Working into October’s Virtue “Satisfaction Becomes Serenity” continued:

This morning at dawn, I could perceive a hint of white mist, spreading across the glassy lake; expanding over the fields of exposed seeds & brown stubble like a soft cloth. Nature is beginning her gestation, concealing in her womb the seeds of future growth. So rests also in our souls the seed of future life. What the future will bring us seems covered by these mists, & the darkening. But now the time has come when in the longer nights this spiritual seed wants to be cherished & nurtured.

We can belong to ourselves again, igniting our inner light. If we foster this calm self-contemplation in our busy lives, even if only for a few minutes every day, we can live with a deep serenity, thru this dark season, & also into the future which is shrouded in the darkness of time.

We must remember that all human life must fluctuate like the scales between two poles, it cannot be fixed. Day & night, life & death, activity & quietness, the out-breath & the in-breath, are the swipes of the pendulum, the rhythms which bear us thru the cycle of the year, & enable us to mature into our true being, when we have found the inner observer at the fulcrum of the scales.

From this mood is prepared the soil from which the future fruits of the soul will ripen.

Collecting colored leaves with you

~hag

16 October 2020 – “Speaking with the Stars”: New Moon occurs this afternoon at 2:31: pm CT. Our satellite is also at perigee, the closest point in its orbit around our planet.

October 2020 has Two full moons (Blue Moon on Halloween!) with a meteor shower sandwiched in between – The annual Orionid meteor shower is already heating up. It generally lasts from early October through about Nov. 7. This year, it’s expected to reach its peak before dawn on Oct. 21. But don’t wait until then to start watching for meteors streaking across the sky. Earth passes through the trail of space debris (rocky dust and ice) left in the wake of Comet Halley. The Orionids, are considered to be one of the most beautiful showers of the year, known for their brightness & speed. Fast meteors can leave glowing ‘trains’ (incandescent bits of debris in the wake of the meteor) which last for several seconds to minutes. Fast meteors can also sometimes become fireballs: Look for prolonged explosions of light when viewing the Orionid meteor shower. You can typically see them anytime after dark, but after midnight is your best bet, & very early mornings are prime time to see these. So if you find yourself up early, like me, say from 4 am – 6 am – you’ve got a good shot at seeing them if you live in a place with dark skies. While the radiant for this meteor shower – the spot where the meteors seem to come from – is the constellation Orion, you can usually see these meteors from anywhere in the sky. So get outside early, look up & let your gaze wander.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1793 – Marie Antoinette, widow of Louis XVI, is guillotined at the height of the French Revolution.

1827 – Birthday of Arnold Bocklin , a Swiss symbolist painter portraying mythological, fantastical figures along classical architecture constructions creating a strange, fantasy world. Böcklin is best known for his five versions of the Isle of the Dead, which partly evokes the Cemetery close to his studio where his baby daughter Maria had been buried.

Rudolf Steiner speaks of him as an Arthurian Knight: Thus even in the 9th century, in the paganism of Europe, there still lived much of the pre-Christian Christianity. That is the remarkable fact. Moreover even in that time the belated followers of European paganism understood the Cosmic Christ far more worthily and truly than those who received the Christ in the Christianity that was spread officially under that name. Strangely we can see the life around King Arthur radiate into the present time, continued even into our time, placed into the immediate present by the sudden power of destiny. Thus I beheld in seership a member of the Round Table of King Arthur, who lived the life of the Round Table in a very deep and intense way, though he stood a little aside from the others who were given more to the adventures of their knighthood. This was a knight who lived a rather contemplative life, though it was not like the Knighthood of the Grail, for this did not exist in Arthur’s circle. What the knights did in the fulfilment of their tasks, which in accordance with that age were for the most part warlike campaigns, was called by the name ‘Adventure’ (Aventure). But there was one who stood out from among the others as I saw him, revealing a life truly wonderful in its inspiration. For we must imagine the knights going out on to the spur of land, seeing the wonderful play of clouds above, the waves beneath, the surging interplay of the one and the other, which gives a mighty and majestic impression to this very day. In all this they saw the Spiritual and were inspired with it, and this gave them their strength. But there was one among them who penetrated most deeply into this surging and foaming of the waves, with the spiritual beings wildly rising in the foam with their figures grotesque to earthly sight. He had a wonderful perception of the way in which the marvellously pure sun-influence played into the rest of nature, living and weaving in the spiritual life and movement of the surface of the ocean. He saw what lived in the light nature of the sun, borne up as it were by the watery atmosphere as we can see to this day, the sunlight approaching the trees and the spaces between the trees quite differently than in other regions, glittering back from between the trees, and playing often as in rainbow colours. Such a knight there was among them, one who had a peculiarly penetrating vision of these things. I was much concerned to follow his life into later time to see the individuality again. For just in this case something would needs enter into a later incarnation of a Christian life that was almost primitive and pagan, that was Christian only to the extent that I have just described. And this in fact was what appeared, for that Knight of the Round Table of King Arthur was born again as Arnold Böcklin. This riddle which had followed me for an immensely long time, can only be solved in connection with the Round Table of King Arthur. Thus you see that we have a Christianity tangible with spiritual touch to this very day, a Christianity before the Mystery of Golgotha which shed its light even into the time that I have just outlined ~Karmic Relationships, Volume IV: Lecture III

1922 – The founding of the Esoteric Youth Circle by Rudolf Steiner. Notes from the various preparatory discussions for the founding of the Group:

‘If I am to go into what I understand with the term “esoteric group” then let me say that if you want to take the esoteric earnestly, you must say to yourself that it is an action out of the impulses from the spiritual world. One can strive toward this. Anthroposophy is a path to this end. To build such a community would constitute a decision to set upon this path.

The spiritual is a living element & so such a group must not be something dead. The group must be a force-group. The health of each part is the health of the whole. It is the mutual taking on of karma that is created in such a community. There is then mutual suffering to live through, but also mutual joy. People must be treated like fellow human beings, with all their imperfections.

What you seek is to find a friend in the spiritual world. The important thing is to remain spiritually true to the friend once found. Therefore, the 1^st requirement is that you learn quite precisely what spiritual loyalty is.

Your community will have in it something of the primordial mystery of all human community. This mystery is that, what we ourselves do within the community bears no fruit for us ourselves, but for others, & that the fruits for us come from others.

We must work for the progress of humanity – Just as the physical social life consists of deeds done together, so too we strive for common deeds in the spirit – thus actually, for a social working in the suprasensible.

We must endeavor to carry spirit into the furthest consequences of our actions. This alone – that we bring spirit & love into our will – can make it possible to stand firmly against being overrun by the cultural machine. Too few people today develop real initiative. There is a lot of willfulness, but little will.

The true meditation is a fulfilling of the spiritual will that the Time Spirit bears with itself. Where such meditation is practiced, a spiritual force is able to work into the earthly events. Spiritual worlds want to work in to earthly events today, but they can do this only when, through human meditation, space is created for it. Through meditation, something like an empty space comes about. Into this space, the spiritual beings can enter with their effects. And the power of meditating such a meditation in common increases by potentization.

When we do this community-meditation, it will bring about a deeper connection of the core of our being with our sheaths.

These meditations, when used correctly, could become something like windows into the spiritual world. The words & pictures given, form only half of what is to be entrusted to us. The other half we are to find ourselves through spiritual activity.

Each of you must feel joy for the success of the other. You must avoid every feeling of rivalry & have the awareness that what each of you accomplishes, you accomplish through the power of all of the others.

Uniting yourself through a mutual promise to strive toward a common spiritual goal – & leaving one another completely free in actions & judgements in life – such a community based on this is something completely new in the evolution of humanity. And it is what is most necessary today.

For someone who comes to specific results on the esoteric path, there is always the danger of delusions of grandeur. Such a community as yours can be a protection against this. For in it, you strive together to cross the threshold of the spiritual world. And there each of you has to say that you have the efforts of all the others to thank for what you have achieved personally.

Effects will arise in the destiny between human beings who are connected with us in the community physically & spiritually. The community will never die out. With the 1^st community members who reincarnate, the community returns to Earth.

By persevering with the exercises we have a chance to stand up to Ahrimanic powers that no one person can withstand.

Through the reading of the oath given by Rudolf Steiner on 16 October 1922, in the presence of the others, the admittance into the community was effected.

And now consider your community as having been founded by the spiritual world itself…Now get to know each other well.

This gave us the idea to tell each other our biography at the mutual acceptance into membership.

What has taken place now is a 1^st in the post-Christian era: human beings themselves chose, out of freedom before the spiritual world, to join together esoterically’.

The 12 founding members:

Daniel van Bemmelen, co-founder of the 1^st Dutch Waldorf School

Georg Groot MD, 3-fold social order, co-worker in the Berlin Group of the College Association

Herbert Hahn, called by Steiner to teach at the Independent Waldorf School in Stuttgart

Ernst Lehrs, teacher at the Waldorf school in Stuttgart, served on the committee for the Independent Anthroposophical Society founded for the youth. Later taught in The Hague, London, & Aberdeen. Also taught with his wife Maria Roeschl in the Rudolf Steiner Seminar.

Rene Maikowski, business manager of the Association for Anthroposophical College Studies, also a Waldorf teacher.

Wilhelm Rath, bookseller, man of letters, farmer, was on the committee of the Independent Anthroposophical Society.

Wilhelm Selling, mechanical engineer, colonial officer in Africa, in charge of the Theosophical library, mentor of the youth work in Berlin

Karin Selling, part of the Scandinavian Theosophical Society, teacher at the Waldorf School in Stockholm

Emma Smit, teacher & organizer of the Independent school in The Hague

Maria Spira, came from the Zionist Youth Movement, married Wilhelm Rath

Albrecht Strohschein, business man, 1^st co-worker in the Der Kommenden (The Coming Day) in Stuttgart, student of psychology in Jena, co-founder of the therapeutic pedagogical movement

Kurt Walther, postal officer, lecturer, & leader of many courses, the successor of Marie Steiner in the Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Socety,married Wilhelm Sellings sister Clara Selling, who was part of Steiner’s household

Others that came in after the founding, in the transition of the Association for the Three-fold Social Organism as it moved into the Association for Independent Spiritual Life, included: Ernst Uehli, Rector Moritz, Michael Bauer, Hermann Beck, Eugen & Lily Kolisko, Emil Leinhas, Emil Molt, Rudolf Meyer, Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz, Fredrich Rittelmeyer, Walter Johannes Stein, Carl Unger, Ludwig Webeck, H. Wohlbold

1946 – Nuremberg trials: Execution of the convicted Nazi leaders of the Main Trial

1964 – China detonates its first nuclear weapon

1968 – United States athletes Tommie Smith & John Carlos are kicked off the US team for participating in the 1968 Olympics Black Power salute

1984 – Desmond Tutu is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

***

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~i am
a cackle of joy
in the throat of a wild goose
swallowing cloud stuff
in a dizzy triangle
above the lake…
~hag

***

31 October, 1 pm – 3 pm CT ​​​​​​​

‘Soul to Soul’ on-line Festival

with the Central Regional Council

Join the CRC for an All Souls Pageant on All Hallows Eve, honoring our connection with our Beloved Dead, thru music, & poetry & Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts – ‘Break Out’ sessions & live music with special guest Rev. Carol Kelly

Halloween 31 October 2020, Saturday 11 am – 1 pm PT / 1 pm – 3 pm CT / 2pm – 4pm ET

Stay tuned for ZOOM details

***

Election Day – Tuesday 3 November 2020

7 pm – 9 pm CT

Our Annual All Souls Festival

We will hold space with each other & connect with the ‘so called dead’ to bring healing on both sides of the Threshold, during Electon Night 2020, through Social Sculpture with Lucien Dante Lazar. 

In person at Elderberries Bio-dynamic Outpost in league with the Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249-51 N. Lincoln Ave. Chicago

& online: Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/94319961767?pwd=S291ZmEraFlOSS9Nc2dGcWFHODlBZz09

Meeting ID: 943 1996 1767
Passcode: 494798
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***

Friday 6 November 2020, 7 pm – 9 pm CT

‘Connections Revealed’

The Connection Between Epidemics, the Souls of the Dead, & the Spiritual World – Leading thoughts by Hazel Archer-Ginsberg based on Spiritual Scientific research & indications from Rudolf Steiner

With Group Eurythmy, Singing, Social Sculpture while reading the names of the dead, & Break out Sessions.

In-person at Elderberries Biodynamic Outpost & 3 fold Cultural Hub, in conjunction with the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago, 4249-51 N. Lincoln Ave.

& on-line: Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/98412080773?pwd=NUQrQnYydmdwZWF3V1FmVjYrTS9wUT09

Meeting ID: 984 1208 0773
Passcode: 054456
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+13126266799,,98412080773#,,,,,,0#,,054456# US (Chicago)
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        +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
        +1 646 876 9923 US (New York)
        +1 301 715 8592 US (Germantown)
        +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
        +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
        +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
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Meeting ID: 984 1208 0773
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