Greetings friends – The divine architect has laid the plans, the draftsmen are hard at work. The builders have honed their tools. All the scaffolding is in place. The 1st draft of the pageant is written; the hunt for mana is ongoing; the space is being sanctified – All that is left is for you to join the quest.

And so it is that we enthusiastically invite you to join us at the Rudolf Steiner Branch in Chicago – one of 6 “HUBS” that will co-lead the conference content with the Central Regional Council. We are also a ‘Hybrid-Host’ where attendees will gather in-person. When you come to Chicago for the AGM, you will experience a conference that is a mix of projected Zoom presentations, in-person small group work, artistic activities, and catered vegetarian meals.

• 1st make sure you are registered at https://www.anthroposophy.org/fallconference and have indicated that you will be attending in person at the RSBranch Chicago.
• Then Register by October 1st with the Chicago Branch using PayPal (this requires that you have a PayPal account of your own).

OR

• Register and write a check and it mail by October 1st to: Rudolf Steiner Branch, Attn: Jenny Doty 4249 N Lincoln Ave. Chicago, IL 60618

OR

• Register and contact jenny.meyer17@gmail.com to make alternative payment arrangements.

Details for the in-person conference:

• $75 will cover the expenses for facilities, 3 lunches and 3 dinners, snacks, and printing.

You will enjoy a pre-AGM dinner on Thursday Oct. 7 Doors open at 5 pm (AGM starts promptly at 6:3opm CT)
Lunch and Dinner on Fri.and Sat.
and Lunch post-conference on Sunday.
As well as Snacks/Coffee-Tea during the breaks.

• $40 will cover only the bare expenses – no meals
• Be a Master Builder Patron for $100 or more, to help pay for the tech costs!

Registration Link

• Free street parking is available on the side streets near the Branch, requiring a few-block walk to the conference.
• The nearest public transportation can be found here https://www.transitchicago.com/planatrip/
• If you opt-out of meals, you may contact jenny.meyer17@gmail.com for a list of restaurants within walking distance (bear in mind time restraints) or bring your own food (that doesn’t require refrigeration or kitchen usage).
• There are 3 bathrooms available at the Branch.
• If you need lodging, consider using AirBnb.com, Vrbo.com, or a nearby hotel. Contact Jenny if you have an interest in finding someone that would allow you to couch-surf or share an AirBnB.
• Be prepared to participate in the group work of Biography, Eurythmy, Singing, and Speech as well as being part of the Experiential Pageant—the culmination of the conference on Sunday 10 October.
• Bring your open heart and community spirit!

For any other questions, please contact Jenny Doty at jenny.meyer17@gmail.com.

Today 28 August 1749 – Birthday of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German author, poet, playwright, scientist & diplomat. In 1888, as a result of his work for the Kürschner edition of Goethe’s works, Rudolf Steiner was invited to work as an editor at the Goethe archives in Weimar. As well as the introductions & commentaries to 4 volumes of Goethe’s scientific writings, Steiner wrote 2 books about Goethe’s philosophy: The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe’s World-Conception (1886), which Steiner regarded as the epistemological foundation & justification for his later work, & Goethe’s Conception of the World (1897). Steiner writes about Goethe in many of his lectures, including commentaries on his play Faust.

Goethe and the Evolution of Consciousness, by Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, August 19th, 1921

“…As a young man Goethe necessarily grew up in the outlook of his contemporaries and in the way in which they regarded the world and the affairs of human beings. But he really did not feel at home in this world of thought. There was something turbulent about the young Goethe, but it was a turbulence of a special kind. We need only look at the poems he composed in his youth and we shall find that there was always a kind of inner opposition to what his contemporaries were thinking about the world and about life.

But at the same time there is something else in Goethe — a kind of appeal to what lives in Nature, saying something more enduring and conveying much more than the opinions of those around him could convey. Goethe appeals to the revelations of Nature rather than to the revelations of the human mind. And this was the real temper of his soul even when he was still a child, when he was studying at Leipzig, Strassburg and Frankfurt, and for the first period of his life at Weimar.

Think of him as a child with all the religious convictions of his contemporaries around him. He himself relates — and I have often drawn attention to this beautiful episode in Goethe’s early life — how as a boy of seven he built an altar by taking a music-stand and laying upon it specimens of minerals from his father’s collection; how he placed a taper on the top, lighting it by using a burning-glass to catch the rays of the sun, in order, as he says later — for at seven years he would not, of course, have spoken in this way — to bring an offering to the great God of Nature.

We see him growing beyond what those around him have to say, coming into a closer union with Nature, in whose arms he first of all seeks refuge. Read the works written by Goethe in his youth and you will find that they reveal just this attitude of mind. Then a great longing to go to Italy seizes him and his whole outlook changes in a most remarkable way.

We shall never understand Goethe unless we bear in mind the overwhelming change that came upon him in Italy. In letters to friends at Weimar he speaks of the works of art which conjure up before his soul the whole way in which the Greeks worked. He says: “I suspect that the Greeks proceeded according to those laws by which Nature herself proceeds, and of which I am on the track.” — At last Goethe is satisfied with an environment, an artistic environment enfilled with ideas much closer to Nature than those around him in his youth. And we see how in the course of his Italian journey the idea of metamorphosis arises from this mood of soul, how in Italy Goethe begins to see the transformation of leaf into petal in such a way that the thought of metamorphosis in the whole of Nature flashes up within him.

It is only now that Goethe finds a world in which his soul really feels at home. And, if we study all that he produced after that time, both as a poet and a scientist, it is borne in upon us that he was now living in a world of thought not easily intelligible to his contemporaries, nor indeed to the man of to-day.

Those who embark upon a study of Goethe equipped with the modern scholarship acquired in every kind of educational institution from the Elementary School to the University, and with habitual thought and outlook, will never understand him. For an inner change of mental outlook is essential if we are to realise what Goethe really had in his mind when, in Italy, he re-wrote Iphigenia in Greek metre, after having first composed it in the mood of the Germanic North. Nor is it possible to understand Goethe’s whole attitude to Faust until we realise the fundamental nature of the change that had taken place.

After he had been to Italy, Goethe really hated the first version of Faust which he had written earlier. After that journey he would never have been able to write the passage where Faust turns away from the

“… heavenly forces rising and descending, Their golden urns reciprocally lending,” where he turns his back upon the macrocosm, crying: “Thou, Spirit of the Earth art nearer to me.”

…And many other passages can be read in the same sense. Take, for instance, that wonderful treatise written in the year 1790, on the Metamorphosis of the Plants (Versuch, die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erkennen). We shall have to admit that before his journey to Italy Goethe could never have had at his command a language which seems to converse with the very growth and unfolding life of the plants. And this is an eloquent indication of the place of Goethe’s soul in the whole sweep of evolution. Goethe felt a stranger to the thought of his time the moment he was obliged inwardly to ‘digest’ the result of contemporary scientific education. He was always striving for a different kind of thinking, a different way of approaching the world, and he found it when he felt that he had brought to life within him the attitude of the Greeks to Nature, to the World, to Man…” http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/19210819p01.html

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

“What is to be the starting force and impulse for events in social and ethical life must come out of the spiritual world.” Rudolf Steiner, New Spiritual Impulses in History” Dornach 16 December, 1917

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

430 – Deathday of Saint Augustine an early Christian theologian & philosopher whose writings influenced the development of Western philosophy.  Among his most important works are The City of God & Confessions. In his early years, he was heavily influenced by Manichaeism & afterward by the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus. He “established anew the ancient Faith.” After his conversion to Christianity in 387, Augustine developed his own approach to philosophy & theology, believing that the grace of Christ was indispensable to human freedom. He is the patron saint of brewers, printers, theologians, the alleviation of sore eyes.

“…St. Augustine came to acquire that true Certainty subject to absolutely no deception, which can only he acquired by man with reference to what he experiences in his inner soul…One can believe that everything else the world says is subject to deception, but one cannot possibly doubt that what one experiences in one’s inner being, as one’s ideas and feelings, is the truth; that is certain. That firm basis for the admittance of an indisputable truth, formed one of the starting-points of the Augustinian philosophy...” ~St. Augustine, St. Simon and Auguste Comte, By Rudolf Steiner, GA 184

listen
to the bees
listen to the workers
listen to the sweet hive of your heart
~hag

Hey friends, You know I never ask for $ – so you know this has got to be an important request: Please help support the Anthroposophical Prison Outreach DANCE-A-THON 2021

Greetings kindred souls – This year for the APO fund raiser I plan to hold a Dance-A-Thon & Biodynamic Prep-stir on Friday 24 September 2021 at the Rudolf Steiner Branch of the Anthroposophical Society in America – Chicago

DJ’s TBA – It’s a potluck community gathering, so please bring food & drink to share – Along with your donation to this amazing program.

We also plan to read some poetry from some of the inmates who are working with Anthroposophy!

If you live out of town you can dance in your neck of the woods in solidarity with us. Please show your generous support…

Xox ~hag, hazel@reverseritual.com

Donate here https://secure.anthroposophy.org/…/anth…/campaign.jsp…

Festival Gathering: Tuesday 28 September on the eve of Michaelmas with Rev’s Jeana Lee & Victoria Capon

Potluck at 5:30
Talk at 7pm

At the Rudolf Steiner Branch, 4249 N Lincoln Ave, Chicago, IL 60618

Meeting The Dragon With Our Four Fold Being – A talk and collaborative sculptural creation

Bring Food & drink for the potluck & a found objects to help build the dragon!
Then our inspiration can come to life through our collaboration.

Jeana Lee was recently ordained as a priest of the Christian Community Movement for Religious Renewal and sent to the congregation in Chicago.  Previously she taught chemistry and math at Green Meadow Waldorf high school.  She enjoys swimming in the lake and is interested in questions of sin and redemption.

Victoria Capon hails from the east coast and is new to Chicago. Before attending seminary she taught at the Waldorf School of Cape Cod. Now she is happily settling into serving the chicago CC congregation and exploring the Windy City