Category Archives: Insight

Friday the 13th

May 13, 2016Chicago Event, Festival, Insight, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Spring~hag

Friday the 13^th May 2016, 2nd Quarter Moon “Study the past if you would define the future.” ~Confucius

Image: 0051465001, License: Rights managed, Restrictions: Image available for use in the Corbis Education Offering., Jacques de Molay, last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, was ordered burned at the stake by King Philip IV of France. Illustration from the end of the 19th century., Place: Paris, France, Model Release: No or not aplicable, Credit line: Profimedia.com, Corbis — Jacques de Molay, last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, was ordered burned at the stake by King Philip IV of France.

1314 – 54 Templars burnt at the stake in Paris.

“…With a mysticism such as was unfolded by the Knights Templar, something spiritual is added to the spiritual “effects” of the world. And inasmuch as this took place, humanity was actually brought a stage further in its evolution. Through this experience of the Templars, the Mystery of Golgotha was understood, and also experienced, at a higher stage than before. Something was now present in the world, in regard to this Mystery of Golgotha, which was formerly not there”…

“Fifty-four Templars were burned at the stake in 1314. Fifty-four souls went up into the spiritual worlds. And from that time on, supersensibly and invisibly, without its being outwardly perceptible to the facts of history, there began in European humanity a spiritual development that owed its origin to the fact that individual souls were continually being inspired from the spiritual world with what these fifty-four souls carried through the gate of death into the spiritual world…” ~Rudolf Steiner The Templars, Dornach, 2nd October 1916, GA 171

1846 – Mexican–American War: The United States declares war on Mexico.

1880 – In Menlo Park, New Jersey, Thomas Edison performs the first test of his electric railway.

1917 – Feast Day of Our Lady of Fatima. Three children report the first apparition in Fátima, Portugal.

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Friday the 13^th

What is at the root of “triskadekaphobia” ? (the fear of the number 13) All numbers have their own cosmic vibration and “13” is considered an unstable number. From the time when humans first used numbers to measure things, the number 12 has represented a common cosmic standard. There are 12 months of the year, 12 hours on the clock, 12 signs of the Zodiac, 12 Tribes of Israel, 12 Apostles, 12 Knights of the Round Table and so on. The number 13 represents disruption to the established order.

The modern basis for the aura that surrounds Friday the 13th stems from Friday May the 13th, 1314. On this date, the Pope of the church in Rome, in Conjunction with the King of France, carried out a secret death warrant Against “the Knights Templar”. The Templars were terminated as heretics, never again to hold the power that they had wielded for so long. On this date their Grand Master, Jacques DeMolay, along with 54 other Templars, were arrested and killed; and so began the antipathy to Friday the 13th.

But In pre-Christian societies, reliance on a lunar calendar meant that Friday the 13th could coincide with the Full Moon or New Moon. It was a day to honor the goddess Freya, which is where we get the name for Friday, ruler of the planet Venus, in a day-long love-fest! Friday the 13th symbolized a day for everyone to let go, party, and sacrifice routine. Such breaks in the usual order allowed for the restoration of balance and harmony.

The Scandinavian belief that the number 13 signified bad luck sprang from their mythological 12 demigods, who were joined by a 13th -Loki, a cruel trickster god who often brought great misfortune upon humans .

The number 13, in the Christian faith, is the number of people at the Last Supper, with the 13th guest at the table being the traitor, Judas.

Whether or not a person considers Friday the 13th as unlucky, belief in superstitions offers a sense of control in stressful situations. Today’s beliefs may very well be tomorrows superstitions.

Until then, however, don’t step on a crack!

Take a cue from our forebears. They saw the number 13 as a lucky omen, a time to make a new beginning and seek new roads to success and satisfaction as we open our heart and mind to new opportunities, luck and love!

~hag

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Dear Friends –

During our time together on this Whitsun day, we will creatively explore ‘Biography work’ which teaches us to approach the exploration of our life experience with the objectivity of a scientist and the soulfulness of an artist. Questions can act as catalysts for a new way of seeing each other, a new quality of interacting to arise.

As Steiner’s Whitsun verse states: “This portal’s key the Soul may fashion, If she herself grow strong within the strife”

Whitsun-Day, 15 May 2016, 2pm -4pm ~Festival of United Soul Endeavor, A Biography Atelier with Leah Walker

$10 includes all artistic materials

Warmth: Contraction/Expansion –

The Pulse of Me & We – AUM = A – I stand for myself, U – I stand for humanity, M – I stand for Life

Welcome Circle

What is Whitsun?

What is Biography Work?

It is good to remember that biography work (just like Whitsun) is really for the future–a more human and moral future. It is an antidote to our increasing individuality, a remedy for the isolation so many of us feel deeply, painfully. It is a new art form. In this, our current time, we may simply take small steps with and through biography–we may strive to develop this potentially great work. ~Leah Walker

Exploring Ourselves as ‘Social Artist’:

‘Postcards’ – Imaginations that deepen our inner feeling for the role others play in creating who we are.

‘Life Triptych’ – Spontaneous Sketches, that open us to real moments from our lives; revealing the nature of our Spirit Self-hood.

We may therefore picture to ourselves that, by uniting in brotherliness in working groups, something hovers invisibly over our work, something like the child of the forces of the spirit self– the spirit self that is nurtured by the beings of the higher hierarchies in order that it may stream down into our souls…In our groups we perform work that streams upward to those forces that are being prepared for the spirit self. ~Rudolf Steiner, Preparing for the Sixth Epoch, Dusseldorf, June 15, 1915

Spirit Recalling, Spirit Sensing, Spirit Beholding

Light divine,

Christ-Sun,

Warm Our hearts;

Enlighten Our heads;

That good may become

What from our hearts, We are founding,

What from our heads, We direct,

With focused will.

~Rudolf Steiner, The foundation Stone Mediation

Snacks to Share encouraged !

For more info. Contact ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg ReverseRitual@gmail.com

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Lemniscate Arts presents: Opening the Realm of New Mystery Drama –

“The Working of the Spirit” –

Saturday May 21 and Sunday May 22, 2016.

10:30am to 6:30pm – Each day is a staged reading in full with breaks, of the new drama.

Contribution $15.00 – $45.00 per presentation – Get your tickets now at www.workingofthespirit.org

A Mystery Play is a dramatic form that has been passed down through the ages. It differs from other plays by showing on stage the connection between the spiritual world and the earth; it reveals the activity of the spiritual beings who work from the heavens to help or hinder human beings in their earthly lives.

The troupe of actors will arrive in Chicago to rehearse May 18, 19, & 20 with the readings happening May 21 & 22.

They are looking for housing in Chicago. If you have space for an actor to stay in your home contact Barbara Richardson brichardson@centerforanthroposophy.org

They are also filling in some of the parts with local actors. If you would like to read a part contact director Marke Levene 707-695-2969

Lemniscate Arts, One International Blvd, Suite 400, Mahwah, NJ 07495 registered 501(c)3

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Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society, 4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618

In Truth & Beauty I Stand

May 12, 2016Chicago Event, Festival, Insight, Lecture, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Spring~hag

May 12, 2016

1820 – Birthday of Florence Nightingale, Italian-English nurse, social reformer, & statistician

1921 – Birthday of Joseph Beuys, German sculptor, performance artist & illustrator

1933 – The Agricultural Adjustment Act is enacted to restrict agricultural production by paying farmers subsidies.

2002 – Former US President Jimmy Carter arrives in Cuba for a five-day visit with Fidel Castro becoming the first President of the United States, in or out of office, to visit the island since Castro’s 1959 revolution.

2008 – An 8.0 magnitude earthquake in Sichuan, China, kills over 69,000 people

~ ~ ~

Pentathlon Chant:

In Truth & Beauty I Stand – Athena Your Wisdom Lights My way

In Truth & Beauty I stand – Centered In Strength & Purpose

In Truth & Beauty I Stand – To Carry the Torch of Victory!

In Truth & Beauty I Stand – In-between Heaven & Earth I Am

In Truth & Beauty I Stand – Upright & Reverent I Wear the Crown

In Truth & Beauty I Stand – To Carry The Torch of Victory!

~hag

~ ~ ~

Part 4, the last of this series, from the lecture: Vitae Sophia- The New Mysteries of ‘I’ and ‘WE’, a ‘Hero’s Journey’ from head to heart by Hazel Archer Ginsberg

As Anthroposophers we know that when people are united in higher wisdom, when communities arise, not thru necessity or heredity, but through free will, a group-soul descends from the spiritual worlds.

And human hearts, once warmed, can rise up to meet the source of wisdom, like flowers turning toward the sun.

Where separate egos are united by a common truth, “Where the senses can know no more”, the higher group-soul can descend.

If, today, together we Will to turn our hearts towards a higher wisdom, to set fire to the forces of knowledge in our souls, redeeming our intelligence, our Anthroposophical angel, if you will, can anchor & embody itself in the environment we prepare for it.

For this to happen, we need to let go of judgment. When we let go of opinion, we can find truth. And then we can let the ground of our souls become warm.

With focused will we can let the ‘Light Divine

Warm our Hearts

Enlighten our Heads’

That Good May Become’.

So let’s apply some spiritual science eh? Heat rises right? & so it is with our inner being. When we warm our hearts, then the spirit responds. The light-flame from above, answers, to the warmth-flame from below.

And how do we do this? By celebrating the festivals of course.

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

~ ~ ~

Odilon Redon

This ends the lecture Click to read the entire thing

Come join us for our upcoming Whitsun Festival May 15 featuring Biography Worker Leah Walker

Until soon

Blessings & Peace –

~hag = Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Current Festival & Program Events

Bee Pollen in the Chalice

May 11, 2016Chicago Event, Festival, Insight, Lecture, Poetry~hag

May 11, 2016 On this Day in History:

330 – Byzantium is renamed Nova Roma during a dedication ceremony, but it is more popularly referred to as Constantinople.

868 – A copy of the Diamond Sutra is printed in China, making it the oldest known dated printed book.

912 – Alexander becomes Emperor of the Byzantine Empire.

1310 – In France, fifty-four members of the Knights Templar are burned at the stake as heretics.

1502 – Christopher Columbus departs Cádiz on his fourth & final voyage to the Americas.

1917 – Rudolf Steiner stops giving private consultations & releases his pupils from any obligations to silence previously required.

1930 – Death-day of Imme von Eckardstein who painted the illustrations for the original Soul Calendar in 1912/13.

~ ~ ~

Martin Bridge

~Today I am

Feeding the uncombed cats & the cross-eyed hens of the world

with BEE POLLEN

~hag

~ ~ ~

Odilon Redon

Part 3 in a series from the lecture: Vitae Sophia- The New Mysteries of ‘I’ and ‘WE’, a ‘Hero’s Journey’ from head to heart by Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Let’s think about it. The Foundation Stone was formed by Rudolf Steiner at the Christmas conference out of:

The Father-forces rising from the depths -gravity, unconscious will;
The Son-forces working in the periphery – warmth, creative love;
& The Spirit-forces descending from the heights -consciousness, wisdom.

Thru Steiner’s profound mystery deed, an altogether new relationship of the macrocosmic forces working within the human:

3. The thoughts of the Spirit revealed in the human head;

2. Christ working in the heart;

1. & The will of the Father fulfilled in the deeds of the limbs, was made openly manifest.

When Steiner took on the karma of the society he gave the Michaelic impulse the possibility of flowing directly into the earth sphere & into those active in the Anthroposophical society.

Here we see a direct relationship with the original Pentecost, which was the 3rd & final stage of the ‘moveable feasts’ making it possible for the Sun Being of The Christ to be in union with the stream of Earthly Being, preparing the way for the mission of Anthroposophy, as the Proclamation of World Pentecost.

Yes, we live in a potent time, when divergent karmic streams have the possibility of coming together- ‘That Good May Become,’ a time when, some say, the Platonists of the School of Chartres & the Aristotelian-Dominicans, The Arthur & Grail streams with true Rosicrucianism, meet the new Michaelic Grail imagination arising in the human soul.

A renewed chalice whose substance is Love, whose form is Imagination & whose light of thought which radiates, is redeemed Michaelic Intelligence.

This transforms the stone of the wise, into the dodecahedral foundation stone of love.

For Michael frees thoughts from the realm of the head, opening a path to the heart, bringing forth that shining, raying-out of the divine chalice, that celestial light of redeemed intelligence, which like the radiance of the spiritual sun, can unite into a single whole the Spiritual substance of love & human love, in the Holy Grail that was set into our souls at the Christmas conference. Calling ever & again for a renewal of the spiritual quest.

Click to read the entire lecture

Come join us for our upcoming Whitsun Festival May 15

Current Festival & Program Events

~ ~ ~

Tomorrow we look deeper into the mission of The Sophia.

Until soon

Blessings & Peace –

~hag = Hazel ArcherGinsberg

Vitae Sophia

May 9, 2016Celestial Event, Chicago Event, Festival, Insight, Lecture, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars, Spring, The Bridging Project: Life & Death~hag

Moonday May 9, 2016 –

TODAY an amazing transit of Mercury in front of the Sun – an ‘inferior conjunction’ with our day star, which only occurs 13 times in a century, & only during a loop when Mercury is retrograde. Mercury, which is usually hidden behind the Sun, is then visible, between the Earth & the Sun.

Also, Jupiter, having been in retrograde since January 7^th goes direct.

Jupiter seal by Rudolf Steiner

1760 – Death-day of Count Zinzendorf , A social reformer & bishop of the Moravian Church. The Zinzendorf family belonged to one of the most ancient of noble families in Lower Austria. Among his ancestors was the Emperor Maximillian I.

Zinzendorf did not intend to found a religious organization distinct from the area’s Lutheran Church, but to create a Christian association, by demonstrating practical benevolence, that might awaken dull Lutheranism. He began to think that true Christianity could be best promoted by free associations of Christians, which in the course of time might grow into churches with no state connection.

In 1722, Zinzendorf offered asylum to a number of refugees from Moravia & Bohemia & built the village of Herrnhut on a corner of his estate.

Out of study & prayer, the community formed a document known as the Brüderlicher Vertrag, the ‘Brotherly Agreement’, today known as “The Moravian Covenant for Christian Living.” The Moravian Church is one of the few denominations that emphasizes a code of Christian behavior over specific creeds.

In these communities, a radical equality of spiritual life was practiced. Nobility & Native Americans shared common quarters; slaves were full members of the Church & could be elected to offices of leadership.

Zinzendorf’s interest in missionary work was sparked by meeting two Inuit children.

In 1736, accusations from neighboring nobles & questions of theological orthodoxy caused Zinzendorf to be exiled from his home in Saxony. He & a number of his followers moved to Marienborn (near Büdingen) & began a period of exile & travel, during which he became known as the “Pilgrim Count.”

In 1741, Zinzendorf visited Pennsylvania, becoming one of the few 18th century European nobles to have actually set foot in the Americas. In addition to visiting leaders such as Benjamin Franklin, he met with the leaders of the Iroquois.

Zinzendorf’s theology strongly included the emotional life of the believer as well as the intellectual. He criticized the coldly intellectual approach common in his day, & built a great deal of practice around the transformation of the emotions. He referred to this as the “religion of the heart.”

1805 – Death-day of Friedrich Schiller, some say he was poisoned (GA 64) The coffin containing what was purportedly Schiller’s skeleton, was brought in 1827, into the Weimarer Fürstengruft (Weimar’s Ducal Vault), later also Goethe’s resting place. On 3 May 2008, scientists announced that DNA tests showed that the skull of this skeleton is not Schiller’s, & his tomb is now vacant.

Friedrich Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, physician, historian, & playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with the already famous & influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. They frequently discussed issues concerning human freedom. Schiller encouraged Goethe to finish works he left as sketches. This relationship & these discussions led to a period now referred to as Weimar Classicism. They also worked together on Xenien, a collection of short satirical poems in which both Schiller & Goethe challenge opponents to their philosophical vision.

Schiller wrote many philosophical papers on ethics & aesthetics. He synthesized the thought of Immanuel Kant with the thought of the German Idealist philosopher, Karl Leonhard Reinhold. He elaborated Christoph Martin Wieland’s concept of die schöne Seele (the beautiful soul), a human being whose emotions have been educated by reason, so that Pflicht und Neigung (duty & inclination) are no longer in conflict with one another. Beauty, for Schiller, is not merely an aesthetic experience, but a moral one as well: the Good is the Beautiful.

His philosophical work was particularly concerned with the question of human freedom, a preoccupation which also guided his historical researches, & found its way as well into his dramas. Schiller wrote important essays on the question of the sublime, addressing one aspect of human freedom—the ability to defy one’s animal instincts, such as the drive for self-preservation, when, for example, someone willingly sacrifices themselves for conceptual ideals.

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Pikishi

~Today I am

The thought of myself

In my Mothers forehead…

May I listen to the voice of the messenger

Bringing her song up from the dead –

A silver star bruised & hanging on a cloud

As I roll gold into life

Like the scarab

& stand with the flowering hawthorn on the obsidian altar…

~hag

~ ~ ~

St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite

Part 1 in a series from the lecture: Vitae Sophia- The New Mysteries of ‘I’ and ‘WE’, a ‘Hero’s Journey’ from head to heart by Hazel Archer Ginsberg

As we move deeper into the glories of Spring, the elementals awaken & we experience in nature, signs & images of the Earth-soul in ascension.

The sense of arising spreads all around us. And in the play of the elements, fire seems to have the last word in the essential dialogue between the heights & depths. From above resounds the fiery word & the other elements follow the creative call with joy & the beauty of ascent.

Whitsun has been called a festival of flowers. We see this out among the buds opening under the increasing power of the sun, under the etheric & astral influences. The heart of humanity as it opens to warmth & light is like the flower, aligning itself to the sun which permeates the earth. And what pours down from the sun, giving the flower, our image in reverse, the potency it needs, is like the tongues of fire descending upon the heads of the disciples, for us humans.

Rudolf Steiner lectured a great deal about Whitsun. He spoke about Spiritual Science as a Whitsun gift.

Today we can see Whitsun as a festival of the 1st fruits of the Spirit. The festival of today is not bestowed on us by nature. It must be called forth…

Some say it is a festival of the future, for we must grow ripe to withstand the surging of the Spirit. Whitsun is the festival of our true higher self, which as yet only hovers above us like a dove.

At the same time it is the festival of community, arising from the harmonizing of our higher selves which are ONE in the Spirit – The Cosmic Spirit of all pervading Love, Healing Spirit, Spirit of Wisdom, The Comforter, Councilor, Paraclete, Sophia, The Spirit of Truth.

“You shall know the truth & the Truth shall make you free.”

Christ fulfilled His Deed for all mankind. And, to each human individual, in order that we may be able to understand this Deed, Christ sends the Healing Spirit, Fulfilling his promise that each person may have access to the effects of the Deed, which was accomplished for all.

Whitsun presents us with a remarkable & dramatic picture of spirit-filled individuals, anointed & en-kindled with the impulse to speak out of individual freedom regarding the truth & healing power of the Spirit…Speaking the Language of the heart, that all can understand.

The intense rush of spirit planted in the hearts of human beings highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts, our individual ego, in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is strongly felt during this time of the consciousness soul era.

Our groups striving to know Spiritual Science, working together as a community, have the possibility to create this type of culture, & 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 & is enhanced by weaving our gifts together with others, knitting our social world in conscious community.

During the Christmas Conference the time had come to take up this new evolutionary task, that of transforming or spiritualizing the human social sphere. This mighty impulse was given inspiration by the foundation stone meditation along with the daily rhythms as presented during the conference.

It was Rudolf Steiner’s hope that a “spiritual foundation stone of Love” would be laid in the etheric hearts of all people, providing a bridge between the macro & microcosmic streams in the world & in human beings striving to create a conscious Michaelic community.

This Sophia inspired Michaelic community can be seen as a vessel in which the Christ Being can unite with humanity. Rudolf Steiner created the Anthroposophical Society so that striving individuals can meet to continue this work of evolution. We get a foreshadowing of this through the Whitsun experience of the 1st apostles.

Click to read the entire lecture

Come join us for our upcoming Whitsun Festival May 15

~ ~ ~

Tomorrow we look into the hearts of the apostles to see the mirror of our own loneliness.

Until soon

Blessings & Peace –

~hag = Hazel ArcherGinsberg

MotherPeace

May 8, 2016Insight, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, The Bridging Project: Life & Death~hag

MOTHER’S DAY May 8^th 2016

1870 – The origins of Mother’s Day –

The earliest mother’s day celebrations can be traced back to the spring festivals of the ancients honoring The Mother of the gods…

Much later, in the 1600’s, England celebrated a day called ‘Mothering Sunday’, honoring the matriarchy; the Queens of England…

As Christianity spread throughout Europe the celebration changed to honor the ‘Mother Church’…

In the U.S. Mother’s Day was 1st suggested as a day dedicated to peace. This was the brain child of feminist Julia Ward Howe, the woman that actually wrote the words to the battle hymn of the republic…

The radical origins of Mother’s Day, as a powerful feminist call against war, penned in the wake of the U.S. Civil War in 1870, are fully compatible with the universal notion of honoring mothers.

Women, even more so now, are the primary sufferers of warfare. In the last Century, civilian populations bore 90 percent of war’s casualties around the world; mass & indiscriminate attacks, popularized in WWII by the Holocaust, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, the Allied firebombings in Japan & Germany, & the rape of Nanjing, are only the most spectacular examples of a phenomenon in which women become the rape & famine victims, the refugees, the forgotten statistics in what are invariably the wars of men.

Hear the words of The Mother’s Day Proclamation by Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910)

“Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts,
Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears
Say firmly:
“We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We women of one country
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says, “Disarm, Disarm!”
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice!
Blood does not wipe out dishonor
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war.
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God. In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions.
The great and general interests of peace.”

Later Ana Jarvis, inspired to pay homage to her ancestors, began a campaign to establish a national Mother’s Day on the 2nd Sunday of May, which was the anniversary of her mother’s death; & which just happened to be 50 days after Easter, Pentecost or Whitsun, when the fiery dove of Wisdom, the Sophia, baptizes us with fire…

President Woodrow Wilson eventually made it official…

But what does it mean to us today…? I’m not taking about the commercialized happy-faced take-your-mother-to-brunch-cliché’s…Hallmark may not be talking…but this is deep stuff…The concept of ‘mother’ is highly charged for most of us…We all have, or have had, a mother…good or bad or in-between…We may be a mother ourselves…What does that bring up…? Plenty…right…How can we be ‘The Good Mother’ to ourselves?…

Ernst Fuchs

A glimpse into Whitsun-tide (which was on the same day as the 1st Mother’s day, & which falls this year a week from today, May 15^th 2016)

Current Festival & Program Events

The lusty, merry month of May, has some other important celebrations which further express the creative fires:

The Feast of Weeks, also called the Feast of first-fruits, marks the end of the barley harvest.; the down time before the beginning of the wheat harvest. The Hebrew name is Shavuot (sha-voo-ote) in remembrance of the day Moses received the 10 commandments, engraved with fire on stones…

50 days after Passover, the time of the liberation of the Jews from Egypt…

The Greek version of this festival is called Pentecost…Meaning 50 days after the resurrection of The Christ, when the new law of, ‘Love thy neighbor as thy self ‘, was engraved in the heart, with the fire of the holy spirit, among roaring winds & tongues of fire…

It is also called Whitsun-day after the white robes worn by those baptized with fire during this vigil…

In Italy it was customary to scatter rose petals from the ceiling to recall the miracle of the fiery tongues resting on the heads of the prophets…

In France they blow trumpets to suggest the sound of the mighty wind which accompanied the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove of peace…

In Russia the congregation carries flowers & sheaves of barley…

Rudolf Steiner calls Whitsun:

*The Festival of the free Individuality”

*Symbol of the Immortality of the Ego

*Festival of the higher self and the universal human being

*Festival of the Holy Spirit

*Festival of Flowers

*Festival of United Soul Endeavor and Spirit Community

*Festival of the purified astral body

-the lifting out of one’s egotism into universal caring

– out of opinion into truth

– out of opinion into wisdom

*Festival of the human unbound from materialism

‘You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free’

The Whitsun thought — Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus.

Liane Collot

WHITSUN VERSE by RUDOLF STEINER

‘Wo Sinneswissen endet,
Da stehet erst die Pforte,
Die Lebenswirklichkeiten
Dem Seelensein eröffnet;
Den Schlüssel schafft die Seele,
Wenn sic in sich erstarket
Im Kampf, den Weltenmächte
Auf ihrem eignen Grunde
Mit Menschenkräfte führen;
Wenn sic durch sich vertreibt
Den Schlaf, der Wissenskräfte
An ihren Sinnesgrenzen
Mit Geistesnacht umhüllet. ‘

‘There first
Where sense can know no more,
Stands the portal, which discloses
Life-reality
To Soul-being;
This portal’s key the Soul may fashion
If she herself grow strong within the strife
By World-Powers waged on their own ground
With human forces;
If of her own accord she puts to flight
The sleep, which at the frontier of her senses
Cloaks the forces of knowledge
In spirit-night.’

You don’t need to have given birth to be the mother of your own creation…Let your labor be one of love, filled with nurturing joy…

~hag

~ ~ ~

Alex Grey

M + V [Maria Virgo]

You are,

The Hymen, Of the gleaming one,

Self-contained, Diamond mind manifested, Atlantean root revised,

Tied to the secret solar angels…

You are

The bright ear of Spica, First crypt of Christ, Solving the Sphinx

To bear

The 6th gate, Of Solomon’s Seal

To shield, To nurture, & finally to reveal,

A branch of fruit, In the mutable cross, Of your arms…

Vulcan under your feet, The caduceus in your head

You are

The valley of work, Conferring soul, Inside the cave, Of every Adam…

Protectress of the divine order, Incentive behind the goal…

O you who are

The Mother of images, Shape & mould matter, With your mindful mercury

Conceive the avatar in us, With your quickening vision

Feed us, With your perfect understanding

Give birth to peace in your womb of time.

~hag

~ ~ ~

Calendar of the Soul – Seventh Week [May 08, 2016 – May 14, 2016]

My self is threatening to fly forth,

Lured strongly by the world’s enticing light.

Come forth, prophetic feeling,

Take up with strength your rightful task:

Replace in me the power of thought

Which in the senses’ glory

Would gladly lose itself.

~ ~ ~

Tomorrow begins a series on Whitsun

Until soon

Blessings & Peace –

~hag = Hazel ArcherGinsberg

Cognitive Ritual

~Confessions of a Modern Rosicrucian

Category Archives: Insight

Friday the 13th

In Truth & Beauty I Stand

Bee Pollen in the Chalice

Vitae Sophia

MotherPeace

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