Category Archives: Lecture

Take up the Cosmic Intelligence into our Heart-Thinking

October 2, 2016Autumn, Insight, Lecture, Poetry, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars~hag

2 October 2016 – Astro-Weather: Tonight marks the unofficial start of the annual Orionid meteor shower. Although the Orionids won’t peak for nearly three weeks (on the morning of October 21), you should start to see a few showers in the Moon-free early morning hours. These meteors appear to radiate from the northern part of the constellation Orion the Hunter.

A twilight challenge: About a half hour after sunset, look for Venus very low in the west-southwest through the twilight. To its right is the thin crescent Moon. Although Venus is still lurking low, it’s on its way to shining high & brilliant this winter.

Even as the stars begin to come out in twilight, Cassiopeia is already higher in the northeast now than the sinking Big Dipper is in the northwest. Cassiopeia’s broad W pattern is almost standing on end.

***

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Islamic New Year

Mehregān (Persian: Mithra Festival) is a Zoroastrian & Persian festival, celebrated since the Zoroaster era to honor the Yazata of “Mehr” which is responsible for friendship, affection & love. It is also widely referred to as Persian Festival of Autumn

The International Day of Non-Violence – The birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, referred to in India as Gandhi Jayanti, a national festival celebrated in India to mark the occasion of the birthday of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the “Father of the Nation”. It is one of the three national holidays of the country

Memorial of the Holy Guardian Angels, Catholics set up altars in honor of guardian angels as early as the 4th Century, & local celebrations of a feast in honor of guardian angels go back to the 11th Century

1187 – Siege of Jerusalem: Saladin captures Jerusalem after 88 years of Crusader rule

1452 – Birthday of Richard III of England, the last king of the House of York. His defeat at Bosworth Field, the last decisive battle of the Wars of the Roses, marked the end of the Middle Ages in England. He is the subject of the historical play Richard III by William Shakespeare

1552 – Conquest of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible, The Grand Prince of Moscow. His conquests transformed Russia into a multiethnic & multicontinental state spanning almost one billion acres. Ivan managed countless changes in the progression from a medieval state to an empire & emerging regional power, & became the first ruler to be crowned as Tsar of All the Russias.

Historic sources present disparate accounts of Ivan’s complex personality: he was described as intelligent & devout, yet given to rages & prone to episodic outbreaks of mental instability, that increased with his age, affecting his reign. In one such outburst, he killed his groomed & chosen heir Ivan Ivanovich. This left the Tsardom to be passed to Ivan’s younger son, the weak & intellectually disabled Feodor Ivanovich.

Ivan’s legacy is complex: he was an able diplomat, a patron of arts & trade, founder of the Moscow Print Yard, Russia’s first publishing house, a leader highly popular among the common people (see Ivan the Terrible in Russian folklore) of Russia, but he is also remembered for his paranoia && arguably harsh treatment of the Russian nobility. The Massacre of Novgorod is regarded as one of the biggest demonstrations of his mental instability & brutality

1803 – Deathday of Samuel Adams, American philosopher & politician

1869 – Birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, Indian activist & philosopher

1925 – John Logie Baird performs the first test of a working television system

1928 – The Opus Dei, is founded by Josemaría Escrivá.

1937 – Dominican Republic ‘strongman’ Rafael Trujillo orders the execution of the Haitian population living within the borderlands; approximately 20,000 are killed over the next five days

1941 – World War II: In Operation Typhoon, Germany begins an all-out offensive against Moscow

1942 – World War II: Ocean Liner RMS Queen Mary accidentally rams & sinks her own escort ship, HMS Curacoa, off the coast of Ireland, killing 239 crewmen

1947 – Deathday of P. D. Ouspensky, a Russian mathematician & esotericist known for his expositions of the early work of the Greek-Armenian teacher of esoteric doctrine George Gurdjieff, whom he met in Moscow in 1915. He shared the (Gurdjieff) “system” for 25 years in England & the United States, having separated from Gurdjieff in 1924 personally, for reasons he explains in the last chapter of his book In Search of the Miraculous, a recounting of what he learned from Gurdjieff during those years. After Ouspensky broke away from Gurdjieff, he taught the “Fourth Way”, as he understood it, to his independent groups.

Gurdjieff proposed that there are three ways of self-development generally known in esoteric circles. These are the Way of the Fakir, dealing exclusively with the physical body, the Way of the Monk, dealing with the emotions, & the Way of the Yogi, dealing with the mind. What is common about the three ways is that they demand complete seclusion from the world. According to Gurdjieff, there is a Fourth Way which does not demand its followers to abandon the world. The work of self-development takes place right in the midst of ordinary life. Gurdjieff called his system a school of the Fourth Way where a person learns to work in harmony with his physical body, emotions & mind. Ouspensky picked up this idea & continued his own school along this line.

He finally gave up the system in 1947. (“A Record of Meetings”, published posthumously) “you must make a new beginning” after confessing “I’ve left the system”

Marcel Duchamp

1968 – Deathday of Marcel Duchamp, French painter & sculptor

1990 – Xiamen Airlines Flight 8301 is hijacked & lands at Guangzhou, where it crashes into two other airliners on the ground, killing 128

1996 – The Electronic Freedom of Information Act Amendments are signed by U.S. President Bill Clinton

1996 – Aeroperú Flight 603, a Boeing 757, crashes into the Pacific Ocean shortly after takeoff from Lima, Peru, killing 70

***

27^th Week in the Calendar of the Soul: AUTUMN

When to my being’s depths I penetrate

There stirs expectant longing

That self-observing, I may find myself

As a gift of summer sun, a seed

That warming lives in autumn mood

As germinating force of soul.

~Rudolf Steiner

***

Part 2, From the Michaelmas 30 September 2016 Lecture: Heart-Thinking: Michael Beckoning by ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

But who is this powerful spiritual being? Rudolf Steiner has given us many indications. For day let’s start by looking at the name. Michael, is a question, for it means ‘Who is like god’? Questions are good, they help us think. But how can we possibly experience this mighty Sun-Being? Well, we can sense his forces in the meteor showers that start in late August & go thru November. We can witness the power of Michael behind the shooting stars, strengthening our blood with cosmic iron, waging war there against anxiety, fear & hate, creating an inner process that penetrates our earthly thoughts with cosmic Thoughts – that our hearts may begin to have thoughts.

And so it is that today I make a small attempt at understanding what spiritual science calls Imaginative cognition, or Heart-Thinking.

And we can start by asking a question. How can humanity, the earth citizen, become once more a citizen of the cosmos? – Well, it certainly won’t be by head-thinking alone. For In the intellect we are isolated from the world, isolated from the cosmos, because everyone has their own head, & in that head, their own thoughts. But In Heart-Thinking it’s not like that, Imaginative cognition takes us further in our evolutionary journey. The mysterious German word, Gemüt, which Steiner uses to describe Heart-Thinking- means something like: ‘the mind warmed by a loving heart & stimulated by the soul’s imaginative power’.

It is not dependent solely on the head, but on the rhythmic system, bringing us back to where we belong, as a being in the cosmos. For in the cosmos rhythm holds sway. You’ve heard of the ‘Music of the Spheres’ right? Everything in sync, harmonious, in perfect balance. Until…

Once upon a time, before time, when another high Sun-Being stood in his place in the choir, looking up the ladder to the highest hierarchies with the thought, ‘hmm it sure would be nice to be god, I’d look so fine sitting up there with the Thrones. I sure would love to sing something different…a solo, that’s what I need, instead of just being here in my place in the choir. Maybe I’ll just skip the line’. Well needless to say Michael, along with some other spiritual beings, felt the commotion coming from this agitated thinking, & tried to reassure the ‘wanna-be’ that yes, someday they will all have full freedom to hit the high notes, but that the time was not yet ripe. But this deva would have none of it, so with some other minions he endeavored to cut the line, & storm the gates of heaven. So Michael, as choir master, guardian of the Cosmic Intelligence, the power or intelligence that keeps the rhythms of the cosmos intact – had to hold the fort, & with the help of the other righteous angels, they cast the trouble makers out of heaven, in order to keep the Music of the Sphere’s harmonious.

And ironically because that high being wanted to rise higher before his time, he actually fell back, becoming more hardened & densified, taking on what we would call, using the language of imagination, the super-sensible form of a serpent or dragon. So there’s our famous story.

But, you may ask, where is the dragon now?

Spiritual Science tells us that the dragon now lives within the human being. The outer cosmic conflict of Michael & the Dragon was transferred to the inner human being, because only in human nature can the Dragon now find his sphere of action. But fear not my friends, because of that, Michael now works with us to fight the dragon within our human nature. Michael has given humanity the opportunity to take up the cosmic intelligence into our heart-thinking.

We continue our exploration tomorrow

Until soon

~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Forging my will to awaken

October 1, 2016Autumn, Lecture, Poetry, Remembering, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars~hag

1 October 2016 – Astro-Weather: The Moon’s absence from the morning sky these next two weeks provides observers with an excellent opportunity to view the zodiacal light. From the Northern Hemisphere, the time around the autumnal equinox (which occurred last week) is the best for viewing the elusive glow before sunrise. It appears slightly fainter than the Milky Way, so you’ll need a clear moonless sky & an observing site located far from the city. Look for a cone-shaped glow that points nearly straight up from the eastern horizon shortly before morning twilight begins (around 6:30am CDT). The Moon remains out of the morning sky until October 15, when the waxing gibbous returns & overwhelms the much fainter zodiacal light

Deneb takes over from Vega as the zenith star after dark at this time of year which means dim Capricornus takes over from Sagittarius as the zodiacal constellation standing due south

***

Arild Rosenkrantz

Looking at the past to see the present, co-creating the future:

“History, historical life, will only be seen in the right light when a true consciousness of the connection of the so-called living with the so-called dead can be developed” – The Living and the Dead by Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, 5th February, 1918

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

286 -Feast Day of Saint Piatus, a Belgian saint, native of Benevento, Italy, Tradition states that he was ordained by Dionysios the Areopagite. He was martyred under Maximian by having the top of his skull sliced off. He may be recognized in depictions holding the sliced portion of his skull. Some of his relics can be found at Chartres Cathedral

331 BC – Alexander the Great defeats Darius III of Persia in the Battle of Gaugamela

1811 – The first steamboat to sail the Mississippi River arrives in New Orleans

1814 – Opening of the Congress of Vienna, intended to redraw Europe’s political map after the defeat of Napoleon the previous spring

1847 – Birthday of Annie Besant a prominent British socialist, theosophist, women’s rights activist, writer, orator & supporter of Irish & Indian self-rule.

In 1890 Besant met Helena Blavatsky. She became a member of the Theosophical Society & a prominent lecturer. She established the first overseas Lodge of the International Order of Co-Freemasonry, Le Droit Humain. Over the next few years she established lodges in many parts of the British Empire. In 1907 she became president of the Theosophical Society, whose international headquarters were in Adyar, Madras. She also became involved in politics in India, joining the Indian National Congress. When World War I broke out in 1914, she helped launch the Home Rule Leagueto campaign for democracy in India. This led to her election as president of the India National Congress. In the late 1920s, Besant travelled to the United States with her protégé & adopted son Jiddu Krishnamurti, whom she claimed was the new Messiah & incarnation of Buddha. Krishnamurti rejected these claims in 1929. She is thought to be the reincarnation of Giordano Bruno

1880 – First electric lamp factory is opened by Thomas Edison

1890 – Yosemite National Park is established by the U.S. Congress

1908 – Ford puts the Model T car on the market at a price of US$825.

1910 – Los Angeles Times bombing: by union members belonging to the International Association of Bridge & Structural Iron Workers. The explosion started a fire which killed 21 newspaper employees & injured 100 more.

1918 – World War I: Arab forces under T. E. Lawrence, also known as “Lawrence of Arabia”, capture Damascus

1924 – Birthday of Jimmy Carter, American lieutenant & politician, 39th President of the United States, Nobel Prize laureate

1928 – General Secretary Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union introduces its First five-year plan, including the creation of “kolkhoz” collective farming systems that stretched over thousands of acres of land & had hundreds of peasants working on them. This essentially destroyed the kulaks as a class, & also brought about the slaughter of millions of farm animals that these peasants would rather kill than give up to the gigantic farms.

To meet the goals of the first five-year plan the Soviet Union began using the labor of its growing prisoner population.

This disruption led to a famine in Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan as well as areas of the Northern Caucasus.

1957 – First appearance of In God we trust on U.S. paper currency

1961 – The United States Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is formed, becoming the country’s first centralized military espionage organization

1964 – Japanese Shinkansen (“bullet trains“) begin high-speed rail service from Tokyo to Osaka

1985 – The Israeli Air Force bombs Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) headquarters in Tunis

***

My POD (Poem Of The Day)

~A word, a vibration, a message

Is coursing thru my blood

The rust in my veins causes combustion

Making room

For the cosmic iron to etch itself into my palms

Activating my limbs – Forging my will to awaken

~hag

***

Part 1, From the Michaelmas 30 September 2016 Lecture: Heart-Thinking: Michael Beckoning by ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

The arrival of autumn always signifies a test. Are we willing to breathe in, after the out-breath of Summer? Are we willing to consciously harvest all the sense perceptions we have gathered? Are we willing to preserve & begin to digest all these life forces which we have received, giving us the reserves we need to courageously go into the dark of the year?

At the fall equinox, when the sun enters the constellation of Libra; the sign of the scales, human beings are indeed weighed on that stern measure. Will our inner strength hold up, when the support of nature is withdrawn?

During the growing season nature supports our human consciousness, it’s a gift given to us from the cosmos, but for the harvest we must work to fashion our own self-consciousness, if we are to remain inwardly awake.

Spiritual Science tells us that human consciousness is ever evolving. Less than 150 years ago, 137 to be exact, humanity experienced a huge shift in consciousness.

And so it was, around the end of the 19^th century, that the fixed date of September 29th came to be called: The feast Day of St. Michael & All the Heavenly Hosts. The old legends always preface the famous story of the battle against the dragon, with an enumeration of the 9 angelic realms, with Michael standing before us as the King & herald of all the hierarchies.

And so as we strive to create the festival of the future which we call Michaelmas, we are invited to stand in balance between the light & the dark, to look back to the fruits of the past, & to prepare by looking to what is coming toward us from the future.

To look where we have been & to where we are going. To contemplate the angelic choirs – that we may look to our future selves – that we may think, here & now, that step by step, we can courageously build our own strong & steady rung on the ladder of evolution, teaching us to count the human being as the 10th hierarchy. It is to this that the mighty sun-being Michael directs our gaze.

The Feast Day of St. Michael & All the Heavenly Hosts

September 29, 2016Autumn, Celestial Event, Chicago Event, Festival, Insight, Lecture, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars~hag

29 September 2016 – Astro-Weather: The Moon has one final hurrah this morning before it disappears into the Sun’s glare. The waning crescent, now just 2 percent lit, slides below Mercury. The pair rises nearly 90 minutes before the Sun & climbs above the horizon 45 minutes ahead of sunrise.

Any clear evening this week is a good time to explore the constellation Sagittarius the Archer. This star group lies just west of due south around 7pm CDT time, near the time twilight ends. The brightest stars within the constellation form a distinctive asterism in the shape of a teapot. The central regions of the Milky Way pass through Sagittarius.

***

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” ~Mark Twain

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

The Feast Day of St. Michael & All the Heavenly Hosts, also called MICHAELMAS

1227 – Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, is excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX for his failure to participate in the Crusades. A man of extraordinary culture, energy, & ability Frederick II was called stupor mundi (the wonder of the world), by Nietzsche, also the first European, the first modern ruler – by many historians, Frederick established in Sicily & southern Italy a modern, centrally governed kingdom with an efficient bureaucracy.

He was aKing of Germany, of Italy, & Burgundy. His other royal title was King of Jerusalem by virtue of marriage & his connection with the Sixth Crusade.

He was frequently at war with the Papacy, hemmed in between Frederick’s lands in northern Italy & his Kingdom of Sicily (the Regno) to the south. Pope Gregory IX went so far as to call him an Antichrist.

Speaking six languages (Latin, Sicilian, German, French, Greek & Arabic, Frederick was an avid patron of science & the arts. He played a major role in promoting literature through the Sicilian School of poetry. His Sicilian royal court in Palermo, saw the first use of a literary form of an Italo-Romance language, Sicilian. The poetry that emanated from the school had a significant influence on literature & on what was to become the modern Italian language.

He was also the first king who explicitly outlawed trials by ordeal as they were considered irrational.

Caravaggio

1571 – Birthday of Caravaggio, Italian painter

1717 – An earthquake strikes Antigua Guatemala, destroying much of the city’s architecture & making authorities consider moving the capital to a different city

1789 – The United States Department of War first establishes a regular army with a strength of several hundred men

1789 – The 1st United States Congress adjourns

1812- Birthday of Caspar Hauser, grown up in the total isolation of a darkened cell. Theories link him with the grand ducal House of BadenThese claims, & his subsequent death by stabbing, sparked much debate & controversy.

“…It was the case of that human being, so enigmatic for many people, who was once placed into this city in a mysterious way, and who in just as mysterious a way met his death in Ansbach. An author, in order to indicate the mystery of his life, wrote that as he was carried out to burial the sun was setting on the one horizon and the moon was rising on the other. I speak, as you know, of Caspar Hauser. If you disregard all the pros and cons that have been asserted, if you look only at what has been fully verified, you will know that this foundling — who was one day simply there in the street, and who since he did not know whence he came, was called the Child of Europe — could neither read nor write when he was found. At an age of twenty years he possessed nothing of what is gained through the intellect but he had a remarkable memory. As they began to instruct him, as logic entered his soul, his memory disappeared. This transition in consciousness was accompanied by something else. He possessed at first an incredible, an entirely inborn truthfulness and it was precisely in this truthfulness that he went more and more astray. The more he nibbled, so to say, at intellectuality, the more it vanished. There would be many things to study were we to enter deeply into this human soul which had been artificially held back. It is not difficult for the student of Spiritual Science to credit the popular tradition, so unacceptable to the learned people of to-day, which relates that while Caspar Hauser still knew nothing, while he still had no idea that there were beings besides himself of different form, he exercised a remarkable effect upon quite savage creatures. Savage animals humbled themselves and became mild, something streamed from him that made such beasts gentle, although they savagely attacked anyone else. We could in fact penetrate deeply into the soul of this remarkable personality, so enigmatic to many, and you would see how things that cannot be explained from ordinary life are led back through Spiritual Science to spiritual facts. Such facts cannot be learnt by speculation but only by spiritual observation, though they are comprehensible to an unbiased and logical thinking.

All this has only been said in order to show you that the modern consciousness has evolved from another, an age-old-state when man was not in direct touch with outer objects in the modern sense, but on the other hand was in connection with facts and beings of the spiritual world.” ~Rudolf Steiner, The Apocalypse of St. John, Spiritual Science — The Gospel — The Future of Mankind

1885 – The first public electric tramway in the world is opened in Blackpool, England

1902 – Deathday of Émile Zola a French novelist, playwright, journalist, the best-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism, & an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. He was a major figure in the political liberalization of France & in the exoneration of the falsely accused & convicted army officer Alfred Dreyfus, which is encapsulated in the renowned newspaper headline J’accuse. Zola was nominated for the first & second Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901 & 1902. His death from carbon monoxide poisoning is suspected to have been murder

1924 – Ludwig Polzer holds his 1^st First Class Lesson

1954 – The convention establishing CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) is signed

1957 – Twenty MCi) of radioactive material is released in an explosion at the Soviet Mayak nuclear plant at Chelyabinsk

1981 – Deathday of Adolf Arenson, German composer & Anthroposopher. Arenson editied many of Rudolf Steiner’s works, & composed the music for many of the plays & productions. Steiner mentions him at the end of Wonders of the World lecture 1

2008 – Following the bankruptcies of Lehman Brothers & Washington Mutual, The Dow Jones Industrial Average falls 777.68 points, the largest single-day point loss in its history

2009 – The 8.1 Mw Samoa earthquake strikes with a maximum Mercalli intensity. A destructive tsunami follows, leaving 189 dead & hundreds injured.

2013 – Over 42 people are killed by members of Boko Haram at the College of Agriculture in Gujba, Nigeria

***

St. Michael’s Harvest Song

In autumn comes Saint Michael with sword and with shield
Passes over meadow and orchard and field.
He’s on the path to battle ‘gainst darkness and strife –
He is the heavenly warrior protector of life.

***

Liane Collot D ‘ herbois

Human consciousness is ever evolving. The Zeitgeist is flavored by the various attributes of the 7 Archangels who take turns ruling a portion of the epoch. In 1879 Michael became the Time Spirit of our age. When he was last up, he ruled the Hebrew folk as they were preparing the vessel for the Christ Being to enter a human form. Back then he held the countenance of Jehovah, the god of the Hebrew people.

At the ‘Turning point of Time’ Michael got a promotion to become an Archai & took on the countenance of The Christ.

In 1899 the Kali Yuga ended & the gates to the spiritual world were opened once again. Around that time, at the end of the 19^th century, the fixed date of September 29th came to be called: The Feast Day of St. Michael & All the Heavenly Hosts. The old legends would always preface the famous story of the battle against the dragon, with an enumeration of the 9 angelic realms, with Michael standing before us as the King & herald of all the hierarchies.

And so as we strive to create the festival of the future, which we call Michaelmas, we are invited to stand in balance between the light & the dark, around this time of the equinox, to look back to the fruits of the past, & to prepare by looking to what is coming toward us from the future.

To look where we have been & to where we are going. To contemplate the angelic choirs – that we may look to our future selves – that we may think, here & now, that step by step, we can courageously build our own strong & steady rung on the ladder of evolution, teaching us to count the human being as the 10th hierarchy. It is to this that the mighty sun-being Michael directs our gaze; which we must in turn direct to the world of nature – Replacing dead sense-bound thinking, represented by the Dragon, with Imaginative Cognition, (to reclaim the Cosmic intelligence) living heart-thinking, fostered by Michael, to reveal the Living Christ, as the fundamental force of the Universe.

I will publish the full notes to the lecture I will give at tomorrow’s Chicago Michaelmas Festival, over the next week.

May Michael fortify our “I” & strengthen our Will, giving us the courage to find the Spirit behind the living Cosmos.

~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

***

Michaelmas Festival: 7 pm –9 pm Friday 30 September, 2016

Optional Community Potluck Dinner 5pm – 6:45pm at The Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 N. Lincoln Ave. Chicago

Heart-Thinking: Michael Beckoning

7pm – The Midwest Eurythmy Group will perform the Michaelmas Verse from Rudolf Steiner’s Calendar of the Soul

Activating Our ‘Gemut’: The mind warmed by a loving heart & stimulated by the soul’s imaginative power – Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Verse for the Michaelic Age: ALL

We must eradicate from the soul all fear and terror of what approaches us from the future. We must acquire serenity in all feelings and sensations about the future.

We must look forward with absolute equanimity to whatever may come. And we must think only that whatever comes is given to us by a cosmic guidance full of wisdom.

It is part of what we must learn in this age, namely, to live without any security in material existence and to live with pure trust in the ever-present help of the spiritual world.

Truly, nothing else will do if our courage is not to fail us. For this let us seek awakening to the reality of the spirit from within ourselves, every morning and every evening. ~Rudolf Steiner

Copper Rod Eurythmy: ALL

If I’m to be a valiant knight, Then there’s a battle I must fight , And I must choose right from the start, Not strength of arm But strength of heart, My sword shall of good steel be made, And love the keenness of the blade

Piano & Voice – Kristen Wray & David Wray performing Nacht und Träume + Ganymed – By Franz Schubert. Kristen Wray is a fiber and metal weaving artist, an energy healing practitioner, as well as a classically trained singer. David Wray is a classics professor at the University of Chicago specializing in ancient Roman poetry. Kristen and David regularly perform together in music student recitals on the university campus.

$10 Donation & Snacks to Share Encouraged

For more info. Contact Festivals Coordinator Hazel Archer Ginsberg Hazel@ReverseRitual.com

Forge me with fire, a sword for my smiting

September 28, 2016Autumn, Celestial Event, Chicago Event, Festival, Lecture, Poetry, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars~hag

28 September 2016 – Astro-weather: Mercury is now in the midst of its finest morning apparition of 2016. The planet reaches greatest elongation today, lying west of the Sun & appearing high in the east 45 minutes before sunrise.

Mars continues to put on a nice show these September evenings. The Red Planet appears high in the south-southwest in early evening. Mars lies among the background stars of western Sagittarius. And this evening, it slides south of the massive star-forming region known as the Lagoon Nebula (M8)

As dawn brightens Thursday morning the 29th, look for a super-thin crescent Moon near Mercury very low in the east.

***

“God is an intelligible sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere”. ~Alanus ab Insulis

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

551 BC – Birthday of Confucius, Chinese teacher, editor, politician, & philosopher of the Spring &Autumn period of Chinese history

1203 – Deathday of Alanus ab Insulis, Theologian, poet, teacher at Chartres. Alan’s philosophy was a sort of mixture of Aristotelian logic and Neoplatonic philosophy. The Platonist seemed to outweigh the Aristotelian in Alan, but he felt strongly that the divine is all intelligibility and argued this notion through much Aristotelian logic combined with Pythagorean mathematic

“Do not hold as gold all that shines as gold”

In the Anticlaudianus he sums up as follows: Reason, guided by prudence, can unaided discover most of the truths of the physical order; for the apprehension of religious truths it must trust to faith. This rule is completed in his treatise, Ars catholicae fidei, as follows: Theology itself may be demonstrated by reason. Alainus even ventures an immediate application of this principle, & tries to prove geometrically the dogmas defined in the Creed

Giovanni Segantini

1899 – Deathday of Giovanni Segantini,an Italian painter known for his large pastoral landscapes of the Alps. He was one of the most famous artists in Europe in the late 19th century. In later life he combined a Divisionist painting style with Symbolist images of nature. He was active in Switzerland for most of his life.

1924 – Rudolf Steiner gave his Last Address in Dornach GA 238 The Individuality of Elias, John, Raphael, Novalis with the Michael Meditation:

Springing from Powers of the Sun,

Radiant Spirit-powers, blessing all Worlds!

For Michael’s garment of rays

Ye are predestined by Thought Divine.

He, the Christ-messenger, revealeth in you —

Bearing mankind aloft — the sacred Will of Worlds.

Ye, the radiant Beings of Aether-Worlds,

Bear the Christ-Word to Man.

Thus shall the Heralds of Christ appear

To the thirstily waiting souls,

To whom your Word of Light shines forth

In cosmic age of Spirit-Man.

Ye, the disciples of Spirit-Knowledge,

Take Michael’s Wisdom beckoning,

Take the Word of Love of the Will of Worlds

Into your soul’s aspiring, a c t i v e l y !

1978 – Deathday of Pope John Paul I, born Albino Luciani, served as Pope until his sudden suspicious death 33 days later. His reign is among the shortest in papal history.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

***

Katlyn Breene

~Flowing from the living waters

The cosmic fount foams up

To moisten my mind’s eye with salt & sulphur,

Forming a mercurial lachrymation

Beading brilliant, Mixing & Pooling

The cosmic iron in my blood scintillating slowly

Within the shining spark of thinking

A way to read intrinsic meaning into being…

The writing is on the wall my friend

Add your etching to enhance

The conscious conversation & Be

Heard…

~hag

***

Forge me with fire, a sword for my smiting

Fright to my foes and flames for my fighting

Shape me a shield forceful and fierce

Stalwart and shapely to fend against fears

Strike me a spear of speed as a shaft

Fearless to fly as a shot to the start

Staunch be my front against fury assailed

Strong be my soul where the feeble have failed

***

Michaelmas Festival: 7pm –9pm Friday 30 September, 2016

Optional Community Potluck Dinner 5pm – 6:45pm at The Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 N. Lincoln Ave. Chicago

Heart-Thinking: Michael Beckoning

7pm – The Midwest Eurythmy Group will perform the Michaelmas Verse from Rudolf Steiner’s Calendar of the Soul

Activating Our ‘Gemut’: The mind warmed by a loving heart & stimulated by the soul’s imaginative power – Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Copper Rod Eurythmy: ALL

Grimm’s Tale “The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs” by Laura Donkel

Verse for the Michaelic Age: ALL

We must eradicate from the soul all fear and terror of what approaches us from the future. We must acquire serenity in all feelings and sensations about the future.

We must look forward with absolute equanimity to whatever may come. And we must think only that whatever comes is given to us by a cosmic guidance full of wisdom.

It is part of what we must learn in this age, namely, to live without any security in material existence and to live with pure trust in the ever-present help of the spiritual world.

Truly, nothing else will do if our courage is not to fail us. For this let us seek awakening to the reality of the spirit from within ourselves, every morning and every evening. ~Rudolf Steiner

$10 Donation & Snacks to Share Encouraged

For more info. Contact Festivals Coordinator Hazel Archer GinsbergHazel@ReverseRitual.com

Like a Candle Calling to the Sun

September 24, 2016Insight, Lecture, Poetry, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul~hag

24 September 2016 – Astro-Weather: Uranus reaches opposition three weeks from today, but it is already showing its face. The ice giant world rises before twilight ends & climbs above the eastern horizon by 11 pm CDT. The planet lies in Pisces, north-northwest of Piscium.

This is the time of year when the rich Cygnus Milky Way crosses the zenith in the hour after nightfall is complete. The Milky Way rises straight up from the southwest horizon, passed overhead, & runs straight down to the northeast.

***

Those who work with the Original indications in the Calendar of the Soul know that Rudolf Steiner lists the birth & death days, as well as other significant occurrences of various individualities, along with the dates in the calendar. He said of this: “What is presented here can be useful to those who wish to follow the path of mankind’s spiritual development” ~Rudolf Steiner

Proserpine 1874 Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1828-1882 Presented by W. Graham Robertson 1940 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N05064 — Dante Gabriel Rossetti

According to the Calendar of the Soul today is the Festival of Persephone, part of The Eleusinian Mysteries, held annually in honor of Demeter & Persephone. The most sacred & revered of all the ritual celebrations of ancient Greece. They were instituted in the city of Eleusis, just west of Athens, possibly as far back as the early Mycenaean period, & continued for almost two thousand years. Large crowds of worshippers from all over Greece (& later, from throughout the Roman empire) would gather to make the holy pilgrimage between the two cities & participate in the secret rites, generally regarded as the high point of Greek life.

622 – Muhammad & his followers completed their Hijra from Mecca to Medina to escape religious persecution. Rudolf Steiner tells us Muhammad was able to see into the etheric realm. Legend has it that the enemy was just seconds from capturing them when they ducted into a cave, where they surly would been found, except a spider wove a giant web & a dove made a nest at the entrance, so when the enemy come to the cave they thought – they can’t be here, since the web was so intricate & the nest so well established.

787 – Second Council of Nicaea: The council assembled at the church of Hagia Sophia

1046 – Deathday(drowned) /Feast of St. Gellert

1541 – Deathday (murdered) Theophrastus Paracelsus, a Swiss German philosopher, physician, botanist, astrologer, & occultist. He is credited as the founder of toxicology. He is also a famous revolutionary for utilizing observations of nature, rather than referring to ancient texts, something of radical defiance during his time. He is credited as the first to note that some diseases are rooted in psychological conditions.

Paracelsus’ most important legacy is his critique of the scholastic methods in medicine, science & theology. As a physician of the early 16th century, Paracelsus held a natural affinity with the Hermetic, Neoplatonic, & Pythagorean philosophies central to the Renaissance. Paracelsus rejected the magic theories of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa & Nicolas Flamel in his Archidoxes of Magic.

Astrology was a very important part of Paracelsus’ medicine & he was a practicing astrologer. Paracelsus devoted several sections in his writings to the construction of astrological talismans for curing disease. He also invented an alphabet called the Alphabet of the Magi, for engraving angelic names upon talismans.

1916 – Rudolf Steiner’s 2^nd lecture on the Mexican Mysteries

1789 – The United States Congress passes the Judiciary Act which creates the office of the United States Attorney General & the federal judiciary system, & orders the composition of the Supreme Court of the United States

1869 – “Black Friday“: Gold prices plummet after Ulysses S. Grant orders the Treasury to sell large quantities of gold after Jay Gould & James Fisk plot to control the market

1896 – Birthday of F. Scott Fitzgerald, novelist & short story writer

1906 – U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt proclaims Devils Tower in Wyoming as the nation’s first National Monument

1914 – World War I: The Siege of Poland begins

1948 – The Honda Motor Company is founded

1950 – Forest fires black out the sun over portions of Canada & New England. A blue moon is seen as far away as Europe

1957 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends 101st Airborne Division troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce desegregation

1960 – USS Enterprise, the world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, is launched

1996 – Representatives of 71 nations sign the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty at the United Nations.

2005 – Hurricane Rita makes landfall in the United States, devastating portions of southwestern Louisiana & southeastern Texas

2007 –100,000 people take part in anti-government protests in Yangon, Burma

2009 – The G20 summit begins in Pittsburgh with 30 global leaders in attendance. It marks the first use of Long-Range Acoustic Devices in U.S. history

2013 – A 7.7-magnitude earthquake strikes southern Pakistan, killing more than 1327 people

2015 – At least 1,100 people are killed & another 934 wounded after a stampede during the Hajj in Saudi Arabia

***

Mirach Ravaia

~Like a candle calling to the sun

I strive…

My flame guttering in the wind

Lashes the wet branches of sleep tossed trees

My resolve wavers

But my bones carry star stuff

Unconcerned

~hag

***

MICHAELMAS AND THE SOUL-FORCES OF MAN by RUDOLF STEINER

Summary by Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Lecture 4. The far-reaching social significance of a Michael Festival. Earth spirit and human spirit. The cosmic breathing process. Nature-consciousness, self-consciousness, and spirit-consciousness. “

In the Gemüt, through anthroposophical endeavor — we learn to distinguish between nature-consciousness, engendered during the spring and summer, and self-consciousness proper which thrives in the fall and winter.

“When the human Gemüt receives into itself spirit-consciousness — the spirit-consciousness engendered by the transition from nature-consciousness (spring-summer) to self-consciousness (autumn-winter) — then will the solution to our social problems of the moment comes clear.”

A Michael Festival calls for us to feel in our souls everything that can activate spirit-consciousness.

“…What does Easter represent in the year’s festivals? First death, then resurrection: that is the outer aspect of the Mystery of Golgotha. One who understands the Mystery of Golgotha in this sense sees death and resurrection in this way of redemption; and can feel in their soul that we must unite in our Gemüt with Christ, the victor over death, in order to find resurrection in death.”

But Christianity does not end with the traditions associated with the Mystery of Golgotha: it must advance. The human Gemüt turns inward and deepens more and more as time goes on; and in addition to this festival that brings alive the Death and Resurrection of Christ, humanity needs that other one which reveals the course of the year as having its counterpart within us, so that we can find in the round of the seasons, first of all the resurrection of the soul — in fact, the necessity for achieving this resurrection — in order that the soul may then pass through the portal of death in a worthy way.

Easter: death, then resurrection; Michaelmas: resurrection of the soul, then death. This makes of the Michael Festival a reversed Easter Festival. Easter commemorates for us the Resurrection of Christ from death; but in the Michael Festival we must feel with all the intensity of our soul: In order not to sleep in a half-dead state that will dim our self-consciousness between death and a new birth, but rather, to be able to pass through the portal of death in full alertness, we must rouse the soul through our inner forces before we die. First, resurrection of the soul — then death, so that in death that resurrection can be achieved which the human being celebrates within.

In Spiritual Science Death must Become

A Resurrection

For this we strive

In gratitude ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Cognitive Ritual

~Confessions of a Modern Rosicrucian

Category Archives: Lecture

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Forge me with fire, a sword for my smiting

Like a Candle Calling to the Sun

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