Dear Friends – In the “Four Seasons and the Archangels,” Dr. Steiner describes the out breath of the Earth in Spring – how the activity of the Ahrimanic beings, whose desire to enslave lives in the limestone, & is strongest, especially in March. Most of the time, the Ahrimanic beings gain very little from the earth, instead they must rely on the human being for their astral sustenance. Yet, in the Springtime, these beings, due to the attraction of the vitality of the limestone, seek to draw down an “astral rain from the cosmos, blowing around the world an astral wind, with the hope of ensouling the earth’s limestone, into a world of pain.”
The Luciferic beings also strive in the Spring thru the carbonic acid, carrying phosphoric, sulfuric, volatile substances, rising up higher out of the earth thru the breathing of the plants. They desire to kick the non-breathing etheric substance of human beings. Together, this would create the possibility of a rising etheric mist that would suffocate human breathing, but would grant Luciferic beings the etheric bodies they do not have. The volatilizing sulfur process, bound to the oxygenation of cells in the body, would be lifted away in a suffocating outbreath of the carbon dioxide, vegetative process. “That is what the Luciferic spirits strive and hope for, when the end of March comes on. They hope to change the whole Earth into a delicate shell of this kind, wherein they, densified through the etheric nature of man, could carry on their own existence.”
Of the Ahrimanic beings, Steiner says that if they could realize their hopes, “the whole of humanity would gradually be dissolved into the Earth:” into a matrix of Ahrimanic singularity. “The transition to this enslavement with the Earth would consist in this: man in his whole organism would become more and more like the limestone. He would blend the limestone with his organism and become more and more calcified. In this way he would transmute his bodily form into one that looked quite different – a sclerotic form with something like bat’s wings. This form would then be able to merge gradually into the earthly element, so that the whole Earth, according to the Ahrimanic idea, would become a dead Earth being.”
We are living in an age where the Ahrimanic threat stands before us, striving to make our soul capacities of thinking, feeling & willing depend entirely on the genetically modified food we digest (rather than on cosmic nutrition). “For Ahriman hardens man, while Lucifer wishes to dissolve and evaporate him through his breathing. In all this, the forces that make for illness reside.”
The healing medicine of the Spring Archangel Raphael is vitally needed, & available to all right now. We can rise in our thinking to meet this energy, which helps us resist fixed, artificial, poisonous systems, especially those that distance us from our human community, that prevent us from overcoming the illness of our time, severing human evolution from the Earth evolution.
Together with the mighty being Michael, spiritual emissaries empower us with true nourishment, & Mother Nature’s artistic, living learning, that, thru our beholding of ‘Natura’, unveils the healing, cosmic spirit.
Ok so, friends, go out & get some sunshine! Take a deep breath, put your feet on the earth & use your thinking to engender gratitude for all the helpful elemental beings aligned with love & light waiting to be redeemed thru our loving attention, thru our willing devotion. xox
2 May 2020 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Here is a must read article from Astrosopher Jonathan Hilton of the Astrosophy Center
***
Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
1519 – Death Day of Leonardo da Vinci, Italian painter, sculptor, & architect.
“…We know how Leonardo worked at the “Last Supper”. He often went and sat on the scaffolding and brooded for hours in front of the wall, then he would take a brush and make a few strokes and go away again. Sometimes he only went and stared at the picture and went away again. When he was painting the Christ Figure, his hand trembled. Indeed, if we put together all that we can find concerning this subject we must say that neither outwardly nor inwardly was Leonardo happy when painting this world-renowned picture. Now there were people at that time in Milan who were displeased with the slow progress of the picture, for instance a Prior of the monastery, who could not see why an artist could not paint such a picture quickly, and complained to the Duke. He too thought the affair had lasted too long. Leonardo answered: “The picture is to represent Jesus Christ and Judas, the two greatest contrasts; one cannot paint them in one year; there are no models for them in the world, neither for Judas nor for Christ”. After he had been working at the picture for years, he said he did not know whether he could finish it after all! Then he said that if finally he found no model for Judas he could always use the Prior himself! It was thus extraordinarily difficult to bring the picture to a conclusion but within himself Leonardo did not feel happy. For this picture showed the contrast between what lived in his soul and what he was able to represent on the canvas. Here it is necessary to bring forward a hypothesis of Spiritual Science, which may be reached by anyone who studies what can by degrees be learned about this picture.” ~Rudolf Steiner, Leonardo da Vinci, His Spiritual and Intellectual Greatness, At the Turning Point of the New Age
1611 – The King James Version of the Bible is published for the first time in London, England, by printer Robert Barker
1729 – Birthday of Catherine the Great of Russia, the longest-ruling female leader of Russia. The Catherinian Era, is often considered the Golden Age of the Russian Empire & the Russian nobility. She enthusiastically supported the ideals of The Enlightenment, thus earning the status of an enlightened despot. As a patron of the arts she presided over the age of the Russian Enlightenment, a period when the Smolny Institute, the first state-financed higher education institution for women in Europe, was established.
1772 – Birthday of Novalis, the pseudonym & pen name of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg, poet, author, mystic, & philosopher of Early German Romanticism. His study of mineralogy & management of salt mines in Saxony, was often ignored by his contemporary readers Novalis concerned himself with the scientific doctrine of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, which greatly influenced his world view, transforming Fichte’s Nicht-Ich (German “not I”) to a Du (“you”), an equal subject to the Ich (“I”). This was the starting point for Novalis’ Liebesreligion (“religion of love”) dedicated to his beloved Sophie who died of tuberculosis.
“…When we consider the life of Novalis, what an echo we find there of the Raphael life for which Hermann Grimm had so fine an understanding! His beloved dies in her youth. He is himself still young. What is he going to do with his life now that she has died? He tells us himself. He says that his life on Earth will be henceforth to “die after her”, to follow her on the way of death. He wants to pass over already now into the super-sensible, to lead again the Raphael life, not touching the Earth, but living out in poetry his magic idealism. He would fain not let himself be touched by Earth life.
When we read the “Fragments” of Novalis, and give ourselves up to the life that flows so abundantly in them, we can discover the secret of the deep impression they make on us. Whatever we have before us in immediate sense-reality, whatever the eye can see and recognise as beautiful — all this, through the magic idealism that lives in the soul of Novalis, appears in his poetry with a well-nigh heavenly splendour. The meanest and simplest material thing — with the magic idealism of his poetry he can make it live again in all its spiritual light and glory.
And so we see in Novalis a radiant and splendid forerunner of that Michael stream which is now to lead you all, my dear friends, while you live; and then, after you have gone through the gate of death, you will find in the spiritual super-sensible worlds all those others — among them also the being of whom I have been speaking to you today — all those with whom you are to prepare the work that shall be accomplished at the end of the century, and that shall lead mankind past the great crisis in which it is involved.” ~Rudolf Steiner, The Individuality of Elias, John, Raphael, Novalis – The Last Address – Dornach, Michaelmas Eve, 1924
1933 – Gleichschaltung: Adolf Hitler bans trade unions
1945 –Fall of Berlin: The Soviet Union announces the capture of Berlin & Soviet soldiers hoist their red flag over the Reichstag building
1952 – The world’s first ever jet airliner, the De Havilland Comet 1 makes its maiden flight, from London to Johannesburg
1972 – In the early morning hours a fire breaks out at the Sunshine Mine located between Kellogg and Wallace, Idaho, killing 91 workers.
1986 –The City of Chernobyl is evacuated six days after the disaster
1998 – The European Central Bank is founded in Brussels in order to define & execute the European Union’s monetary policy
2000 – President Bill Clinton announces that accurate GPS access would no longer be restricted to the United States military
2008 – Cyclone Nargis makes landfall in Burma killing over 138,000 people & leaving millions of people homeless
2008 – Chaitén Volcano begins erupting in Chile, forcing the evacuation of more than 4,500 people.
2011 – Osama bin Laden, is killed by the United States special forces
2014 – Two mudslides in Badakhshan, Afghanistan, leave over 2,500 people dead
***
POD (Poem Of the Day)
~The portals of perception
Raw & cluttered await
The revealing –
It is my Self I see –
A 1000 colors swirling in liquid light
A star covered in rising clouds
Hung by a thread from its ocean Moon
Hail Self
Traversing eternity
In moral steps of time
Where the Guardian beckons
~hag
***
| Like an evening vapor after the sunset An On-line Ascension Festival with the Central Regional Council May 21, 2020, 7pm – 8:15pm CDT (8pm – 9:15pm EDT) |
 Ascension Thursday – May 21, 2020 7pm – 8:15pm CDT (8pm – 9:15pm EDT) Join the Central Regional Council and special guest Raven Garland on an artistic exploration of the Mystery of Ascension. We will offer leading thoughts, intermingled with poetry and Eurythmy, to be followed by open conversation. In the clouds, between the depths of earth and heavenly heights, in the sphere of the etheric realm, we see the primal image of metamorphosis. Is this global pandemic entreating us to ‘Practice Spirit Beholding‘ to awaken to the etheric realm we all share in common with the earth? We can ‘Practice Spirit Recalling‘ to remember we received our etheric body on Old Sun. In practicing ‘Spirit-Sensing‘ we may feel perhaps the Coronavirus is an admonition for us to reconnect to the sun-forces now imbued with The Etheric Christ, waiting to be recognized and engaged in the current evolving conditions. This is an invitation for all of humanity to rise to a higher stage of initiation – a global Coronation. The fulfillment of the secret promise of the Ascension is the Second Coming. Will we choose to participate? FREE – ALL are Welcome – find below Zoom Call details. |
| The Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America invites you to join our on-line Ascension Festival. This will be a “Zoom” conference call allowing us an opportunity to see one another while conversing (or audio only if you prefer). To connect to the audio/video-conference:Option 1. Click link below if you wish to connect through your computer (a headset is recommended) https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86998748216?pwd=K3JYa1ZLWis3dzEweFYvQ1VFZVVRdz09 The PASSWORD is: Ascension Option 2. Call in using your telephone. United States: +1 (346) 248 7799 or +1 (312) 626 6799 Access Code: 869-9874-8216 The PASSWORD is: Ascension Option 3. You can use a combination of Options 1 and 2 (computer and phone). If you use the phone, please turn off the audio on your computer to prevent audio feedback. For more info. contact Alberto Loya aloyavaca@peoplepc.com May Hope Spring Eternal – The CRC – Marianne Fieber, Alberto Loya, Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, David Howerton, Lisa Dalton Eurythmyst: Raven GarlandIn heavy clouds let Him ascend And so also let Him downward tread. In cooling streams let Him be sent, in flames of fire blaze His descent, In air and essence, sound and dew, To permeate our whole earth through. ~Novalis, born on May 2nd, 1772 — Happy birthday to him! |
