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Blessings friends on this eve of Whitsunday 2021 –

The Holy Grail is the esoteric image of the whole of evolution; a living container which connects the ancient wisdom centers, with esoteric Christianity. It is a key to the New Mysteries which are ever emerging in our time. The Grail integrates the etherized blood of the Christos, with the Feminine aspect of the Holy Spirit, which descends on Whitsunday like tongues of fire – 1st to the heads of the disciples; penetrating then into their hearts, opening the larynx along the way, enabling them to speak the language of the heart, uniting all in a new community – The 1^st foundation for the Temple of the Heart.

Rudolf Steiner tells us in his ‘Philosophy of Spiritual Activity’: ‘Only because human individuals are one spirit can they also enjoy life side by side. The free person lives in confidence that the other free person belongs with them to a spiritual world, and in their highest intentions, will meet with them’. And Philosopher Friedrich Schiller once said “Take the divine into your will, and it descends from its cosmic throne.”

In 1907 Rudolf Steiner created the ‘Whitsun Congress’ as a new Rosicrucian impulse, displaying the 7 seals of St. John’s Apocalypse, a representation of the 7 stages of human evolution, and of the Christian initiation.

The Whitsun spirit came alive again through Rudolf Steiner for the 3rd time in history, with the re-founding of the Anthroposophical Society at the Christmas Conference. The deed of laying the Foundation Stone of Love into the hearts of those connected with the Anthroposophical movement, created what Steiner called a “World Whitsun” – The renewing of Wisdom, connected with Steiner’s deed of Love and Sacrifice, inaugurated the possibility for the human soul to transform into a chalice for Anthroposophia.

In the Celtic stories, the Grail symbolizes both the Womb and the Tomb, belonging to the Mother Goddess, for it is She who initiates the cycles of life, death, and rebirth.  This is now transformed into the primary Christian image of the Holy Grail containing the redemptive Blood of Her Son. Ever and again, the Chalice which contains the sacrificial Blood, becomes the Womb which gives new life to the faithful during the Ritual of the Eucharist.

Those who partake of this Chalice receive the essence of the Resurrected Life – a spiritual striving that has its reflection in the Quest of the Knights for the Holy Grail. It is also the task of the Grail seeker today, to bring the Sophia forth from her exile, in the renewal of the Christian mysteries.

This quest begins in the Wisdom literature of the scriptures and the Apocrypha, where Sophia is recognized as the first creation of God, an emanation of the Divine Light, and also as co-creator and mediator between God and the world.

Christian Mystic and alchemist Jacob Boehme tells us: “The Sophia is the ‘seeing’ as Holy Spirit, the ‘mirror’ as Son, and the ‘eye’ as Father… The noble Sophia hides herself in the fountain of Christ.”

This shows an understanding of her role as the creative power of the Divine – the Heavenly figure of Wisdom, and the “World-Soul” which is the Divine Presence within creation.

Our modern Grail Quest today follows the pathways of The Sophia hidden in the Chalice of Christ. For the Grail is also the vessel of Sophia.

A major theme of the Grail stories is the loss of this Grail – the loss of the ‘Soul of the World’, and the devastation of the land which ensues. When we are once again able to hear Sophia’s message, we will realize that every created thing is seeded with the Divine. When we drink from Her Cup, we become aware of the sacredness of the natural world.

The paradoxical nature of Sophia’s Chalice is that, while it provides limitless nourishment, it is at the same time, an empty vessel – For the Grail is the receptive ground from which all nature arises, and into which the Divine pours itself. The mystery of the Grail is that it contains all things, and yet it is open, pure and virginal.

For if we gaze long enough into the Grail, following the meditative practice of Spiritual Science, we may see the essential openness – the seeming void of deep space, which is beyond time, before creation or mortality.

These polarities of existence are expressed in the many images of the Grail: the primal Cauldron of the Goddess, which gives both life and death; the Chalice of Christ’s blood, which represents the suffering of Good Friday and the Joy of Easter, and the World-Soul, experienced through the expansion into the heights of Ascension, which then calls down the tongues of fire, bringing the Holy Spirit into our will.

The Grail as both the Chalice of Christ and the Cauldron of Sophia, brings a differentiated wholeness, consisting of a dynamic balance between Love and Wisdom – expressed as the Sangraal of ‘Christos-Sophia.’

~hag

Join us tomorrow:

Sangraal: A Pentecost Pilgrimage & Whitsun Festival with the Central Regional Council an experiential ‘Pageant’ written by Hazel Archer, taking us on a Quest from The Cauldron of Ceridwen, to The Holy Grail, & into The Sacred Vessel of the Sophia.

with Special Guests: Mary Mertz, Camille Vettraino. Eurythmy with Elizabeth Carlson, & Music with Ultra-Violet Archer

Join us on Whitsunday 23 May 2021, at 11 am PT / 12 noon MT / 1 pm – 2:30 pm CT / 2 pm ET / 8 pm CET

Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81181550712 Meeting ID: 811 8155 0712

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May 22, 2021 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Use the waxing gibbous moon to find Spica, the brightest star in the constellation Virgo the Maiden. ~earthsky.org

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day(RSarchve.org)

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY ( From Rudolf Steiner’s original Calendar of the Soul, The Present Age Mag., Wikipedia, RSarchive.org)

334 BC – The Macedonian army of Alexander the Great defeats Darius III of Persia in the Battle of the Granicus.

337 – Birthday of Constantine the Great, Roman emperor.

1802 – Death-day of Martha Washington, 1st First Lady of the United States

1813 – Richard Wagner, German composer. Ilona Schubert is credited with connecting him in a former life to Merlin.

1934 – Deathday of Pekka Ervast – the founder of Finnish Section of Theosophical Society. He was a writer, lecturer, linguist, and clairvoyant – very versatile in languages. He learned to read French at the age of five or six. Ervast’s mother died when he was eight years old and he then began to have ‘extrasensory perception’. At the age of twelve he wrote a comparative grammatical study of nine different languages.

In January 1894, Ervast got acquainted with Theosophy through a Swedish translation of Esoteric Buddhism by A. P. Sinnett: “I read a few sentences from the first chapter. There was talk about a brotherhood of adepts, how there has always been and still are human beings who have deeper knowledge about the secrets of nature and life than any scientist. I could read no more. I was overwhelmed by so great a shudder of joy that I was compelled to throw myself on the couch. My whole being sounded as in one voice: this is true, this is true…The aftermath was so immense I could not read anything on that day. I couldn’t think anything else. As if from a revelation I had gained a certainty that adepts do exist and a human being can participate in divine knowledge.” The next year he joined the Scandinavian Section of the Theosophical Society.

In 1896 he went through an experience of rebirth, which formed the basis for his theosophical work: “On October 13, 1896, in the middle of the day, the agony of my soul had reached an utmost point…There seemed to be a dark cloud before my eyes, and I felt as if my pain would transfer itself into the cloud. I then thought, such is life. At the same time the cloud tore apart as if struck by lightning, and the rays of the sun shone warmly on my face, bright but not dazzlingly. Gradually this lovely light surrounded me on every side, so I was as if in a sea of light, and eventually it filtered inside me, filled me, and lit me up totally, so I and my whole being became like a pure light…My old life was wiped away…”

During the years 1896-1898, Ervast belonged to the Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society. He was its representative in Finland. He joined the esoteric school led by Mrs. Katherine Tingley. Ervast intensively followed meditation instructions of the esoteric school.

Ervast started regular lecturing and writing on Theosophy early on in his theosophical career; theosophical work was his full-time occupation. It is worth noting that Theosophy in Finland attracted mainly persons belonging to the so-called working class, whereas in other parts of the Western world Theosophy was more popular among the higher classes.

When the Theosophical Society in Finland was founded in 1907, Ervast was the first to serve as General Secretary, a position he held for ten years. The TS in Finland grew quickly into a vibrant organization.

Ervast and other theosophists founded a commune Tuonenkylä in 1910. The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 was a great disappointment for Ervast. He had believed that theosophists on both sides of the war would follow the ideal of the universal brotherhood and declined to go to war. Ervast was an unconditional pacifist: according to his interpretation, the non-resistance of evil is the cornerstone of Esoteric Christianity (this is well in line with ahimsa in Hinduism and Buddha’s teachings on non-violence).

Ervast published two of his main works during the war time: The Esoteric School of Jesus (the contemporary translation is called The Divine Seed) and The Key to the Kalevala, which is available in English as a free ebook. The former is a detailed investigation of the ethical teachings of Jesus from the perspective of Esoteric Christianity, and the latter is an exploration of the spiritual meaning of the Finnish National Epic, the Kalevala.

The Order of the Star in the East was under intense interest among the theosophists in Finland and elsewhere. However, Rudolf Steiner, who was the Head of the German Section of the T. S. at the time, was very critical towards teachings of Krishnamurti as a new World Teacher. Ervast was also critical. He met Steiner when he visited Helsinki in a lecture tour in 1912 just before Steiner left the T. S.

Ervast founded a new society, The Finnish Rosy Cross (Ruusu-Risti) in the tradition of Rosicrucianism. Ervast lectured on the special status of Jesus Christ in the spiritual evolution of humanity.  Hs teaching on the Christ concur with Rudolf Steiner’s teachings. Ervast remained prolific to the end of his life.

Pekka Ervast wrote over 100 books in several languages:

• From Death to Rebirth. Foreword by Richard Smoley.
• The Divine Seed: The Esoteric Teachings of Jesus.
• The Key to the Kalevala. 1916.
• The Mission of the Theosophical Society. 1921.
• Astral Schools.
• The Sermon on the Mount. 1933.
• H. P. B.: The Sphinx of the XIXth Century. 1933.
• Spiritual Knowledge.
• The Inner God and Happiness. ~Theosophy Wiki

1849 – Future U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is issued a patent for an invention to lift boats over obstacles in a river, making him the only U.S. President to ever hold a patent.

1885 – Death-day of Victor Hugo. Prior to burial in the Panthéon, the body of Victor Hugo was exposed under the Arc de Triomphe during the night. Rudolf Steiner indicates he was a Hibernian Initiate in the Karma lectures vol. 2 lec. 14.

“Now there is a personality upon whom the Initiation rites and ceremonies of the Hibernian Mysteries had made a profound impression; they had a deep effect upon his inner life and his experiences were of such intensity that he forgot the Earth altogether. Then, after this personality had lived through an incarnation as a woman, when the impulses of earlier Initiation showed themselves merely in the general disposition of the soul, he came to the Earth again as an important figure in the 19th century. He had lived out the consequences of his karma in the Saturn-sphere — the sphere where one lives among Beings who, fundamentally speaking, have no present. It is a shattering experience to look with clairvoyant vision into the Saturn-sphere, where Beings live who have no present but only look back on their past. Whatever they do is done unconsciously; any action of theirs comes to consciousness only when it has happened and is inscribed into the world karma. Acquaintance with these Beings who draw their past after them like a spiritual comet’s tail, has a shattering effect. The personality of whom I am speaking, who had at one time been initiated and had thus transcended earthly existence in a certain sense, bore his soul to these Beings who take no part in the present, and elaborated his karma among them. It was as if everything that had been experienced hitherto in an Initiate-existence now illumined with majestic splendour all the past earthly lives. This past was brought to fruition by what had been experienced through the Hibernian Initiation. When this personality appeared again on Earth in the 19th century he had now, by contrast, to unfold impulses for the future. And when, on descending from the Saturn-sphere, this soul, with its gaze into the past illumined by the light of Initiation, arrived on Earth, it presented this contrast: a firm foothold on the Earth while gazing into the future and giving expression to far reaching ideas, impulses and perceptions. This Hibernian Initiate became Victor Hugo.”

1906 – The Wright brothers are granted a U.S. patent for their “Flying-Machine”.

1947 – Cold War begins: President Harry S. Truman – The Truman Doctrine – established that the United States would provide political, military and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces. The Truman Doctrine effectively reoriented U.S. foreign policy, away from its usual stance of withdrawal from regional conflicts not directly involving the United States, to one of possible intervention in far away conflicts. ~ history.state.gov

We are She – She are We – Embodying Love in Wisdom with Hazel & Ultra-Violet Archer

9:30 am PT / 10:30 am MT / 11:30 am CT / 12:30 pm ET / 5:30 pm GMT / 6:30 pm CET