Category Archives: Poetry

The Shepherds must become Kings & the Kings-Shepherds

October 3, 2016Autumn, Lecture, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars~hag

3 October 2016 – Astro-Weather: A slender crescent Moon appears above Venus in this evening’s sky. The pairing of the night sky’s two brightest objects set against the vivid colors of twilight will make a stunning scene

MOON TRINE NEPTUNE: This is a good time for collaboration and transcendent events. Best possible outcome is to enrich the soul.

MOON CONJUNCT VENUS: Take advantage of this beautiful moment, favorable circumstances, and good moods to advance your agenda.

MARS SQUARE JUPITER: Be ready to toot your own horn and get things going in order to pass the test! Attention to production, outreach, or installation processes is worthwhile.

~Astrological Forecast by Victoria Martin viccimartin@gmail.com

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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

La Shanah Tovah

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, (רֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה‎, literally “head of the year”) is the first of the High Holy Days or Yamim Noraim (Days of Awe), a two-day celebration that started last night & is believed to be the anniversary of the creation of Adam & Eve, & their first actions toward the realization of humanity’s role in the world. It weds seriousness with celebration & begins the 10 days of repentance that culminate in Yom Kippur.

The New Year focuses our attention on themes of judgment, repentance, memory & the divine presence in the world. At the same time, Rosh Hashanah invites us to celebrate birth & creation on many levels. The liturgy suggests that Rosh Hashanah commemorates the creation of the world. Family-oriented services often include a birthday cake for the world.

Customs include sounding the shofar (a hollowed-out ram’s horn) & eating symbolic foods such as apples dipped in honey to emphasize the sweetness of starting the cycle of seasons once again, & round challah to remind us of the cycles of life.

Lucas Cranach the Elder

508 BC – Deathday of Lucretia an ancient Roman woman whose fate played a vital role in the transition of Roman government from the Roman Kingdom to the Roman Republic. She committed suicide after being raped by an Etruscan king’s son was the immediate cause of the anti-monarchist rebellion that overthrew the monarchy. As a result of its sheer impact, the rape itself became a major theme in European art & literature

Deathay of Jarius. The record of the daughter of Jairus is a combination of miracles of Jesus in the Gospels (Mark 5:21–43, Matthew 9:18–26, Luke 8:40–56) The story immediately follows the exorcism at Gerasa. Jairus, a patron or ruler of a Galilee synagogue, had asked Jesus to heal his 12-year-old daughter. As they were traveling to Jairus’ house, a sick woman in the crowd touched Jesus’ cloak & was healed of her sickness. Jesus turned round to the woman & says: “Take heart, daughter,” your faith has healed you. Go in peace.” Moments later, a messenger arrived with the news that Jairus’ daughter had died, & he was advised not to trouble Jesus any further. However, Jesus responded: Be not afraid, only believe. (Mark 5:36) Jesus continued to the house, where he informed all those present that the girl was not dead but asleep. He then went upstairs & restored the little girl to life. In Mark’s account, the Aramaic phrase “Talitha Koum” (transliterated into Greek as ταλιθα κουμ meaning, “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”) is attributed to Jesus

Deathday of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, a Syrian Christian theologian & philosopher of the late 5th to early 6th century, the author of the set of works commonly referred to as the Corpus Areopagiticum or Corpus Dionysiacum, portraying himself as the Athenian convert of Paul of Tarsus mentioned in Acts 17:34 (Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus) This attribution to the earliest decades of Christianity resulted in the work being given great authority in subsequent theological writing in both East & West. His works are mystical & show strong Neoplatonic influence. For example he uses Plotinus’ well-known analogy of a sculptor cutting away that which does not enhance the desired image.

In a letter addressed to Polycarp, pseudo-Dionysius asks “What have you to say about the solar eclipse which occurred when the Savior was put on the Cross? At the time the two of us were in Heliopolis and we both witnessed the extraordinary phenomenon of the moon hiding the sun at the time that was out of season for their coming together…. We saw the moon begin to hide the sun from the east, travel across to the other side of the sun, and return on its path so that the hiding and the restoration of the light did not take place in the same direction but rather in diametrically opposite directions.…” This is illustrated in an astronomical fresco in the main gallery of the Escorial Library, near Madrid, Spain, which shows Dionysius the Areopagite observing an eclipse at the time of Christ’s crucifixion.

Luke, 23-45 (It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over all the land until the ninth hour. 45The sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was torn down the middle) We can notice a quadrant & an astrolabe in the hands of the amazed men!

287 AD – Deathday of Saint Candidus. The Golden Legend states that he was a commander of the Theban Legion, which was composed of Christians from Upper Egypt. He opposed Maximian, who had ordered them to harass the local Christians in his name, stating that “we are your soldiers, but we are also servants of the true God. We cannot renounce Him who is our Creator and Master, and also yours even though you reject Him.” Candidus, along with St. Maurice, the other staff officers & 6,600 soldiers, were martyred at the Swiss town of Saint Maurice-en-Valais

1226 – Deathday of Francis of Assisi, Italian friar & saint. Based on a study of the life of Francis of Assisi, Rudolf Steiner shows how the development of morality is based on the belief in the Divine at the bottom of every human soul, on the boundless love that springs from this belief, and on the hope for each human soul that it can find its way back to the Divine. The Spiritual Foundation of Morality: Francis of Assisi and the Mission of Love see also Esoteric Christianity and the Mission of Christian Rosenkreutz, Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy and Philosophy, Steiner says: Francis of Assisi was wholly the sentient soul of Jesus of Nazareth in Christianity in the Evolution of Mankind, Leading Individualities and Avatar-Beings. There are many other lectures where this great personality is mentioned.

1250 – Deathday of Gilbertus Anglicus. His major work, the Compendium Medicinae, written in Latin, running to seven books, is an attempt to provide a comprehensive encyclopedia of medical & surgical knowledge as it existed in his day. He quotes extensively from Roger of Palma, & acknowledges that his work is indebted to Greek physicians including Galen, Hippocrates & Theophilus Protospatharius, & Arab physicians such as Averroes & Avicenna.

1942 – Spaceflight: The first successful launch of a V-2 /A4-rocket from Test Stand VII at Peenemünde, Germany. It is the first man-made object to reach space.

1952 – The United Kingdom successfully tests a nuclear weapon to become the world’s third nuclear power.

1962 – Project Mercury: Sigma 7 is launched from Cape Canaveral, with astronaut Wally Schirra aboard, for a six-orbit, nine-hour flight.

1963 – A violent coup in Honduras pre-empts the October 13 election, ends a period of reform, & begins two decades of military rule.

1981 – The hunger strike by Provisional Irish Republican Army & Irish National Liberation Army prisoners at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland ends after 7months & 10 deaths.

1985 – The Space Shuttle Atlantis makes its maiden flight. (Mission STS-51-J)

1986 – TASCC, a superconducting cyclotron at the Chalk River Laboratories, is officially opened

1990 – German reunification: The German Democratic Republic ceases to exist & its territory becomes part of the Federal Republic of Germany. East German citizens became part of the European Community, which later became the European Union. Now celebrated as German Unity Day

1995 – O. J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson & Ronald Goldman

2008 – The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act is signed by President George W. Bush – commonly referred to as a bailout of the U.S. financial system, is a law enacted in response to the subprime mortgage crisis authorizing the United States Secretary of the Treasury to spend up to $700 billion to purchase distressed assets, especially mortgage-backed securities, & supply cash directly to banks

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My POD (Poem Of the Day)

~I looked within

& saw the dragon writhing

In rags of mortality

Spitting the cold fire of fear

Binding & Hardening…

& yet my blood was hot

Pulsing with scintillating sparks

Forged From the sword of the Archai…

Now my tongue flicks flames

Licking the fingers of gods

Knowing I am

Free

~hag

***

Part 3, From the Michaelmas 30 September 2016 Lecture: Heart-Thinking: Michael Beckoning by ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

And so in striving to understand what Heart-Thinking is, I’d like to invite you to practice a little experiment. I will relate a picture Steiner gave, & you can work to use your ‘soul’s imaginative power’ to try & ‘see’ it.

Steiner gives an imagination of the dragon writhing around the animalistic part of humanity. Perhaps you can feel it there in the lower chakras, even coiling around the heart in some folks. But then – also, behind us, at the back of the head, – picture the cosmic figure of Michael, towering, radiant, retaining his cosmic nature but reflecting it in our higher human nature, so that our etheric body, that part of us that holds our formative, life forces, reflects etherically the cosmic figure of Michael. Can you feel it there in your back space? Then, Steiner says, there becomes visible in the human head, a kind of protective helmet, whose power pours down the spine, into the heart, causing blood to flow down from the heart to the limbs – moving the power of Michael in a leminscate, from head to heart to limbs, so we can put our will into action.

This is important because a big part in how we conquer the dragon is being able to recognize it. So with our Heart-thinking we can wake up to this & say: Ok, yes, the power of the Dragon is working within me, I might not see it – but I can feel it as a force that wants to drag me down below my true self. But in the spirit I also ‘see’ the luminous Angel whose cosmic task has always been the vanquishing of the Dragon.

I concentrate my Gemüt upon this glowing figure, I let its light stream into my heart-thinking so that my illumined & warmed soul forces can bear within it the strength of Michael. And out of a free resolution I will be able, through my alliance with Michael, to conquer the Dragon’s might in my own lower nature.

So…How did you do with our little experiment?

Some folks find it easy to work with imaginative pictures & some folks are more comfortable working with the intellect. We all, thru our individual temperaments & karma, tend to relate either to the head or the heart. (The 2 streams: Platonic & Aristotelian ) Of course our work is to bring them into balance, (The Shepherds must become Kings & the Kings-Shepherds) but since we began with the imagination, let’s work from the other side of the coin to formulate a more intellectual approach to understanding Heart-Thinking.

Tomorrow we begin there

~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

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Saturday 15 October 2016 Opening (Closing event 12 November 2016)

Calaj.com Artists Matthew Schaefer and Janet Trierweiler Schaefer present:

“Silent Lecture” Art Exhibit & Discussion

1pm – 4pm Paintings on view (in the un-rented space next to the Branch)

2:30 Artist Discussion – topics may include:

Setting limits to hold the limitless.

Human systems at work.

The fallible element, how it works in art.

The steps or ritual.

The visible/invisible origin.

Finding the spiritual in art through a primitive gesture.

A cognitive transformation, instinct to intuition.

Snacks to Share Encouraged

For more info. Contact Hazel Archer Ginsberg

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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

New Moon: Harbinger of new beginnings & festivities

September 30, 2016Autumn, Chicago Event, Festival, Insight, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars~hag

30 September 2016 – Astro-Weather: Humans have always had a fascination with lunar events—& with the rise of the Internet, all kinds of moon moments have become media sensations. Consider super moons, harvest moons, & the rare super blood moon total eclipse.

Today sky-watchers may be tempted to add another lunar moniker to the list: a “black moon,” popularly defined as the second new moon in a month. However, it’s not exactly going to make for good sky-watching.

New moons occur when the moon’s orbit takes it between Earth & the sun, leaving the lunar orb’s unilluminated side facing Earth. At night, this phase of the moon is impossible to see: Since new moons are in the same part of the sky as the sun, they rise and set with the sun & are overwhelmed by its glare.

New moons can be readily seen only when they pass directly in front of the sun, causing solar eclipses. Otherwise, sky-watchers must look to the days before or after a new moon, when just a sliver of the moon’s sunlit side is visible from Earth. (The Noble Qur’an categorically requires physical Moon sighting (with the naked eye) to confirm the beginning & ending of the Islamic months such as Ramadan & Zil-Hajjah. The Qur’anic term for the Crescent Moon is al-Hilal which means “the sighted Moon.”)

Usually, new moons occur only once a month, but because there’s a slight disjunct between the moon’s phases—a 29.5-day cycle, on average—& the Gregorian calendar, some months can have two new moons: one at the beginning & one at the end. This double-dipping occurs once every 32 months or so.

In this sense, a black moon is like the blue moon, conventionally understood as the second full moon in a month. But let’s be clear: This new moon—like any astronomical event—doesn’t bring ill tidings or herald the end of days, despite the astrological fear-mongering that has been seeping through the web.

If anything, this black moon is a harbinger of new beginnings & festivities: On the evening of October 2, the barely visible waxing crescent moon will shine on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. And on October 3, the growing crescent will mark the beginning of Muharram, the first month in the Islamic lunar calendar.

New Moon occurs at 7:11 pm CDT

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When we look up to the wonder of the starry world, when we contemplate the whole process of the universe with its glories and marvels, then we are led at last to the feeling that all the glory that lies open to our view in the whole universe that surrounds us only has meaning when it is reflected in an admiring human soul. -~Goethe

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

Sigmund Gleismüller

395 – John the Evangelist settles in Patmos to write the Apocalypse

Caravaggio

420 – Deathday of St. Jerome also called Hieronymus, Roman priest, theologian, patron saint of translators, librarians & encyclopedists. Rudolf Steiner speaks of him in From Jesus to Christ lecture 4, saying he had to ‘falsify’ the Gospel of St. Matthew, because it was too esoteric for folks at the time:

When we know this, we understand that the original Gospel of Matthew could not be imparted without further preparation because men were not ripe to receive what was in it. For if Jerome, a Father of the Church, was himself not ripe for what it contained, then certainly other men were not. Those who were originally in possession of these communications, the Ebionites, did not impart them because, if received by unripe persons, they would have been so distorted that they must have led to what Jerome meant when he said that they would serve not for edification but for destruction. Now Jerome understood this; yet he allowed himself to impart in a certain way the Gospel of Matthew to the world. ~Rudolf Steiner

1207 – Birthday of Rumi, Persian mystic & poet

1791 – The first performance of The Magic Flute, the last opera by Mozart to make its debut, took place at Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna, Austria

1791 – The National Constituent Assembly in Paris is dissolved; Parisians hail Maximilien Robespierre & Jérôme Pétion as “incorruptible patriots”

1882 – Thomas Edison’s first commercial hydroelectric power plant (later known as Appleton Edison Light Company) begins operation on the Fox River in Appleton, Wisconsin

1914 – Birthday of Johannes Tautz – a Historian, Religious scholar, Anthroposophist, Author & Waldorf teacher. After the German capitulation, Tautz was imprisoned by the Czechs, Americans & Russians but managed to escape in the summer of 1945 back to his family in Bad Boll. He was soon approached by Erich Gabert in Stuttgart to join the Waldorf School that was about to be opened as its German & History teacher. On 1 November 1945 he stood before his first 9th grade at the Free Waldorf School, Uhlandshöhe.

Soon Johannes Tautz decided to look up his “predecessor”, the first history teacher at the Waldorf School, Walter Johannes Stein. The conversations with Stein provided an orientation & inspiration for all of his further work as a teacher, lecturer & writer; in his lecturing work at national & international conferences and in the “Hague Circle”, a coordinating international group of Waldorf teachers.

He likewise received particular guidance from Emil Bock regarding a Christological view of world history & from Jürgen von Grone about the destiny of Germany &in particular to the figure of Helmuth von Moltke.

In 1966 Tautz held three lectures about the spiritual background to National Socialism, which later appeared in print under the title Attack of the Enemy – The Occult Inspiration Behind Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in 1976. In it he looks at a number of personalities connected with questionable occult practices with which leading Nazis had been close during the time of the movement’s growth.

In 1979 he edited a collection of biographical portraits together with Gisbert Husemann of the circle of founding Waldorf teachers around Rudolf Steiner.

Together with a young friend, Thomas Meyer, he visited the daughter of Walter Johannes Stein, Clarissa Johanna Muller, in Ireland where she was living in order to look through her father’s literary estate. They found the typescript of Stein’s dissertation annotated by Rudolf Steiner, letters & meditations of Steiner for Stein, his mother & for his brother, who fell in a mysterious manner in WWI. Letters & notes of Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz, Eliza von Moltke, Ita Wegman, D.N Dunlop & many other personalities were discovered & formed the basis of Tautz’s biography of Stein in 1989

In 1993 he initiated the editing of a collection Rudolf Steiner’s letters & notes to Eliza von Moltke together with the post mortem communications & the letters of Helmuth von Moltke himself. The decision to publish these was to prevent or anticipate a partial publication without an appropriate commentary on the subject that had been announced. A previous instance of this content being used had been in the book The Spear of Destiny by Trevor Ravenscroft which, in the opinion of Tautz had been written “without the necessary protection of background knowledge for the deeply-penetrant & difficult to understand material.” Further reading

1938 – The League of Nations unanimously outlaws “intentional bombings of civilian populations”

1962 – Labor leader César Chávez founds the National Farm Workers Association, which later becomes United Farm Workers

1982 – Cyanide-laced Tylenol kills six people in the Chicago area. Seven are killed in all

1993 – The 6.2 Mw Latur earthquake shakes Maharashtra, India with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe) killing 9,748 & injuring 30,000

1999 – The Tokaimura nuclear accident causes the deaths of 2 technicians, many others affected by radiation poisoning, in Japan’s second-worst nuclear accident

2009 – The 7.6 Mw Sumatra earthquake shakes central Sumatra with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe). 1,115 people dead, many injured & left homeless

***

“Do you know what you are?
You are a manuscript of a divine letter.
You are a mirror reflecting a noble face.
This universe is not outside of you.
Look inside yourself;
everything that you want,
you are already that.”

~Rumi

***

Michaelmas is not just a day; it is a season that extends from September 29, the Feast of St. Michael & All The Heavenly Hosts, to October 31, All Hallows Eve. It is a time for harvest, a time for work, a time for storing away that which we need for the cold dark months to come.

The autumn is an exceptional time. In many parts of North America, the trees are ablaze with splendid color— the scarlet maples, the twittering yellow aspens, the orange sumac. The evening skies come alive as meteor showers streak across the dark canopy like blazing arrows. This cosmic metallic presence is absorbed into our blood from the very air we breathe, invigorating our blood with its homeopathic qualities of iron. Darkness starts to wrap around us & we are moved inside to the comfort of our homes. Our thought life also goes inward. The dreamy mood of summer is replaced by a new vigor that seems to aid us in our tasks. Beyond external observation, what does all of this mean?

An ancient intuitive wisdom placed a festival at each of the four turning points of the solar year. The autumn festival was named after the archangel Michael, the heavenly warrior. The name Michael is Hebrew, & its meaning is a question: “Who is like God?” Legend tells that Michael, along with Gabriel, Uriel & Raphael, were sent out into the cosmos by God to seek a name for man. With sublime spirit-power, Michael, as the messenger of God, proclaimed man’s earthly name: “Adam.”

There are many other legends of Michael, the most notable being of his confrontation in heaven with the rebellious angels, led by Lucifer, who sought to overthrow God. The forces of Michael cast them out of heaven & held them in control in their earthly form as dragons. Michael did not slay the dragon, but through inner forces was able to hold it in control, at the tip of his spear.

If we examine this story, we can begin to find the meaning of Michaelmas & the task of Michael. The dragon is not an external reality, but rather lives within all humankind, represented by cold, dead, rationalistic & pragmatic thinking.

It is alive within every mortal as a potentially evil force. Michael’s message to humanity is not to try to slay the dragon within ourselves, for we would not live in freedom if we did, but rather to overcome it with consciousness. It is the consciousness in our thinking which calls for exactitude & selflessness, as well as the strength of will needed to follow a moral path in life. Michaelmas is a festival of inner strength & initiative. It is a time when our higher being can conquer anxiety & fear, for it is the task of Michael to awaken humankind to the eternal within.

In earnest wakefulness & practiced Peace –

~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

***

TONIGHT!!!

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

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 GinsbergHazel@ReverseRitual.com

Cognitive Ritual

~Confessions of a Modern Rosicrucian

Category Archives: Poetry

The Shepherds must become Kings & the Kings-Shepherds

Take up the Cosmic Intelligence into our Heart-Thinking

Forging my will to awaken

New Moon: Harbinger of new beginnings & festivities

Forge me with fire, a sword for my smiting

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