When human beings stand in reverence & awe in their striving to take in the great revelations & truths coming from the spiritual world behind world events, we imbue ourselves with a feeling of wonder that can develop into a force of attraction for the Christ Impulse.
As the Logos is drawn in, the Christ Impulse unites with our individual human soul, to the extent that we are capable of standing in awe of cosmic mysteries.
The astral body of Christ, which The Sophia purifies in us, is derived from all the feelings of wonder that we have lived into thru our individual soul forces.
The second attribute that human souls must develop to attract the Christ Impulse is the feeling of compassion. Whenever a feeling of compassion or shared joy develops in a human soul, it serves as a force of attraction for the Christ Impulse. Through compassion & love, The Logos unites with our human soul. Compassion & love lived into by humanity are the forces from which the Christ will shape his own etheric body until the end of the Earth phase of evolution.
When we picture that the etheric body of The Christ develops out of human feelings of compassion & love, the biblical statement, ‘What you have done to the least of my brothers, you have done to me,’ becomes very real.
A third higher attribute that enters the human soul is the awakening & heeding of conscience; placing greater value on this ‘still small voice’, than on our own individual instincts. Christ unites most intimately with conscience, (as he did with John the Baptist), deriving his physical body from impulses of conscience in individual human souls.
Aceneo Killiopze
Today will you stand in Reverence & Awe; in Compassion & Love; letting that ‘still small voice of Conscience ring out with truth – as we embody & manifest the Christ within & out in the world…?
331- Birthday of Julian the Apostate. In Rudolf Steiner’s Kama Lectures Vol. 4, lec. 6, he hear about him as Herzeloyde & Tycho Brahe.
1882 – More than 100,000 inhabitants of Bombay are killed when a cyclone in the Arabian Sea pushes huge waves into the harbor
1889 – The Great Seattle Fire destroys all of downtown Seattle
1892 – The Chicago “L” commuter rail system begins operation
1934 – New Deal: The U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Securities Act of 1933 into law, establishing the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission
1944 – D-Day -155,000 Allied troops land on the beaches of Normandy in France, beginning the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi control during World War II.
Winston Ferrme
1961 – Deathday of Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist & psychotherapist
Gardner Cox
1968 – Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, Democratic Party senator from New York, brother of 35th President John F. Kennedy, dies from gunshot wounds inflicted on June 5
1982 – The Lebanon War begins. Forces under Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon invade southern Lebanon
2002 –A near-Earth asteroid estimated at ten meters in diameter explodes over the Mediterranean Sea between Greece & Libya; estimated to have a force of 26 kilotons, more powerful than the Nagasaki atomic bomb
Fabrizio Cassetta
1875 – Birthday of Thomas Mann, German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, & the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic & ironic epic novels are noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist & the intellectual. His analysis & critique of the German soul used modernized German & Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche & Schopenhauer.
***
~The Hive hums Wings grow out of the ether of my bones In anticipation of the rite Steeped in royal jelly I contemplate the hexagramma mysticum & prepare to dance the lemnisus infinitorum… ~hag
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Friday 19 June 2020 – Front Range Anthroposophical Café presents:
Cosmic Rapture Grounded in Jubilant Hearts – From Summer Solstice to St. John’s-Tide –with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg
To pass the test of Summer we will explore many questions:
What is the Spiritual Significance of a Solar Eclipse on Summer Solstice?
How do we stand wakefully within the sublime mysteries of the Summer-Tide, to consciously embody ‘the spiritual wisdom of the gods’?
Who is the mysterious Archangel of Summer?
What is the secret to healing the ‘soul-fever’ so prevalent in society today?
Together we will work to strengthen our true “I”, enlivening our will forces.
We look forward to seeing you on Friday 19 June 2020 shortly before 6 pm (Pacific), 7 PM (Mountain) 8 pm (Central), 9 pm (Eastern).
Here is the link to our Anthroposophical Café and all you need to do to join us is click on it: https://zoom.us/j/294724669.
Warmly, Karen vann Vuuren, Tom Altgelt, Jamie York, and our growing circle of Café Friends – It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
The Tuesday (Mars day) of Pentecost – The festival of the Word, a newLanguage of the Sophia-Logos, holding the ideal of Free Speech! Our day star Sun is speaking thru the stars of the Bull at this time, that region of the Zodiac connected to the humanLarynx, giving us the capacity for self-expression.
The current World events must be given voice. Pentecost is the festival of NOW, highlighting the challenging relationships of self & community. – Offering us an opportunity to transcend race. 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’, the True Self which will provide the capacity to create new social forms..?
Thinking of Pentecost as being 50 days after Easter, & in looking at the # 5, we see the 4 bodies of the human being: physical, etheric, astral & “I” – given a 5th dimension – a new spiritual aspect is added: The Spirit-Self, the Higher Ego.
Aggripa
The pentagram is the symbol of the true human being, (the inverted pentagram is a symbol of black magic – that which seeks to destroy this higher human being). The numbers 4 & 5 raised to the 10th power, indicate a process taking place at a higher spiritual level, which is how the events described in 40 days = Ascension & 50 days = Pentecost, are meant to be understood, both as historical events of Christ’s union with the earth, but also as initiatory events taking place on a higher plane for humanity.
Rudolf Steiner defines the 10 days between Ascension & Pentecost as a time of deep sadness, grief & loss for the apostles. He describes it as ‘a sorrow such as cannot be compared with any other sorrow on earth’ –A kind of death experience on a spiritual level. And just like in the old mystery traditions, after the time of catharsis & preparation, there is a mystical death; so here too there is a kind of loss & experience of death. The #10 is the number of completion.
Bea Trumbel
Steiner points out: ‘All real knowledge, all knowledge that can truly be called great is born from pain, from inner travail…And out of this pain, out of this infinite sorrow, there sprang what we call the Mystery of Pentecost…Having lost sight of the Christ in external clairvoyant vision (the 40 days with the Resurrected Christ), the disciples found it again in their inmost being…found it through sorrow, through pain.(May 17, 1923, Christiana)
Donna Vector
Here we have a great reversal. 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.
Ninetta Sombart
Even in with Lazarus, the first Christian initiation performed on Earth, in public, by the Christ, Lazarus was “called forth” by Christ as the hierophant from without.
Pentecost 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. In ancient Greek, there are several words for love: eros – romantic love; philia – brotherly/family love; agape – divine love, or love of the human for the divine.
Johannes Demmer
One other word for love is charis. Charis is higher than agape, because it is the love of the Divine for the human being. This is the highest form of love.
In the 12th of Steiner’s lectures on the ‘Gospel of John’, which he describes as the most spiritual perspective given by the writers of the gospels, he speaks of how John never uses the name Mary, but always says: “the mother of Jesus”. He equates this with the ‘Virgin Sophia’ – the purified astral body. It is this Virgin Sophia = the Mother of Jesus, who is “in their midst” at Pentecost.
The story goes on to say that they were all together in one place, using the word which is often translated as house, but in Greek it means “a shared, common place”, a community place. Into this community place, with the Virgin Sophia in their midst, came the Holy Spirit, the Universal Ego, the true I AM, which can then speak out of this purified astral body.
This Holy Spirit came with a rushing of wind & flames that individualized onto each of the disciples, & “stayed upon each of them”(this is the same term used at the Baptism of Jesus) They then began to speak a new language “as the
Holy Spirit gave them utterance.” This was a speaking, which transcended earthly languages, for everyone understood & were amazed.
In this same lecture from the Gospel of John cycle, Steiner addresses this question: ‘a person thus illuminated, who has received the Holy Spirit into himself, speaks in a different manner. How does he speak? …he is not expressing ‘his’ own opinion. His views do not come into consideration. His personal (earthly) ego has been eclipsed which means that…it has become impersonal and it is the Cosmic Universal Ego’.
He continues this Pentecostal theme in a lecture on Whitsunday, 1910: ‘This Holy Spirit enables us to become free human souls. As the Spirit of Freedom, it streamed out through the first disciples…in the first Pentecostal festival….We can become free only when we find ourselves again in spirit and out of the spirit become master over the spirit within ourselves. Our true spirit is the universal human spirit, which we recognize as the Pentecostal power of the Holy Spirit.. which we must bring to birth in ourselves and allow to become manifest…This will bring to life in our souls something which overleaps all boundaries separating the different parts of humanity’.
Leszek Forczek
This brings us back to the great call of our current time of Pentecost – which is the great social question of our time: the individual in relation to the whole, the community.
Today we face immense questions about the future of humanity, with division, polarization, lack of understanding & failed communication, creating the social problems of our time.
Only by a social & personal catharsis which can allow for 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.
***
2 June 2020 – “Speaking with the Stars”: At inferior conjunction, Venus moves between Earth & Sun. This facilitates Venus in becoming the morning star, after her hidden journey into the Solar Logos.
2020, June 3: Venus passes between Earth and Sun – inferior conjunction – and begins to move into the morning sky when it rises before sunrise.
When we see the Sun in the south, our clocks read noon. The opposite direction is midnight. We do not see the sun in the sky at midnight, & Venus too will be hidden.
The line then divides the morning sky from the evening sky. Venus is moving toward the morning as she revolves around the Sun faster than Earth.
“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)
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)
***
Kerby Dalton
POD (Poem Of the Day)
~i am a form in the flame seen only if one gazes long into the fire… clouds of smoke tear like a shroud & i see the shine of other hidden ones, faces aglow with heat flashing like lightning, speaking with thunder… rising in the smoke the scent of my prayer an incense of hope & wonder… ~hag
***
MANIFESTATIONS OF KARMA: June 3rd, 2020 Zoom Meeting with the Central Regional Council 7:15 pm – 8:30 pm CDT “He who observes human life carefully — not simply in a superficial way — may find remarkable connections in it. Unfortunately, the phenomena of human life are at present observed for only short periods of time, hardly even for a few years; people are not accustomed to connect what has happened after a long period of time, with what may have happened previously as the cause. There are very few at the present day who study the beginning and the end of a man’s life in their relationship to each other; nevertheless this relationship is extraordinarily instructive.” ~Rudolf Steiner, Manifestations of Karma
Chapter 1, “The Nature and Significance of Karma in the Personal and Individual, and in Humanity, the Earth and the Universe, Hamburg, 16 May, 1910 … focus of the June 3 meeting.
Meeting ID: 811 1655 6762 One tap mobile +13017158592,,81116556762# US (Germantown) +13126266799,,81116556762# US (Chicago)
Dial by your location +1 301 715 8592 US (Germantown) +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) +1 646 558 8656 US (New York) +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma) +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston) +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose) Meeting ID: 811 1655 6762
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kclU2SSTFIf you have questions, please contact Alberto Loya aloyavaca@peoplepc.com Agenda for our Study Call
7:15 Welcome and Introductions 7:18 Verse 7:25 Study led by five volunteers Note: CRC team will ID volunteers Marianne – first section Travis – second section Lisa – third section Alberto – fourth section Hazel – fifth section 8:05 Conversation 8:28 Close with verse
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Friday 19 June 2020 – Front Range Anthroposophical Café presents:
The New Mysteries of St. Johns-Tide with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg
To pass the test of Summer we will explore many questions:
How do we stand wakefully within the sublime mysteries of the Summer-Tide, to consciously embody ‘the spiritual wisdom of the gods’?
Who is the mysterious Archangel of Summer?
Who is John the Baptist? What do his sayings “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” And “He must increase, but I must decrease.” really mean?
What is the secret to healing the ‘soul-fever’ so prevalent in society today?
What is the mystery of the Dragon-fly, & other elemental beings?
How can we understand the ‘Cycle of the Year as Breathing Process of the Earth’?
Together we will work to strengthen our true “I”, enlivening our will forces.
We look forward to seeing you on Friday 19 June 2020 shortly before 7 PM (Mountain time.) Here is the link to our Anthroposophical Café and all you need to do to join us is click on it: https://zoom.us/j/294724669.
Warmly, Karen vann Vuuren, Tom Altgelt, Jamie York, and our growing circle of Café Friends – It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
HERE IS THE RECORDING of Vitae Sophia~ A Whitsun Festival of United Soul Endeavor with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, with Guest Speakers Lisa Dalton & Geoff Norris
Online Whitsunday, 31 May 2020 Sponsored by the Anthroposophical Society in New Hampshire
Our individual strength is enhanced by weaving our gifts together, kindling our social world in conscious community.
“The dove descending breaks the air With flame of incandescent terror Of which the tongues declare The one discharge from sin and error. The only hope, or else despair Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre- To be redeemed from fire by fire. Who then devised the torment? Love. Love is the unfamiliar Name Behind the hands that wove The intolerable shirt of flame Which human power cannot remove. We only live, only suspire Consumed by either fire or fire.” ~T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
George Floyd, a 46 year old black man, is handcuffed on his stomach as a Minneapolis police officer presses his knee into his neck. Floyd lies immobilized, groaning on the pavement as cars rush by, police radios beep & bystanders gather, yelling that his nose is bleeding, entreating the officers. “Hey, let him breathe, man!”
“Please, man!” Floyd begs as he is ground into the pavement. His cries mix with the ambient noises around him. They are the disjointed sounds from the clash of belief systems & competing visions of sovereignty, of ownership, of authority over black bodies compressed into the narrow frame of Floyd’s last moments.
“Momma!” the black man calls out. “Momma! I’m through,” the dying man says.
A call to your mother is a special prayer, a sacred invocation. George Floyd’s mother died two years ago, but he called her now, in his darkest hour of need.
“He is a human being!” comes an anguished plea from someone in a desperate attempt to engage the officers’ reason, or compassion, or oath of office. But in that moment, those officers are beyond the reach of their own humanity.
I didn’t want to click on the video. I didn’t want to see another police snuff film. I didn’t want to watch whatever it is that compels someone to put his knee into a man’s neck, until he can no longer draw breath. But I heard this black man had called out to his momma as he lay dying – A prayer since time immemorial, a sacred call. And we are asked to bear witness.
Dying soldiers called out for their mothers, according to Civil War battlefield reports. Last year, an article from The Atlantic cited a hospice nurse. “Almost everyone is calling for ‘Mommy’ or ‘Mama’ with the last breath.”
The Mother is the anchor – A way for those who are close to the edge to find their way back, or to find their way home.
As bystanders scream at Minneapolis officers, “He’s dying. You’re f—ing killing him,” Floyd is no longer moving, he is perhaps already dead.
To call out to his mother is to be seen by his creator – The one who gave him life.
‘The Feast of the Visitation’ – The visible actors (see Luke 1:39-45) are Mary & Elizabeth, 2 MOTHERS TO BE, 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 – Birthday of occultist Eliphas Levi. Steiner refers to his Mexican incarnation in the Karma lectures Vol. 2
1916 – Battle of Jutland, beginning of the end of British sea power
1942 – Deathday of Reinhard Heydrich, assassinated 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 Eichman, 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.
~ ~ ~
~I bring offerings to She who is & Them that are not: Moly & frankincense & visions of peace unending… I bring turquoise & silver & carnelian, the stone of earth’s joyful singing… I bring the earth, ground deep into the pores of my skin… I bring yesterday & today & the Sun & the waning crescent Moon Rising at midnight between them I come with the roar of wind & time – like 2 lions mating in my mind’s eye To give birth to my breath… ~hag
***
Friday 19 June 2020 – Front Range Anthroposophical Café presents:
The New Mysteries of St. Johns-Tide with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg
To pass the test of Summer we will explore many questions:
How do we stand wakefully within the sublime mysteries of the Summer-Tide, to consciously embody ‘the spiritual wisdom of the gods’?
Who is the mysterious Archangel of Summer?
Who is John the Baptist? What do his sayings “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” And “He must increase, but I must decrease.” really mean?
What is the secret to healing the ‘soul-fever’ so prevalent in society today?
What is the mystery of the Dragon-fly, & other elemental beings?
How can we understand the ‘Cycle of the Year as Breathing Process of the Earth’?
Together we will work to strengthen our true “I”, enlivening our will forces.
We look forward to seeing you on Friday 19 June 2020 shortly before 7 PM (Mountain time.) Here is the link to our Anthroposophical Café and all you need to do to join us is click on it: https://zoom.us/j/294724669.
Warmly, Karen vann Vuuren, Tom Altgelt, Jamie York, and our growing circle of Café Friends – It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
Last night with the Quarter Moon lighting our way, folks gathered for a Merry Prep-Stir. It was the start of the Jewish festival Shavuot, & all were in a celebratory mood of gratitude & reverence. I began with a few antidotes & a dedication, & then everyone stepped forward one by one to add a pinch of BD 500 to the stirring bucket – uniting individual prayers with the collective intention of spiritualizing & healing all life. And then the stirring began! And we sang “Spirit to matter, matter to spirit…” Such joy as the vortex was spun & the thrill of the chaos was welcomed in the leminscate between rhythm & commotion.
As the stars came out, Bella Luna rose higher in the southwest, below the belly of Leo’s stick-figure lion pattern, forming a nearly equilateral triangle with Leo’s Regulus & Gamma Leonis (Algieba). We saw Mercury, & Capella, but Venus was already low in the West behind the tree line, on her way to the underworld for a time before she rises again as the evening star…
The young folks played music, cello, guitars, bass, hand drums & shakers, singing galore! – Adding the power of sound vibration to the forces entering the stir. The garden was lush from lots of rain & the bonfire was blazing, warming & highlighting the power of all the elementals.
As the evening wore on I spoke about Shavuot, called by various names: Feast of Weeks, Feast of The First Fruits & Feast of the Giving of the Law.
It celebrates the spring harvest. In olden times as each fruit ripend, the first of each type would not be eaten, but instead the farmer would tie a ribbon around the branch. This ribbon signified that these fruits were Bikkurim, or the first fruits.
At Shavuot the farmers would gather the Bikkurim into baskets & bring them to the city where they would be shared with the wider community. This joyful occasion was celebrated with the music of fifes, timbres, & drums.
To commemorate, for the 3 nights during Shavuot, folks light candles, decorate with greenery, eat dairy food, study Torah, attend prayer services, & read the Book of Ruth. (I will tell this amazing story of Ruth & Naomi tomorrow as part of my Whitsun festival)
Along with being a Harvest holiday & celebrating the spiritual journey of Ruth, Shavuot celebrates the Revelation of Torah.
Many of the traditions & customs of Shavuot have evolved from the legends & stories describing the experiences of Moses at Mount Sinai. According to tradition the people actually overslept on the morning when Moses returned from the mountain. To compensate for this, folks hold an all-night vigil on the eve of Shavuot. They stay awake from dusk to dawn, singing to the spirits of nature.
It was getting late, so we took a break from the music & everyone grabbed a jar of the potentized prep & aspurged the neighborhood. Our friend next door, who was having his 1st experience as a Merry Prep-stir, told all that he could tell that his garden was changed thru our previous sprayings. What a delight to see our Merry band fliting about on the city streets with our buckets & jars spreading droplets of magic on the lawns, gardens & parkways.
The young folks made good on the all-night vigil. And this morning there is a perceivable presence in the air surrounding our property. The bees are happy, the bird song responding with thanks & praise.
~hag
Nancy Poer
~Vitae Sophia~ A Whitsun Festival of United Soul Endeavor with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg
Online Whitsunday, 31 May 2020 from 10 am–11:15 am EDT Zoom Call*
Through leading thoughts and conversation we are called to redeem the ether spheres to create an Ecclesia, a chalice 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. The Whitsun Festival highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts, in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is especially strong now during this ‘pandemic’. Our groups striving to know Spiritual Science must work together as a community, to have the possibility to create a new culture where a sacrament is possible in every encounter. Our individual strength is enhanced by weaving our gifts together, kindling our social world in conscious community.
Hazel Archer-Ginsberg – Founder of Reverse Ritual Understanding Anthroposophy through the Rhythms of the Year. Essayist, Lecturer, Poet, Trans-denominational Minister, ‘Anthroposopher’, working as the Festivals Coordinator of the Chicago Rudolf Steiner Branch, The Traveling Speakers Program, & the Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society.
Sponsored by the Anthroposophical Society in New Hampshire
I turn to history not for lessons but to confront my experience with the experience of others and to win for myself a sense of responsibility for the state of the human conscience. ~ Zbigniew Herbert (Poet) 1924 – 1998
1431 – Deathday of Joan of Arc, French martyr & saint, burnt at the stake by the British under Duke of Bedford.
Burned at the stake as a heretic after a politically-motivated trial, Joan was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920. Born of a fairly well-to-do peasant couple in Domremy-Greux (southeast of Paris), Joan was only 12 when she experienced a vision and heard voices that she later identified as St. Michael the Archangel, Catherine of Alexandria, and Margaret of Antioch. During the Hundred Years War, she led French troops against the English and recaptured the cities of Orléans and Troyes. This enabled Charles VII to be crowned as king in Reims in 1429. Captured near Compiegne the following year, she was sold to the English and placed on trial for heresy and witchcraft. Professors at the University of Paris supported Bishop Pierre Cauchon of Beauvis, the judge at her trial; Cardinal Henry Beaufort of Winchester, England, participated in the questioning of Joan in prison. In the end, she was condemned for wearing men’s clothes. The English resented France’s military success–to which Joan contributed. On this day in 1431, she was burned at the stake in Rouen, and her ashes were scattered in the Seine River. A second Church trial 25 years later nullified the earlier verdict, which was reached under political pressure. Remembered by most people for her military exploits, Joan had a great love for the sacraments, which strengthened her compassion toward the poor. Popular devotion to her increased greatly in 19th-century France and later among French soldiers during World War I. Theologian George Tavard writes that her life “offers a perfect example of the conjunction of contemplation and action” because her spiritual insight is that there should be a “unity of heaven and earth.” Joan of Arc has been the subject of many books, plays, operas, and movies. “Joan of Arc is like a shooting star across the landscape of French and English history, amid the stories of the Church’s saints and into our consciousness. Women identify with her; men admire her courage. She challenges us in fundamental ways. Despite the fact that more than 500 years have passed since she lived, her issues of mysticism, calling, identity, trust and betrayal, conflict and focus are our issues still.” (Joan of Arc: God’s Warrior, by Barbara Beckwith)
1593 – Deathday of Christopher Marlowe, English poet & playwright
Paul-Delaroche
1672 – Birthday of Peter the Great Czar of Russia. He led a cultural revolution that replaced some of the traditionalist & medieval political systems with ones that were modern, scientific, based on The Enlightenment.
1778 – Deathday of Voltaire, French philosopher & author. Rudolf Steiner speaks of him as being a former pupil of the mysteries in Karmic Relationships Vol. 2.
1806 – Future U.S. President Andrew Jackson kills Charles Dickinson in a duel
1935 – Deathday of Daniel Nicol Dunlop , a Scottish entrepreneur, founder of the World Power Conference & other associations, a theosophist-turned-anthroposophist. Thought to have been a Templar in a former life. Dunlop saw Rudolf Steiner for the first time when he was still General Secretary of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, both of them expressed their intimate spiritual connection &respect for one another. Dunlop started the anthroposophical “Human Freedom Group & anthroposophical Summer Schools. In 1928 he organized the first & only World Conference on Anthroposophy & in 1929 he was elected General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain. He had a deep friendship with Eleanor Merry, who supported his work, especially after the death of his own wife, Eleanor in 1932. As a result of conflicts & power struggles within the General Anthroposophical Society, leading to its splintering in April 1935, Dunlop was expelled together with a number of other leading members. He died shortly afterwards of an appendicitis. Dunlop enlisted the help of fellow anthroposophist Walter Johannes Stein in the hope of founding a World Economic Organization, but his death prevented this.
1936 – Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz resigns from the General Anthroposophical Society on the 1 year anniversary of his friend D.N. Dunlop’s death, in protest after many of his contemporizes were expelled from the Society.
1937 – Memorial Day massacre: Chicago police shoot & kill 10 labor demonstrators
1989 –The 33-foot high “Goddess of Democracy” statue is unveiled in Tiananmen Square by student demonstrators
1998 – The 6.5 Mw Afghanistan earthquake killed over 5,000
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Friday 19 June 2020 – Front Range Anthroposophical Café presents:
The New Mysteries of St. Johns-Tide with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg
To pass the test of Summer we will explore many questions:
How do we stand wakefully within the sublime mysteries of the Summer-Tide, to consciously embody ‘the spiritual wisdom of the gods’?
Who is the mysterious Archangel of Summer?
Who is John the Baptist? What do his sayings “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” And “He must increase, but I must decrease.” really mean?
What is the secret to healing the ‘soul-fever’ so prevalent in society today?
What is the mystery of the Dragon-fly, & other elemental beings?
How can we understand the ‘Cycle of the Year as Breathing Process of the Earth’?
Together we will work to strengthen our true “I”, enlivening our will forces.
We look forward to seeing you on Friday 19 June 2020 shortly before 7 PM (Mountain time.) Here is the link to our Anthroposophical Café and all you need to do to join us is click on it: https://zoom.us/j/294724669.
Warmly, Karen vann Vuuren, Tom Altgelt, Jamie York, and our growing circle of Café Friends – It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
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.
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.
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 .
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 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 and 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.
For 40 days Christ lived in the concentrated form of the Phantom & resurrection body, which was perceptible, to the apostles. The Concentration then changed into expansion, conveying to the universe the mystery of death, & the secret of death into life. So Now, at the Ascension, the wisdom of the resurrection that had been brought forth in the depths, was made known in the heights, & the expansion fulfills the cycles of time.
Matter is spirit burst into visibility. The crucifixion was an undoing of this process.
The phantom or resurrection body of Christ is no longer purely human comprised as we are of the Imagination of the Spirits of Form, the Inspiration of the Spirits of Wisdom, with an aura by the Spirits of Will. It is the body of a reconstituted new Adam pointing us in a new direction of our future evolution, not back to the garden, but going forward toward the New Jerusalem. Materializing & dematerializing at will.
This ‘body’ encompasses the whole of humanity – Rudolf Steiner calls it the group-soul of mankind. It is like a cell that is multiplying. The expression “put on the resurrection body” used by the apostle Paul is a true picture of what can happen for us. This is really what is meant by the Chymical Wedding.
May we all called to the marriage feast as we prepare to receive the baptism by fire from the Holy Spirit
Greetings friends on this Whitsun Weekend 2020 – The birth of Bio-Dynamics thru Rudolf Steiner occurred at Whitsun time in 1924, when he gave us the Agriculture Course – in the hopes that we would take up this impulse to spiritualize the earth.
TONGHT: Putting Whitsun into the will:
7 pm CDT Friday 29 May 2020 The Merry Prep-Stirs of Chicago are doing a Whitsun Prep – coordinating with many other Bio-Dynamic folks around the world, & YOU are invited. Come stir in Social Solidarity around the campfire. BYO beverages or snacks. Musical instruments encouraged. Contact Hazel@ReverseRitaul.com for details
Hilma af Klint
Whitsunday 31 May 2020 – Online 9 am–10:15 am CDT Zoom Call* ~Vitae Sophia~ A Whitsun Festival of United Soul Endeavor with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg Sponsored by the Anthroposophical Society in New Hampshire
Through leading thoughts and conversation we are called to redeem the ether spheres to create an Ecclesia, a chalice 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. The Whitsun Festival highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts, in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is especially strong now during this ‘pandemic’. Our groups striving to know Spiritual Science must work together as a community, to have the possibility to create a new culture where a sacrament is possible in every encounter. Our individual strength is enhanced by weaving our gifts together, kindling our social world in conscious community.
~with simple sandals i walk before my Beloved but in the house of heaven my feet are still… my breast is a lyre that hums, my lungs fill with living fire, a cool breeze encircles me, there is no need for haste… ~hag
