Greetings friends on this Michaelmas day. Two years ago Laura Scappaticci did an interview with me for the The Anthroposopher Podcast called ‘Preserve the Light’ – Enjoy!
Human consciousness is ever evolving. The Zeitgeist is flavored by the various attributes of the 7 Archangels who take turns ruling a portion of each epoch. In 1879 Michael became the Time Spirit of our age. When he was last up, he ruled the Hebrew folk as they were preparing the vessel for the Christ Being to enter a human form. Back then he held the countenance of Jehovah, the god of the Hebrew people. And before that this mighty being worked thru Aristotle & Alexander the Great to bring Michael’s cosmopolitan impulse from East the West. And before that in the ancient Chaldean time he was called Mithras – born from Sophia to conquer Tiamat, an early form of the dragon in the human being…
At the ‘Turning point of Time’ Michael got a promotion to become an Archai & took on the countenance of The Christ.
Spiritual Science speaks about the Kali Yuga as lasting from about 3000 BC until 1899 AD. During this time humankind gradually lost contact with the spiritual world. This was necessary for us in the course of our evolution so that we could cultivate a sense of individuality & self-reliance.
In ‘Spiritualization of Knowledge of Space – The Mission of Michael’ Dornach, December 17, 1922, Steiner spoke of the shift that occurred after this long dark age calling us back to the spirit: “In the last third of the nineteenth century, the Spiritual Being we call Michael became the ruler of everything of a spiritual character in human events on earth… Michael is the active being who pulses through our breath, our veins, our nerves, to the end that we may actively develop all that belongs to our full humanity in connection with the cosmos. What stands before us as a challenge from Michael is that we become active in our very thoughts, working out our view of the world through our own inner activity. We belong truly to the Michael Age only when we do not sit down inactively and seek to let enlightenment come to us from without. We must cooperate actively in what the world offers us by way of experiences and opportunities for observation.”
In 1899 the Kali Yuga ended & the gates to the spiritual world were opened once again. Around that time, at the end of the 19th century, the fixed date of September 29th came to be called: The Feast Day of St. Michael & All the Heavenly Hosts. The old legends would always preface the famous story of the battle against the dragon, with an enumeration of the 9 angelic realms, with Michael standing before us as the King & herald of all the hierarchies.
Michael’s message to humanity is not to try to slay the dragon within ourselves, for we would not live in freedom if we did, but rather to overcome it with consciousness. It is the consciousness in our thinking which calls for exactitude & selflessness, as well as the strength of will needed to follow a moral path in life. Michaelmas is a festival of inner strength & initiative. It is a time when our higher being can conquer anxiety & fear, for it is the task of Michael to awaken humankind to the eternal within. It is to this inner light that the mighty Sun-Being Michael directs our gaze; which we must in turn direct to the world of nature –Replacing dead sense-bound thinking, represented by the Dragon, with Imaginative Cognition, (to reclaim the Cosmic intelligence) living heart-thinking, fostered by Michael, to reveal the Living Christ, as the fundamental force of the Universe.
May Michael fortify our “I” & strengthen our Will, giving us the courage to find the Spirit as the very essence of the living Cosmos.
~hag
29 September 2021- “Speaking with the Stars”: On the mornings of September 29 and 30, 2021, you can see Bella Luna near the two brightest stars of the constellation Gemini the Twins-Castor and Pollux.
Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
The Feast Day of St. Michael & All the Heavenly Hosts, also called MICHAELMAS
1227 – Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, is excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX for his failure to participate in the Crusades. A man of extraordinary culture, energy, & ability Frederick II was called stupor mundi (the wonder of the world), by Nietzsche, also the first European, the first modern ruler – by many historians, Frederick established in Sicily & southern Italy a modern, centrally governed kingdom with an efficient bureaucracy.
He was a King of Germany, of Italy, & Burgundy. His other royal title was King of Jerusalem by virtue of marriage & his connection with the Sixth Crusade.
He was frequently at war with the Papacy, hemmed in between Frederick’s lands in northern Italy & his Kingdom of Sicily (the Regno) to the south. Pope Gregory IX went so far as to call him an Antichrist.
Speaking six languages (Latin, Sicilian, German, French, Greek & Arabic, Frederick was an avid patron of science & the arts. He played a major role in promoting literature through the Sicilian School of poetry. His Sicilian royal court in Palermo, saw the first use of a literary form of an Italo-Romance language, Sicilian. The poetry that emanated from the school had a significant influence on literature & on what was to become the modern Italian language.
He was also the first king who explicitly outlawed trials by ordeal as they were considered irrational.
1571 – Birthday of Caravaggio, Italian painter
1717 – An earthquake strikes Antigua Guatemala, destroying much of the city’s architecture & making authorities consider moving the capital to a different city
1812- Birthday of Caspar Hauser, grown up in the total isolation of a darkened cell. Theories link him with the grand ducal House of Baden.These claims, & his subsequent death by stabbing, sparked much debate & controversy.
“…It was the case of that human being, so enigmatic for many people, who was once placed into this city in a mysterious way, and who in just as mysterious a way met his death in Ansbach. An author, in order to indicate the mystery of his life, wrote that as he was carried out to burial the sun was setting on the one horizon and the moon was rising on the other. I speak, as you know, of Caspar Hauser. If you disregard all the pros and cons that have been asserted, if you look only at what has been fully verified, you will know that this foundling — who was one day simply there in the street, and who since he did not know whence he came, was called the Child of Europe — could neither read nor write when he was found. At an age of twenty years he possessed nothing of what is gained through the intellect but he had a remarkable memory. As they began to instruct him, as logic entered his soul, his memory disappeared. This transition in consciousness was accompanied by something else. He possessed at first an incredible, an entirely inborn truthfulness and it was precisely in this truthfulness that he went more and more astray. The more he nibbled, so to say, at intellectuality, the more it vanished. There would be many things to study were we to enter deeply into this human soul which had been artificially held back. It is not difficult for the student of Spiritual Science to credit the popular tradition, so unacceptable to the learned people of to-day, which relates that while Caspar Hauser still knew nothing, while he still had no idea that there were beings besides himself of different form, he exercised a remarkable effect upon quite savage creatures. Savage animals humbled themselves and became mild, something streamed from him that made such beasts gentle, although they savagely attacked anyone else. We could in fact penetrate deeply into the soul of this remarkable personality, so enigmatic to many, and you would see how things that cannot be explained from ordinary life are led back through Spiritual Science to spiritual facts. Such facts cannot be learnt by speculation but only by spiritual observation, though they are comprehensible to an unbiased and logical thinking.
All this has only been said in order to show you that the modern consciousness has evolved from another, an age-old-state when man was not in direct touch with outer objects in the modern sense, but on the other hand was in connection with facts and beings of the spiritual world.” ~Rudolf Steiner, The Apocalypse of St. John, Spiritual Science — The Gospel — The Future of Mankind
1902 – Deathday of Émile Zola a French novelist, playwright, journalist, the best-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism, & an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. He was a major figure in the political liberalization of France & in the exoneration of the falsely accused & convicted army officer Alfred Dreyfus, which is encapsulated in the renowned newspaper headline J’accuse. Zola was nominated for the first & second Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901 & 1902. His death from carbon monoxide poisoning is suspected to have been murder
1924 – Ludwig Polzer holds his 1st First Class Lesson
1954 – The convention establishing CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) is signed
1957 – Twenty MCi of radioactive material is released in an explosion at the Soviet Mayak nuclear plant at Chelyabinsk
1981 – Deathday of Adolf Arenson, German composer & Anthroposopher. Arenson editied many of Rudolf Steiner’s works, & composed the music for many of the plays & productions. Steiner mentions him at the end of Wonders of the World lecture 1
2008 – Following the bankruptcies of Lehman Brothers & Washington Mutual, The Dow Jones Industrial Average falls 777.68 points, the largest single-day point loss in its history
REGISTRATION CLOSES OCTOBER 1ST
- 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.
In order to know how much food to order REGISTRATION ENDS OCT. 1ST
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.
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!
For those who are longing for a deep dive: The Applied Anthroposophy Course (AAC) brings transformative online content into the alchemy of individual and group inner work. The mission is to explore the urgent issues of our time through the lens of spiritual philosophy, awakening meaning, inner reflection, and outer action.
I will be facilitating one of the Chrysalis Groups: ‘The Cycle of the Year as a Path of Initiation into the New Mysteries’ –
The Royal Art of community awaits your participation.
See you there
~hag
