Category Archives: Festival

“Charis”

Community, Festival, History, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Speaking with the Stars, Upcoming Events
Michael Stevens’ The Pentecost (After Maíno) 

This season of Whitsun-tide is the world-festival of the NOW, highlighting the challenging relationships of Self & community. How do we work as individuals to transform our ingrained sympathies & antipathies? How do we purify our astral nature in order to make ourselves into a vessel worthy to receive the Holy Spirit, giving us the possibility of manifesting the ‘Spirit Self’ – healing the formative forces of our Life-Spirit, which will provide the capacity to create new social forms..?

Rea Vena

In ancient times the human being experienced the True Self, the Higher I AM, in the cosmos outside of them in the Sun sphere thru initiation, by leaving the body. – This was outpictured in the time of the ancient Summer Solstice Festivals – Which have now become mysteries of St. John the Baptist, where the Spirit is called to become manifest, by applying the powers of the Archangel Uriel.

Alex Fiskgogt

The Whitsun-tide inaugurates a new age, when human beings thru a personal path of self-guided catharsis comes to an awakening of the Higher I AM in “their inmost being” as a force of transformative power, which is the force of love. 

The Greek word for grace is, “Charis”, which means the free love from God. 

Jonna Powell

This brings us back to the great social question of our time: the individual in relation to the whole – the community, & the cosmos.

Kim Heale

Only by a social & personal catharsis which allows the true spirit of freedom, the true I AM, to eclipse our small personal egotism & the lower impulses of our nature, can a new community & new language of universal sister/brotherhood be created. 

Only out of the spiritual recognition of the universal Human Being, will the ideas & applications of a new approach to fraternity in economics; equality in human rights; & freedom in the cultural/spiritual life, be accomplished. 

May we strive to serve this goal out of the spirit of The Sophia.

~hag

~John Jardine Goss/ EarthSky.

2 June 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: The bright waxing gibbous moon will glow near fiery Antares, the brightest star in Scorpius the Scorpion, after sunset this evening. The following evening finds the full moon close to Antares. You can watch them move across the sky all night.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

“The Master said, “A true teacher is one who, keeping the past alive, is also able to understand the present.” (Analects 2.11)” ~Confucius

455 – Sack of Rome

1098 – First Crusade: The first Siege of Antioch ends as Crusader forces take the city; the second siege began five days later.

1692 – Bridget Bishop is the first person to go to trial in the Salem witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts; she was found guilty and later hanged

1882 – Deathday of Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italian general & politician. Spoken of as a high initiate in the Hibernian Mysteries in ‘Karmic Relationships’ Vol 1, lec. 11 by Rudolf Steiner (June 2nd is also Festa della Repubblica -The Italian National Republic Day)

One of my fav. stories: “…Garibaldi became acquainted in a most extraordinary way with the woman who was to be the mainstay of his happiness for many years. He was out at sea, on board ship, looking landwards through a telescope. To fall in love through a telescope — that is certainly not the way it happens to most people!

Destiny again made it easy for him to become quickly acquainted with the one whom he had chosen through the telescope to be his beloved. He steered at once in the direction in which he had looked through the telescope, and on reaching land he was invited by a man to a meal. It transpired, after he had accepted the invitation, that this man was the father of the girl he had seen! She could speak only Portuguese, and he only Italian; but we are assured by his biographer, and it seems to be correct, that the young woman immediately understood his carefully phrased declaration of love, which seems to have consisted simply of the words — in Italian of course — “We must unite for life.” She understood immediately. And it really happened so, that from this meeting came a life-companionship that lasted for a long, long time.

Garibaldi’s wife shared in all the terrible and adventurous journeys he made in South America, and some of the recorded details of them are really most moving. For example, the story is told of how a report got about that Garibaldi had been killed in battle. His wife hurried to the battlefield and lifted up every head to see if it were her husband’s. After a long time, and after undergoing many adventures in the search, she found him still alive. It is most affecting to read how on this very journey, which lasted a long time, she gave birth to a child without help of any kind, and how, in order to keep it warm, she bound it in a sling about her neck, holding it against her breast for hours at a time. The story of Garibaldi’s South American adventures has some deeply moving aspects.” ~Rudolf Steiner, KARMIC RELATIONSHIPS I, GA 235

THE TENSION BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, GA 83, Part I: Anthroposophy and the Sciences
2. Psychology, 2 June 1922, Vienna

1922 – Start of the West-East Congress in Vienna, opened by Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz. At this conference Rudolf Steiner gave his last lecture on Threefolding (1917 – 1922)

~Kindling Radiance~

A Community Festival Gathering Celebrating St. John’s-Tide

Saturday, June 24, 2023 at Zinniker Farm

5:30 pm Potluck – Please bring food & drink to share

Artistic Offerings – Poem, Song… Express yourself!

7 – 9 pm – Bonfire Drum Circle w/ Hazel & Ultra-Violet Archer

Show support for Zinniker Farm – $15 more or less Love Donation

Co-hosted by The Christian Community of Southeast WI. & Chicago
http://thechicagochristiancommunity.org/ & https://zinnikerfarm.com/ & ReverseRitual.com

>>> RSVP margaretthom27@yahoo.com Subject: St. John’s

Baptism by Fire

Biography, Community, Festival, History
Pentecost 2023 Biodynamic Barrel Compost Prep-Stir

Dear friends – While attending the Sunrise this morning in my wild garden, I was remembering our community Pentecost gathering, in the evening after our online offering which you can view here. It was perfect weather, good food, Prep-making, sky gazing with Venus & the Twins, & beautiful insightful conversations around the bonfire. After going around the circle speaking with tongues of fire, answering the question: What qualities does a true conscious community have – a hummingbird appeared! The perfect affirmation that the Spirit was amoung us.

When we attune ourselves to beings such as Raphael, Archangel of Spring, we can awaken to the way spiritual entities constantly interact with earth thru the elements.

FOLLOWING THE SUN. PIONEERING ART IN THE DECORATION OF PUBLIC ...
Edvard Munch

The messengers of cosmic warmth in the rays of the Sun activate the ascension of the element of water. Through its union with air, clouds originate. In the cloud, between depths of earth & heavenly heights, in the sphere of the etheric realm, a mobile balance manifests.

Blossoms & fruits are in reality not just products of earth but heavenly forms filled with earthly substance, like us.

The phantom body of Christ is a reconstituted New Adam, & the Resurrection Body points us in the direction of our future evolution, not back to the garden, but going forward toward the New Jerusalem. Materializing & dematerializing at will.

The ‘ Resurrection Body’ encompasses the whole of humanity – Rudolf Steiner calls it a redeeming of the  group-soul of mankind. It is like a cell that is multiplying; growing ever more evident in the etheric realm.

The expression “Put on the Resurrection Body” used by the apostle Paul is a true picture of what can happen for us. An imaginative picture of this is secreted in the allegory of the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz .

Goethe’s Fairy Tale is another powerful imagination that captures the essence of the Ascension & the working of the Healing Spirit

It’s been said that The Green Snake & the Beautiful Lily, which is full of esoteric symbolism, was born out of Goethe’s reading of The Chymical Wedding .

And Goethe’s Tale was written as a response to a work by Friedrich Schiller called ‘Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man’.  Über die aesthetische Erziehung des Menschen

One of the central ideas discussed so often by Goethe & Schiller centered on the question of human freedom. Schiller was trying to build an inner bridge between reality & the ‘ideal human being’.

Schiller wrote his ‘Letters’ during the time of the French Revolution, which was driven by a desire for outer social changes, to enable human beings to become free.

But both Schiller & Goethe recognized that freedom cannot be ‘imposed’ from the outside, it must arise from within. So Goethe took this inspiration & set about writing a Fairy Tale that would show, in imaginative pictures, the way in which a human soul could become whole & free by bridging the abyss between the human & the divine within.

Leszek Forczek

Last night, on the anniversary of the death by fire of Jeanne d’Arc, a group of us went to see the fully restored silent movie “The Passion of Joan” made in 1928. It was accompanied by a live band playing a powerfully dynamic score. Afterward we related how hers was like a baptism by fire from the Holy Spirit…

xox 

~hag

John Jardine Goss/ EarthSky

31 May 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Our solar system’s brightest planet, Venus, will shine brightly in the western evening sky all month. She is shining above the reddish star Aldebaran & the delicate Pleiades star cluster. Venus will move from the constellation of Taurus the Bull to Gemini the Twins this month.

The Healers" Intuitive energy painting available for prints | Energy art, Healing arts, Healing artwork
Denta Quxale

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY (Rudolf Steiner’s orginal Calendar of the Soul, Wikipedia Commons)

‘The Feast of the Visitation’ – The visible actors (see Luke 1:39-45) are Mary & Elizabeth, although Jesus & John the Baptist steal the scene. John leaps with joy in the womb of Elizabeth, who in turn, is filled with the Holy Spirit & addresses words of praise to Mary—words that echo down through the ages. Then comes the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55).

One of the invocations in Mary’s litany is “Ark of the Covenant.” Like the Ark of the Covenant of old, Mary brings God’s presence into the lives of other people. As David danced before the Ark, John the Baptist leaps for joy. As the Ark helped to unite the 12 tribes of Israel by being placed in David’s capital, so Mary has the power to unite all in her Son.

1809 – Deathday of Austrian composer Franz Haydn

1819 – Birthday of Walt Whitman, American poet, essayist, & journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism & realism, often called the father of free verse. His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene.

1875 – DSeathday of occultist Eliphas Levy. Steiner refers to his Mexican incarnation in the Karma lectures Vol. 2

1942 – Deathday of Reinhard Heydrich, assinated in Prague. A high-ranking German Nazi official during World War II, one of the main architects of the Holocaust. Many historians regard him as the darkest figure in the Nazi elite; Adolf Hitler described him as “the man with the iron heart”.

1962 – Deathday of Adolf Eichmann, a German Nazi SS, one of the major organisers of the Holocaust. Eichmann was working with Reinhard Heydrich facilitating & managing the logistics of mass deportation of Jews to extermination camps. In 1960, he was captured in Argentina by Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service. Following a widely publicized trial in Israel, he was found guilty of war crimes & hanged on this day in 1962.

Saturday 24 June 2023 – Our St. Johns-Tide Festival at Zinniker Farm. Details coming soon.

‘The full power of the “I”

Biography, Festival, Rudolf Steiner Quote
RS, Alex Grey, Daniel Ospina

Since time immemorial, the Divine Feminine has been connecting humanity with the inspiration to acquire wisdom.

This year during the 10 days between Ascension & Pentecost, I took up again the 3rd-century Gnostic text known as the Pistis Sophia, a compelling fav. of mine, like the Gospel of Mary Magdalene.

The name Pistis Sophia means ‘Faith in Wisdom’ – One of the  inspirations for Velsum’s Pentecost song. In her story, we hear how Wisdom is a co-creator with the Creator beings; & how she takes a fall after being seduced by a false light.

And like Parzival the Holy Fool, the trial of ‘Faith in Wisdom’ embodies the cosmic drama of the human soul – a hero’s journey giving birth to Love in freedom. The theme of renunciation is part of this path.

In some versions of the battle between Lucifer & Michael, a brilliant green stone, a jewel in the crown of Lucifer, fell to earth when he was cast out of heaven. This stone was taken up by the angels; who fashioned it into a chalice; & guarded it in ethers between heaven & earth.

Then when Christ came to earth – the star-chalice came with him – & became the cup at the Last Supper. This stone became the Holy Grail after the blood of Christ filled it.

This, my friends is a parable revealing the beginning of Lucifer’s redemption.

Rudolf Steiner explains: “A wonderfully beautiful legend tells us that when Lucifer fell from heaven to earth, a precious stone fell from his crown…This precious stone is, in a certain respect, none other, than the full power of the ‘I.’

ok folks let’s let that sink in … This precious stone from the crown of Lucifer is ‘the full power of the “I”. What’s going on here?

In Eschenbach’s Parzival, the stone is called the Lapis Exillis – which in alchemy is the name of the Philosopher’s Stone. This secret was guarded by the Templars.

When we reclaim “the full power of our ‘I’” each human being will live for the other, creating a shared life on Earth that nourishes the soul just like the Holy Grail is able to feed every questing Templar knight providing them with their most desirable meal. Love feeds all.

This now, & future task for humanity, takes us on our own transformative Parzival journey, enabling us to achieve ‘Faith in Wisdom’ thru crystalized pain – Our faith leading us to the Joy of purpose. Thru trial & error we strive to become worthy to receive the Holy Grail – to foster the Philosopher Stone.

This will eventually allow us to sanctify the gemstone that fell from the crown of Lucifer, bringing a healing redemption, that re-claims the true forces of this Sun-Being – to be used in service of the Christos.

On this WhitMonday, this Memorial Day, may we re-member the Holy Spirit as the Physician of all worlds…

~hag

I’m still waiting for the recording of our Pentecost festival from zoom…

Chart via ~John Jardine Goss/ EarthSky.

29 May 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: We were contemplating & communing with this last night around the bonfire! The waxing gibbous moon along the western side of the Spring Triangle – an asterism made of the bright stars Arcturus in Boötes the Herdsman, Spica in Virgo the Maiden and Regulus in Leo the Lion – at its corners. Bella Luna & the Spring Triangle will be visible up until aroun 2:30 am CDT.

Whitsun Congress

Calendar of the Soul, Community, Festival, Speaking with the Stars, Upcoming Event

Greetings friends on this WhitSunday 2023 –

The Whitsun Festival highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts, our individual “I”, in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is strongly felt during this time of the consciousness soul age. Our groups striving to know Spiritual Science must work together as a community, to have the possibility to create this type of culture, and the opportunity is here for each of us to meet, human to human, where a sacrament is possible in every encounter. Our individual strength comes from our personal development and is enhanced by weaving our gifts together with others, knitting our social world in conscious community.

We can think about the ‘7 gifts of the Holy Spirit’, and ask ourselves: What are my gifts?  How can I place them in right relationship within the social realm? How can I hone them, to strengthen and enhance the world? How do we turn the ME into a WE?

In 1907 Steiner created the ‘Whitsun Congress’ in Munich as a new Rosicrucian impulse, displaying the 7 seals of St. John’s Apocalypse, a representation of the 7 stages of Christian initiation. The Whitsun spirit came alive again, through Rudolf Steiner for the 3rd time in history with the re- founding of the Anthroposophical Society at the Christmas Conference.

When we take up the mantric expression of the Foundation Stone Meditation, it becomes the key in which the individual and social principles are harmoniously united – Lifting us out of the ‘ME’ into the ‘WE’, so that the spirit flame can enter and spread out through us, creating a radiating vessel for the Christ – Anthroposophia – and the powerful Michaelic forces wanting to be employed by us.

Our job as Michaelites is to take our individual Inner Whitsun and expand it, into what Steiner calls the “World Festival of Knowledge” a path leading from ‘Sprit Recalling’, to ‘Sprit Sensing’, to ‘Sprit Beholding.’

Through Steiner’s profound mystery deed at the Christmas Conference, an altogether new relationship between the spiritual world and the human being was conceived. If, today, together, we will to turn our hearts towards a higher wisdom in Love, to set fire to the forces of knowledge in our souls, redeeming our intelligence, our Anthroposophical angel, if you will, can anchor and embody itself in the environment we prepare for it.

Schiller once said “Take the divine into your will & it descends from its cosmic throne.”

We are called to create an Ecclesia, a vessel, a chalice, a sheath for The Sophia. Then the spirit flame can spread out to become what Steiner called a “World Whitsun”, which began in earnest at the Christmas Conference, where the ‘inverted Whitsun’, was born. The idea of taking the spirit that has flowed through the head into the heart, and then out from the heart, back as a gift to humanity, to redeem the Cosmic Intelligence of Michael.

In this sense the Christmas Conference, in all its spiritual reality, reveals itself as the true Whitsun for those who strive to take into their souls the Wisdom of the Holy Spirit concerning the human being – Anthropos-Sophia, which is the knowledge of the grail held aloft by Michael in this present age of the consciousness soul.

~hag

Here are some Whitsun presentations for your inspirational viewing:

Sangraal: A Pentecost Pilgrimage with the CRC

Whitsun: ‘The Festival of United Soul Endeavour’ – All Region’s

~Vitae Sophia~

This years offering: Anthroposophia & the Redemption of Lucifer, featuring Velsum, coming soon! Stay tuned…

~John Jardine Goss/ EarthSky.

28 May 2023 – “Speaking with the stars”: Shortly before sunrise tomorrow Mercury (occult Venus) will reach greatest distance from the Sun and will be very low in the east. To its upper right shines the brighter planet Jupiter.

RUDOLF STEINER’S CALENDAR OF THE SOUL
translated with added titles by Roy Sadler
WHITSUN
DREAM LIFE’S PRESENCE
v8
In concert with the spirit’s birth
the senses’ power grows;
it presses thinking down
to dimness of a dream.
When Holy Spirit
would bond with soul;
the mind must rest
in dream life’s presence.

the mirror verse
CANDLEMAS II
THOUGHT’S LIGHT
v45
In concert with the spirit’s birth
thought’s power grows;
it lights up senses’ vague allure
to vivid clarity.
When soul would bond
with springtime’s coming,
thought’s light must shine
on sense revealing.


TODAY: Whitsunday 28 May 2023

NEW TIME: 7 pm – 9 pm 

50 Days after The Resurrection = 
Our Community Pentecost Gathering –

Social Sculpture with Rev. Jeana Lee & ~hag

Pot-Luck, Bonfire & Prep Stir

at the home of Hazel & Chuck Ginsberg

Please bring food & drink to share –

RSVP to Hazel@ReverseRitual.com

First Fruits

Community, Festival, History

Listen to the Story of Ruth & Naomi on the ‘I Think Speech’ Podcast.

Then join us online today at 1 pm for our Pentecost Festival (see below)

Dear Friends, With all the struggles going on in & around Israel, I would like to tell the story of Ruth & Naomi – a Jewish woman & an Arab woman, who shared a deep karmic connection, giving us a message of unity we need so much today. Their story is mixed in with the Holiday called Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, Feast of The First Fruits, or Feast of the Giving of the Law; a Spring festival that celebrates the grain harvest, & the ripening of the first fruits, as well as the anniversary of the giving of the Torah. Remember that this is the time that Moses meets the ‘I AM” of Christ in the burning bush! A precurser to the tongues of fire on Pentecost.

According to tradition folks overslept the day that Moses came down from fiery Mount Sinai. So to atone, many folks hold an all-night vigil on the eve of Shavuot. They light candles, decorate with flowers, eat dairy food, study Torah, & read the Book of Ruth- an integral part of the Jewish & Christian liturgical year. Sections of Ruth are also used in the Protestant Wedding ceremony

A number of biblical scholars have speculated that the Book of Ruth may have been written by a woman – its story is not only expressed entirely from a woman’s point of view, the name “Ruth” literally means, “woman friend.” And the grammar of the original Hebrew shows an unusual content of gender equality. There is also a hidden teaching in Ruth, a kind of women’s mystery that we can contemplate, & also an allegory for a karmic, or spiritual union.

Here’s a synopsis: The widow Naomi & her 2 sons left Israel, because of a famine, traveling thru foreign lands. They settled in Moab which today is an Arab country on the East Bank of the Jordan River, bordered by Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria & Palestine. The sons married Ruth & Orpah, 2 non-Jewish women from that place. During this time in exile, the 2 sons died, & the 3 woman became very close.

The tender friendship was especially strong between Ruth & Naomi, so unusual with a mother-in-law; which has been celebrated in poetry, prose & in art, the world round. After a time, Naomi gets word that Jerusalem is fertile again, & with her 2 sons gone, she desires to go back to her homeland, telling her 2 daughters-in-law that they should go back to their families, since life with her would be one of poverty, in a strange land, & she didn’t want them to have to sacrifice all the pleasures of their young lives for her. Already sad & lonely with the loss of their husbands, the thought of parting with Naomi really intensified their grief. United in common sorrow, the 3 women stand at a crossroads. Naomi’s words made a deep impression on Orpah; & at last she decides to take her advice; –

But not Ruth, who felt a special destiny with Naomi; so they journeyed on together & made a home in Bethlehem, where Naomi’s family owned a small house, with a spring on the outskirts of town, but little else.

Ruth wanting to earn her keep, heard that laborers were needed in the fields. And Naomi remembered that she had a kinsman, Boaz, whose name means strength -a man of great wealth, as well as wisdom. And so it was that Ruth became employed in the fields of Boaz; where she worked hard & proved a blessing to her mother. Boaz took note of the integrity of the woman  from Moab. At harvest time he needed many extra hands, & he often went among the reapers to see how the work was going forward. He heard such good accounts of Ruth’s industry, dignity & discretion that he ordered his men to leave plenty for her to glean & to carry home in the evening. This she often sold on the way, in order to buy something that Naomi needed.

The 2 woman enjoyed their evenings together. Naomi had her spinning-wheel & loom; she also worked in the garden, raising vegetables, herbs & chickens. They often talked over their day’s labor as they enjoyed their simple supper of herb tea, bread & watercress.

One night Naomi was told by the spirit of prophecy, that from Ruth would descend 6 of the most righteous men of the age, notably, the prophet Daniel, King David, & what we would call ‘the Luke Jesus’. Boaz prized Ruth for her virtues, & her great moral qualities of head & heart.

In due time they were married; & Ruth bore a son whose name was Obed, which means: ‘One who Serves’. Obed became the father of Jesse, the root from which sprung the Virgin Mary. And Obed, Ruth’s son, was also the father of King David.

And so that is how this ‘Old Testament’ story ends, but we know this is just the beginning…

~hag

TODAY: Saturday 27 May 2023 on zoom
1 – 2:30 pm Central Time 

Anthroposophia & the Redemption of Lucifer –
A Pentecost Festival for 2023

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg 

& Velsum Voices Lucien Dante Lazar & Ultra-Violet Archer
 
Experiential Break out led by Lucien & Ultra

Hazel Archer is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Pentecost Festival
Time: May 27, 2023 01:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/7050174041?pwd=WkNaNDlPS0VIMTJUUkE1ZkFMaDh5dz09

Meeting ID: 705 017 4041
Passcode: Whitsun


& then Tomorrow Whitsunday 28 May 2023

NEW TIME: 7 pm – 9 pm 

50 Days after The Resurrection = 
Our Community Pentecost Gathering –

Social Sculpture with Rev. Jeana Lee

Pot-Luck, Bonfire & Prep Stir

at the home of Hazel & Chuck Ginsberg

Please bring food & drink to share –

RSVP to Hazel@ReverseRitual.com