Greetings friends – I posted this in 2016 – It seems appropriate to revisit today…& everyday…
“The hatred and antipathy in the world today can indeed be followed by international love with healing in its wings. This is indeed possible. But we are living in an age when all that is possible must be consciously, deliberately and freely striven for by human beings. There must be knowledge of the conditions requisite for uniting the peoples of the Earth, in order that, as a result of this knowledge, each individual people may help to make the waves of love follow those of hatred. Human love alone has power to heal the wounds of hatred. If humankind has no wish for this love, chaos will remain. That is the terrible alternative now facing human beings who have knowledge. Those who realise its terrors know that the souls of human beings dare not sleep, for otherwise, as a result of the powerlessness caused by the sleep into which the souls of the peoples have fallen, the healing waves of love will not be able to flow over the waves of hatred.
Mendy Z M Zimmerman
Human beings who realise this will acquire the kind of knowledge that flows from a spiritual conception of the relationships between the peoples. They will take this knowledge into their feeling — love for humanity will be born. They will take this knowledge into their will-deeds for humanity will be accomplished. The evolution of the age, with all the terrible paralysis that is appearing at the present time, places a solemn duty before the soul: to gather together all that can unite humankind in love and array it in opposition to the destructive elements that have made their appearance in recent times.This quest for loving unification, for unifying love is not merely a vague feeling. To those who understand the conditions of life today, it is the very highest duty of humanity.” ~ The Peoples of the Earth in the Light of Anthroposophy, A Lecture given by Rudolf Steiner, Stuttgart, March 10th, 1920 http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/19200310p01.html
1838 – Future abolitionist Frederick Douglass escapes from slavery
1939 – World War II: France, the United Kingdom, New Zealand & Australia declare war on Germany after the invasion of Poland, forming the Allies
1939 – World War II: The United Kingdom & France begin a naval blockade of Germany that lasts until the end of the war. This also marks the beginning of the Battle of the Atlantic
1941 – The Holocaust: Karl Fritzsch, deputy camp commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, experiments with the use of Zyklon
1942 – World War II: Dov Lopatyn leads an uprising in the Ghetto of Lakhva, in present-day Belarus
1943 – World War II: The Allied invasion of Italy begins on the same day that U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower & Italian Marshal Pietro Badoglio sign the Armistice of Cassibile aboard the Royal Navy battleship HMS Nelson off Malta
1944 – Holocaust: Diarist Anne Frank & her family are placed on the last transport train from the Westerbork camp to the Auschwitz concentration camp
1959 – Birthday of my beloved husband Chuck Ginsberg :0
1962 – Deathday of E. E. Cummings
~talk is cheap… uncover your face… thru your own light come remembering that the god you seek is within – the truth you chase lives behind your eyebrows look again… Give from your body birth to all time & its seasons… hum a song that lives in the quiet cypher of rain sing for the gods hidden in tears & laugh – for love is eternal… ~hag
Festival Gathering: Tuesday 28 September on the eve of Michaelmas with Rev’s Jeana Lee & Victoria Capon
Meeting The Dragon With Our Four Fold Being – A talk and collaborative sculptural creation
Potluck at 5:30 Talk at 7pm
At the Rudolf Steiner Branch, 4249 N Lincoln Ave, Chicago, IL 60618
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
$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!
Today 23 August is the Feast Day of Rose of Lima. ‘Saint Rose’ is the patroness of the Americas, sacred to the indigenous people, in Lima, Peru.
Born Isabel Flores y de Oliva in Lima, the capital city of Peru, her nickname, “Rose,” came from a childhood incident in which a household servant attested to having seen the child’s face turn into a mystical rose.
She took the name formally as her own, at her confirmation in 1597.
As a young girl, in emulation of St. Catherine of Siena, she began to fast three times a week and performed severe penances in secret. When she was admired for her beauty, Rose cut off her hair and burned her face, upset that men were beginning to take notice of her. She rejected all suitors against the objections of her friends and her family. Despite the censure of her parents, she spent many hours contemplating the Blessed Sacrament, which she received daily, an extremely rare practice in that period. She was determined to take a vow of virginity, which was opposed by her parents who wished her to marry.
After daily fasting, she took to permanently abstaining from eating meat. She helped the sick and hungry around her community, bringing them to her room and taking care of them. Rose sold her fine needlework, and took flowers that she grew to market, to help her family. She made and sold lace and embroidery to care for the poor, and she prayed and did penance in a little grotto that she had built. Otherwise, she became a recluse, leaving her room only for her visits to church.
She attracted the attention of the friars of the Dominican Order. She wanted to become a nun, but her father forbade it, so she instead entered the Third Order of St. Dominic while living in her parents’ home. In her twentieth year she donned the habit of a tertiary and took a vow of perpetual virginity. She only allowed herself to sleep two hours a night at most, so that she had more hours to devote to prayer. She donned a heavy crown made of silver, with small spikes on the inside, in emulation of the Crown of Thorns worn by Christ.
Peter Paul Rubens
For eleven years she lived this way, with intervals of ecstasy, and eventually died on 23 August 1617, at the young age of 31. It is said that she prophesied the date of her death. Her funeral was held in the cathedral, attended by all the public authorities of Lima.
She was the first American-born saint.
Speaking with the Stars: By 10 pm CT, the waning Moon is well up in the Southeast. Spot bright Jupiter off to her upper right. They form a nearly equilateral triangle with Fomalhaut, the Autumn Star, rising below Jupiter.
Feast Day of Rose of Lima. ‘Saint Rose’ is the patroness of the Americas, sacred to the indigenous people, in Lima, Peru.
Black Ribbon Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism & Nazism
International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade & its Abolition
30 BC – After the successful invasion of Egypt, Octavian executes Marcus Antonius Antyllus, eldest son of Mark Antony, & Caesarion, the last king of the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt & only child of Julius Caesar & Cleopatra
20 BC – Ludi Volcanalici = games or chariot races, held within the temple precinct of Vulcan for the Fire God’s Feast Day, to mark the treaty with Parthia by Augustus
79 – Mount Vesuvius begins stirring, on the feast day of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire
1244 – Siege of Jerusalem: The city’s citadel, the Tower of David, surrenders to Khwarezmian (Persian) Empire
1382 – Siege of Moscow: The Golden Horde led by khan Tokhtamysh lays siege
1572 –St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre a wave of Catholic mob violence, directed against the Huguenots (French Calvinist Protestants) during the French Wars of Religion. Traditionally believed to have been instigated by Catherine de’ Medici, the mother of King Charles IX.
1754 – Birthday of Louis XVI of France
1839 – The United Kingdom captures Hong Kong. The ensuing 3-year conflict will later be known as the First Opium War
1914 – World War I: Japan declares war on Germany
1926 – Deathday of Rudolph Valentino, Italian-American actor
1939 – World War II: Nazi Germany & the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression treaty, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. In a secret addition to the pact, the Baltic states, Finland, Romania, & Poland are divided between the two nations.
1942 – World War II: Beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad
1944 – World War II: Marseille is liberated by the Allies
1944 – Freckleton Air Disaster: A United States Army Air Forces B-24 Liberator bomber crashes into a school in Freckleton, England killing 61 people
1966 – Lunar Orbiter 1 takes the first photograph of Earth from orbit around the Moon
1970 –César Chávez leads the Salad Bowl strike, the largest farm worker strike in U.S. history
1973 – A bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden, turns into a hostage crisis, who begin to sympathize with their captors, leading to the term “Stockholm syndrome”
1989 – Singing Revolution: Two million people from Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania stand on the Vilnius–Tallinn road, holding hands for restoration of independence
1990 – Armenia declares its independence from the Soviet Union
1991 – Tim Berners-Lee opens the World Wide Web to new users
1996 – Osama bin Laden issues message entitled ‘A declaration of war against the Americans occupying the land of the two holy places.’
2000 – Gulf Air Flight 072 crashes into the Persian Gulf killing 143
2011 – A magnitude 5.8 earthquake occurs in Virginia as a result of ‘Fracking’. Damage occurs to monuments & structures in Washington D.C. with damage estimated at 300 million
Craig Wiggins
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 and then transformation – Bring your 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 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
Online and in-person at locations around the country – Co-sponsored by the Central Regional Council – Registration opens here in mid-August
Keynotes from Dr. Michaela Glöckler, Brian Gray, and Michael Lipson
We welcome you to gather in person at the following locations…Click here to find a list of contact names & get more information about where and how to join in person! (COMING SOON)
6:30- 8:00 PM Annual General Meeting (AGM) – Members Meeting
(Note: This portion is free and open to all members)
FRIDAY, October 8
10:00 AM Class Lesson XI for the School of Spiritual Science (Note: There will be no online gathering for the Class Lesson
it will be on your own or with your local group)
11:30 AM What is the School of Spiritual Science?
A conversation led by Helen-Ann Ireland, open to all (30 min)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
1:00 PM Conference Opening
2:00 PM The Stairway of Surprise: Rudolf Steiner’s 6 Basic Exercises
with Michael Lipson
3:00 PM 30-minute Break
3:30 PM Thinking / Clear Thinking with the New Orleans Hub
Doing / Willing / Right Action with the Austin Hub
Musical Interludes by Morgan Vallat
4:30 PM Biography with Janey Newton & Kathleen Bowen
5:00 PM 60-minute Break
6:00 PM Singing, Speech & Eurythmy with Dennis Dietzel, Katherine Thivierge & Mary Ruud
6:15 – 7:00 PM Building the Temple through Spiritual Research: Sections of the School of Spiritual Science as Columns of the Temple
SATURDAY, October 9
11:00 AM Singing, Speech & Eurythmy with Dennis Dietzel, Katherine Thivierge & Mary Ruud
11:15 AM The Life of the Heart in Space, Time and Eternity with Michaela Glöckler
12:30 PM Biography with Janey Newton & Kathleen Bowen
1:00 PM 60-minute Break
2:00 PM Singing, Speech & Eurythmy with Dennis Dietzel, Katherine Thivierge & Mary Ruud
2:15 PM Feeling / Equanimity with the Twin Cities Hub
Loving / Positivity with the Northern Michigan Hub
Opening / Open-mindedness with the Ann Arbor Hub
Musical Interludes by Morgan Vallat
3:30 PM 60-minute Break
4:30 PM Exploring the Heart Connections between Chartres Cathedraland Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival with Brian Gray
5:45 PM Biography with Janey Newton & Kathleen Bowen
6:15 PM 60-minute Break
7:15-8:30 PM Thanking / Harmony with the Chicago / Youth Section Hub
SUNDAY, October 10
11:00 AM Singing, Speech & Eurythmy with Dennis Dietzel, Katherine Thivierge & Mary Ruud
11:15 AM Experiential Pageant: ‘Building the Temple of the Heart – The Royal Art: A Social Pilgrimage of the Soul’ by Hazel Archer featuring the 6 HUBS, Dennis Dietzel, Mary Ruud, Katherine Thivierge & YOU12:45 PM
15-minute Break
1:00-2:00 PM Conversation and Conference Closing
Join us for the Applied Anthroposophy Course 2021-2022!
October 13, 2021 – May 25, 2022
Hazel Archer & Nancy Melvin will be leading a ‘Chrysalis Group on Thursday mornings 8am PT / 10 am CT / 11am ET /
We invite you to join us as we explore big, essential questions together…
What is contemporary culture asking for now?
What are you being called to bring to the world?
How will Anthroposophia assist you in the task?
The Applied Anthroposophy Course (AAC) brings transformative online content to the alchemy of individual and group inner work.
The mission is to explore the urgent issues of our time and awaken meaning through the lens of spiritual philosophy, inner reflection, and outer action. Visit appliedanthroposophy.orgfor more information!
How the Queenship of Mary is connected to her Assumption:
Tradition celebrates two main feasts of Mary in August. The first is the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary on August 15, & the second is the Feast of the Queenship of Mary on August 22.
The feast of the Assumption has been celebrated since the 5th or 6th century & for many years its festival was extended by an octave.
Our ancestors celebrated all major feasts for eight days = for an octave. Essentially the same liturgy was said, using the same liturgical texts each day of the octave.
The eighth day of the octave was seen as a heightened experience, honoring the spiritual themes of the feast for the last time. For this reason a complimentary feast was often instituted on this eighth day.
Nicolas Poussin
When it came to the Assumption, it had an octave celebration for many centuries. Then on May 4, 1944, Pope Pius XII established the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary on August 22, the octave day of the feast of the Assumption. He did this so that by her intercession may be obtained “peace among nations, the love of purity and the practice of virtue.”
However, later Pope Paul VI decided to switch the feasts of the Immaculate Heart and the Queenship of Mary. The feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary was joined to the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (celebrated on the Saturday following the feast of the Sacred Heart, typically around the Summer Solstice June 20) and the Queenship of Mary was moved to August 22. Mary becomes the “Queen of Heaven.” The power of the Queenship of Mary is that she is a “Queen of Peace.”
“May all recognize more clearly and venerate more devoutly the merciful and maternal sway of the Mother of God. May this feast help to preserve, strengthen and prolong that peace among nations which daily is almost destroyed by recurring crises. Is she not a rainbow in the clouds reaching towards God, the pledge of a covenant of peace?”
After her Assumption into Heaven, Mary has become our Queen & is right there beside her Son, The Being of Love, listening to our prayers. She is the true “Queen of Peace,” who can help us turn the tide of war & conflict thru her powerful intercession.
May we strive to make our hearts Immaculate to share the Crown of our Queen & become a beacon of Love & peace in our world.
~hag
RUDOLF STEINER’S CALENDAR OF THE SOUL translated (with added titles) by Roy Sadler AUTUMN PRELUDE I My Future’s Power v21 I feel a strange new strengthening, fruit-bearing force, maturing with seed of who I am, and on a starlit loom in me a dawning vision weaving my pathway to my real being.
ALL HALLOWTIDE III The Gift Of Destiny v32 I feel my own fruit-bearing power present me to the world and strengthen my innate intent to turn towards the clarity within life’s web of destiny.
22 August 2021 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Bella Luna again forms a big curving arc with Jupiter and Saturn, but now they’re to the Moon’s right. The arc spans three fists at arm’s length.
“The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history… It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science.” ~Rachel Carson
392 –Birthday of Eugenius elected – the last Roman Emperor to support polytheism
476 – Birthday of Odoacer a soldier became the first King of Italy. His reign is commonly seen as marking the end of the Western Roman Empire
565 –Birthday of Columbaa, Christian saint -one of the ‘Twelve Apostles of Ireland’ reports seeing a monster in Loch Ness, Scotland
1241 – Deathday of Pope Gregory IX, established the Papal Inquisition
1849 – The first air raid in history. Austria launches pilotless balloons against the city of Venice
1864 – Twelve nations sign the First Geneva Convention
1862 – Birthday of Claude Debussy
1902 – Cadillac Motor Company is founded
1913 – 1st performance of Rudolf Steiner’s 4th Mystery Drama: The Souls’ Awakening
1932 – The BBCbegins television broadcasting using John Logie Baird’s system
1941 – World War II: German troops begin the Siege of Leningrad
1944 – World War II: Holocaust of Kedros in Crete by German force
*1947 – Deathday of Francis Delaisi, French social economist spoken of by Rudolf Steiner in ‘Fall of the Spirits of Darkness’ Lecture 14 Dornach, 28 October 1917
1961 – Ida Siekmann dies attempting to cross the Berlin Wall
1962 – The OAS attempts to assassinate French president Charles de Gaulle
1971 – J. Edgar Hoover & John Mitchell announce the arrest of 20 of the Camden 28, a group of “Catholic left” anti-Vietnam War activists.
Bobbye Caine
~today I am a feather thru which light passes – a sky body where the mist of time disperses… ~hag
Craig Wiggins
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 and then transformation – Bring your 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 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
Join us for the Applied Anthroposophy Course 2021-2022!
October 13, 2021 – May 25, 2022
Hazel Archer & Nancy Melvin will be leading a ‘Chrysalis Group on Thursday mornings 8 am PT / 10 am CT / 11am ET /
We invite you to join us as we explore big, essential questions together…
What is contemporary culture asking for now?
What are you being called to bring to the world?
How will Anthroposophia assist you in the task?
The Applied Anthroposophy Course (AAC) brings transformative online content to the alchemy of individual and group inner work.
The mission is to explore the urgent issues of our time and awaken meaning through the lens of spiritual philosophy, inner reflection, and outer action. Visit appliedanthroposophy.orgfor more information!
The General Council of the ASA = hag, John Bloom, Gino Ver Eecke, Deb Abrahams-Dematte, Helen-Ann Ireland, Christine Burke, Dave Alsop,Dave Mansur, John H Beck, Micky Leach, Katherine Thivierge, missing: Nathaniel Williams
Greetings friends –
I am still re-acclimatizing after an intensely stimulating retreat with the General Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America. We met for the 1st in-person gathering since the onset of the Corona-Crisis, at the Rudolf Steiner House in Ann Arbor, MI, the home of the ASA with its offices, including the work of the prison outreach program. It also houses the Great Lakes branch; & it’s only a few steps from the amazing Nichols Arboretum.
The beautiful brick building was built as the ‘Acacia Fraternity’, in 1923, for the sons of Masons attending the University of Michigan. A plaque engraved on the corner stone reads: “For the good of humankind” in Greek.
I was asked by Helen-Ann, the Chair of the Council, to bring 2 sessions of artistic activity for our retreat. I thought it would be engaging & powerful to explore the ‘Two main streams in Anthroposophy’ through a short theatrical-piece of famous quotes. So we all took on characters speaking in the voices of some famous Platonic & Aristotelian individualities from the past.
Besides being enlivening, the goal of this recitation was to help us contemplate where we may stand in these streams. It is always my hope that we will look to how we can learn from & appreciate the other tributaries; remembering that just as with the temperaments, none are ‘better or worse – right or wrong’; we are called to balance them all within us.
Clues as to your ‘original stream’ might be characters from history that you may feel drawn to. Being conscious of our sympathies & antipathies can reveal a lot. Do you relate more toward inner development or service? Do you resonate to the tales of Arthur & the Round Table or those of Parzival & the Holy Grail? Which of the original Vorstand members do you have an affinity with? Which panel of the FSM is your fav? It might also help to think which of the 6 basic exercises is easiest, which hardest for you; or what your favorite basic book is…?
We began with singing a song I learned when I presented at the “YIP Initiative Forum: Are You Listening?” And ended with a song written by Ultra-Violet Archer that was perfect: ‘You & Me, we are the leaves of the same tree, growing anew, & falling, side-by-side, come along for the ride’…
Then we worked with a piece i called: A Play on Words, complied by ~hag from Quotes by: Rudolf Steiner/Aristotle/Aquinas; Christian Rosenkreutz/Lazurus-John; Plato/Hroswitha; Alanus ab Insulis/ Lievegoed; Alexander the Great/Ita Wegman; Goethe; Schiller; Fichte; Schelling; Hegel; Marie Steiner; Willem Zeylmans van Emmichoven; Sergei O. Prokofieff.
We switched off playing the different parts, & thru Nathaniel’s encouragement, had fun making gestures & connecting. It was an enlivening time, a wonderful way to loosen up while still doing deep anthroposophical exploration.
The spirit of place still holds the aura of Dr. Ernst Katz, a professor of physics at the University of Michigan, who together with his wife, Katherine, fostered the growth of anthroposophy in Ann Arbor for sixty years. Folks in the community regaled him thru many stories of how he touched their lives during a potluck-initiative-sharing with the GC on Saturday evening.
The long weekend was all about embodying initiative, which has become the driving force behind the General Councils’ focus & worldview. As a person of initiative myself, this is very exciting.
Before I left for the retreat my husband CG & some friends who own a biodynamic cranberry marsh met with Farmer John & Haidy Peterson of Angelic Organics, for a brainstorming session on how to create a ‘Community Farm Initiative’ to support biodynamic farmers working to ‘Spiritualize the Earth’, & to bring ‘Culture back to Agriculture’.
It seems, dear friends, that we are all being called to waken to our will.
Will you wkae for heavens sake?
~hag
Farmer Dan Gannon ‘Community Farm of Ann Arbor’
“Be a person of initiative, and take care that the hindrances of your own body or hindrances that otherwise confront you do not prevent you from finding the center of your being, where the source of your initiative lies. Likewise, you will find that all joy and sorrow, all happiness and pain, depend on finding or not finding your own individual initiative” ~Rudolf Steiner, Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies – Volume III, The Karmic Relationships of the Anthroposophical Movement, 1 August 1924, Dornach, GA 237
The calling of Anthroposophia & Michael is to become human beings of initiative – an unfolding of our karma. What meets us in this life depends on the extent to which we can become actively & willingly, conscious of it.
“…the Vorstand declares that it places itself within the Society in the freest manner possible: it wants nothing else but to be a group of people with initiative for the cause of Anthroposophy.To live fully in initiative for the cause of Anthroposophy will have to be the heart’s blood of this Vorstand. It is not a representative of people in the abstract; it is a representative of the anthroposophical cause here at the Goetheanum…The membership and the Vorstand, and their relationship with one another, is thought of as being quite generally human in an entirely free way in the future. We have not achieved this as yet; we must make it obvious to all the world...” ~ The Christmas Conference, Part Two: The Proceedings of the Conference – Rudolf Steiner’s Opening Lecture and Reading of the Statutes, 24 December, 11.15 a.m.
skyandtelescope.com
17 August 2021 – “Speaking with the Stars”: After nightfall, look far below Bella Luna for the Cat’s Eyes in the tail of Scorpius – Lambda and Upsilon Scorpii, canted at an angle; the cat is tilting its head to the right. And the cat has a bleary eye; Upsilon is fainter than Lambda.
“Nescire autem quid antequam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum. (To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.)” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
1560 – The Roman Catholic Church is overthrown & Protestantism is established as the national religion in Scotland
1585 – A first group of colonists sent by Sir Walter Raleigh under the charge of Ralph Lane lands in the New World to create Roanoke Colony on Roanoke Island, off the coast of present-day North Carolina
1586 – Birthday of Johann Valentin Andrea, who wrote: The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz
1687 – Deathday of Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen , kidnapped at the age of 10 by Hessian soldiery, – in their midst tasted the adventures of military life in the Thirty Years’ War. He was made Schultheiss (magistrate) at Renchen in Baden where he devoted himself to literary pursuits. Greatly influenced by previous utopian & travel literature, he wrote the Simplicissimus series, inspired by the events & horrors of the Thirty Years’ War which devastated Germany from 1618 to 1648, it is regarded as the first adventure novel in the German language & the first German novel masterpiece. The full subtitle is “The life of an odd vagrant named Melchior Sternfels von Fuchshaim: namely where and in what manner he came into this world, what he saw, learned, experienced, and endured therein; also why he again left it of his own free will.” It attained a readership larger than any other seventeenth-century novel
1668 – A magnitude 8.0 earthquake causes 8,000 deaths in Anatolia, Ottoman Empire
1798 – The Vietnamese report a Marian apparition in Quảng Trị, an event which is called Our Lady of La Vang
1807 – Robert Fulton’s North River Steamboat leaves New York City for Albany, New York, on the Hudson River, inaugurating the first commercial steamboat service in the world
1911 – The 1st performance of Rudolf Steiner’s 2nd Mystery Drama,The Trial of the Soul, in the Gardener’s Place Theatre in Munich. In all 4 four plays. Steiner showed how spiritual development might manifest in a freely formed, but karmically-knit group of people. The experiences of the main characters of the play, particularly Johannes, Capesius & Strader, represent 3 different aspects of the path of initiation – “differing according to the karma of the respective individualities.” Steiner described his process of artistic creation as “images that grew like the leaves of a plant”.
1918 – Bolshevik revolutionary leader Moisei Uritsky is assassinated
1924 – Rudolf Steiner visits Tintagel, mystery center & court of King Arthur.
On his final visit to Britain, Rudolf Steiner’s schedule of lecturing was hectic. He delivered three lectures a day during the Anthroposophical Society’s Summer School at Torquay (11-22 August 1924) – but that is another story…Steiner took one day out of that busy schedule, to go as far west as he ever ventured in that lifetime – to the west coast of Cornwall.
Tintagel is the legendary home of King Arthur, Merlin, the sword Excalibur, the Lady of the Lake, the Knights of the Round Table, Sir Lancelot, Queen Guinevere, & the court of Camelot.
Midway through the Torquay Summer School, on Sunday August 17th, Rudolf Steiner declared “I want to go to King Arthur” (see Eleanor Merry, 1956, in Villeneuve, 2004, p.1051). A cavalcade of three cars ventured forth from the southern beachside resort town of Torquay, across the verdant moors of Dartmoor, to the spectacularly positioned Tintagel, on the west coast of Cornwall.
Eleanor Merry & D.N. Dunlop were the two organizers of the Torquay Summer School. Both were part of the entourage to Tintagel. Merry reports that: “At last we came again to the sea, and straight ahead of us, at the top of a green cliff, were the last fragments of King Arthur’s castle of Tintagel. A deep rocky chasm divided this from a second rugged cliff, where still other remains could be seen”(quoted in Villeneuve, 2004, p.1052)Merry continues: “Dr. Steiner was at first silently absorbed in the wonderful view. All around was sunshine, and fleeting cloud-shadows and little hurrying rainbows – and a stormy and angry sea”.
The entourage included at least two of the 11 attendees of Steiner’s Agriculture Course at Koberwitz, namely Dr. Elisabeth Vreede & Guenther Wachsmuth. That course (7-16 June, 1924) laid the foundations for the development of biodynamic agriculture.
Wachsmuth remembered: “On that unforgettable day Rudolf Steiner went with us to the place on the rough rocky western coast of Cornwall, Tintagel, where the castle of King Arthur had once stood … That strangely densified spiritual atmosphere we shall never forget, so intensely to be felt as Rudolf Steiner climbed the strange projecting cliff on the lonely coast of Cornwall where the last walls of the castle of King Arthur towered over the roaring sea … He spoke there, standing on the cliff, about the experience of the Knights of King Arthur … He spoke of the teachings of Merlin … The immediacy of the spiritual vision in this place was so intense that, during his descriptions, the entire reality, the external life and action … of King Arthur’s knights, stood before us as actual experience” (Wachsmuth, 1989, pp.563-4)
The Tintagel visit occurred just two months after Steiner’s Agriculture Course & less than six weeks before Rudolf Steiner retreated from public life entirely. On this, his tenth visit to Britain, Steiner taught about Anthroposophy & Waldorf education. An opportunity for agriculture lectures in Britain did not arise, & there had been no British attendees at the Koberwitz course. We can speculate that the attendance of Wachsmuth & Vreede, who had attended at Koberwitz – as well as Tintagel, in this case along with Marna Pease – may have seeded the early interest in Britain in Anthroposophic agriculture which evolved into biodynamics.
Marna Pease went on to be the secretary of Britain’s Anthroposophical agricultural Foundation which was founded in 1928. Elizabeth Vreede attended, in London, as a guest at the first Annual Meeting of the Anthroposophical Agricultural Foundation.
Despite the intensity with which Rudolf Steiner engaged with his missions, including the Torquay Summer School, he was, by this time terminally ill from being ‘poisoned’ eight months earlier. Wachsmuth described this final visit to Britain: “During … the last trip of Rudolf Steiner in his life on earth, he suffered tragically from the destructive illness. Outwardly, nothing of this could be observed. He met daily all the requirements of the comprehensive program & his lecturing activity. He spoke introductory words at artistic programs, had numerous conferences, & took part in the excursions, but every meal caused in his ill condition renewed suffering, which he bore courageously without a word of complaint … He permitted nothing to be known by those at the conference regarding his illness” (Wachsmuth, 1989, p.563).
Just a month after this tenth visit to Britain, Rudolf Steiner retreated entirely from public life (on 28 September, 1924), & he died on 30 March 1925
References:
AAF. (1929). Annual Meeting of the Anthroposophical Agricultural Foundation, Minutes: 3 pp. typescript.
Ashley, M. (2010). A Brief History of King Arthur. London: Constable & Robinson.
Collison, H. (1925). Rudolf Steiner. X a.m. 30th March, 1925, R.I.P. Anthroposophical Movement, 2(13), 101.
Kolisko, L. N. (1936). The Moon and the Growth of Plants (M. Pease, Trans.). London: Anthroposophical Agricultural Foundation.
Paull, J. (2011a). Attending the First Organic Agriculture Course: Rudolf Steiner’s Agriculture Course at Koberwitz, 1924. European Journal of Social Sciences, 21(1), 64-70. Paull, J. (2011b). Biodynamic Agriculture: The journey from Koberwitz to the World, 1924-1938. Journal of Organic Systems, 6(1), 27-41.
Pease, M. (1937). A New Farming and Gardening: For Enquirers (Leaflet No. 2, 2nd Series). Bray-on-Thames, Berkshire: Anthroposophical Agricultural Foundation.
Steiner, R. (1924a). On the conduct of this news-sheet, & the share members should take in it. Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain Monthly News-Sheet for Members, January, 8. Steiner, R. (1924b). To all members: Our summer courses in Torquay. Anthroposophical Movement, 1(24 August), 81-83.
Steiner, R. (1933). Nine Lectures on Bees: Given in 1923 to the workmen at the Goetheanum (M. Pearse, Trans.). London: Anthroposophical Agricultural Foundation.
Villeneuve, C. (2004). Rudolf Steiner in Britain: A Documentation of his Ten Visits, Volume 11, 1922-1925. Forest Row, UK: Temple Lodge.
Wachsmuth, G. (1989). The Life and Work of Rudolf Steiner
Wannamaker & R. E. Raab, Trans. 2nd edition; first published in German 1941). Blauvert, NY: Spiritual Science Library.
Whitehead, A. (2010). Rudolf Steiner: Journey of a Grail Knight Warrior. Blackheath, NSW: Golden Beetle Books
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 and then transformation – Bring your 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 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
Join us for the Applied Anthroposophy Course 2021-2022!
October 13, 2021 – May 25, 2022
I will be leading a ‘Chrysalis Group on Thursday mornings 8am PT / 10 am CT / 11am ET /
We invite you to join us as we explore big, essential questions together…
What is contemporary culture asking for now?
What are you being called to bring to the world?
How will Anthroposophia assist you in the task?
The Applied Anthroposophy Course (AAC) brings transformative online content to the alchemy of individual and group inner work.
The mission is to explore the urgent issues of our time and awaken meaning through the lens of spiritual philosophy, inner reflection, and outer action. Visit appliedanthroposophy.orgfor more information!
Greetings friends on this Feast of the Transfiguration of Christ, a cosmic metamorphosis that prepared the way for the deed on Golgotha & was a pre-figuration of the Ascension.
“We find the transfiguration scene in all the evangelists except St. John. This is significant. Let us clarify the meaning of this scene. What takes place? Jesus goes with three disciples Peter, James and John, up a mountain: this means into the inner sanctuary where one is initiated into higher worlds and where one also speaks in occult language. The disciples were carried up into a higher state of consciousness. They saw then that which is not transitory but eternal. Moses and Elias appear and Jesus himself with them. What does this mean? In occult science the word Elias means the same as El — god the goal – the way. Moses is the spiritual scientific word for truth. By the fact that Elias, Moses and Jesus appear, you have the fundamental Christian truth: I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. Jesus himself says — this is a fundamental Christian mystical truth — “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” (John, ch. 14, v. 6) ~ Rudolf Steiner, The Gospel of St. John, 3rd Lecture
Today in 70 AD- The Second Temple of Jerusalem is destroyed by Roman legions under Titus. For 420 years, the 2nd Temple constituted a divine presence – the point where heaven & earth met.
Hiroshima: The Anti-Transfiguration – Brian Zahnd
6 August is also the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, an act of genocide on US President Harry Truman’s orders.
I think of all those souls who crossed the threshold together, at that time. How will their sacrifice bear fruit…?
Krishna with Aruna in the Bhagavad Gita: “A thousand simultaneous suns Arising in the sky Might equal that great radiance, With that great glory vie.”
Interesting to contemplate these pivotal events today in 2021 which occur on the actual astrological cross-quarter date of Lammas (Loaf-mass) when the Sun enters 15 degrees of fiery Leo the Lion (in the tropical zodiac) – the exact midpoint between Summer Solstice & the Autumnal Equinox – a time of harvest, when the plant is sacrificed to make the bread. “The king is dead love live the king”.
We stand now also in the dark of the Moon (New Moon & Islamic New Year 8 Aug) on the edge of the Perseid Meteor Showers which peak in a few days…
Suuny Unii
Those of us working in the Sophia Group & the planning committee for the ‘Sophia Conference’ happening in the Spring of 2022 are especially attuned to this duel anniversary since the location of the conference will be in New Mexico where the atomic bomb was engineered & tested. The site chosen was a remote corner of the desert, south of Los Alamos, New Mexico, known as the “Jornada del Muerto,” or “Journey of Death.” Robert Oppenheimer named the site of the testing “Trinity” inspired by the poems of John Donne.
In the juxtaposition of these 2 world changing events we see not only the polarity of life & death, but the opportunity to bring the Wisdom of the Sophia in – with her connection to the Holy Spirit of the Trinity – calling in the ‘Healing Medicine that makes whole’ -to avail ourselves to the ‘Advocate, The ‘Comforter’ The ‘Mediator’ with the Being of Love – The Christos.
Together we can redeem & transfigure the fallen light of nuclear death, into the light of Wisdom & Love.
Blessings & Peace –
~hag
Candelario Cervantez
THE TRINITY by John Donne
“O blessed glorious Trinity, Bones to philosophy, but milk to faith, Which, as wise serpents, diversely Most slipperiness, yet most entanglings hath, As you distinguish’d, undistinct, By power, love, knowledge be, Give me a such self different instinct, Of these let all me elemented be, Of power, to love, to know you unnumbered three.”
Robert Bentley
Here is an interesting piece about the Transfiguration by Edouard Schure – French philosopher, poet, playwright, novelist, music critic, & publicist of esoteric literature – collaborator with Marie & Rudolf Steiner.
“In every great moment of his life, we see Christ Jesus withdrawing to the mountain to pray. Did not the Vedic sage say, “Prayer sustains heaven and earth and rules the gods?” Jesus knew this power of powers. Usually he did not allow any companion to share the times when he descended into the arcanum of his consciousness. However, on one occasion he led Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, John and James, to a high mountain in order to spend the night there. Tradition has it that the place was Mount Tabor. There that mysterious scene which the Gospels describe under the name The Transfiguration took place between the Master and his three most initiated disciples.
According to Matthew, the Apostles saw the luminous, diaphanous form of the Master appearing, in the transparent shadows of an oriental night, his face shining like the sun, his garments radiant as light. Then two forms, which they took for those of Moses and Elias appeared beside him. Trembling they came out of their strange prostration, which seemed to them like both a deep sleep and an intense waking state. Beside them they saw the Master, who touched them in order to awaken them completely. The transfigured Christ was never erased from their memory.
But what had Jesus himself seen, what had he experienced during that night which preceded the decisive deed of his prophetic career? He passed through a gradual disappearance of earthly things under the fire of prayer and an ascension from sphere to sphere on wings of ecstasy. Slowly it seemed to him that through his deep consciousness he was returning into a previous existence, which was entirely spiritual and divine. Far from him were the suns, worlds, earths, whirlwinds of painful incarnation, while in a homogeneous atmosphere was a fluid substance, an intelligent Light.
In this radiance legions of heavenly beings formed a moving canopy, a firmament of ethereal bodies, white as snow, from which emanated gentle rays of light. On the shining cloud where he himself was standing, six men in priestly clothing and of powerful stature are lifting a gleaming Chalice in their united hands. They are the six Messiahs who already have appeared on earth; the seventh is he himself, and this Cup signifies the Sacrifice which he must experience by becoming incarnate on earth in his turn. Beneath the cloud the thunder rolls, a black abyss opens, the circle of generations, the gulf of life and death, the earthly hell appear before him. With a supplicating gesture the Sons of God elevate the Cup. Heaven waits motionless …
With a gesture of acceptance Jesus spreads his arms in the form of a cross, as though he embraces the world. Then the Sons of God kneel, faces to the ground; angels with long wings and lowered eyes carry the shining Chalice upward into the vault of Light. Hosanna! rings out from heaven to heaven, melodious and ineffable . . . But without even hearing it, he plunges into the abyss …
This is what once took place in the world of Archetypes, in the Bosom of the Father, where the Mysteries of eternal Love are celebrated, and where the movements of the stars pass in waves of living Light. This is what Jesus had sworn to fulfill; this is why he was born, this is why he had struggled upon earth. And now the mighty promise gripped him again at the end of his work, through the fullness of his spiritual consciousness, by means of which he had entered into the revelation of a divine ecstasy.
Deep vow, dread Chalice! Nevertheless, it was necessary to drink from it. After the rapture of ecstasy, he awakened in the depths of the abyss, at the brink of martyrdom. There could be no further doubt; the time had come. Heaven had spoken, earth cried aloud for help.
Then, slowly retracing his steps, Jesus again went down to the valley of the Jordan and took the road to Jerusalem.”
~In the cardboard sky The Thunder gods gather In a procession of chattering dark wind weavings Flashing signs of other lives Royal blue souls in zig-zagging sighs Stop Where heat rises like dust after the bomb To be weighed In the over-ripe fruit trees For the transfiguration ~hag
