Category Archives: Chicago Event

THE ST. JOHN IMAGINATION

Chicago Event, Festival, Lecture, Poetry, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Summer

June 10, 2016

This morning – An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.2 rocked Southern California, rousing residents out of bed at about 1:05 a.m. PT .

The quake was centered about 13 miles north-northwest near Borrego Springs in the desert east of Los Angeles, the U.S. Geological Service reported.

On the west side of Los Angeles, about 100 miles from the epicenter, the quake produced a long shaking motion lasting about 30 seconds. Near Los Angeles International Airport, window blinds shook & the building structure rolled in steady waves. The quake was also felt in San Diego.

40 AD – Birthday of Apollonius of Tyana, a Greek Neopythagorean philosopher, around the time of Jesus.

671 – Emperor Tenji of Japan introduces a water clock (clepsydra) called Rokoku.

1190 –Frederick I Barbarossa drowns in the river Saleph while leading an army to Jerusalem

1786 – A landslide dam on the Dadu River created by an earthquake ten days earlier collapses, killing 100,000 in the Sichuan province of China

1886 – Mount Tarawera in New Zealand erupts, killing 1,530 people & burying the famous Pink & White Terraces. Eruptions continue for 3 months creating a large, fissure across the mountain peak

1898 – Spanish–American War: U.S. Marines land on the island of Cuba

1915 – Birthday of Saul Bellow, Canadian-American author & playwright, Nobel Prize laureate

1963 – Equal Pay Act of 1963 aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex (see Gender pay gap) was signed into law by John F. Kennedy as part of his New Frontier Program

1964 – United States Senate breaks a 75-day filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, leading to the bill’s passage.

1967 – The Six-Day War ends: Israel and Syria agree to a cease-fire

1977 – The Apple II, one of the first personal computers, goes on sale

2002 – The first direct electronic communication experiment between the nervous systems of two humans is carried out by Kevin Warwick in the United Kingdom

~   ~   ~

eye light

~O fickle winds & swirling dust

Mirage of trees in Summer

Let me remember what is real…

~hag

~   ~   ~

A Summary of THE ST. JOHN IMAGINATION, by Rudolf Steiner ~from the Four Seasons and the Archangels Lecture 4

In the sense world we see the being of Nature sprouting, budding —from the powers of sleep the forces of vegetative growth, are given form. But in this sleeping Nature, the spiritual which animates & weaves through everything in Nature is revealed.

In summer humanity is bound up with Nature, but, if we have right feeling & perception for it, objective spirituality comes towards us from out of Nature’s interweaving life. And so, to find the essential human being during the St. John’s time, at midsummer, we must turn to the objective spirituality in the outer world, & this is present everywhere in Nature.

If we follow Nature in high summer with deepened spiritual insight & with perceptive eyes, we find our gaze directed to the depths of the Earth itself. We find that the minerals down there send their inner crystal-forming process towards us more vividly than at any other time of the year; shaping itself into lines, angles & surfaces. “If we are to have an impression of it as a whole, we must picture this crystallizing process as an interweaving activity, colored throughout with deep blue”.

St. John's RS GA 229 Plate V

We can feel that as a human form we have grown out of the blue depths of the earth’s crust; permeated with force by the silver-gleaming crystal lines.

Using our imaginative thinking, we could ask: “How is it that these silver-sparkling crystal lines & waves are working within me? What is it that lives & works there, silver-gleaming in the blue of the Earth? — then one knows: That is cosmic Will. And one has the feeling of standing upon cosmic Will”.

Tomorrow we look up to the heights

Until soon

Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Current Festival & Program Events

Lose yourself to find yourself

Chicago Event, Poetry, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote

May 22, 2016

battle of Granicu

334 BC – The Macedonian army of Alexander the Great defeats Darius III of Persia in the Battle of the Granicus.

337 – Birthday of Constantine the Great, Roman emperor.

1802 – Death-day of Martha Washington, 1st First Lady of the United States

1813 – Richard Wagner, German composer. Ilona Schubert is credited with connecting him in a former life to Merlin.

1849 – Future U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is issued a patent for an invention to lift boats over obstacles in a river, making him the only U.S. President to ever hold a patent.

1885 – Death-day of Victor Hugo. Prior to burial in the Panthéon, the body of Victor Hugo was exposed under the Arc de Triomphe during the night. Rudolf Steiner indicates he was a Hibernian Initiate in the Karma lectures vol. 2 lec. 14.

1906 – The Wright brothers are granted U.S. patent number 821,393 for their “Flying-Machine”.

1947 – Cold War begins: President Harry S. Truman the Truman Doctrine.

1960 – The Great Chilean earthquake, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded measuring 9.5.

~   ~   ~

veilpaintflowersLily Trofete

Calendar of the Soul Ninth Week [May 22, 2016 – May 28, 2016]

When I forget the narrow will of self,

  The cosmic warmth that heralds summer’s glory

  Fills all my soul and spirit;

  To lose myself in light

  Is the command of spirit vision

  And intuition tells me strongly:

  O lose yourself to find yourself.

~  ~   ~

Mystery Working Marke

LAST CHANCE IN CHICAGO TO BE PART OF THIS JOURNEY: 

Lemniscate Arts Presents: “The Working of the Spirit” –  

The Readers:

Hilary/ Hierophantes – Marke Levene

Felix/Prophetes/Pelagios – Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Felicia – Kim Synder-Vine

Beate Truegood – Barbara Richardson

Trutman/Romanus/Dionysian Poet/Philokrates– Ed Schuldt

Nicholas Findig – Denise McCauley

Thodosius/Torquatus/ Orphic Poet – Meaghens Witri

Johannes/Alexandros – Seamus Maynard

Capesius/Neophytos/Chrysanthides – Matthew Dexter

Maria – Peneolpe Lait

Angel – Seamus Maynard

Double – Xavier Curry

Lucifer – Ariane Grossi

Astrid – Meaghens Witri

Philia – Denise McCauley

Luna- Kim Synder-Vine

Other Philia – Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Beneditictus – Duncan MacIntosh

Strader/Hesperon – Glen Williamson

Rnienecke/Kolotars – Xavier Curry

Arhriman – Michael Burton

Theodora– Barbara Richardson

Gairmanus/Magus Bell/ Appolonian Priest– Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Nurse – Christa MacBeth

Guardian – Meaghens Witri

i more Readers Theater performance TODAY Sunday May 22, 2016. 10:30am to 6:30pm – 

Estimated breakdown of Scenes:

Start: 10:30am -Scenes 1-2

Noon  – 15 minute break

12:15-12:45pm – Sc. 3,4,5

1-2 – Lunch

2-3:30pm – Sc. 6,7,8,9

3:30-3:45pm – Sc. 10,11

4:45-5pm – Break

5-6:30pm – Sc. 12,13,14

The End

Folks are invited to come & go as they like, but if you plan to enter sometime in the middle, please buy your tickets on-line ahead of time. 

 Contribution $15.00 – $45.00 per presentation – Get your tickets now at www.workingofthespirit.org 

Make checks out to Lemniscate Arts, Credit cards also accepted

Can’t make it? Make a donation to show your support

Wesak Mystery Drama

Chicago Event, Insight, Poetry

Haiku’s, ants & worms

Buddha-like the Moon sitting

All have the same face

On Buddha’s birthday

Spring rain beneath a full moon,

On Buddha’s deathday

Enlightenment in the Lake

Another sunset

~hag 

The Buddha (whose name means: *The Awakened One* or *One who Knows*) is regarded as the ninth incarnation of Lord Vishnu. He was born in 563 BC on the Full Moon of May in Vaisakh. Traditionally, Buddha’s Birthday is known as Wesak or Visakah Puja (Buddhas Day).

Wesak, the major Buddhist festival of the year, celebrates the birth, enlightenment and death of the Buddha on one and the same day, when the Sun is in Taurus, and the Moon in Scorpio.

The Full Moon in May is a mystically auspicious time – This ‘Buddha Moon’ is considered to be the greatest moment of spiritual contact for the entire year. Great polarities are said to be synthesized and consequently united at this festival. Hope is revived in the world, and great seeds of beauty, truth, and goodness are planted within us — qualities needed for the unity of humankind.

Ancient Wisdom asserts that there will be a new coming of the World Avatar and those beings who assist them. But the reality set forth and embedded within this festival, is that WE, as a living unit called humanity, are to be that World Avatar, when we can live as “Christ in me”…

The Wesak Festival provides us each year with a reception of the tools of love and wisdom, to fulfill this ancient prophecy. What all the higher beings have done, we can do also, taking up our responsibility as the 10th hierarchy to radiate the Christ Impulse out to all the kingdoms of Earth -becoming like little suns – emanating rays from the very core of our “I”, through the vehicle of our bodies, from our purified hearts, and specifically from our forehead, where our third eye is located. This is the Bulls Eye of Taurus – the Sun of May – and the mystery of the transformative Scorpio Moon.

The Full Buddha Moon is exact at 4:14pm CST, on May 21st 2016, we will see it rise over the Great Inland Sea of Chicago at 7:59pm, and it will set on May 22 at 6:15am.

~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

~   ~   ~

Lemniscate Arts Presents: Opening the Realm of New Mystery Drama – 

“The Working of the Spirit” – 

The Readers:

Hilary – Marke Levene

Felix – Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Felicia – Kim Synder-Vine

Beate Truegood – Barbara Richardson

Trutman/Romanus – Ed Schuldt

Nicholas Findig – Denise McCauley

Johannes – Seamus Maynard

Capesius – Matthew Dexter

Maria – Peneolpe Lait

Angel – Seamus Maynard

Double – Xavier Curry

Lucifer – Ariane Grossi

Astrid – Meaghens Witri

Philia – Denise McCauley

Luna- Kim Synder-Vine

Other Philia – Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Beneditictus – Duncan MacIntosh

Strader – Glen Williamson

Arhriman – Michael Burton

Theodora– Barbara Richardson

Gairmanus Bell – Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Nurse – Christa MacBeth

Guardian – Meaghens Witri

2 Readers Theater performances: Saturday May 21 and Sunday May 22, 2016. 10:30am to 6:30pm – Each day is a staged reading in full, with breaks, of the new drama.

Estimated breakdown of Scenes:

Start: 10:30am -Scenes 1-2

Noon  – 15 minute break

12:15-12:45pm – Sc. 3,4,5

1-2 – Lunch

2-3:30pm – Sc. 6,7,8,9

3:30-3:45pm – Sc. 10,11

4:45-5pm – Break

5-6:30pm – Sc. 12,13,14

The End

Folks are invited to come & go as they like, but if you plan to enter sometime in the middle, please buy your tickets on-line ahead of time.  

Contribution $15.00 – $45.00 per presentation – Get your tickets now at www.workingofthespirit.org 

 Make checks out to Lemniscate Arts

Credit cards also accepted

Can’t make it? Make a donation to show your support

~   ~   ~

Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society,

4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618 (map)

 

Check out our Web site!

Chicago, IL (Anthroposophical Society in America)

Creative Fire

Chicago Event, Insight, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote

May 20, 2016

325 – The First Council of Nicaea is formally opened, starting the first ecumenical council of the Christian Church

526 – An earthquake kills about 250,000 people in what is now Syria and Antiochia

IHS St. Bernardine of Siena

1444 – Feast Day of St. Bernardine of Siena. Most of the saints suffer great personal opposition, even persecution. Bernardine, by contrast, seems more like a human dynamo who simply took on the needs of the world.

He was the greatest preacher of his time, journeying across Italy, calming strife-torn cities attracting crowds of 30,000.

When he was 20, the plague was at its height in his hometown, Siena. Sometimes as many as 20 people died in one day at the hospital. Bernardine offered to run the hospital &, with the help of other young men, nursed patients there for four months.

At 22, he entered the Franciscan Order. For almost a dozen years he lived in solitude & prayer, but his gifts ultimately caused him to be sent to preach. He always traveled on foot, sometimes speaking for hours in one place, & then doing the same in another town.

Bernardine devised a symbol—IHS, the first three letters of the name of Jesus in Greek, in Gothic letters on a blazing sun. Opposition arose from those who thought it a dangerous innovation. Three attempts were made to have the pope take action against him.

General of a branch of the Franciscan Order, the Friars of the Strict Observance, he strongly emphasized scholarship. When he started there were 300 friars in the community; when he died there were 4,000. He returned to preaching the last two years of his life, dying while traveling.

Botticelli_-_Madonna_del_Magnificat_

Madonna of the Magnificat by Botticell, shows Lucrezia de’ Medici as the Madonna, surrounded by her children with Lorenzo holding a pot of ink

1503 – Death-day of Lorenzo de’ Medici

sonnets-tl

1609 – Shakespeare’s sonnets are first published in London

1806 – Birth-day of John Stuart Mill, an English philosopher, political economist &civil servant. He has been called “the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century.” Mill’s conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control.

Amelia Earhart

1932 – Amelia Earhart takes off from Newfoundland to begin the world’s first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot, landing in Ireland the next day

1956 – In Operation Redwing, the first United States airborne hydrogen bomb is dropped over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean

~   ~  ~

light goddess

~Look, I have light

In my eyes

And on my skin…

The warmth of a star…

And everything alive is turning

Into something else

In the alchemical Heart

Of some annihilating

Yet creative fire

That is burning unnoticed

Waiting to touch

Me & You…

~hag

~   ~   ~

mystery working 2

Dear Friends – Can you feel the excitement building? Twenty actors, including Glen Williamson & Kim Synder-Vine, with director  Henry-Cameron Allen from Gloucester, Massachusetts, & writer Michael Hedley Burton, with producer Marke Levene & eurythmist Barbara Richadson…Are all here, ensouling our branch with their graceful presence, striving in rehearsal, bonded together for the Readers Theater production this weekend.We hope you will join us.

“In giving speech artistic shape and form the healthy co-operation and harmonization of body, soul and spirit becomes manifest. The body shows whether it is able to incorporate the Spirit correctly; the soul reveals whether the spirit lives in it truly; and the Spirit is vividly present working directly into the physical. Those taking part in speech courses have a direct personal experience of the revelation of Anthroposophy in the activity of Man. Here it may be regarded as a testing of Anthroposophy that it is in a position to enable the art of speech to come to life again, in its full significance.” ~Rudolf Steiner

Lemniscate Arts Presents: Opening the Realm of New Mystery Drama –

“The Working of the Spirit” –  

TWO Readers Theater performances: Saturday May 21 and Sunday May 22, 2016. 

10:30am to 6:30pm – Each day is a staged reading in full, with breaks, of the new drama.

The journey of the play is well worth the long ride, with its rich language – very deep & beautiful – depicting the lives & relationships of earthly humans as well as spiritual beings.

Folks are invited to come & go as they like, but if you plan to enter sometime in the middle, please buy your tickets on-line ahead of time. 

Contribution $15.00 – $45.00 per presentation – 

Get your tickets now at www.workingofthespirit.org  

Can’t make it? Make a donation to show your support

~   ~   ~

Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society,

4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618 (map)

Check out our Web site!

Chicago, IL (Anthroposophical Society in America)

 

In the I

Chicago Event, Insight, Poetry, Quote, Remembering

May 19, 2016 “History is a cyclic poem written by Time upon the memories of man”. ~Percy Bysshe Shelley

1643 – Thirty Years’ War: French forces defeat Spanish forces at the Battle of Rocroi, marking the symbolic end of Spain as a dominant land power.

1792 – Birthday of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the philosopher of the ”I”. Rudolf Steiner reveals a past life as Spinoza in GA 158

1895 – Birthday of Emil Bock, a German anthroposophist, author, theologian & one of the founders of The Christian Community.

In 1914 he began a study of languages at the University of Bonn. However, the same year he enlisted in the First World War & was sent to the front in Flanders, where he was wounded. In 1916, he met for the first time the theologian Friedrich Rittelmeyer, & from 1918 he studied Protestant theology in Berlin, & graduated in 1921. That same year he was one of the founders of the Christian Community in Switzerland. Bock soon became the leader of the seminary of the Christian Community, & after the death of Friedrich Rittelmeyer, he became the leader of the community in 1938.

In 1941, the Nazi regime banned the Christian Community due to its alleged “Jewish” & “Masonic” influence, & Bock was sent to a concentration camp. He was released from the concentration camp in 1942, but was under surveillance for the rest of the war. Yet, Bock was instrumental in the rebuilding of the community.

1898 – Death-day of William Ewart Gladstone a British Liberal politician. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate times, more than any other person, & served as Chancellor of the Exchequer four times. Gladstone was also Britain’s oldest Prime Minister; he resigned for the final time when he was 84 years old. According to Alfred Meebold, a personal student of Rudolf Steiner, Gladstone was Cicero.

1921 – The United States Congress passes the Emergency Quota Act establishing national quotas on immigration.

~   ~   ~

eyecosmic

~I am in the Eye

A hazel orb resting beneath golden lids encircling

Eyelashes growing like stalks of dark truth

I see beyond light shimmering

In every blade of greening leaf

Blue flames leap

Opening my pores

As I shine in & out of life

~hag

~   ~   ~

A review from Copake:

Working of the Spirit Presents Powerful Pictures of the Soul Life of Contemporary Times in Readers Theater

This “new Mystery Drama” as it is being called is really a “must see” for anthroposophists everywhere!  It is compelling and well written, with a cast of actors well suited for the reading of such complex and compelling characters and interconnections! The actors have been assembled from around the world.

Over Whitsun weekend, Camphill Copake hosted a festival of “new mystery dramas” in “readers theater” format. Michael Burton, established author and lifetime student of Anthroposophy and Rudolf Steiner’s Mystery Dramas, wrote the Working of the Spirit drama.

Working of the Spirit will be presented in Readers Theater in two separate performances in Chicago on Saturday and Sunday, May 21 and 22. Tickets are available for purchase at www.workingofthespirit.org or at the door of the Chicago Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Requested donations start at $15.

Both Readers Theater performances of The Working of the Spirit will start at 10:30 a.m. As with Rudolf Steiner’s Mystery Dramas, the play is an all day event, with anticipated ending at 6 p.m. (Folks are invited to come & go as they like, but if you plan to enter sometime in the middle, please buy your tickets on line ahead of time 🙂

The journey of the play is well worth the long ride, however, with rich language – very deep and beautiful – and the depicting of the lives and relationships of earthly humans as well as spiritual beings.

Twenty actors portray the many characters and do a clear and moving rendering, as they read from scripts, bringing the play to life.  At Copake, the author, Michael Burton, portrayed the part of Trautmann and also read all stage directions to stimulate the imaginations of the audience. Michael’s speech and his clear voice made it easy to “see” the play.

This new drama, based on Rudolf Steiner’s four Mystery Dramas and featuring the characters from those four plays, continues their stories into the future.

Marke Levene’s immersion in the 1990s with Portal Productions on producing and touring Rudolf Steiner’s Mystery Dramas provided him a meditatively acquired outline of the fifth Mystery Drama Steiner had planned when the start of WWI blocked continuation. This play is an attempt to continue the story of these characters.  Michael Burton used Marke’s outline as his starting point.  By Patrick O’Neill