At Michaelmas, 1923, for the last time in his earthly life as Rudolf Steiner, this great, humble initiate, was able to fully celebrate a Michaelmas festival, in Vienna, the capital city of his own homeland, where he had spent so many fruitful years in his youth. Much of Germany, including Berlin, was cut off from him in that year of uncontrolled inflation, but there in Vienna he could feel himself truly at home, as he re-founded the Anthroposophical Society in Austria & gave wonderful lectures on the human Gemüt. (The dictionary translates Gemüt as “heart, soul, mind,” seeming to imply, “take your choice.” But the word Gemüt must not be thought of as having these 3 separate meanings, but rather as a unified concept embracing all 3. We can think of Gemüt, as something like: the mind warmed by a loving heart, stimulated by the soul’s imaginative power. It might also be described as the soul in a state of intuition arising from the working together of heart & mind with courage.

It is a very beautiful & comprehensive word which every student of anthroposophy must strive to be on intimate terms with.  Steiner tells us: “This human Gemüt dwells in the very center of the soul life.”

In his Christmas letter in 1924 to the members, which form part of the ‘Michael Mystery’, Steiner emphasized in a single marvelously compressed paragraph the task of humanity in the middle period of the age of the consciousness soul in which we are now living.

“In its essential nature the Spiritual Soul (Consciousness Soul) is not cold. It seems to be so only at the commencement of its unfolding, because at that stage it can only reveal the light-element in its nature, and not as yet the cosmic warmth in which it has indeed its origin.”

This cosmic warmth must now be breathed out by all of us into our observation of the external world. Not only must we understand the world objectively in the manner of a spiritual scientist, but we must enter into this understanding with our life of feeling, to wrest the world from Ahriman’s clutches, filling it with the Christ forces working from within ourselves.

“Cleverness, then, has been furnished in abundance by the last few centuries; but what we need today is warmth of Gemüt, and this anthroposophy can provide. When someone studying anthroposophy says it leaves him cold, he reminds me of one who keeps piling wood in the stove and then complains that the room doesn’t get warm. Yet all he needs to do is to kindle the wood, then it will get warm. Anthroposophy can be presented, and it is the good wood of the soul; but it can be enkindled only by each within himself. What everyone must find in his Gemüt is the match wherewith to light anthroposophy. Anthroposophy is in truth warm and ardent: it is the very soul of the Gemüt; and he who finds this anthroposophy cold and intellectual and matter-of-fact just lacks the means of kindling it so it may pervade him with its fire. And just as only a little match is needed to light ordinary wood, so anthroposophy, too, needs only a little match. But this will enkindle the force of Michael in man.” ~ Rudolf Steiner ‘Michaelmas & the Soul forces of man’ lecture 2 September 28, 1923 (GA 223)

In ‘Michaelmas and the Soul-Forces of Man’ Steiner describes just how it is possible to enter into the external world with love, endowing it with soul-warmth, & in the process learning also to celebrate a new kind of Autumn Festival in which Michael can truly participate.

Together dear friends, may we warm our mind with a loving heart, to stimulate our soul’s imaginative power – let us cultivate together a state of intuition arising from the working together of our hearts & minds in the courageous power of love.

Blessings as we move consciously into Michaelmas 2020.

~hag

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4 September 2020 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Friends, we’ll be able to see Bella Luna & Mars in conjunction on the nights of September 4-6. By now the Full Corn Moon will be waning (it’ll be around 86% lit) & will be visible next to Mars as evening twilight ebbs into darkness. but 1st comes Jupiter & Saturn, with Jupiter being the brighter of two. (For the fun of it, Uranus is shown there too. It’s theoretically visible to the eye, but requires a very dark sky – and no nearby moon – to be seen) Look for the moon & Mars to be up by mid-evening, by around 9 or 10 pm. If you have an obstructed eastern horizon, it could be a little later. And once the moon & Mars are up, they will be out for rest of the night.

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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY (inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s Original Calendar of the Soul: “What is presented here can be useful to those who wish to follow the path of humankind’s spiritual development“)

Birth & Death-day of MOSES (from Rudolf Steiner’s Calendar of the Soul):

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.

According to Konrad Burdach, Rudolf Steiner connects Moses in a later incarnation as Goethe, in a special lecture in the GA 138 series

1150 – Feast day of St. Rosalia – born of a Norman noble family that claimed descent from Charlemagne. Devoutly religious, she retired to live as a hermit in a cave on Mount Pellegrino, where she died alone in 1166. Tradition says that she was led to the cave by two angels. On the cave wall she wrote “I, Rosalia, daughter of Sinibald, Lord of Roses, and Quisquina, have taken the resolution to live in this cave for the love of my Lord, Jesus Christ.”

In 1624, a plague beset Palermo. During this hardship Saint Rosalia appeared first to a sick woman, then to a hunter, to whom she indicated where her remains were to be found. She ordered him to bring her bones to Palermo and have them carried in procession through the city.

The hunter climbed the mountain & found her bones in the cave as described. He did what she had asked in the apparition. After her remains were carried around the city three times, the plague ceased. After this Saint Rosalia was venerated as the patron saint of Palermo, & a sanctuary was built in the cave where her remains were discovered.

On September 4 there is a tradition of walking barefoot from Palermo up to Mount Pellegrino.  In Italian American communities in the United States, the September feast brings large numbers of visitors annually to the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn in New York City.

1781 – Los Angeles is founded as El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora La Reina de los Ángeles (The Village of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels) by 44 Spanish settlers.

1882 – The Pearl Street Station in New York City becomes the first power plant to supply electricity to paying customers.

1886 – After almost 30 years of fighting, Apache leader Geronimo, with his remaining warriors, surrenders to General Nelson Miles in Arizona.

1888 – George Eastman registers the trademark Kodak& receives a patent for his camera that uses roll film.

1949 – The Peekskill riots erupt after a Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill, New York.

1951 – The first live transcontinental television broadcast takes place in San Francisco, from the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference.

1957 – Little Rock Crisis: Orval Faubus, governor of Arkansas, calls out the National Guard to prevent African American students from enrolling in Central High School.

1957 – The Ford Motor Company introduces the Edsel.

1965 – Death-Day of Albert Schweitzer, French-Gabonese physician, theologian, missionary, & Nobel Prize laureate.

1998 – Google is founded by Larry Page & Sergey Brin, two students at Stanford University.

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The Central Regional Council Invites ALL to our Michaelmas Festival:

‘Courage Born of Wisdom’

Wednesday 23 September 2020 – The Autumnal Equinox – 7:15 pm CDT – 8:30 pm

CRC performs a telling of a tale from ancient Chaldea where EA gives birth to Marduk, precursor to Michael.

then “Wisdom Built herself a house*”…7 members of the various sections of the Anthroposophical Society will stand as Wisdom’s 7 Pillars to share how Courage was born from Wisdom leading to their work in the world.

Medical Section –Drs. Molly & Quentin McMullen
Social Science Section – Doug Wylie
Youth – Stephan Ambrose
BD – Rand Carter
Pedagogical –Michael Holdrege
3-folding – Dorothy Hinkle-Uhlig
Eurythmy – Barbara Richardson

with a closing about the connection between Michael, The Christ & Anthroposophia!

FREE – Zoom details to follow

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Our annual Michaelmas Festival & Youth Gathering  26 Sept. 2020 – 2 pm – 4 pm CDT

Joan d’Arc – PURIFYING FIRE: The Power behind the Will – 2 pm – 4 pm CDT

In person & online presentations 

This years theme will be an exploration of the connection between Joan d’Arc & the Archangel Michael…

with special guests: Angela Foster from Atlanta & Mary Spalding

Including a performance of ‘The Passage” by Lucian Dante Lazar

Details TBA

Sponsored by: The Rudolf Steiner Branch & Elderberries Biodynamic Outpost & Cultural Hub. for more info. contact Festivals coordinator Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

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