Category Archives: Quote

A Star among Stars

Community, Festival, Insight, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Storytelling
Allie Handlon

10:10 Testament, Inspired by Alice Groh & given by Rudolf Steiner:

The opposite force of gravity, is light. But we must bear the cross of our body, living consciously into this gravity-being of the Earth. Steiner says “Only when you immerse yourself completely in the element of weight or gravity can you advance to the experience of lightness” Light is connected with the Sun. In Winter the light & warmth rest in the Earth. “When you immerse yourself spiritually in gravity, you are led back to the cosmic past of the Earth & thereby to the experience of the moment when Earth was born out of the Divine Father-forces.

Terrence Gendle

How can we “strive to experience the Earth as a Star – as a star among stars”…? Steiner asks: “What makes something a star? Something is a star when it rays out, gleams, & has form & weight in it that holds the body together. But what is it that rays out from the star? It is the will of the beings that reside in the star. You Will – & the Earth radiates out into the universe.

It is in the feeling of the beings that reside in a star that make it gleam & sparkle. You feel – & the earth gleams as star into the universe.

It is the thinking that wraps light-filled around the star. You think – & your thinking allows the Earth to shimmer in waves of light.

In the perceiving & ‘touching’ of the beings that reside in the star, the star builds its density. Through your touch (referring to all we perceive) the Earth achieves its form.

It is just that you must so train your consciousness that your thinking, feeling & willing is not for you, but for the cosmos; so that it rays out, gleams, & shines into the widths of the cosmos. Through your thinking, feeling & willing, the Earth becomes visible to the beings on the other stars.

In the ray lives my will – for the good rays forth from the star
In the gleam lives my feeling – for love gleams on the star
In the sheath lives my thinking – for light works in the star
In gravity lives my touch – for density builds the star.

If you approach the Earth from out of the cosmos, you experience it as closed within an atmosphere of human karma. It surrounds the Earth like a warmth-love cloak, out of which your own karma speaks to you world-mightily.

When however human beings do not think, feel & will spiritually, when they refuse to meet the Guardian consciously, then no human experience shines into the cosmos. In the 19th century, as human beings stopped thinking spiritually, human thinking was not sufficient to let the Earth radiate. Yet a star must radiate. Because of that, in the last third of the 19th century, the higher animal group souls had to step in & send out their light.

At that time the cosmic disgrace of humanity began to radiate into the cosmos.

The evil that human beings think, feel, & will radiates out into the cosmos. It is still visible in the starry space after millions of years.

Alex Slopi

For that reason, there must be found in humanity souls whose spiritual knowledge allows the Earth to shine out as star into cosmic space for the residents of the other stars”.

~Rudolf Steiner, from Two Esoteric Lessons for the Youth Group, Stuttgart 13 July 1923 & Dornach 30 December 1923

Dear friends – Please Join Us as move toward the Winter Festival Season:

Thursday 23 December 2021 – The Eve of the Eve –
11 am PT / 12 pm MT / 1 pm CT / 2 pm ET / 7 pm UTC

A Christmas Festival with artistic elements (details coming soon)
& a talk by our Christian Community Priest Rev. Jeana Lee

‘Divine Love and the Holy Child Within’

This will be a hybrid in-person & Zoom event
Featuring our 2 camera technology with Mary Spalding

Doors open at 12:30 pm (Zoom Room open 12:45 pm for Social time)
Snacks to Share Encouraged

Suggested donation $15.00
cash payment at the door or via the Rudolf Steiner Branch PayPal donation site –
*Please make a note on the first line – type in: “Christmas Fest”!
The Festival will be recorded

Time: Dec 23, 2021 01:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/7052931041?pwd=Vk1XcDJqT0lKeHYzWXZJNlRYNlRvZz09
Meeting ID: 705 293 1041
Passcode: Christmas

For more info. Contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Hazel Archer-Ginsberg 

The Epic of Gilgamesh
Storytelling during the Holy Nights 2021-2022
Hosted by the Anthroposophical Society in America 

”The purpose of a story is to be an ax that breaks up the ice within us.”
~ Franz Kafka

Click to Register! 

All around the world the season of midwinter is the traditional time for community bonding through storytelling. In laying the groundwork for the 100-year anniversary of the Christmas Conference, we bring the ancient Sumerian saga “The Epic of Gilgamesh” to life. Rudolf Steiner explored this story in Occult History during the Holy Nights of 1910; and again with the lectures “World History in the Light of Anthroposophy” given during those fateful Holy Nights in 1923 for the re-founding of the Society. 

The Epic of Gilgamesh is perhaps the oldest written tale on Earth. The Sumerian version dates from around 3000 B.C. Later it was compiled from 12 clay tablets written in Akkadian cuneiform. 

It is the “Hero’s Journey” of human evolution, a story of friendship, and a quest for the meaning of life – revealing Steiner’s core mission of bringing karma and reincarnation to the west. 

Myths, fairytales, historical epics, and sagas open us up to powerful archetypes behind the human condition, revealing clues to ourselves – from the past, the present, and the future. What will we uncover about ourselves and each other during this year’s Holy Nights adventure in storytelling?

Tune in for any or all of the episodes of this dramatic reading, re-worked by Hazel Archer from various translations, and featuring friends from around the world.

What: The Epic of Gilgamesh: Story Telling during the Holy Nights hosted by the ASA, Hazel Archer, and friends.

Time: 22 minutes daily at 9 am PT / 10 am MT / 11 am CT / 12 pm ET / 5 pm UTC

Dates:  December 24, 2021- January 5, 2022 for 13 consecutive days  
Can’t join us live? No problem. Each gathering will be recorded and posted on our Holy Nights page (link will be emailed upon registration).

How: Register Here!  Then check your email for confirmation with the Zoom registration link. 

Cost: This event is free with suggested donations of $25, $50, $100
Your donations help us create events like this one!
Register Here! 
www.anthroposophy.org/holynights

Eurythmy for the Holy Nights with Jan Ranck
‘Tuning to the Stars’:
Sacred Geometry, the Planets and the Zodiac

LIVE IN-PERSON 26-30 Dec. 2021
at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago 4 pm – 5 pm
And at 7pm on 31 Dec. as part of our Annual NYE Gathering (details below)

$100 for all 6 sessions, or $22 for each individual session.

Make your payment using the Rudolf Steiner Branch PayPal
or QuickPay with Zelle to chase@rschicago.org
(Please indicate in the notes that it is for the “Holy Nights Eurythmy”)

Cash at the door, or send a check to:
Rudolf Steiner Branch
4249 North Lincoln Avenue
Chicago, IL 60618-2953
USA

For more info. Contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Hazel Archer-Ginsberg 

* Jan Ranck – Born in the USA, Jan Ranck studied music and comparative arts at Indiana University in Bloomington. She accompanied the London Stage Group on their 1976 USA tour and went on to study eurythmy at the Eurythmeum in Dornach with Lea van der Pals, where she subsequently taught. In 1984 she joined the faculty of The London School of Eurythmy. She left there to complete her eurythmy therapy training in Stuttgart in 1989, moving afterward to Israel, where she founded and directed the Jerusalem Eurythmy Ensemble (1990) and the Jerusalem Academy of Eurythmy (1992) and was an instructor in the Jerusalem Waldorf Teacher Bachelor Program in David Yellin Academic College from 1999. Jan has held Master Classes at various venues worldwide, including the Goetheanum and the MA Program in Eurythmy held at Emerson College and Spring Valley. She is the representative for Israel in the International Eurythmy Therapy Forum.

Friday 31 December 2021
Doors open at 6:30 pm 

Join us for our Annual NYE Conscious Community Gathering –
The Theme for 2022 is Cabaret – a Cultural Sharing!

All are invited to take the stage with an offering.

Circles Edge & other Waldorf alum will also perform

Please bring Festival Food & Drink to share

$20 Cash at the door or Make your payment using the Rudolf Steiner Branch PayPal or QuickPay with Zelle to chase@rschicago.org
(Please indicate in the notes that it is for the “NYE”)

All proceeds go to support the Rudolf Steiner Branch – the young People hosting & The Band (Can’t make it? Send a $ gift PayPal)

7 – 8 pm – Eurythmy with Jan Ranck (separate fee $22 see above)

8 pm – Potluck Social

8:30 pm – Circles Edge & Friends warm the stage & host the open mic

10:10 pm – Thought-Seed Circle

10:30 pm – Clean-up…;)

For more info. Contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Hazel Archer-Ginsberg 

Tuesday 4 January 2022 – (Zoom Details TBA) 
11 am PT / 12 pm MT / 1 pm CT / 2 pm ET / 7 pm UTC

a talk with Christian Community Priest & Lenker for North America
Rev. Craig Wiggins:
‘From Bethlehem to Golgotha: Birthing the Christ within at Epiphany’

Hold Hands

Biography, Calendar of the Soul, Community, Festival, History, Rudolf Steiner Quote
Alex Gray

One wields the Sun-sword of right thinking
The other fashions the sheath of our soul,
To show us to ourselves.
Together they battle the hardening in our perceptions or
Our evasion into illusion…
One is light
The other is color
When they hold hands,
Spirit & Soul are One in Wisdoms Love
So we can be
Truly human.

Upright between Heaven & Earth,
Together with Michael & Anthroposophia
We carry the Christ-Light
Of Spirit thru Soul
Into the dark halls of matter.

Dear friends, I am honored to tread the ever winding way with all of you. Together we hold the center, ring the bell, & step into halleluiah!
~hag

Moon in Gemini: Two positions of moon on succeeding days with Castor, Pollux, and other labeled stars.

21 November 2021 – “Speaking with the Stars”

DL Watson

RUDOLF STEINER’S CALENDAR OF THE SOUL
translated (with added titles) by Roy Sadler
There are 4 Advent verses between the death verse, 33, and the Christmas verse, 38,
which (if not, as next year, on a Sunday) is in the same week as the last Advent Sunday;
so this first Advent verse is a prelude to next week’s first Advent Sunday.
ADVENT I
Old Treasure’s Mystery Felt
v34
Mysteriously to feel
with newly risen sense of who I am
old treasure re-enlivening within me
shall rouse a tide of cosmic forces
that pouring into my endeavour for the world
will in becoming print me into that which is.

The title for the August mirror verse is from Eloise Krivosheia

LAMMASTIDE III
Feel Gratitude For Everything
v19
Mysteriously to sheathe
my life’s new seed with memory
be now my striving’s further aim
that strengthening it shall awake
my own true force within me
and in becoming give me who I am.

 Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

 ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY – Wikipedia – Rudolf Steiner Archives –

164 BCE – Judas Maccabeus, son of Mattathias of the Hasmonean family, restores the Temple in Jerusalem. This event is commemorated each year by the festival of Hanukkah.

1676 – The Danish astronomer Ole Rømer presents the first quantitative measurements of the speed of light.

1694 – Birthday of Voltaire, a French Enlightenment writer, historian, & philosopher famous for his wit, his criticism of Christianity, especially the Roman Catholic Church, as well as his advocacy of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state. Voltaire was a versatile & prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, & historical & scientific works. He wrote more than 20,000 letters & more than 2,000 books & pamphlets. He was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties, despite the risk this placed him in under the strict censorship laws of the time. He adopted the name Voltaire in 1718, following his incarceration at the Bastille. It is an anagram of AROVET LI, the Latinized spelling of his surname, Arouet, & the initial letters of le jeune (“the young”). According to a family tradition he was known as le petit volontaire (“determined little thing”) as a child, & he resurrected a variant of the name in his adult life. The name also reverses the syllables of Airvault, his family’s home town in the Poitou region. Voltaire perceived the French bourgeoisie to be too small and ineffective, the aristocracy to be parasitic and corrupt, the commoners as ignorant and superstitious, and the Church as a static and oppressive force useful only on occasion as a counterbalance to the rapacity of kings, although all too often, even more rapacious itself. Voltaire distrusted democracy, which he saw as propagating the idiocy of the masses. As a satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize intolerance, religious dogma, & the French institutions of his day.

1783 – In Paris, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier & François Laurent d’Arlandes, make the first untethered hot air balloon flight.

1789 – North Carolina ratifies the United States Constitution & is admitted as the 12th U.S. state.

1811 – Death day of Heinrich von Kleist, German poet & author, spoken about by Rudolf Steiner in THE INNER ASPECT OF THE MOON-EMBODIMENT OF THE EARTH. How can we fail to recognise that this man’s spirit in its entirety as he stands before us, is an actual living embodiment of that which dwells in the depths of the Soul, which we must trace back to something other than the life of earth if we wish to recognise it? Has not Heinrich Von Kleist described in the most significant manner what may live within a man (a description of which you will find at the very beginning of The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Mankind), as something transcending him and driving him, and which he will only understand later on if he does not snap the threads of his life before! Think of his ‘Penthesilea’; how much more there is in her than she can span with her earthly consciousness! We should not be able to describe her at all, did we not take for granted that her Soul was immeasurably further advanced than the narrow little soul (although it was a great one) which she could span with her earthly consciousness. Hence a situation must arise which artistically introduces the whole process of the Drama. Indeed, it was necessary to prevent the whole transaction — which Kleist introduces with Achilles — from being grasped with the higher consciousness; otherwise the whole tragedy could not be perceived. Hence Achilles is called ‘her’ Achilles. What lies in the higher consciousness must be plunged into the non-conscious. Again, what part does this subconsciousness play in Katchen Von Heilbronn, especially in the remarkable relation between her and Wetter Von Strahl, which plays no part in the higher consciousness, but in the deeper strata of the Soul where dwells the forces of which man knows nothing, which pass from one to another. When we have this before us we can trace the spiritual nature of the world’s forces of gravity and attraction. For instance, in the scene where Katchen stands before her admirers, do we not feel what lives in the subconsciousness, and how it is related to what is outside in the world which has been dryly called the forces of our planet’s attractions? Yet only 100 years ago a truly penetrating and striving mind was not able to find his way into that subconsciousness. But it must be done to-day. And the tragedy of a Prince of Homburg strikes us in a very different way now. I should like to know how an abstract thinker, one who accounts for everything by reason alone, could account for a figure such as the Prince of Homburg, who carried out all his great deeds in a kind of dream-state, even those leading finally to victory. Kleist indicates very clearly that he could not possibly gain the victory by means of his higher consciousness, for as far as that was concerned he was not a particularly great man, for he whines and whimpers over everything he has to do. Only when by a special effort of the will, he brings up what dwells in the depths of his Soul, does he play the man.

1877 – Thomas Edison announces his invention of the phonograph, a machine that can record and play sound.

1905 – Albert Einstein’s paper that leads to the mass–energy equivalence formula, E = mc², is published in the journal Annalen der Physik.

1916 – Deathday of Franz Joseph I of Austria, spoken about by Steiner in The History and Actuality of Imperialism

The Emperor of Austria, who now belongs to the deposed royalty, before he was chased out carried around along with his other titles a most unusual one: Franz Joseph I, Emperor of Austria, Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slovenia, Galizia, Lodomeria, Illyia and so on. Among all these titles was also “King of Jerusalem!” The Austrian Emperor also carried, until he was no longer emperor, the title “King of Jerusalem.” It came from the crusades. It would be impossible to give a better example of meaninglessness than this. And such meaninglessness plays a much greater role than you imagine. It is a question of whether we can arise to a recognition of the present-day platitudes. It is made difficult because those who live in platitudes are the verbal representatives of the old concepts that stagger around in their brains imitating thoughts. But one can only achieve real thinking again when the inner soul-life is filled with substance and that can only come from knowledge of the spiritual world, of spiritual life. Only by being relieved by the spirit can one become a complete person, after having been constipated with platitudes. What I described yesterday as a feeling of shame will result in the call for the spirit. And the propagation of the spirit will only be possible if the spiritual/cultural sector is allowed to develop independently.

1927 – Columbine Mine massacre: Striking coal miners are attacked with machine guns by a detachment of state police dressed in civilian clothes.

‘Tuning to the Stars’: Eurythmy for the Holy Nights with Jan Ranck* –
Sacred Geometry, the Planets and the Zodiac
LIVE IN-PERSON 26-30 Dec. 2021 at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago 4 pm – 5 pm
And at 7pm on 31 Dec. as part of our annual NYE Conscious Community Gathering (details above)
 
$100 for all 6 sessions, or $22 for each individual session.
Make your payment using PayPal
or QuickPay with Zelle to chase@rschicago.org  
(please indicate in the notes that it is for the Holy Nights Eurythmy)
Cash at the door, or send a check to:
Rudolf Steiner Branch
4249 North Lincoln Avenue
Chicago, IL 60618-2953
USA
 
For more info. Contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Hazel Archer-Ginsberg 
 
* Jan Ranck – Born in the USA, Jan Ranck studied music and comparative arts at Indiana University in Bloomington. She accompanied the London Stage Group on their 1976 USA tour and went on to study eurythmy at the Eurythmeum in Dornach with Lea van der Pals, where she subsequently taught. In 1984 she joined the faculty of The London School of Eurythmy. She left there to complete her eurythmy therapy training in Stuttgart in 1989, moving afterward to Israel, where she founded and directed the Jerusalem Eurythmy Ensemble (1990) and the Jerusalem Academy of Eurythmy (1992) and was an instructor in the Jerusalem Waldorf Teacher Bachelor Program in David Yellin Academic College from 1999. Jan has held Master Classes at various venues worldwide, including the Goetheanum and the MA Program in Eurythmy held at Emerson College and Spring Valley. She is the representative for Israel in the International Eurythmy Therapy Forum.

Join us for our Annual NYE Conscious Community Gathering – The Theme for 2022 is Cabaret – a Cultural Sharing! All are invited to take the stage with an offering.

Circles Edge & other Waldorf alum will also perform

31 December Doors open at 6:30 pm – 4248 N. Lincoln Ave. Chicago, IL. 60618

Please bring Festival Food & Drink to share

$20 goes to support the Rudolf Steiner Branch – the young People hosting & in The Band

7 – 8 pm – Eurythmy with Jan Ranck (separate fee $20)

8:30 pm – Circles Edge & Friends warm the stage & host the open mic

10:10 pm – Thought-Seed Circle

10:30 pm – Clean-up…;)

For more info. Contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Hazel Archer-Ginsberg 

Question

Poetry, Rudolf Steiner Quote

~Hail wind in my face
Blown from the mouths of gods…
I return the goslings to their nest…
The hawk soars freely above the great inland sea…
May we live in peace…
~hag

Look up next week! Leonids Meteor Shower will peak on Wednesday | Daily Mail Online
sky&telescope

17 November 2021 – “Speaking with the Stars”: The Leonid meteor shower peaks today, but the bright Moon will make spotting shower meteors nearly impossible – Try during the early morning predawn hours, when Leo is highest in the sky. The shower lasts until November 30th. Bella Luna passes south of Uranus at 8 pm CST tonight. The pair shines in Aries, which is bordered by the constellations Cetus, Pisces, Triangulum, Perseus. Taurus, and Eridanus. While you’re in the area, you might also zoom in on clusters such as like the Pleiades and the Perseus Double Cluster, which will be visible — if somewhat diminished — by the bright moonlight.

~Rudolf Steiner

 Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

 ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

“Art is a continuous setting free of the human spirit; it also educates humanity about how to act out of love. ” ~Rudolf Steiner

1624 – Deathday of Jakob Böhme, a shoemaker in Görlitz, Silesia, is regarded to be one of the most profound mystics in Germany.

“Jakob Böhme’s thoroughly healthy way of knowledge — his original deeper heart’s knowledge, so in accordance with the feeling of the people — beheld freedom as weaving and working through everything necessitated, working even through natural necessity. And Schelling, ascending from a view of nature in accordance with the spirit to a beholding of the spirit, felt himself in harmony with Jakob Böhme…

Hegel‘s world view has its place in the course of mankind’s spiritual evolution through the fact that in it the radiant power of thoughts lifts itself up out of the mystical depths of the soul, and through the fact that in Hegel’s seeking, mystical power wants to reveal itself with the power of the light of thought. And this is also how he sees his place in the course of this evolution. Therefore he looked back upon Jakob Böhme in the way expressed in these words (to be found in his History of Philosophy): “This Jakob Böhme, long forgotten and decried as a pietistic visionary, has regained his rightful esteem only in recent times; Leibniz revered him. His public has been greatly reduced by the Age of Enlightenment; in recent times his profundity has been recognized again. … To declare him a visionary means nothing. For if one wants to, one can call every philosopher so, even Epicurus and Bacon. … But as to the high esteem to which Böhme has been raised, he owes this particularly to the form of his contemplation and feeling; for, contemplation and inner feeling … and the pictorial nature of one’s thoughts the allegories and so on — are partly considered to be the essential form of philosophy. But it is only the concept, thinking, in which philosophy can have its truth, in which the absolute can be expressed and also is as it is in and for itself.” And Hegel finds these further words for Böhme: “Jakob Böhme is the first German philosopher; the content of his philosophizing is truly German. What distinguishes Böhme and makes him remarkable is … that he set the intellectual world into his own inner life (Gemüt), and within his own consciousness of himself he beheld, knew, and felt everything that used to be in the beyond. This general idea of Böhme proves on the one hand to be profound and basic; on the other hand, however, he does not achieve clarity and order in all his need and struggle for definition and discrimination in developing his divine views about the universe.”

Such words are spoken by Hegel, after all, only from the feeling: In the simple heart of Jakob Böhme there lived the deepest impulse of the human soul to sink itself with its own experience into world experience — the true mystical impulse — but the pictorial view, the parable, the symbol must lift themselves to the light of clear ideas in order to attain what they want. In Hegel’s world view Jakob Böhme’s world pictures are meant to arise again as ideas of human reason. Thus the enthusiast of thoughts, Hegel, stands beside the deep mystic, Jakob Böhme, within the evolution of German idealism”. ~Rudolf Steiner, The Riddle of Man

1858 – Deathday of Robert Owen, Welsh manufacturer turned reformer, one of the most influential early 19th-century advocates of utopian socialism. His New Lanark mills in Lanarkshire, Scotland, with their social & industrial welfare programs, became a place of pilgrimage for statesmen & social reformers. He also sponsored or encouraged many experimental “utopian” communities, including one in New Harmony, Indiana, U.S.

1869 – In Egypt, the Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, is opened

1901 –October 1901 to April 1902, Rudolf Steiner delivered a series of lectures in the Theosophical Library leading from the ancient mysteries up to the mystery of Golgotha which provided a comprehensive expansion of the subject treated in the previous year on mysticism. These lectures were published as Christianity As Mystical Fact

According to T.H. Meyer & Johannes Hemleben, in his book “Rudolf Steiner: A documentary biography”: Today 17 NOVEMBER in 1901 Marie von Sivers asks THE question of Rudolf Steiner –Marie von Sivers “appeared one day” at one of Rudolf Steiner’s early lectures in 1900. In the autumn of 1901, she posed the question to Steiner, “Would it be possible to create a spiritual movement based on European tradition and the impetus of Christ?” Rudolf Steiner later reported:

With this, I was given the opportunity to act in a way that I had only previously imagined. The question had been put to me, and now, according to spiritual laws, I could begin to answer it.

From Rudolf Steiner’s The Story of My Life, Chapter 30: “The Brockdorffs were leaders of a branch of the Theosophical Society founded by Blavatsky. What I had said in connection with Goethe’s fairy-tale led to my being invited by the Brockdorffs to deliver lectures regularly before those members of the Theosophical Society who were associated with them. I explained, however, that I could speak only about that which I vitally experienced within me as spiritual knowledge.

In truth, I could speak of nothing else. For very little of the literature issued by the Theosophical Society was known to me. I had known theosophists while living in Vienna, and I later became acquainted with others. These acquaintance ships led me to write in the Magazine the adverse review dealing with the theosophists in connection with the appearance of a publication of Franz Hartmann. What I knew otherwise of the literature was for the most part entirely uncongenial to me in method and approach; I could not by any possibility have linked my discussions with this literature.

So I then gave the lectures in which I established a connection with the mysticism of the Middle Ages. By means of the ideas of the mystics from Master Eckhard to Jakob Böhme, I found expression for the spiritual conceptions which in reality I had determined beforehand to set forth. I published the series of lectures in the book Die Mystik im Aufgange des neuzeitlichen Geisteslebens(2). At these lectures there appeared one day in the audience Marie von Sievers, who was chosen by destiny at that time to take into strong hands the German section of the Theosophical Society, founded soon after the beginning of my lecturing. Within this section I was then able to develop my anthroposophic activity before a constantly increasing audience.

No one was left in uncertainty of the fact that I would bring forward in the Theosophical Society only the results of my own research through perception…

My object was to set forth the evolution from the ancient mysteries to the mystery of Golgotha in such a way that in this evolution there should be seen to be active, not merely earthly historic forces, but spiritual supramundane influences. And I wished to show that in the ancient mysteries cult-pictures were given of cosmic events, which were then fulfilled in the mystery of Golgotha as facts transferred from the cosmos to the earth of the historic plane.

This was by no means taught in the Theosophical Society. In this view I was in direct opposition to the theosophical dogmatics of the time, before I was invited to work in the Theosophical Society. For this invitation followed immediately after the cycle of lectures on Christ here described.

Between the two cycles of lectures that I gave before the Theosophical Society, Marie von Sievers was in Italy, at Bologna, working on behalf of the Theosophical Society in the branch established there.

Thus the thing evolved up to the time of my first attendance at a theosophical congress, in London, in the year 1902. At this congress, in which Marie von Sievers also took part, it was already a foregone conclusion that a German section of the Society would be founded with myself – shortly before invited to become a member – as the general secretary.

The visit to London was of great interest to me. I there became acquainted with important leaders of the Theosophical Society. I had the privilege of staying at the home of Mr. Bertram Keightley, one of these leaders. We became great friends. I became acquainted with Mr. Mead, the very diligent secretary of the Theosophical Movement. The most interesting conversations imaginable took place at the home of Mr. Keightley in regard to the forms of spiritual knowledge alive within the Theosophical Society.

Especially intimate were these conversations with Bertram Keightley himself. H. P. Blavatsky seemed to live again in these conversations. Her whole personality, with its wealth of spiritual content, was described with the utmost vividness before me and Marie von Sievers by my dear host, who had been so long associated with her.

I became slightly acquainted with Annie Besant and also Sinnett, author of Esoteric Buddhism. Mr. Leadbeater I did not meet, but only heard him speak from the platform. He made no special impression on me.

All that was interesting in what I heard stirred me deeply, but it had no influence upon the content of my own views.

1907 – Birthday of Israel Regardie, English occultist & author

‘Tuning to the Stars’: Eurythmy for the Holy Nights with Jan Ranck* –
Sacred Geometry, the Planets and the Zodiac
LIVE IN-PERSON 26-30 Dec. 2021 at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago 4 pm – 5 pm
And at 8pm on 31 Dec. as part of our annual NYE Conscious Community Gathering (details TBA)
 
$100 for all 6 sessions, or $22 for each individual session.
Make your payment using PayPal
or QuickPay with Zelle to chase@rschicago.org  
(please indicate in the notes that it is for the Holy Nights Eurythmy)
Cash at the door, or send a check to:
Rudolf Steiner Branch
4249 North Lincoln Avenue
Chicago, IL 60618-2953
USA
 
For more info. Contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Hazel Archer-Ginsberg hag@RSchicago.org
 
* Jan Ranck – Born in the USA, Jan Ranck studied music and comparative arts at Indiana University in Bloomington. She accompanied the London Stage Group on their 1976 USA tour and went on to study eurythmy at the Eurythmeum in Dornach with Lea van der Pals, where she subsequently taught. In 1984 she joined the faculty of The London School of Eurythmy. She left there to complete her eurythmy therapy training in Stuttgart in 1989, moving afterward to Israel, where she founded and directed the Jerusalem Eurythmy Ensemble (1990) and the Jerusalem Academy of Eurythmy (1992) and was an instructor in the Jerusalem Waldorf Teacher Bachelor Program in David Yellin Academic College from 1999. Jan has held Master Classes at various venues worldwide, including the Goetheanum and the MA Program in Eurythmy held at Emerson College and Spring Valley. She is the representative for Israel in the International Eurythmy Therapy Forum.

Enhance

Autumn, Biography, Poetry, Quote, Speaking with the Stars
E Taylor

“When you put your hand in a flowing stream, you touch the last that has gone before, and the first of what is still to come”. ~Leonardo da Vinci.

I stand with the swirling wind, a witness to the trees. Their dancing leaves a bright metamorphosis gifting the earth – enriching the soil. Can my thoughts join with their selfless giving? What can I do to make my life a gift to the future?

I will my thought to penetrate to the essence of spirit behind the fiery face of Nature’s dying. I am met by the souls of the dead. They too are working to enliven the earth – sending forces from the vast spiritual worlds.

As I walk, I am wrapped in the fertile scent of Autumn’s moldering. And my thoughts turn to the souls waiting to come down the rainbow bridge into a new life.

How can we cultivate our relationship to these unborn?  What will we create to enhance the destinies of our descendants? How can we live so that we preserve & augment the wonders of the world?

As we ponder our possible contributions – & take practical action to deepen our commitment to them – perhaps we can keep in mind this thought from Lewis Carroll: “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backward.”

~hag

12 November 2021 – “Speaking with the Stars”: This evening Bella Luna shines left of Jupiter and Saturn, forming a gentle curving arc with them.

Kendra Miller

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

 ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1793 – Jean Sylvain Bailly, the first Mayor of Paris, is guillotined during the Reign of Terror. Bailly was a French astronomer, mathematician, freemason, & political leader of the early part of the French Revolution.

1840 – Birthday of Auguste Rodin, French sculptor & illustrator, created The Thinker

1927 – Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, leaving Joseph Stalin in undisputed control of the Soviet Union.

1956 – In the midst of the Suez Crisis, or the Second Arab–Israeli War, Palestinian refugees are shot dead in Rafah by Israeli soldiers following the invasion of the Gaza Strip. The canal continued to be strategically important after the Second World War as a conduit for the shipment of oil. As a result of the conflict, the United Nations created the UNEF Peacekeepers to police the Egyptian–Israeli border, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigned, Canadian Minister of External Affairs Lester Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize, & the USSR may have been emboldened to invade Hungary.

1979 – Iran hostage crisis: One of the leading national issues during that year was the release of 52 Americans being held hostage in Iran since November 4, 1979.  In response to the hostage situation in Tehran, US President Jimmy Carter orders a halt to all petroleum imports into the United States from Iran. The Iran hostage crisis continued into 1980, & as the November 1980 presidential election approached, there were concerns in the Republican Party camp that a resolution of the crisis would give incumbent Jimmy Carter enough of an electoral boost to be re-elected.

Reagan won the election, because the hostages were not released before the election, but on the day of Reagan’s inauguration—in fact, 20 minutes after he concluded his inaugural address—the Islamic Republic of Iran announced the release of the hostages. The timing gave rise to an allegation that representatives of Reagan’s presidential campaign had conspired with Iran to delay the release until after the election to thwart President Carter from pulling off an “October surprise”.

According to the allegation, the Reagan Administration rewarded Iran for its participation in the plot by supplying Iran with weapons via Israel & by unblocking Iranian government monetary assets in US banks.

The House October Surprise Task Force outlined as “principal allegations” three supposed meetings between representatives of Reagan’s campaign & Iranian government officials in the summer & fall of 1980 to delay the release of the hostages: 1) a meeting in Madrid during the summer, 2) a meeting at the L’Enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington, D.C that autumn, & 3) a meeting in Paris in October.

The Task Force characterized three other meetings or contacts as “ancillary allegations”: 1) a meeting at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. in early spring 1980, 2) a meeting at the Churchill Hotel in London in the summer of 1980, and 3) a meeting at the Sherry Netherlands Hotel in New York in January 1981.

  • March 1980: Jamshid Hashimi, international arms dealer, is visited by William Casey at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel, who asks that a meeting be arranged with “someone in Iran who had authority to deal on the hostages”.
  • March 21, 1980: Jamshid Hashimi & his brother Cyrus Hashimi meet at the latter’s home.
  • April 1980: Donald Gregg, a U.S. National Security Council aide with connections to George Bush, meets Cyrus Hashimi in New York’s Shazam restaurant, near Hashimi’s bank.  Former Iranian President Abolhassan Banisadr said in his 1991 book My Turn to Speak that he had “proof of contacts between Khomeini & the supporters of Ronald Reagan as early as the spring of 1980…. Rafsanjani, Beheshti, & Ahmed Khomeini [the Ayatollah’s son] played key roles.”
  • Last week of July 1980: At a meeting in Madrid arranged by the Hashimi brothers that includes Robert Gray, a man identified as Donald Gregg, & Mahdi Karrubi, William Casey says that if Iran could assure that American hostages were well treated until their release & were released as a “gift” to the new administration, “the Republicans would be most grateful & ‘would give Iran its strength back.’” Karrubi says he has “no authority to make such a commitment.”
  • About August 12, 1980: Karrubi meets again with Casey, saying Khomeini has agreed to the proposal. Casey agrees the next day, naming Cyrus Hashimi as middleman to handle the arms transactions. More meetings are set for October. Cyrus Hashimi purchases a Greek ship & commences arms deliveries valued at $150 million from the Israeli port of Eilat to Bandar Abbas. According to CIA sources, Hashimi receives a $7 million commission. Casey is said to use an aide named Tom Carter in the negotiations.
  • September 22, 1980: Iraq invades Iran.
  • Late September 1980: An expatriate Iranian arms dealer named Hushang Lavi claims he met with Richard V. Allen, the Reagan campaign’s national security expert, Robert “Bud” McFarlane, & Lawrence Silberman, & discussed the possible exchange of F-4 parts for American hostages, but Lavi says they asserted they “were already in touch with the Iranians themselves”.
  • October 15–20: Meetings are held in Paris between emissaries of the Reagan/Bush campaign, with Mr. William Casey as “key participant”, & “high-level Iranian & Israeli representatives”.
  • October 21: Iran, for reasons not explained, abruptly shifts its position in secret negotiations with the Carter administration & disclaims “further interest in receiving military equipment”.
  • October 21–23: Israel secretly ships F-4 fighter-aircraft tires to Iran, in violation of the U.S. arms embargo, & Iran disperses the hostages to different locations.
  • January 20, 1981: Hostages are formally released into United States custody after spending 444 days in captivity. The release takes place just minutes after Ronald Reagan is sworn in as president.

Several individuals—most notably former Iranian President Abulhassan Banisadr, former naval intelligence officer and U.S. National Security Council member Gary Sick, & former Reagan/Bush campaign staffer & White House analyst Barbara Honegger—have continued to speak out about this truth, to no avail. ~Infogalactic

1996 – A Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747 & a Kazakh Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane collide in mid-air near New Delhi, killing 349. The deadliest mid-air collision to date.

1997 – Ramzi Yousef is found guilty of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

1999 –Düzce earthquake shakes northwestern Turkey. At least 1845 people were killed & almost 5,000 were injured.

2001 – In New York City, American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus A300 en route to the Dominican Republic, crashes minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 260 on board & five on the ground.

2017 – The Kermanshah earthquake shakes the northern Iran–Iraq border. At least 2410 people were killed & over 7,000 were injured.

~Sharpening my pointy chin…
I go
Questing in the shadowland.
From my hands the horn of plenty flows freely
The ghosts are fed, the unborn, ready…
I remind them
The Earth is an apple
Ripening in space.
Blue starlight filters thru
The outstretched wings of a bird, like wind in the fire,
As our walk-about leads ever onward
In the unending rhythm of the light
Glowing in the dark…
~hag

‘Tuning to the Stars’: Eurythmy for the Holy Nights with Jan Ranck* –
Sacred Geometry, the Planets and the Zodiac
LIVE IN-PERSON 26-30 Dec. 2021 at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago 4 pm – 5 pm
And at 8pm on 31 Dec. as part of our annual NYE Conscious Community Gathering (details TBA)
 
$100 for all 6 sessions, or $22 for each individual session.
Make your payment using PayPal
or QuickPay with Zelle to chase@rschicago.org  
(please indicate in the notes that it is for the Holy Nights Eurythmy)
Cash at the door, or send a check to:
Rudolf Steiner Branch
4249 North Lincoln Avenue
Chicago, IL 60618-2953
USA
 
For more info. Contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Hazel Archer-Ginsberg hag@RSchicago.org
 
* Jan Ranck – Born in the USA, Jan Ranck studied music and comparative arts at Indiana University in Bloomington. She accompanied the London Stage Group on their 1976 USA tour and went on to study eurythmy at the Eurythmeum in Dornach with Lea van der Pals, where she subsequently taught. In 1984 she joined the faculty of The London School of Eurythmy. She left there to complete her eurythmy therapy training in Stuttgart in 1989, moving afterward to Israel, where she founded and directed the Jerusalem Eurythmy Ensemble (1990) and the Jerusalem Academy of Eurythmy (1992) and was an instructor in the Jerusalem Waldorf Teacher Bachelor Program in David Yellin Academic College from 1999. Jan has held Master Classes at various venues worldwide, including the Goetheanum and the MA Program in Eurythmy held at Emerson College and Spring Valley. She is the representative for Israel in the International Eurythmy Therapy Forum.

Adaptable

History, Poetry, Rudolf Steiner Quote
Joan Miró

~A blueprint unfolding gold
A formula forthcoming
Renewed in the heart convulsing
Thru me the past flows like blood.
Let the vultures gobble the sin with the flesh…
Beyond numbers that bind minds into boxes –
Rounding up to the stars reaching
Gentling the horns with peat moss & beeswax,
I rise above the crescent moon
~hag

‘I think Speech’ podcast

Video recordings

Richard Lindner

10/11/21 – “Speaking with the Stars”:

Moon passing Saturn and Jupiter, Nov. 10-11, 2021
sky & telescope

 Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

 ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

461 – Birthday of Pope Leo, the first pope to be called “the Great”. He is perhaps best known for having met Attila the Hun in 452, persuading him to turn back from his invasion of Italy. He is also a Doctor of the Church, most remembered theologically for issuing the Tome of Leo, a document which was a major foundation to the debates of the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon which elucidated the orthodox definition of Christ’s being as the hypostatic union of two natures, divine & human, united in one person.

1483 – Birthday of Martin Luther, German monk & priest, leader of the Protestant Reformation

1493 – Birthday of Paracelsus “In order to understand Paracelsus, one must look at the basic character of his work as a doctor and as a philosopher, and grasp him as a theosophist, as he combined these both soul characters with each other. This personality was uniform. With brilliant look, he tried to grasp the construction of the world edifice. His surprised sight looked up at the secrets of the starry heaven, became engrossed in the construction of the earth and in particular in the construction of the human being himself. This brilliant sight penetrated also into the secrets of the spiritual life. He was also a theosophist, while he tried to enclose the nature of the astronomical knowledge and at the same time the nature of anthropology, the doctrine of the human being in connection with the doctrine of all living beings. Nothing was mere theory in him, everything was immediate in such a way that it was bent on practise, that he wanted to use all that he knew for the welfare, the spiritual and physical health of the human being. This gives his work, his thinking, and investigations the big, immense unity. This makes him appear as sharply carved from one single piece of wood. Thus, he stands before us as an original, elementary personality.” see The Riddles of the World and Anthroposophy by Rudolf Steiner.

1759 – Birthday of Friedrich Schiller, German poet, playwright, & historian. From Rudolf Steiner in Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies – Volume VI “I should like to speak today about an individual who was incarnated about the second century A.D. in Rome, as it then was, and who with great sensitiveness of perception had witnessed the willing martyrdom suffered by the Christians in their efforts to promulgate their cause in the Roman Empire. This individual had also witnessed the terrible injustices and the many forms of depravity and corruption which were so rife in the Roman Empire at that time. Numberless manifestations of Good and Evil were witnessed and experienced by this individual. With the methods of spiritual research which enable such happenings to be recognised, we find this individual drawn into the tumultuous happenings which at that time, during the second half of the second century A.D., were experienced in the Roman Empire in connection with the spread of Christianity. There is something extremely moving about this individual when the eye of spirit is directed upon him in the way I explained last time with reference to other individuals in their repeated earthly lives.

In this individual who lived to a very great age and who had witnessed so much Good in deeds of supreme sacrifice in the sphere of germinating Christianity, and so much that was evil and bad in Roman life at that time, there arose a kind of realisation which was also a question: Where is the balance, the mean? Is there only the wholly Good and the wholly Evil in the world?

With the consciousness of Imagination and Inspiration one can follow quite clearly how this individual was subsequently reborn in the eleventh century, as a woman. The experiences undergone in the life as a woman levelled out the hard, steel-like angularity of soul which had developed during the Roman incarnation when he had reached a great age. This trait was softened and mellowed and became a faculty of inner, thoughtful contemplation of Good and Evil. This individual then came again to the Earth in the eighteenth century and was born as the German poet, Friedrich Schiller.

And now study Schiller’s life and see how it develops, striving to find a middle condition, a balance, a mean. Schiller needed Goethe before he could get rid of all that had remained in him from the conviction that there is only Good, there is only Evil. Read Schiller’s dramas, and you will understand them if you think of his earlier incarnation.

What circumstances lie behind Schiller’s life and outlook? The experiences he had undergone in the Roman incarnation continued to be alive within him, but he had subsequently incarnated as a woman in the Middle Ages. And then, in his life between death and a new birth, it was in the Saturn sphere that the most significant development of his karma took place.”

1939 – Deathday of Frederick Eckstein, an Austrian polymath, theosophist, Anthroposophist, & friend & co-worker of Sigmund Freud. Emil Molt states: ‘ Frederick Eckstein was the benefactor of Bruckner and Hugo Wolf, indeed the right arm of Bruckner, taking care that affairs went smoothly. He was a world traveller, had mastered Jui-jitsu and taught himself all sorts of difficult tricks. The story went around that he had trained himself to jump off a fast moving train without getting hurt. He too, was a highly gifted mathematician and a learned man in many respects.’

Also the husband of fellow theosophist & writer Bertha Diener, Eckstein’s penchant for occultism first became evident as a member of a vegetarian group which discussed the doctrines of Pythagoras & the Neo-Platonists in Vienna at the end of the 1870s. His esoteric interests later extended to German & Spanish mysticism, the legends surrounding the Templars & the freemasons, Wagnerian mythology & oriental religions. In 1886, in the week after the tragedy at Mayerling, in which Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, & his mistress were found dead in mysterious circumstances, he & his friend, the composer Anton Bruckner (for whom he also served as private secretary) traveled to the monastery of Stift Heiligenkreuz to ask the abbot there for details of what happened.

He introduced C. G. Harrison to Rudolf Steiner, the writer of ‘Transcendental Universe, Six Lectures on Occult Science, Theosophy and the Catholic Faith’. Most spiritual impulses at work today can be traced back to the nineteenth century explosion of esotericism. In The Transcendental Universe, one of the most enigmatic and thought-provoking works of the period, C. G. Harrison, a mysterious and unknown figure, examines Theosophy from an esoteric Christian standpoint and separates the true gnosis from the false. With great personal courage, he makes public much esoteric knowledge that had remained hidden within the occult orders. Self-initiated and unaffiliated, he speaks authoritatively on: the secret history of Spiritualism and Theosophy; the nature of initiates, esoteric societies, and secret brotherhoods; occult science; the true nature of God, matter, evil, and the evolution of consciousness; the angelic hierarchies: the Archangel Michael, Beelzebub, and the War in Heaven; the coming sixth epoch, and more. Previously known only to esotericists, this important work is now made available to the general public ninety-nine years after its original publication.

1940 – The Vrancea earthquake strikes Romania killing an estimated 1,000 & injuring approximately 4,000 more

1975 – The 729-foot-long freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald sinks during a storm on Lake Superior, killing all 129 crew on board.

1975 – Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the United Nations General Assembly passes Resolution 3379, determining that Zionism is a form of racism

1983 – Bill Gates introduces Windows 1.0

Bayley Bazister

Be adaptable – like Water:

“Water is sometimes sharp and sometimes strong, sometimes acid and sometimes bitter, sometimes sweet and sometimes thick or thin, sometimes it is seen bringing hurt or pestilence, sometime health-giving, sometimes poisonous.

It allows change into as many natures as are the different places through which it passes. And as the mirror changes with the colour of its subject, so it alters with the nature of the place, becoming noisome, laxative, astringent, sulfurous, salty, incarnadined, mournful, raging, angry, red, yellow, green, black, blue, greasy, fat or slim.

Sometimes it starts a conflagration, sometimes it extinguishes one; is warm and is cold, carries away or sets down, hollows out or builds up, tears or establishes, fills or empties, raises itself or burrows down, speeds or is still; is the cause at times of life or death, or increase or privation, nourishes at times and at others does the contrary; at times has a tang, at times is without savor, sometimes submerging the valleys with great floods.

In time and with water, everything changes” ~Leonardo da Vinci

“She focused on the words: “He gives moisture to the dead.” It was a gift to the shadow world – tears. They would be sacred beyond a doubt. Nothing on this planet had so forcefully hammered into here the ultimate value of water. Not the water-sellers, not the dried skins of the natives, nor the stillsuits or the rules of water discipline. Here there was a substance more precious than all others – it was life itself and entwined all around with symbolism and ritual.

Water reflects the truth” from Dune ~Frank Herbert