Category Archives: Festival

Penetrate to the heart of the core of the root…

September 17, 2016Autumn, Chicago Event, Festival, Insight, Meditation, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars~hag

17 September 2016 – Astro-Weather: Now the Moon shines below the Great Square of Pegasus. From the Great Square’s left corner extends a big line of three stars, running to the lower left, that mark the head, backbone & leg of the constellation Andromeda. The line of three includes the Square’s corner

Upper left from the end of this line, you’ll find W-shaped Cassiopeia tilting up

Skywatchers with an unobstructed horizon toward the west-southwest should keep an eye out for Venus this week, minutes after sunset, it shines so brilliantly that it stands out against the bright twilight. The star Spica, is to her lower left

***

I turn to history not for lessons but to confront my experience with the experience of others and to win for myself a sense of responsibility for the state of the human conscience ~ Zbigniew Herbert (from Chris Manvell)

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1179 – Deathday of Hildegard of Bingen, “the Sybil of the Rhine” a German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, visionary, & polymath.

She is considered to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany. One of her works as a composer, the Ordo Virtutum, is an early example of liturgical drama, the oldest surviving morality play. She wrote theological, botanical, & medicinal texts, as well as letters, liturgical songs, & poems, while supervising miniature illuminations in the Rupertsberg manuscript of her first work, Scivias. She is also noted for the invention of a constructed language known as Lingua Ignota.

Hildegard 1st saw “The Shade of the Living Light” at the age of three. Hildegard was hesitant to share her visions, but at the age of 42, Hildegard received instruction from God, to “write down that which you see and hear.” Still hesitant to record her visions, Hildegard became physically ill. The illustrations recorded in the book of Scivias were visions that Hildegard experienced, causing her great suffering: “But I, though I saw and heard these things, refused to write for a long time through doubt and bad opinion and the diversity of human words, not with stubbornness but in the exercise of humility, until, laid low by the scourge of God, I fell upon a bed of sickness; then, compelled at last by many illnesses, and by the witness of a certain noble maiden of good conduct [the nun Richardis von Stade] I set my hand to the writing. While I was doing it, I sensed, the deep profundity of scriptural exposition; and, raising myself from illness by the strength I received, I brought this work to a close – though just barely – in ten years. (…) And I spoke and wrote these things not by the invention of my heart or that of any other person, but as by the secret mysteries of God I heard and received them in the heavenly places. And again I heard a voice from Heaven saying to me, ‘Cry out therefore, and write thus!’

Hildegard’s visions caused her to see humans as “living sparks” of God’s love.

On 17 September 1179, when Hildegard died, her sisters claimed they saw two streams of light appear in the skies & cross over the room where she was dying.

“Listen: there was once a king sitting on his throne. Around Him stood great and wonderfully beautiful columns ornamented with ivory, bearing the banners of the king with great honor. Then it pleased the king to raise a small feather from the ground, and he commanded it to fly. The feather flew, not because of anything in itself but because the air bore it along. Thus am I, a feather on the breath of God.”

Howard Chandler Christy

1787 – The United States Constitution is signed in Philadelphia

1859 – Joshua A. Norton declares himself “Norton I, Emperor of the United States.” Born in England, Norton spent most of his early life in South Africa, he emigrated to San Francisco with an inheritance, but he lost his fortune investing in Peruvian rice & Norton’s public prominence faded. He reemerged to lay claim to the position of Emperor of the United States, & ‘Protector of Mexico’. He was treated deferentially in San Francisco, &currency issued in his name was honored in the establishments he frequented.

Though some considered him insane or eccentric, citizens of San Francisco celebrated his regal presence & his proclamations, such as his order that the United States Congress be dissolved by force & his numerous decrees calling for a bridge crossing connecting San Francisco to Oakland, &a corresponding tunnel to be built under San Francisco Bay.

At his funeral two days later, nearly 30,000 people packed the streets of San Francisco to pay homage. Norton has been immortalized as the basis of characters in the literature of writers Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Christopher Moore, Maurice De Bevere, Selma Lagerlöf, & Neil Gaiman

1908 – The Wright Flyer flown by Orville Wright, with Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge as passenger, crashes, killing Selfridge. He becomes the first airplane fatality

1916 –Manfred von Richthofen (“The Red Baron“), a flying ace of the German Luftstreitkräfte, wins his first aerial combat near Cambrai, France, in World War I

1928 – The Okeechobee hurricane strikes southeastern Florida, killing more than 2,500 people. It is the third deadliest natural disaster in United States history, behind the Galveston hurricane of 1900 & the 1906 San Francisco earthquake

1939 –The Soviet Union joins Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland in World War II

1939 –German submarine U-29 sinks the British aircraft carrier HMS Courageous in World War II

1948 – The Lehi, also known as the Stern gang, assassinates Count Folke Bernadotte, who was appointed by the United Nations to mediate between the Arab nations & Israel. Lehi = “Fighters for the Freedom of Israel” was a Zionist paramilitary organization founded by Avraham (“Yair”) Stern in Palestine. Its aim was to evict the British authorities from Palestine by force, allowing unrestricted immigration of Jews & the formation of a Jewish state, a ‘new totalitarian Hebrew republic’

1961 – Deathday of Dag Hammarskjöld, Swedish diplomat, economist, author & the second secretary-general of the United Nations. Soon after his appointment Hammarskjöld was interviewed on radio by Edward R. Murrow. In this talk he declared: “But the explanation of how man should live a life of active social service in full harmony with himself as a member of the community of spirit, I found in the writings of those great medieval mystics [Meister Eckhart and Jan van Ruysbroek] for whom ‘self-surrender’ had been the way to self-realization, and who in ‘singleness of mind’ and ‘inwardness’ had found strength to say yes to every demand which the needs of their neighbours made them face, and to say yes also to every fate life had in store for them when they followed the call of duty as they understood it.”

He was en route to negotiate a cease-fire on 18 September when his plane crashed near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia. Hammarskjöld & fifteen others died in the crash. The circumstances of the incident are still not clear. There is some evidence that suggests the plane was shot down. Göran Björkdahl (a Swedish aid worker) wrote in 2011 that he believed Dag Hammarskjöld’s 1961 death was a murder committed in part to benefit mining companies like Union Minière, after Hammarskjöld had made the UN intervene in the Katanga crisis. Björkdahl based his assertion on interviews with witnesses of the plane crash & on archival documents. Former U.S. President Harry Truman commented that Hammarskjöld “was on the point of getting something done when they killed him. Notice that I said ‘when they killed him’.”

1978 – The Camp David Accords brokered by President Jimmy Carter, is signed by Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin

2001 – The New York Stock Exchange reopens for trading after the September 11 attacks, the longest closure since the Great Depression

2006 – Fourpeaked Mountain in Alaska erupts, marking the first eruption for the long-dormant volcano in at least 10,000 years

2011 – Occupy Wall Street movement begins in Zuccotti Park, New York City

***

Hilma Af Klint

~In slanted sunlight O my soul

The ripening fruits of my thinking are aroused in certainty,

For I sense an essence kindred to my own…

Joyfully I can perceive

The Autumn-Spirt waking…

& then I know

That winter will spring in me

Like Summer of the soul…

***

Hilma Af Klint

Inner Sanctum – a guided imagination:

Let us take our breath into our thinking, bringing our awareness inward, into the secret reaches of our inner sanctum…

Penetrate to the heart of the core of the root…

Peer down through the cracks in the surface, all the way to the center…

Treat the darkness there, as the source, of light, a cleverly disguised treasure, waiting to be re-discovered…a repository of raw material that will fuel the fires of inspiration, a place where we can go to practice the high art of redemption…

Let’s dare to be curious about the amazing sacraments that lie beneath the obvious questions…To open that mysterious door, that leads to the even more mysterious door, that will take us to the most private, yet inclusive, fertile oasis of all…as we aspire to wrestle tenderly with the unripe side of our nature, until it agrees to share its hidden treasures with the rest of us…

Then the immediate future, the eternal now, will bring cathartic revelations leading to spiritual insights & ingenious changes in the way we dance our life…

You are potentially a genius, we all are…Perhaps not in the same way that Einstein & Beethoven were, but still: We possess some brilliant capacity or set of skills that is exquisitely unique…

We are a masterpiece unlike any other that has ever lived…& you know what…the precise instructions we need to ripen into that glorious Genie have always been with us…The master plan…our special mission…our personal soul code…our secret song, that says, it’s our birthright to dance daily with the Divine Intelligence…

We have the power & the privilege to ask ‘The Source’ very specific questions about what we need to do NOW in order to activate more of our soul’s code, & to then receive a very specific answer…

So what question will you ask the Divine Intelligence today, as you commune in the sacred dance of yourself? …

Breathe in the Q breathe out the answer…open to receive it…breathe in the Q as you embody your answer in the healing moment of the now…

The Question is Love & Love Is the Answer…

Breathe in the Q breathe out the answer…& as you let yourself ripen & become the answer…just breathe & be…

And then slowly come, slowly come back into the body of this now…breathe in the now…& begin to renew your connection to the circle of life…bring your awareness back to the unity of the universe…into the sacred dance of your life…with the milk & manna still lingering on your lips…mingling with the salt of your skin…ready to be turned into honey-mead…we take the marriage feast back to the ring, into the circle that never stops…

Then Out into the world, to feed life with Loves healing mystery…grounded in every cell of our bodies…connected to the stars in our eyes…lived with every breath…as we take in the power we’ve raised in our imaginative thinking to fuel & feed our ‘balance in Change’…

See you in the circle

~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

***

Michaelmas Festival: 7pm –9pm Friday 30 September, 2016

Optional Community Potluck Dinner 5pm – 6:45pm at The Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 N. Lincoln Ave. Chicago

Heart-Thinking: Michael Beckoning

7pm – The Midwest Eurythmy Group will perform the Michaelmas Verse from Rudolf Steiner’s Calendar of the Soul

Activating Our ‘Gemut’: The mind warmed by a loving heart & stimulated by the soul’s imaginative power – Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Copper Rod Eurythmy: ALL

If I’m to be a valiant knight, Then there’s a battle I must fight , And I must choose right from the start, Not strength of arm But strength of heart, My sword shall of good steel be made, And love the keenness of the blade

Grimm’s Tale “The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs” by Laura Donkel

Verse for the Michaelic Age: ALL

We must eradicate from the soul all fear and terror of what approaches us from the future. We must acquire serenity in all feelings and sensations about the future.

We must look forward with absolute equanimity to whatever may come. And we must think only that whatever comes is given to us by a cosmic guidance full of wisdom.

It is part of what we must learn in this age, namely, to live without any security in material existence and to live with pure trust in the ever-present help of the spiritual world.

Truly, nothing else will do if our courage is not to fail us. For this let us seek awakening to the reality of the spirit from within ourselves, every morning and every evening. ~Rudolf Steiner

Piano & Voice – Kristen Wray & David Wray performing Nacht und Träume + Ganymed – By Franz Schubert. Kristen Wray is a fiber and metal weaving artist, an energy healing practitioner, as well as a classically trained singer. David Wray is a classics professor at the University of Chicago specializing in ancient Roman poetry. Kristen and David regularly perform together in music student recitals on the university campus.

$10 Donation & Snacks to Share Encouraged

For more info. Contact Festivals Coordinator Hazel Archer Ginsberg Hazel@ReverseRitual.com

‘Carry wakefully Sun’s Glowing’

September 11, 2016Autumn, Celestial Event, Chicago Event, Festival, Insight, Meditation, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars~hag

11 September 2016 –

Astro-Weather: The Moon is just about equidistant from Altair, & Mars.

Asteroid 2 Pallas the second-largest object orbiting between Mars & Jupiter remains in the evening sky. You can find it in the dim constellation Equuleus the Little Horse, which lies just west of its big cousin, Pegasus, climbing nearly two-thirds of the way to the zenith in the southern sky around 10 pm CDT.

***

“It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.”~Benjamin Franklin

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Birthday of Abraham, ancestor of the Semitic Hebrews & Arabs

354 – Deathday of Saints Protus & Hyacinth mentioned in “Depositio Martyrum”

1826 – Captain William Morgan, an ex-freemason is arrested in Batavia, New York for ‘debt’ after declaring that he would publish The Mysteries of Free Masonry. This sets into motion the events that led to his mysterious disappearance

1830 – Anti-Masonic Party convention; one of the first American political party conventions

1851 – Christiana Resistance: Escaped slaves stand against their former owner in armed resistance in Christiana, Pennsylvania, creating a rallying cry for the abolitionist movement

1893 – Parliament of the World’s Religions opens in Chicago, where Swami Vivekananda delivers his speech on fanaticism, tolerance & the truth inherent in all religions

1897 –Menelik II of Ethiopia captures Gaki Sherocho, the last king of Kaffa, bringing an end to that ancient kingdom

1919 – U.S. Marines invade Honduras

1921 – Nahalal, the first Jewish settlement in Palestine, as part of a Zionist plan to colonize Palestine creating a Jewish state, later to be called Israel

1932 – Deathday of Fritz Lemmermayer an Austrian writer, journalist & closest childhood friend of Rudolf Steiner in Vienna. Fritz was a passionate anti-materialist, he wanted to devote his life to the creation & maintenance of spiritual values.

In 1883 he completed his novel “The Alchemist”. Rudolf Steiner met Lemmermayer again in 1886 in the circle of the poet Marie Eugenie delle Grazie. An extensive correspondence attests to the close friendship between the two (see GA 38 ).

In ” My Life ” Steiner says: Fritz Lemmermayer, with whom I was later on terms of intimate friendship, I came to know at one of delle Grazie’s afternoons. A highly noteworthy man. Whatever interested him he expressed with inwardly measured dignity. In his outward appearance he resembled equally the musician Rubinstein and the actor Lewinsky. With Hebbel he developed almost a cult. He had definite views on art and life born out of the sagacious understanding of the heart, and these were unusually fixed. He had written the interesting and profound romance, Der Alchemist(3), and much besides that was characterized by beauty and depth. He knew how to consider the least things in life from the view-point of the most vital. I recall how I once saw him in his charming little room in a side-street in Vienna together with other friends. He had planned his meal: two soft-boiled eggs, to be cooked in an instantaneous boiler, together with bread. He remarked with much emphasis while the water was heating to boil the eggs for us: “This will be delicious!” In a later phase of my life I shall again have occasion to speak of him (see GA 028, p 141f )

Lemmermayer & Steiner joined the ranks of the Viennese artist circle in the house of the protestant priest Alfred Formey. In 1891 Lemmermayer was vice president of Schrifstellerbundes Iduna , named after Iduna , the Norse goddess of youth & immortality a counterweight against the currents of naturalism.

Lemmermayer became a member of the Anthroposophical Society in 1920. He Steiner on many trips through Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, Holland & England. This led to his 1929 published memories, where he spoke about Rudolf Steiner, Robert Hamerling & other personalities of the Austrian intellectual life of the 80s. In addition, Lemmermayer published in the weekly ” Das Goetheanum “.

1940 – George Stibitz performs the first remote operation of a computer

1941 – Ground is broken for the construction of The Pentagon

1941 – Charles Lindbergh’s Des Moines Speech accusing the British, Jews & the Roosevelt administration of pressing for war with Germany

1943 – World War II: Start of the liquidation of the Ghettos in Minsk & Lida by the Nazis

1950 – Korean War: President Harry S. Truman approved military operations north of the 38th parallel

1954 – Hurricane Edna hits New England as a Category 1 hurricane, causing significant damage & 129 deaths

1961 – Hurricane Carla strikes the Texas coast as a Category 4 hurricane, the second strongest storm ever to hit the state, 129 people die

1968 – Air France Flight 1611 crashes off Nice, France, killing 89 passengers &six crew

1973 – Deathday of Salvador Guillermo a Chilean physician & politician, known as the first Marxist to become president of a Latin American country through open elections. Allende’s involvement in Chilean political life spanned a period of nearly forty years. As a member of the Socialist Party, he was a senator, deputy & cabinet minister. In 1970, he won the presidency. Allende adopted a policy of nationalization of industries & collectivisation; due to these & other factors, increasingly strained relations lead to his death. On 11 September 1973, the military moved to oust Allende in a coup d’état sponsored by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). As troops surrounded La Moneda Palace, he gave his last speech vowing not to resign. He was assassinated by the CIA assault rifle attack.

Following Allende’s death, General Augusto Pinochet declined to return authority to the civilian government, & Chile was later ruled by a military junta that was in power up until 1990, ending almost four decades of Chilean democratic rule. The military junta that took over dissolved the Congress of Chile & began a persecution of alleged dissidents, in which thousands of Allende’s supporters were kidnapped, tortured, and murdered.

1974 – Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 crashes in Charlotte, North Carolina, killing 69 passengers & two crew.

1976 – A bomb planted by Zvonko Bušić is found at New York’s Grand Central Terminal

1978 – Janet Parker is the last person to die of smallpox, in a laboratory-associated outbreak

1982 – The international forces that were guaranteeing the safety of Palestinian refugees following Israel’s 1982 Invasion of Lebanon leave Beirut. Five days later, several thousand refugees are massacred in the Sabra & Shatila refugee camps

1988 – The St. Jean Bosco massacre takes place in Port-au-Prince, Haiti

1992 – Hurricane Iniki, one of the most damaging hurricanes in United States history, devastates the Hawaiian islands of Kauai & Oahu

9/11 – 2001 – Two hijacked aircraft crash into the World Trade Center in New York City, while a third smashes into The Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, & a fourth into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, in a series of coordinated suicide attacks by 19 members of al-Qaeda? Over 2,996 people are killed, many suffer illness associated with the clean up

***

Van James

Calendar of the Soul Twenty-fifth Week [September 11, 2016 – September 17, 2016]

I can belong now to myself

And shining spread my inner light

Into the dark of space and time.

Toward sleep is urging all creation,

But inmost soul must stay awake

And carry wakefully sun’s glowing

Into the winter’s icy flowing.

~Rudolf Steiner

***

Sir Edward Coley

Spiritual epiphany alert!
Yes, my dear bundles of rumbling DNA

Uncanny revelations are imminent!
Hope you don’t mind being shaken awake
in the middle of your regularly scheduled life…
It doesn’t matter if you’re a true believer
or a work-a-day TV viewer — YOU
will soon be invited
to have one of your logical certainties torn out
by the roots & replaced with a throbbing vision
of cosmic hoopla…
Brace yourself for the most pungent enlightenment

you’ve had since your last mudwrestle
with an angel…

…for Long-standing versions of reality
are mutating…Stories that have remained fixed
are about to acquire unexpected wrinkles…
& from the crack in the godhead
new possibilities are pouring forth…

&…there’s something You can do
to ensure that the new versions of the old vision
are more empowering than the overlay:

Escape the cramped quarters of your own mind…
2. Slip away from the corners you’ve been backed into…
3. Stop telling the convoluted stories ‘they’ concocted
to rationalize why you should be afraid…
4. Get out of the loop & escape into the big,
fresh places that will rejuvenate
your eyes and heart…& for the foreseeable future,
5. take on the demeanor & spirit of a noble warrior
with high integrity & a fluid sense
of humor…What I pray is that we won’t be satisfied with mediocre
half-truths; that it is ok be focused
on cutting out waste, fraud, & delusion; that
it’s ok to be itchy to know more about the unacknowledged
games that are being played…Frustration, I hope,
will be our holy fuel…Unsweetened lemonade,
I trust, will be our rejuvenating drink…
These are blessings, my friend, not curses..!
I pray that you’ll pick one of those itchy scabs
until it bleeds
so the healing process can start over —
the right way this time…See…there goes that misplaced acceptance of
warped chunks of complications…Here comes
an opportunity to make a break for bubbly responsibility

True Human Freedom…
To take advantage, we’ll need to travel much lighter –
So please peel off your heart-armor – polish your sun-shield
Power the rust off your sword

Wipe that forty-pound sneer of doubt off your face –

Bury your broken-down theories by the wayside,
& donate all your unnecessary props
to the birds & the bees – Strip down –
for where we’re going, all you’ll need are
your good looks & a big fresh attitude…

I end this 9/11 epiphany with:

THE “AMERICAN” or “THREEFOLD” VERSE sent by Rudolf Steiner to Ralph Courtney, a pioneer of Anthroposophy in North America for the Threefold Group in New York City, which later established the Threefold Community in Spring Valley (now Chestnut Ridge). This verse for the American spirit speaks of the inner unity of human beings and of support from the spiritual world for our efforts:

May our feeling penetrate
To the center of our hearts –
And seek, in love, to unite with those who share our goals
And with the spirits who look down benevolently
on our hearts earnest strivings Sending us strength from realms of light
to illuminate our love.

In Peace & Good Will

~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

***

Michaelmas Festival: 7pm -9pm, Friday 30 September, 2016 at The Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 N. Lincoln Ave. Chicago

Heart-Thinking: Michael Beckoning

Piano & Voice – Kristen & David Wray performing Nacht und Träume + Ganymed– By Franz Schubert

Activating Heart-Thinking– Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Copper Rod Eurythmy: ALL

Grimm’s Tale “The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs” by Laura Donkel

Harvest Songs-Singing with Elisabeth Swisher: ALL

Verse for the Michaelic Age: ALL

$10 Donation & Snacks to Share Encouraged

For more info. Contact Festivals Coordinator Hazel Archer GinsbergHazel@ReverseRitual.com

I hear the words that shatter space

September 10, 2016Autumn, Chicago Event, Festival, Lecture, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars~hag

10 September 2016 – Astro-Weather: This evening the Moon shines over the Sagittarius Teapot, about the size of your fist at arm’s length, tipping & pouring to the right

If you look overhead as darkness falls anytime this week, your eyes will fall on the brilliant star Vega in the constellation Lyra the Harp. Vega is the brightest member of the prominent Summer Triangle asterism. The Triangle’s second-brightest star, Altair in Aquila the Eagle, lies southeast of Vega. The asterism’s dimmest member, Deneb in Cygnus the Swan, stands east-northeast of Vega.

***

“The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.”~Eden Phillpotts, “A Shadow Passes,” 1918

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

720 – Death/Feast Day of Aubert of Avranches According to legend, in 708 he had a vision in which the Archangel Michael instructed him to build an oratory on the rocky tidal island at the mouth of the Couesnon. Aubert did not pay attention to this vision at first, until in exasperation Michael appeared to him again, this time driving his finger into Aubert’s skull & ordering him to complete the task again. Michael is said to have appeared to him a total of three times. After this the oratory was built.

The relic of Aubert’s skull, complete with hole where the archangel’s finger pierced it, can still be seen at the Saint-Gervais Basilica in Avranches.

1305 – Death/Feast Day of Nicholas of Tolentino, known as the Patron of Holy Souls, was an Italian saint &mystic. There are many tales & legends which relate to Nicholas. One says the devil once beat him with a stick, which was then displayed for years in his church. In another, Nicholas, a vegetarian, was served a roasted fowl, for which he made the sign of the cross, & it flew out a window. Nine passengers on a ship going down at sea once asked Nicholas’ aid, & he appeared in the sky, wearing the black Augustinian habit, radiating golden light, holding a lily in his left hand, & with his right hand, he quelled the storm. An apparition of the saint, it is said, once saved the burning palace of the Doge of Venice by throwing a piece of blessed bread on the flames. He was also reported to have resurrected over one hundred dead children, including several who had drowned together.

1509 – An earthquake known as “The Lesser Judgment Day” hits Constantinople killing over 2,000

1721 – The Treaty of Nystadt was signed ending the twenty-one year Great Northern War between Russia & Sweden. Rudolf Steiner speaks about the significance of this in GA 119 Macrocosm/Microcosm: Lecture 6: Experiences of Initiation in the Northern Mysteries

1898 – Deathday of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, the wife of Emperor Franz Joseph I, Queen of Hungary & Queen consort of Croatia and Bohemia.

While travelling in Geneva in she was stabbed to death by an Italian anarchist named Luigi Lucheni who selected her because he had missed his chance to assassinate Prince Philippe, Duke of Orléans, & wanted to kill the next member of royalty that he saw. Elisabeth was the longest serving Empress-consort of Austria, at 44 years.

1919 – Austria & the Allies sign the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye recognizing the independence of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia & Yugoslavia

1933 – Deathday of A.W. Sellin, Anthroposopher & Fremason

1935 – Birthday of Mary Oliver, poet & author

1943 – World War II: German forces begin their occupation of Rome

2008 – The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, described as the biggest scientific experiment in history, is powered up in Geneva, Switzerland

World Suicide Prevention Day

***

~I hear the words that shatter space
My tongue curls around the tone
Of crystals rising
In the oblique angle
Of the autumning sun…
There
The Archangel beckons…

~hag

***

Arild Rosenkrantz

Michaelic thoughts on the eve of 9/11

Michael is, & has been, the genius & leader of humanity through all the many transformations of our consciousness. Rudolf Steiner taught us to view him as the ‘Guardian of Cosmic Intelligence’, governing the cosmic thoughts of the hierarchies, which formed the plan of the universe before the beginning of time. And in this capacity as a Sun-Being, he is the closest servant & trail blazer of The Christ, called the ‘Logos’ in the Gospel of John, which indicates the sphere of origin where the thinking & speech of God are still one.

The spirit-body of the Christ-Being is the creative primal thoughts of God, thoughts that we can call cosmic intelligence. And Michael as Guardian of Cosmic Intelligence, is the herald & helper of the Christ, Bearing the Christ Being to humanity.

Michael sees to it that on every level of evolution, the right things are always accomplished, so that, finally, this cosmic intelligence can shine forth directly from the human spirit.

The name Michael is a question, for it means ‘Who is like god’? He is in our time, the countenance of Christ, & is preparing to become the countenance for human beings.

This goal will be attained when the sunlight of divine thought finds direct entry into human souls; when humanity is no longer a shadow darkened by head-thinking alone.

We are all participants in this new Michaelic age.

Thinking & willing with you

In warmth of Soul

~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

***

Michaelmas Festival: 7pm -9pm, Friday 30 September, 2016 at The Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 N. Lincoln Ave. Chicago

Heart-Thinking: Michael Beckoning

Piano & Voice – Kristen & David Wray performing Nacht und Träume + Ganymed– By Franz Schubert

Activating Heart-Thinking– Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Copper Rod Eurythmy: ALL

Grimm’s Tale “The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs” by Laura Donkel

Harvest Songs-Singing with Elisabeth Swisher: ALL

Verse for the Michaelic Age: ALL

$10 Donation & Snacks to Share Encouraged

For more info. Contact Festivals Coordinator Hazel Archer Ginsberg Hazel@ReverseRitual.com

Heart-Thinking: Michael Beckoning

September 4, 2016Chicago Event, Festival, Poetry, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote~hag

4 September 2016 – Astro-Weather: In the afterglow of sunset the Crescent Moon low in the southwest points the way to bright Venus. Just below the Moon look for twinkling Spica

***

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

From Rudolf Steiner’s Calendar of the Soul: Birth & Deathday of MOSES

According to Egyptian astrologers, the liberator of the children of Israel was to be born on this day- So all the male children were to be thrown into the water by order of King Pharaoh. Jochebed, Amram‘s wife, mother of Miriam, & Aaron, gave birth to her third child, a boy that morning at sunrise. Right from that moment the house was filled with a radiant light, so they knew he was an extraordinary child. After three months, Jochebed saw that she would not be able to conceal her child any longer. So she made a small, water-proof basket & set him down among the papyrus reeds growing on the brink of the Nile. Miriam remained nearby to watch the baby.

The day was hot, & King Pharaoh’s daughter, Bithya, came out to the river, accompanied by her maids, to take a bath in the cool waters of the Nile. Suddenly, she heard the wailing of a small child, & she found the basket. Intrigued by the child’s beauty, Bithya tried to figure out a way to enable her to keep him for herself & save him from death, for she understood that this boy was from a Jewish family.

The child refused to be nursed by any of the Egyptian maids-in-waiting, & continued to weep. At this moment, Miriam came over to the princess & offered to find a Jewish nurse. Bithya was glad of this solution, so Miriam rushed home & brought her mother Jochebed, to be his ‘nurse’. For two years the baby was left in his mother’s care.

Meanwhile Bithya told Pharaoh about the boy she had adopted. Her father did not object as he felt sure that the danger had already been averted years ago. So Moses was taken to the royal court, where he grew up as the princely adopted son of the Pharaoh’s daughter.

Once it happened that Moses was playing on King Pharaoh’s lap. He saw the shining crown, studded with jewels, reached for it & took it off. Pharaoh, asked his astrologers for the meaning of this action. They interpreted it to mean that Moses was a threat to Pharaoh’s crown & suggested that the child be put to death before it could do any harm. But one of the king’s counselors suggested that they should first test the boy to see whether his action was prompted by an evil intelligence, or if he was merely grasping for sparkling things as any other child would.

Pharaoh agreed to this, & two bowls were set down before young Moses. One contained gold & jewels, & the other held glowing fire-coals. Moses reached out for the gold, but an angel re-directed his hand to the coals. Moses snatched a glowing coal & put it to his lips. He burned his hand & tongue, but his life was saved.

After that fateful test, Moses suffered from a slight speech defect. He could not become an orator, but G‑d’s words that were spoken to him & with the help of his brother Aaron & sister Miriam, he was able to fulfill his mission.

At age 20, Moses fled Egypt after killing an Egyptian he saw beating a Jew &made his way to Midian, where he married Zipporah, the daughter of Jethro, & fathered two sons, Gershom & Eliezer.

When he was 80 years old, Moses was shepherding his father-in-law’s sheep when G‑d revealed himself to him in a burning bush at Mount Horeb (Sinai) & instructed him to liberate the Children of Israel.

Moses took the Israelites out of Egypt, performed numerous miracles for them (the ten plagues in Egypt, the splitting of the sea, extracting water from a rock, bringing down the manna, etc), received the Torah from G‑d & taught it to the people, built the Mishkan (Divine dwelling) in the desert, & led the Children of Israel for 40 years as they journeyed through the wilderness; but G‑d did not allow him to bring them into the Holy Land. Moses passed away on his 120th birthday on Mount Nebo, within sight of the land he yearned to enter.

(Buddha was also born & died on the same day)

***

Calendar of the Soul 24th Week [September 04, 2016 – September 10, 2016]

Unceasingly itself creating

Soul life becomes aware of self;

The cosmic spirit, striving on,

Renews itself by self-cognition,

And from the darkness of the soul

Creates the fruit of self-engendered will

~Rudolf Steiner

***

Michaelmas Festival: 7pm –9pm Friday 30 September, 2016

The Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 N. Lincoln Ave. Chicago

Heart-Thinking: Michael Beckoning

7pm – Piano & Voice – Kristen Wray & David Wray performing Nacht und Träume + Ganymed – By Franz Schubert. Kristen Wray is a fiber and metal weaving artist, an energy healing practitioner, as well as a classically trained singer. David Wray is a classics professor at the University of Chicago specializing in ancient Roman poetry. Kristen and David regularly perform together in music student recitals on the university campus.

Activating Our ‘Gemut’: The mind warmed by a loving heart & stimulated by the soul’s imaginative power – Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Copper Rod Eurythmy: ALL

Grimm’s Tale “The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs” by Laura Donkel

Verse for the Michaelic Age: ALL

We must eradicate from the soul all fear and terror of what approaches us from the future. We must acquire serenity in all feelings and sensations about the future.

We must look forward with absolute equanimity to whatever may come. And we must think only that whatever comes is given to us by a cosmic guidance full of wisdom.

It is part of what we must learn in this age, namely, to live without any security in material existence and to live with pure trust in the ever-present help of the spiritual world.

Truly, nothing else will do if our courage is not to fail us. For this let us seek awakening to the reality of the spirit from within ourselves, every morning and every evening. ~Rudolf Steiner

$10 Donation & Snacks to Share Encouraged

For more info. Contact Festivals Coordinator Hazel Archer Ginsberg

***

Saturday 15 October 2016

Calaj.com Artists Janet Trierweiler Schaefer & Matthew Schaefer present:

“Silent Lecture” Art Exhibit & Discussion

2pm – 5pm at the Branch

Details Coming Soon

Snacks to Share Encouraged

For more info. Contact Hazel Archer Ginsberg

https://reverseritual.com/festivals-2/festival-dates/current-festival-events/

“Substances are densified, Faults are judged & rectified, Hearts are sifted – Receive the light”

June 26, 2016Chicago Event, Festival, Insight, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote~hag

26 June 2016, ASTRO-WEATHER Pluto passes just due south of the star Pi Sagittarii in northeastern Sagittarius.

363 – Julian the Apostate murdered. Rudolf Steiner speaks a lot about him as Tycho Brahe, astronomer, astrologer & alchemist & Herzeloyde, Percival’s mother, in Karmic Relationships Vol. 4 Lec. 5

405 – St. Vigilius murdered in Rendena Valley, Italy, where he had been preaching against the worship of the god Saturn. Vigilius said Mass & overturned a statue of the god into the River. As punishment, he was stoned to death. Ironically, a statue of the god Neptune stands in front of Vigilius’ shrine in Trent today.

699 – En no Ozuno, a Japanese mystic said to have supernatural powers, regarded as the founder of the folk religion Shugendō, is banished to Izu Ōshima.

1295 – Przemysł II crowned king of Poland. The white eagle is added to the Polish coat of arms.

1407 – Ulrich von Jungingen becomes Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights.

1409 – Western Schism: Three men simultaneously claimed to be the true pope. Driven by politics rather than any theological disagreement, the schism was ended by the Council of Constance.

1483 – Richard III becomes King of England

1510 – Michelangelo completes his painting of Jeremiah on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo once remarked that “In painting, the idea is an image that the intellect of the painter has to see with interior eyes in the greatest silence and secrecy”. That’s why the prophet Jeremiah has his mouth covered & finger extended in the ‘signum harpocraticum’, an ancient gesture of silence signifying profound esoteric knowledge.

Origen, Christianity’s first theologian, states that you will not understand the prophet’s wisdom “if you do not listen in a hidden manner”. Jeremiah’s books in the Old Testament, like all scripture & art, require an esoteric interpretation.

(For Fuji) 1927 – The Cyclone roller coaster opens on Coney Island

1945 – The United Nations Charter is signed by 5o nations

1963 – U.S. President John F. Kennedy gave his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, underlining the support of the United States for democratic West Germany shortly after Soviet-supported East Germany erected the Berlin Wall

2000 – Pope John Paul II reveals the third secret of Fátima

2015 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marriage under the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution

***

Roxana Villa

Calendar Of The Soul, 14th Week [June 26, 2016 – July 02, 2016]

SUMMER

Surrendering to senses’ revelation

I lost the drive of my own being,

And dreamlike thinking seemed

To daze and rob me of myself.

Yet quickening there draws near

In sense appearance cosmic thinking.

***

Who is this John the Baptist? (continued)

Before JB baptizes Jesus, opening the way for the cosmic Christ, he brings about an opening for many people, preparing them for their roles as disciples of Christ. By baptizing with water, JB brought about an initiatory near death experience, loosening the etheric body, so they could remember their life as a spiritual being. Into this experience of the past, John spoke his mighty admonition: “Change your hearts and minds!”

After the dove descended on Jesus & He became the Christ, & John the Baptist said, “He must increase and I must decrease’” JB was in prison until his beheading. Then his role changed from that of the “voice of one calling in the wilderness“, to a more inward voice, heard in the stillness of the soul.

Herod who had made him prisoner is haunted by this inner voice. Herod’s wife is also affected & wants to silence this uncomfortable voice, so she has John the Baptist beheaded.

The spirit, or angel, of John the Baptist, becomes the guardian of the apostles, appearing especially in the “rich young man” -Lazarus, continuing his mighty task thru him. It is Lazarus, who undergoes the first initiation in the ‘New Mysteries’, accomplished thru Christ Jesus, achieving the name John. But Instead of being performed in the secret inner sanctum of the temple, as it was in the past, this new initiation was done as an example, out in plain sight. It is not coincidence that they both take on the name John, because Johannes E-O-Ah is a powerful title sounding a high stage of initiation.

Lazarus John, ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’, is the only one who is able to remain mindful thru the events of Passion Week. He is there in full consciousness on Golgotha at the “Turning Point of Time” with Mary the Mother. And, along with Mary Magdalene, he is able to behold the Risen Christ on Easter Sunday.

He becomes the writer of the Gospel of St. John, the most spiritual book in the New Testament. He lives a long life, taking Mother Mary with him to the island of Patmos in Greece, where he is able to receive the prophetic vision of the Book of Revelation, with help from John the Baptist & other heavenly sources, bringing us a vision of the future destiny of humankind.

And the voice of John the Baptist can still be heard today, reminding us to, ‘Make Straight the path’.

Tomorrow I will try to bring a synthesis to this theme

Until soon

Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

***

“For what lies inside the human being is the whole spiritual cosmos in condensed form. In our inner organism we have an image of the entire cosmos”.~ Rudolf Steiner

Come Join us for our St. John’s Festival – Sunday June 26^th, 2pm – 4pm

at the Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 N. Lincoln Ave, Chicago IL. 60618. MAP

He Must Increase but I Must Decrease– Exploring the Mysteries of Midsummer

Hammer Dulcimer – Dr. Elaine Wagner

Guest Speaker Robert Karp Co-Director of the Biodynamic Association

Rudolf Steiner’s Summer Mantra, Read by Elisabeth Swisher

Labyrinth Walk with Hazel Archer Ginsberg

*PLEASE BRING YOUR JOURNAL, & eurythmy shoes if you have them*

From-The St. John Imagination: The Four Seasons and The Archangels Lecture IV:

“…Thus there arises an imagination of the Trinity, which is really the St. John Imagination. The background of it is Uriel…”

Schaue unser Weben

Das leuchtende Erregen

Das wärmende Leben } The Heights

Lebe irdisch Erhaltendes

Und atmend Gestaltetes –

Als wesenhaft Waltendes } The Depths

Fühle dein Menschengebeine

Mit himmlischen Scheine

Im waltenden Weltenvereine } The Midst, The inner being of Man

Es werden Stoffe verdichtet

Es werden Fehler gerichtet

Es werden Herzen gesichtet. } The Whole, sounding as song & trumpet

The Heights:

Behold our weaving, the kindling radiance, the warming life.

The Depths:

Live in the earth’s sustaining, and in the form-giving breathing,

with the power of true being.

The Midst, The inner being of humanity:

Feel your very bones suffused with heavenly glory

in the sovereign yoga of the worlds.

The Whole:

Substances are densified,

Faults are judged and rectified,

Hearts are sifted – Receive the light

~Rudolf Steiner, Dornach 1923

For more info. Contact Hazel ReverseRitual@gmail.com

Chicago, IL (Anthroposophical Society in America)

Cognitive Ritual

~Confessions of a Modern Rosicrucian

Category Archives: Festival

Penetrate to the heart of the core of the root…

‘Carry wakefully Sun’s Glowing’

I hear the words that shatter space

Heart-Thinking: Michael Beckoning

“Substances are densified, Faults are judged & rectified, Hearts are sifted – Receive the light”

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