30 May 2019 – “Speaking with the Stars”: The watery king Neptune rises around 2 am CDT high in the east-southeast as twilight commences.
A gigantic asterism you may not know is the Diamond of Virgo, some 50° tall and extending over five constellations. It currently stands upright in the south after the stars come out.
Start with Spica, its bottom. Upper left from Spica is bright Arcturus. Almost as far upper right from Arcturus (as you face south) is fainter Cor Caroli, almost overhead. The same distance lower right from there is Denebola, the 2nd-magnitude tail-tip of Leo (remember, this was where the Spring Full Moon fell right after the Equinox) And then back to Spica.
The brightest, bottom three of these stars, form a nearly perfect equilateral triangle. Maybe we should call this the “Spring Triangle” to parallel those of summer & winter?
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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
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
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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POD (Poem Of the Day)
~In the clouds I hear what I see –
A low hum of vitality
The bell of flowers singing…
With the bright blade of spirit I turned new ground,
Planted seed & watched,
Beneath my hand things happened –
Grapes & wheat
In time I will serve
Wine & bread…
~hag
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Cloud Gazing Thoughts of Ascension
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.
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 are born. In the cloud, which is between the depths of earth & the heavenly heights, in the sphere of the etheric realm – a mobile balance manifests. – We see it in the blue sky, dancing with the ever changing clouds. It is the primal image of metamorphosis, of organic forming & transforming, the never-resting developing, blessed by the heights. For this reason, blossoms & fruits are in reality not just products of earth but heavenly forms filled with earthly substance, like us.
And so for 40 days after the Resurrection, amidst this seasonal activity, the apostles received from The Risen Christ His esoteric teachings; essentially the contents of the 5th Gospel given to us by Rudolf Steiner.
Then they witnessed The Christ, being received into the clouds, moving out of their sight – an expansion of His being – like the unfolding of a lotus flower into the universe. Rudolf Steiner tells us, that at the same time, the vivid spiritual reality of what would have happened to earth existence if the mystery of Golgotha had not occurred; came into their consciousness. It was revealed to them that human physical bodies would have so deteriorated that all of humanity would have perished.
Our physical bodies have earth-gravity, but our etheric bodies have sun levity, so if the Christ deed we call The Ascension had not taken place, our etheric bodies would have left the physical for good as well, & the existence of humankind would have come to an end, having no formative forces to give them life.
We know that until the Mystery of Golgotha, the sun was the dwelling place of the Christ. The human etheric body, which was in danger of being drawn out towards the sun, like clouds, & dispersed –is held together, contained thru this cosmic deed, so that we are not dispersed, but can remain as individuals.
Christ remains in union with the earth, which rescues for the earth the sunward-striving etheric body. –But to be able to take effect in a human being’s spirit & soul nature, the Christ impulse must also be consciously recognized. The spiritual effect can only proceed from a true recognition of its content.
The mystery here is that in the festival of Ascension opens us to the forces proceeding from the sphere of the Father. This is big folks, the gospel of Mark tells us: ‘Then the Lord, after He had spoken to them, was taken up into the heavenly spheres & sat down at the right hand of the World-Father as the fulfiller of His deeds’.
As a result of the conversations over the 40 days with The Risen Christ, the apostles were able to receive the primal sources of a new imaginative clairvoyance, removing the veil hiding the true image of death, which is really a facet of the Father-God in the aspect of Creator. – What is born must die, but thru Christ death becomes life. This revelation of the apostles’ higher imagination brings the true content of death with its connection to the kingdom of the divine Father into perceptive.
At the moment of the Ascension the mystery of death was made manifest not only to the immortal spiritual beings who, being eternal have no experience of death, but also to the apostles, for they beheld it with their own eyes to be a process of union with the world of the Divine.
From that turning point of time onward, Rudolf Steiner tells us that, one of the 1st experiences of every human being after death is a contemplation of Christ’s Ascension; which can reveal to the person’s soul, the true picture of death & its connection with the highest sphere of the Father.
As the Christ has ascended, so too, in the fullness of time will humanity be transfigured. The company of the hierarchies wait, for us, their younger siblings to ascend in our thinking to meet them in fellowship, as they work all the while at our sides.
And another thing to contemplate:
Just as the experience of the Ascension lies between Easter & Whitsun, so between Good Friday & Easter lies the event known as Christ’s Descent into Hell. Both hold the image of Christ disappearing from sight.
By His death Christ opened up the paths of the higher spheres for those exhausted souls trapped in Kamaloca, so they could ascend into the upper planetary realms & be renewed.
The Descent into Hell rescued the heavenly forces for humanity; the Ascension rescued the formative forces.
At the Baptism, The Christ Being united with the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth & was therefore united with earthly evolution as a whole.
At the Transfiguration Christ permeates the etheric body of Jesus. In the scene of the transfiguration, Christ reveals his higher sun nature, to the 3 chosen disciples, a visionary manifestation of the fully transformed etheric body, which radiates light like a Sun.
These events are mirrored, & transformed by the mystery of Golgotha, Ascension relates to the Transfiguration & Whitsun to the Baptism.
In the Ascension, Christ showed the connection to the spiritual Sun forces which became manifest in the Transfiguration, with the etheric bodies of all human beings.
When Christ entered into Jesus at the Baptism, His Sun-Being took over the ego of Jesus, the Zarathustra soul had to leave the body or be completely overpowered.
After the resurrection the Christ impulse can live within mankind without taking over the ego-consciousness. But in order for this to happen, Christ had to Ascend.
Then after 10 days He sent the Holy Spirit- that divine Being of the Trinity that does not overpower, but enhances the individual ego of human beings. –RS. So now the Christ impulse can enter human souls thru the mediation of the Holy Spirit, so that we can retain our “I” in freedom.
My friends, The Christ-Revelation ‘coming in the clouds’ is here- Showing us the bridge that brings a harmonizing spring-dialogue between the worlds.
At the Ascension, Christ becomes “Lord of the heavenly forces upon earth”.
The fulfillment of the secret promise of the Ascension, is the Second Coming.
It was said to the apostles, “He will come again, in like manner, as you have seen Him go up into the clouds of heaven.”
The Ascension is the seed of this Second Coming, & the Second Coming is the fulfillment of the Ascension.
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The 2nd Coming leading to a “World Whitsun”
A Journey thru the ‘Easter Paradox’ of 2019, thru Ascension into Whitsun as a ‘United Soul Endeavor’
Eurythmy: A – I stand for myself, U- I stand for humanity, M – I stand for Life
Social Sculpture: Are you an ‘Autumn Person’ or a ‘Spring-time Person’? Through Art, the bridge between science & spirit, we warm the ‘I’, to open the heart, in support of healthy community.
What are my gifts-What are my tools? How can I place them in right relationship within the social realm? How can I hone them to strengthen and enhance the world? Leading Thoughts & original art-collage projections with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg
Enter the Labyrinth of Vitae Sophia – Human hearts, once warmed, can rise up to meet the source of wisdom, like flowers turning toward the sun.
Eurythmy: Living into the Foundation Stone of Love – How can we take our individual Inner Whitsun & expand it, into what Steiner calls the “World Festival of Knowledge” a path leading from ‘Sprit Recollection’, to ‘Sprit Sensing’, to ‘Sprit Beholding’?
Read a compilation of research into this year’s interesting ‘Easter Paradox’ – A Cosmic Wake Up Call: The Easter Paradox of 2019
Also on 7 May at the Rudolf Steiner House in Ann Arbor MI, the headquarters for the Anthroposophical Society in America
also:
10 am – 1 pm Saturday 8 June 2019 -4804 Sewanee Road, Nashville, TN 37220. for more info. contact Cathy Green cgreen@grasslandaquatics.com
also
11-12 June 2019, Ashville, TN. for more info. contact Marnie Muller
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‘Preparation, Illumination & Initiation’ – The Rosy Cross
Incorporating ‘The Golden Legend’, & the Plant vs. Human Kingdoms, To enliven our work with ‘The Rose Cross Meditation’.
Using our head, hands & heart we will enact this powerful Rosicrucian tool given to us by Rudolf Steiner, as a soul path of initiation, using imaginative cognition to build spiritual etheric forces; a Metamorphoses of Self & of World.
Friday 7 June 2019, 7-9pm 4804 Sewanee Road, Nashville, TN
also:
12 Noon Potluck, Program 1 pm -5 pm Whitsunday 9 June 2019, In Knoxville, TN. for more info. contact William Rogers wmerogers@gmail.com
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 & Council Member of the Chicago Rudolf Steiner Branch, The Traveling Speakers Program, & the Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society.
