Category Archives: Quote

find the secret path

Celestial Event, Poetry, Quote, Remembering

14 March 2018 – Astro-Weather:

As midnight approaches, look to the east for the bright star Arcturus. It is the brightest star visible from mid-northern latitudes. If you scan to the left & a little below this luminary, you should see a conspicuous semicircle of stars — the constellation Corona Borealis the Northern Crown. It’s the most prominent group of stars having a shape reminiscent of a circle, & it makes a fitting target for Pi Day. (For you non-geeks, Pi Day is 3/14 because the first three digits of the mathematical constant pi are 3.14. Pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, so today we celebrate all things circular.)

“If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful flowers, what might not the heart become in the long journey towards the stars?”~ G K Chesterton

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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

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 & the Dead by Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, 5th February, 1918

Antonio Molinari

Feast Day of Abigail (Hebrew “my father’s joy”) in 2 Samuel 17:25 she became a wife of David after Nabal’s death. She became the mother of one of David’s sons, who is listed in the Book of Chronicles under the name Daniel. Abigail is also listed as one of the seven Jewish women prophets.

Anglia Campus

44 BC – Casca & Cassius decide, on the night before the Assassination of Julius Caesar, that Mark Antony should live

 Titian

1489 – The Queen of Cyprus, Catherine Cornaro, sells her kingdom to Venice

1592 – Ultimate Pi Day: the largest correspondence between calendar dates & significant digits of pi since the introduction of the Julian calendar

1794 – Eli Whitney is granted a patent for the cotton gin

1879 – Birthday of Albert Einstein! (1879 the year Michael became the Time-Spirit) see article below

1900 – The Gold Standard Act is ratified, placing United States currency on the gold standard.

1903 – The Hay–Herrán Treaty, granting the United States the right to build the Panama Canal, is ratified by the United States Senate. The Colombian Senate would later reject the treaty

1926 – El Virilla train accident, Costa Rica: A train falls off a bridge over the Río Virilla between Heredia and Tibás. 248 are killed & 93 wounded

1943 – World War II: The Kraków Ghetto is “liquidated”

1978 – The Israel Defense Forces invade & occupies southern Lebanon, in Operation Litani

1681 – Birthday of Georg Philipp Telemann, a German Baroque composer & multi-instrumentalist. Almost completely self-taught in music, he became a composer against his family’s wishes. He held important positions in Leipzig, Sorau, Eisenach,& Frankfurt before settling in Hamburg in 1721, where he became musical director of the city’s five main churches. While Telemann’s career prospered, his personal life was always troubled: his first wife died only a few months after their marriage, & his second wife had extramarital affairs & accumulated a large gambling debt before leaving Telemann.

Telemann was one of the most prolific composers in history & was considered by his contemporaries to be one of the leading German composers of the time—he was compared favorably both to his friend Johann Sebastian Bach, who made Telemann the godfather & namesake of his son Carl Philipp Emanuel, & to George Frideric Handel, whom Telemann also knew personally. He remained at the forefront of all new musical tendencies & his music is an important link between the late Baroque & early Classical styles

1790 – Birthday of Ludwig Emil Grimm, a German painter, art professor, etcher & copper engraver. His brothers were the well-known folklorists Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm

1804 – Birthday of Johann Strauss I, an Austrian Romantic composer. He was famous for his waltzes, & he popularized them alongside Joseph Lanner, thereby setting the foundations for his sons to carry on his musical dynasty. His most famous piece is the Radetzky March

1867 – Birthday of Marie Steiner von Sivers – born into an aristocratic family in Włocławek, Poland, then part of Russia. She was well-educated &was fluent in Russian, German, English, French & Italian. She studied theater & recitation with several teachers in Europe.

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.

Marie Steiner-von Sivers & Rudolf Steiner were married on Christmas eve 1914, & she was one of his closest colleagues. Marie von Sivers collaborated with Steiner for the rest of his life & carried his work beyond his death in 1925 until her own death in 1948. She accompanied him & helped him as secretary, translator, editor, & organizer of his lecture tours & other public activities. She assisted Steiner’s work with her own resources & in 1908 founded the Philosophical-Theosophical Press (later Philosophical-Anthroposophical) to publish Steiner’s work

She made a great contribution to the development of anthroposophy, particularly in her work on the renewal of the performing arts (eurythmy, speech & drama), & the editing & publishing of Rudolf Steiner’s literary estate.

Starting in 1912, the art of eurythmy was developed by Rudolf Steiner. Under Marie Steiner-von Sivers’ guidance, it developed in three directions, as a stage art, as an integral part of Waldorf pedagogy, & as a therapeutic method. Under her tutelage, two schools of eurythmy were founded, in Berlin & in Dornach, Switzerland.

Marie von Sivers was trained in recitation & elocution & made a study of purely artistic speaking. She gave introductory poetry recitals at Steiner’s lectures & assisted him in the development of the 4 Mystery Dramas (1910–1913). With her help, Steiner conducted several speech & drama courses with the aim of raising these forms to the level of true art. Ms Steiner died on December 27th 1948

1883 – Deathda y of Karl Marx

1923 – Birthday of Diane Arbus, American photographer & writer noted for photographs of marginalized people—dwarfs, giants, transgender people, nudists, circus performers—& others whose normality was perceived by the general populace as ugly or surreal. In 1972, a year after she committed suicide, Arbus became the first American photographer to have photographs displayed at the Venice Biennale.  Millions viewed traveling exhibitions of her work in 1972–1979. The book accompanying the exhibition, Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph, is the bestselling photography monograph ever, still being reprinted today

1932 – Deathday of George Eastman, American inventor & businessman, founded Eastman Kodak

***

POD (Poem Of the Day)

 

sherry gold

~Lady of the Wheel, of the Fates, of the Fist…
Beneath Her robe curls a caterpillar in an empty sky
Her flame is sharp – Her hands are quick
She burns flesh into ash & light
Yet Her mouth is wet & soothing
Her teeth are the rattling seeds of the sistrum,
A brilliant moment in time
She molds my form in wax & tosses it into the flames
There I find the secret path…
~hag

***

CREATIVE SPEECH from ‘Das Goetheanum,’ 7th March, 1926 By Marie Steiner von Sivers

“SPEECH reveals to the human being their divine nature; the sounds of speech are creative forces which unite us with our spiritual origin and enable us, once again, to find the path leading to the spirit. Speech raises the human being above the level of the animal; it leads us back to the Divine within our Ego. That spark from the Divine Ego, which, issuing forth, prepared itself to become human, had of necessity, as it traveled the path leading into the material world, to unite itself with the forces of destruction. When the densifying process worked too strongly, damming up the spirit, as it were, then the form could be cast off by the ever-recurring forces of death and change. Thus there arose the animal kingdom, which may be likened to a kind of extended alphabet, containing within it all that burdened humanity too heavily when we carried it compressed within the limits of our own being. In the human being it was able to be so far clarified that it could develop into the Word, into Speech. Sound, tone in the animal kingdom cannot rise to the level of speech. It remains mere noise in the case of cold-blooded animals, and, in the case of warm-blooded animals, inarticulate sound. Even in its most beautiful form, in the song of the birds, cosmic tone cannot fully reveal itself; the song of the birds is at most only its faintest echo. It is in speech that the individual force of the Ego first finds expression through tone and becomes aware of its own being. Through speech, cosmic forces can, as it were, focus themselves in an individual Ego and from out this Ego work creatively once more.

When the human being raises to the upright position, when we change from the horizontal position natural to the animal to the vertical position of the human being, we free the forces of speech. The child is overshadowed by these forces; as their individuality develops they become more and more strongly united with them. The child does not say ‘ I ’ of themselves so long as their utterance is mere incoherent babbling. In personal desire, in egoism, the lower ego in the first place struggles through, expressing itself in wishes and desires, afterwards working its way through to feeling and thence into thought. Thought enters into the human being through the gate of speech. Pictures, imaginations are in this way raised up into the consciousness. Through this interplay of processes the human being becomes a thinking being.

 A ray from the spiritual essence of the Sun enters into the human being through the mind. In the German language there is a reflection of this in the words ‘Sonne’ (Sun) and ‘Sinn’ (Mind), where the all-embracing, all-enclosing vowel sound ‘ O ’ is transformed into an arrow of light in the vowel sound ‘ E ’ (ee)”.

***

Albert Einstein was slow to speak or read, & he was considered a poor student. He found inspiration in playing the violin. Einstein’s parents were secular, middle-class Jews. His father, Hermann Einstein, was originally a featherbed salesman, and later ran an electrochemical factory with moderate success.

Einstein would write that two “wonders” deeply affected his early years. The first was his encounter with a compass at age five. He was mystified that invisible forces could deflect the needle. This would lead to a lifelong fascination with invisible forces. The second wonder came at age 12 when he discovered a book of geometry, which he devoured, calling it his “sacred little geometry book.”

Einstein became deeply religious at age 12, even composing several songs in praise of God and chanting religious songs on the way to school. This began to change, however, after he read science books that contradicted his religious beliefs. This challenge to established authority left a deep and lasting impression. At the Luitpold Gymnasium, Einstein often felt out of place and victimized by a Prussian-style educational system that seemed to stifle originality and creativity. One teacher even told him that he would never amount to anything.

A pivotal turning point occurred when Einstein was 16 when he was introduced to a children’s science series by Aaron Bernstein, Naturwissenschaftliche Volksbucher in which the author imagined riding alongside electricity that was traveling inside a telegraph wire. Einstein then asked himself the question that would dominate his thinking for the next 10 years: What would a light beam look like if you could run alongside it? If light were a wave, then the light beam should appear stationary, like a frozen wave. Even as a child, though, he knew that stationary light waves had never been seen, so there was a paradox. Einstein also wrote his first “scientific paper” at that time (“The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields”).

Einstein’s education was disrupted by his father’s repeated failures at business. In 1894, after his company failed to get an important contract to electrify the city of Munich, Hermann Einstein moved to Milan to work with a relative. Einstein was left at a boardinghouse in Munich and expected to finish his education. Alone, miserable, and repelled by the looming prospect of military duty, Einstein ran away six months later and landed on the doorstep of his surprised parents. His parents realized the enormous problems that he faced as a school dropout and draft dodger with no employable skills.

Fortunately, Einstein could apply directly to the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School. Einstein would recall that his years in Zürich were some of the happiest years of his life. He met many students who would become loyal friends, such as Marcel Grossmann, a mathematician, and Besso, with whom he enjoyed lengthy conversations about space and time. He also met his future wife, Mileva Maric, a fellow physics student from Serbia.

After graduation in 1900, Einstein faced one of the greatest crises in his life. Because he studied advanced subjects on his own, he often cut classes; this earned him the animosity of some professors, so he was subsequently turned down for every academic position that he applied to.

Meanwhile, Einstein’s relationship with Maric deepened, but his parents vehemently opposed the relationship. (Maric’s family was Eastern Orthodox Christian). Einstein defied his parents, however, and in January 1902 he and Maric even had a child, Lieserl. It is  thought that she died of scarlet fever or was given up for adoption.

In 1902 Einstein reached perhaps the lowest point in his life, and his father’s business went bankrupt. Desperate and unemployed, Einstein took lowly jobs tutoring children, but he was fired from even these jobs. Finally he got a job at the Swiss patent office in Bern, which allowed him to think about how  the speed of light remains the same no matter how fast one moves. This violates Newton’s laws of motion, but this insight led Einstein to formulate the principle of relativity: “the speed of light is a constant in any inertial frame (constantly moving frame).”

For the next 10 years, Einstein would be absorbed with formulating a theory of gravity in terms of the curvature of space-time. To Einstein, Newton’s gravitational force was actually a by-product of a deeper reality: the bending of the fabric of space and time.

In November 1915 Einstein finally completed the general theory of relativity, which he considered to be his masterpiece. Hewas convinced that general relativity was correct because of its mathematical beauty and because it accurately predicted the precession of the perihelion of Mercury’s orbit around the Sun. His theory also predicted a measurable deflection of light around the Sun. As a consequence, he even offered to help fund an expedition to measure the deflection of starlight during an eclipse of the Sun.

Einstein’s work was interrupted by World War I. A lifelong pacifist, he was only one of four intellectuals in Germany to sign a manifesto opposing Germany’s entry into war. Disgusted, he called nationalism “the measles of mankind.” He would write, “At such a time as this, one realizes what a sorry species of animal one belongs to.”

After the war, the headline of The Times of London read, “Revolution in Science—New Theory of the Universe—Newton’s Ideas Overthrown—Momentous Pronouncement—Space ‘Warped.’” Almost immediately, Einstein became a world-renowned physicist, the successor to Isaac Newton.

Invitations came pouring in for him to speak around the world. In 1921 Einstein began the first of several world tours, visiting the United States, England, Japan, and France. Everywhere he went, the crowds numbered in the thousands. En route from Japan, he received word that he had received the Nobel Prize for Physics, but for the photoelectric effect rather than for his relativity theories. During his acceptance speech, Einstein startled the audience by speaking about relativity instead of the photoelectric effect.

Einstein also launched the new science of cosmology. His equations predicted that the universe is dynamic—expanding or contracting. This contradicted the prevailing view that the universe was static.

During a visit to California, Einstein met Charlie Chaplin during the Hollywood debut of the film City Lights. Einstein also began correspondences with other influential thinkers like Sigmund Freud (both of them had sons with mental problems) on whether war was intrinsic to humanity. He discussed with the Indian mystic Rabindranath Tagore the question of whether consciousness can affect existence.

Einstein also clarified his religious views, stating that he believed there was an “old one” who was the ultimate lawgiver. He wrote that he did not believe in a personal God that intervened in human affairs but instead believed in the God of the 17th-century Dutch Jewish philosopher Benedict de Spinoza—the God of harmony and beauty. His task, he believed, was to formulate a master theory that would allow him to “read the mind of God.” He would write: “I’m not an atheist and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages.…The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God.”

Inevitably, Einstein’s fame and the great success of his theories created a backlash. The rising Nazi movement found a convenient target in relativity, branding it “Jewish physics” and sponsoring conferences and book burnings to denounce Einstein and his theories. In December 1932 Einstein decided to leave Germany forever

The 1930s were hard years for Einstein. His son Eduard was diagnosed with schizophrenia and suffered a mental breakdown in 1930. (Eduard would be institutionalized for the rest of his life.) Einstein’s close friend, physicist Paul Ehrenfest, who helped in the development of general relativity, committed suicide in 1933. And Einstein’s beloved wife, Elsa, died in 1936. And to his horror,  physicists began seriously to consider whether his equation E = mc2 might make an atomic bomb possible. During the war Einstein’s colleagues were asked to journey to the desert town of Los Alamos, New Mexico, to develop the first atomic bomb for the Manhattan Project. Einstein, the man whose equation had set the whole effort into motion, was never asked to participate. Voluminous declassified Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) files, numbering several thousand, reveal the reason: the U.S. government feared Einstein’s lifelong association with peace and socialist organizations. (FBI director J. Edgar Hoover went so far as to recommend that Einstein be kept out of America by the Alien Exclusion Act, but he was overruled by the U.S. State Department.)

Einstein was on vacation when he heard the news that an atomic bomb had been dropped on Japan. Almost immediately he was part of an international effort to try to bring the atomic bomb under control, forming the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists.

Although Einstein continued to pioneer many key developments in the theory of general relativity—such as wormholes, higher dimensions, the possibility of time travel, the existence of black holes, and the creation of the universe—he was increasingly isolated from the rest of the physics community. Because of the huge strides made by quantum theory in unraveling the secrets of atoms and molecules, the majority of physicists were working on the quantum theory, not relativity.

Through a series of sophisticated “thought experiments,” Einstein tried to find logical inconsistencies in the quantum theory, particularly its lack of a deterministic mechanism. Einstein would often say that “God does not play dice with the universe.”

The other reason for Einstein’s increasing detachment from his colleagues was his obsession, beginning in 1925, with discovering a unified field theory—an all-embracing theory that would unify the forces of the universe, and thereby the laws of physics, into one framework.

New generations of space satellites have continued to verify the cosmology of Einstein. And many leading physicists are trying to finish Einstein’s ultimate dream of a “theory of everything.”

Bang the Stave

Celestial Event, Central Regional Council, Chicago Event, Insight, Lecture, Poetry, Quote, Remembering

7 March 2017 – Astro-Weather: The waning gibbous Moon passes  north of Jupiter today, & the two make a pretty sight – the brightest point of light in the sky, Jupiter remains conspicuous all week. The King of the gods rises shortly after 11 pm CDT climbs highest in the south as twilight commences. This giant expansive kingdom resides among the stars of the constellation Libra.

***

Thomas Aquinas by Fra Bartolommeo

“How is it they live in such harmony, the billions of stars, when most men can barely go a minute without declaring war in their minds?” ~Thomas Aquinas

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

161 – Deathday of Emperor Antoninus Pius, who is succeeded by his adoptive son Marcus Aurelius

321 – Emperor Constantine I decrees that the dies Solis Invicti (sun-day) is the day of rest in the Empire

 

Carlo Crivelli

1274 – Deathday of Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican Friar & Theologian, “The prince of Scholastics”. Nickname in school=The ‘dumb ox’. Also known as the ‘Angelic Doctor’. “It must be realized that Thomas Aquinas, in the 13th Century, attained the concepts and ideas he elaborated in his writings in a completely different way from the way ideas are acquired today. One must think of his books as being inspired by a spirit from the Hierarchy of the Angeloi and that he recorded what came from a higher consciousness” ~Rudolf Steiner, The Karma of Materialism

Aquinas, who is most renowned for his Five Ways of Proving the Existence of God, believed that both faith and reason discover truth, a conflict between them being impossible since they both originate in God.

Believing that reason can, in principle, lead the mind to God, Aquinas defended reason’s legitimacy, especially in the works of Aristotle. The philosophy of Aquinas continues to offer insights into many lingering problems in Metaphysics, the Philosophy of Mind, & the Philosophy of Religion & Ethics.

Albertus Magnus by Tommaso da Modena

In Rudolf Steiner’s historic sketch of the life of thought in the Middle Ages, he shows how Albertus Magnus ( an earlier incarnation  of Ita Wegman) & Thomas Aquinas ( an earlier incarnation of Aristotle & Rudolf Steiner himself) & the Scholastics of the 12th century gave an impetus towards what in the twentieth century has come to be known as Spiritual Science, or Anthroposophy.

“The Middle Ages would not have produced what is called Scholasticism — the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus and the other Scholastics — if this philosophy, this world conception, with all its social consequences, had not been inspired by the most important thought of the Church, by the Easter thought. In the vision of the descending Christ, Who lives for a time in man on Earth and then goes through the Resurrection, that soul impulse was given which led to the particular relation between faith and science, between knowledge and revelation which was agreed upon by the Scholastics. That out of man himself, only knowledge of the sensible world can be acquired, whereas everything connected with the super-sensible world has to be gained through revelation — this was determined basically by the way the Easter thought followed upon the Christmas thought.” ~Rudolf Steiner, The Cycle of the Year as Breathing-Process of the Earth

Aristotle by Raphael

“Thomas Aquinas made himself thoroughly familiar with the world conception of Aristotle, who becomes, as it were, his master in the life of thought…For centuries, he is il maestro di color che sanno, the master of those who know, as Dante expresses the veneration for Aristotle in the Middle Ages.”

“Thomas Aquinas had intended on the one hand to investigate the world through physical research and intellectual knowledge but, on the other hand, that he had wanted to supplement this intellectual knowledge with the truths of revelation. But he had done that precisely to gain access to the unifying principle of the world.” ~Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, 12 June 1923

“Of the great Dominicans, St. Thomas Aquinas is especially noteworthy because in him the influence of the astral body of Christ was manifest to a high degree.”

“St. Francis of Assisi and Thomas Aquinas had copies of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into their souls, and it is this fact that allowed them to be such dynamic teachers. They worked from a sphere in which Christ had once lived.

In some cases external events such as natural catastrophes or similar things enhance this weaving of spiritual bodies into the soul of the recipient. It is said of St. Thomas Aquinas that lightning struck and killed his little sister in the room where he happened to be standing, but spared him. He interpreted this lightning bolt next to him to the effect that elemental forces were necessary to help him take up the copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. Elisabeth of Thüringen also had an imprint of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth in her soul”. ~ Rudolf Steiner, The Principle of Spiritual Economy, Rome, March 28, 1909

1792 – Birthday of English astronomer Sir John Frederick William Herschel. In 1864, he published the General Catalogue of Nebulae & Clusters, which astronomers still use today

1876 – Alexander Graham Bell is granted a patent for an invention he calls the “telephone

1913 – The Berlin chapter of the Theosophical Society, of which Rudolf Steiner was president & Marie von Sivers secretary, is officially annulled.

1965 – Bloody Sunday: A group of 600 civil rights marchers is brutally attacked by state and local police in Selma, Alabama

***

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~My heart kips in the house of Hearts
Like a knotting vine
Blue & red blood twist thru me
Humming like a hive awakened…
Bang the stave
While thunder opens my chest to love…
My raw, red heart leaps & answers the call
Of my head ignited…

~ Hazel Archer Ginsberg

***

The Karma Project – A Western Approach to Reincarnation & Karma –
March 7, 2018 – 7:15 pm CST (8:15 pm EST)
The Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America invites you to our FREE conversation with special guest Frederick Amrine.

Fred Amrine is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in German Studies at the University of Michigan. A prolific author and translator of Rudolf Steiner, Fred has been an anthroposophist his entire adult life.

Steiner’s Karma lectures of 1924 are, strangely (and against usual press practices) not arranged chronologically. Moreover, two key lectures are entirely missing from the series, including Rudolf Steiner’s all-important “Last Address.”

This is very unfortunate for a number of reasons. These lectures, above all, should be read as one continuous cycle, and it is extremely important to read them in the right chronological sequence, for reasons that Fred Amrine will detail in his talk.

Audioconference Details

Option 1. Click link below if you wish to connect through your computer (a headset is recommended): https://zoom.us/j/499410574

Option 2. Call in using your telephone.

United States: (646) 558-8656 or: (669) 900-6833
Access Code: 499-410-574

Please join us – All are Welcome!

Agenda

7:15 Welcome and introductions
7:18 Verse
7:20 Introduce guest speaker
7:25 Guest Speaker: Frederick Amrine (45 minutes)
8:10 Q&A – Please state your name, location before asking a question
8:28 Close with verse

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Sophie Takata

From Necessity to Freedom – Social Sculpture & Experiential Discourse with Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Friday March 9th 2018 at the Rudolf Steiner Branch 7 pm – 9 pm

From the vaporous cleft of Mount Parnassus, & the birth place of Greek Philosophy, to Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, on to the Holy Grail. From Prophesy to Warning, from Fate to Karma, From Destiny to Free Will.

Through the insights of Spiritual Science, the power of Social Arts, & Story-Telling, we will journey into our soul-depths to stand before the “Daughters of Necessity” that we will transform into “Freedom Fighters” to meet our true calling; asking: ‘What is my Highest Purpose?’

$10 Love Donation

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Our Monthly Community Conversation

Friday March 23rd 2018 – 7 pm – 9 pm

Come be part of our ongoing Goethean Conversation about the future of Anthroposophy and its cultivation here in Chicago.

***

The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz –

Our Holy Week Study & Easter Festival 

Palm Sunday, March 25th – 2 pm – 4 pm,

Holy Monday – Good Friday, March 26- 30th – 7 pm – 9 pm

Holy Saturday March 31st & Easter Sunday, April 1st 2018 – 2 pm – 4 pm

This primary Rosicrucian text provides a 7 stage initiation, which we will traverse together on each of the days of Holy Week. We will discuss the symbolism & render some of the images from the text using various artistic mediums.

Please print your own  PDF copy

for more info. Contact  Hazel (at) ReverseRitual.com 

Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society, 4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618 (map) Check out our Web site! Chicago, IL (Anthroposophical Society in America)

The newly renovated (& lazured) Elderberries 3-Fold Space is currently available for rental on PEER SPACE for classes, events, meetings, retreats, art exhibits, family parties, etc…

 

 

“I am for Going Forward” Ita Wegman’s Birthday

Celestial Event, Chicago Event, Insight, Poetry, Quote

22 February 2018 – Astro-Weather: This evening Bella Luna shines with Aldebaran & the Pleiades.

Under the feet of Orion, & to the right of Sirius, hides Lepus the Hare. As with Canis Major, you can connect Lepus’s dots to make it look like what it’s supposed to be – a crouching bunny, with his nose pointing lower right, his faint ears extending up toward Rigel, & his body bunched to the left. His brightest two stars, Beta & Alpha Leporis, form the front & back of his neck.

***

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1632 – Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems is published.

1651 – St. Peter’s Flood: A storm surge floods the Frisian coast, drowning 15,000 people

1732 – Birthday of George Washington, American general & politician, 1st President of the United States

1788 – Birthday of Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher & author

1876 – Birthday of Ita Wegman, founder of Anthroposophical medicine & close collaborator of Rudolf Steiner. She also developed a special form of massage therapy, called rhythmical massage, & other therapeutic treatments.

Ita Wegman, as she was known throughout her life, was born as Maria Ita Wegman in Indonesia, the first child of a Dutch colonial family. Around the turn of the century, she returned to Europe (she had visited before) & studied therapeutic gymnastics & massage. In 1902, when she was 26, she met Rudolf Steiner for the first time. Five years later she began medical school at the University of Zurich, where women were not discriminated to study medicine. She was granted a diploma as a medical doctor in 1911 with a specialization in women’s medicine & joined an existing medical practice.

In 1917, having opened an independent practice, she developed a cancer treatment using an extract of mistletoe following indications from Steiner. This first remedy, which she called Iscar, was later developed into Iscador & has become an approved cancer treatment in Germany & a number of other countries.

By 1919 she had a joint practice together with two other doctors, also women. In 1920 she purchased land in Arlesheim, where she opened her own clinic, the Klinisch-Therapeutisches Institut, the first center for anthroposophical medicine. In 1922 she founded a therapeutic home for mentally handicapped children, Haus Sonnenhof, also in Arlesheim, & co-founded a pharmaceutical laboratory, Weleda, that has since grown into a significant producer of medicines & health-care products.

In the following year, Rudolf Steiner asked Wegman to join the Executive Council of the newly reformed Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland. She also directed the Medical Section of the research center at the Goetheanum. Together, Wegman & Steiner wrote what was to be Steiner’s last book, Extending Practical Medicine, which gave a theoretical basis to the new medicine they were developing. The book was partly written while Wegman cared for Steiner, who was already terminally ill. Wegman founded a new medical journal, Natura, the following year.

In 1936, the clinic opened a second home in Ascona, Switzerland. Shortly thereafter, difficulties between Wegman & the rest of the Executive Council flared up, & Wegman was asked to leave the Council; in addition, she & a number of supporters had their membership in the Anthroposophical Society itself withdrawn. The medical work flourished, however, & Wegman travelled extensively in support of the rapidly growing movement to extend medicine’s limits; she was especially active in the Netherlands & England during this time. Wegman died in Arlesheim in 1943, at the age of 67.

Ita Wegman is a close collaborator of Rudolf Steiner thruout many incarnations including: Alexander the Great to Steiner’s Aristotle; Gilgamesh & Ebani… On the Work of the Archangel Michael by Ita Wegman

1943 – Deathday of 1943 – Hans & Sophie Scholl, German activists. Sophie a German student along with her brother Hans were anti-Nazi political activists, active within the White Rose non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany. They were convicted of high treason after distributing anti-war leaflets at the University of Munich (LMU).

In the early summer of 1942, Scholl, his sister Sophie, Willi Graf, Kurt Huber, Christoph Probst, & Alexander Schmorell, co-authored 6 anti-Nazi Third Reich political resistance leaflets. Calling themselves the White Rose, they instructed Germans to practice nonviolent resistance against the Nazis. The group had been horrified by the behavior of some German soldiers on the Eastern Front, where they had witnessed cruelty towards Jews in Poland & Russia.

Hans & Sophie Scholl & Christopher Probst were beheaded by Johann Reichhart in Munich’s Stadelheim Prison. The execution was supervised by Dr. Walter Roemer, the enforcement chief of the Munich district court. Scholl’s last words were “Es lebe die Freiheit!” (“Long live freedom!”). Shortly thereafter, most of the other students involved were arrested & executed as well.

1932 – Birthday of Ted Kennedy, an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Massachusetts for over forty years from 1962 until his death in 2009. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the second most senior member of the Senate when he died & is the fourth-longest-continuously-serving senator in United States history, having served there for almost 47 years.

For many years, Ted Kennedy was the most prominent living member of the Kennedy family, & he was also the last surviving, longest-living, & youngest son of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. & Rose Kennedy. He was the youngest brother of John F. Kennedy—the 35th President of the United States—& Senator Robert F. Kennedy, both victims of assassination, & the father of Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy.

1997 – In Roslin, Midlothian, British scientists announce that an adult sheep named Dolly was successfully cloned.

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POD (Poem Of the Day)

Susan Balyar

~TODAY I AM –
An old gnarled tree near the shore,
Roots swallowing the sand & rock
Pecked by the high-tide & the wild wind…
A 1000 fledglings have nested in my boughs
& beneath, I give shelter to all…
How do you see me?
As firewood or freedom…?
~hag

***

Prayer to our Angel by Rudolf Steiner

‘You my heavenly friend, my angel who has led me to the earth and who will lead me through the gate of death, into the spirit-home of the human soul; You who knows the paths since millennia, do not cease to enlighten me, to strengthen me, to advise me so that I will emerge from the weaving fire of destiny as a stronger destiny vessel and will learn to fill myself ever more with the meaning of divine world goals.’

Rudolf Steiner goes on to say:

‘This prayer is a direct invocation of the human soul to their angel. Every human being has an angel, an individual guiding being, who constantly accompanies the individual, and who gives this earthly human being, out of immediate perception of the total web of destiny, the right impulses and indications – IF this soul wishes to take them up. The angel accompanies this human soul intimately, its strivings, tasks, needs and fears. The angel grabs this soul with its entire being, at the same time grasping the spiritual world with its laws and possibilities. The angel helps and guides the human soul on its assigned paths.’

Sulamith Wulfing

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Denise Yocco

Friday February 23rd 2018 -Open Community Conversation 7 pm – 9 pm

This is a call to All: Especially those working out of the various Steiner initiatives – Folks from The Chicago Waldorf School, City Garden & The Urban Prairie Waldorf School, The Christian Community, Arcturus, the Rudolf Steiner Branch, Elderberries, Angelic Organics, Zinniker’s Bio-Dynamic Farm…

Come be part of our ongoing conversation about the future of anthroposophy & its cultivation here in Chicago.

We will set the tone of the evening with The Calendar of the Soul Verse #47 Performed in Eurythmy by the Monday Eurythmy Group led by Mary Ruud

We will also continue to explore the biography of famous Chicagoans. At this meeting, Mary Ruud will share her research on Harold Washington.

And as always, the floor will be open for conversation.

All are welcome

“We come here
To embrace what is common in each one of us –
Our love for a higher knowledge
Which unites us in understanding.
Let this Light of Knowledge unite
Each and All of us
Making rise in each
The raising of the Other”.
~Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society, 4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618 (map) Check out our Web site! Chicago, IL (Anthroposophical Society in America)

The newly renovated (& lazured) Elderberries 3-Fold Space is currently available for rental on PEER SPACE for classes, events, meetings, retreats, art exhibits, family parties, etc…

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Spinning Destiny with the Fates – An Art Presentation & Experiential Discourse with Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Friday March 9th 2018 at the Rudolf Steiner Branch 7 pm – 9 pm

Come face the Fates & meet the Sibyls in the Light of Anthroposophy, as we trace the evolution of human consciousness & ask: Does Fortune smile? Is Justice blind? How can I Co-Create with Destiny, to spin the thread of my life with integrity, to heal and clear the collective karma, & achieve my True Becoming?

Through the insights of Rudolf Steiner, the power of Myth-Telling, & Ritual-Tasks, such as Socratic questioning; we will journey into our soul-depths to stand before the “Daughters of Necessity” that we will transform into “Freedom Fighters” to meet our true calling; asking: ‘What is my Highest Purpose?’

$10 Love Donation

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Matthaus Merian

The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz

Our PDF Holy Week Study & Easter Festival

Palm Sunday, 2 pm – 4 pm,

Holy Monday – Good Friday, 7 pm – 9 pm

Holy Saturday & Easter Sunday, 2 pm – 4 pm

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Gravity

Poetry, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote

27 January 2018 – Astro-Weather: After dark you’ll find the Great Square of Pegasus sinking in the west, tipped onto one corner. Meanwhile the Big Dipper is creeping up in the north-northeast, tipped up on its handle.

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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Carole Voss

“If you want to change the world, you have to change the metaphor.” ~ Joseph Campbell

407 – The deathday of St. John Chrysostom The epithet Χρυσόστομος or Chrysostomos, means “golden-throat” in Greek & denotes his celebrated eloquence. As Archbishop of Constantinople, he was known for his preaching & public speaking, & his denunciation of abuse of authority by both ecclesiastical & political leaders. Chrysostom was among the most prolific authors in the early Christian Church. The Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom is sublime.

1302 – Dante Alighieri is exiled from Florence

1756 – Birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

1775 – Birthday of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, German-Swiss philosopher

Riddle of Man: German Idealism: Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, a lecture by Rudolf Steiner – “…For Schelling, the world riddle consists in the fact that he sees himself, with his soul awakened to egohood, confronted by a seemingly mute and lifeless nature. Out of this nature the soul awakens. This fact reveals itself to human observation. And the knowing, feeling human spirit delves down into this nature and through this nature fills itself with an inner world that then becomes spiritual life within it. Could this be so if there did not exist between the soul and nature a deeply inward relatedness at first hidden from human cognition? But nature remains mute if the soul does not make itself into the instrument of nature’s speech; nature seems dead if the spirit of man does not free life from the spell of semblance (Schein). The secrets of nature must sound forth from the depths of the human soul. But in order for this not to be a deception, it must be the essential being of nature itself that speaks out of the human soul. And it must be true that the soul only seemingly goes down into its own depths when it knows nature; in actuality, when it wants to find nature, the soul must travel through subconscious passages in order to delve down with its own life into the cycle of nature’s weaving…”

1901 –Deathday of Giuseppe Verdi, Italian composer

1951 – Nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site begins with Operation Ranger

2011 – Arab Spring: The Yemeni Revolution begins as over 16,000 protestors demonstrate in Sana’a

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POD (Poem Of the day)

~Roundness
+ Gravity
Shapes the Heart
~hag

***

Alexander the Great & the Fates by Bernardino Mei

It is interesting that the Sibyls should 1st appear in Ionia, since it was also at the same time, the birthplace of Greek philosophy: that high wisdom of Thales & especially Aristotle, still considered one of the greatest thinkers in politics, psychology & ethics. When Aristotle turned 17, he enrolled in Plato’s Academy. He also founded his own school, the Lyceum. Did you know he was the tutor of Alexander the Great? Learn more at this experiential workshop:

Spinning Destiny with the Fates

An Experiential Workshop with Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Saturday, 10 February 2018 – 10:30 AM – 4:30 PM

At the Theosophical Society 1926 N Main St, Wheaton, IL 60187

Come face the Fates & meet the Sibyls in the Light of Anthroposophy & ask: Does Fortune smile? Is Justice blind? How can I Co-Create with Destiny, to spin the thread of my life with integrity, to heal and clear the collective karma, & achieve my True Becoming?

Through the insights of Rudolf Steiner,  the power of Myth-Telling, & Ritual-Tasks, such as interactive drumming, & Socratic questioning; we will journey into our soul-depths to stand before the “Daughters of Necessity” that we will transform to meet our true calling; asking: ‘What is my Highest Purpose?’

Please bring your own vegetarian lunch

$60 nonmembers $50 members $70 at the door

Register here

Hazel Archer-Ginsberg  –Spiritual Midwife, Trans-denominational Minister, Essayist, Lecturer, Blogger – Anthroposopher, working as the Festivals Coordinator for the Rudolf Steiner Branch of Chicago. Founder of  www.reverseritual.com

 

unbound & beauteous

Chicago Event, Meditation, Poetry, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote

22 January 2018 – Astro-Weather: Orion is now high in the southeast right after dark.  Orion is the brightest of the 88 constellations, but his main pattern is surprisingly small compared to some of his dimmer neighbors. The biggest of these is Eridanus the River to his west, enormous but hard to trace. Dimmer Fornax the Furnace, to Eridanus’s lower right, is almost as big as Orion! Even the main pattern of Lepus, the Hare cowering under Orion’s feet, isn’t much smaller than he is.

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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1905 – Bloody Sunday in Saint Petersburg – unarmed demonstrators led by Father Georgy Gapon were fired upon by soldiers of the Imperial Guard as they marched towards the Winter Palace to present a petition to Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. Bloody Sunday caused grave consequences for the Tsarist autocracy governing Imperial Russia: the events in St. Petersburg provoked public outrage and a series of massive strikes that spread quickly throughout the industrial centers of the Russian Empire. The massacre on Bloody Sunday is considered to be the start of the active phase of the Revolution of 1905. In addition these events became one of the key events which led to the Russian Revolution of 1917.

1561 – Birthday of Francis Bacon, English philosopher & politician, Attorney General for England and Wales. Rudolf Steiner speaks of him as Harun al Rashid in Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies – Volume I lecture 10:

“When we learn to know the individuality of Haroun al Raschid inwardly in the astral light, as we say, when we have him before us as a spiritual individuality in the 9th century, bearing in mind what he was behind the scenes of world-history and when what he was had been unfolded on the surface with the brilliance of which I have told you — then we can follow the course of time and find such an individuality as Haroun al Raschid passing through death, looking down from the spiritual world upon what is happening on earth, looking down, that is to say, upon the outward extermination of Arabism and, in accordance with his destiny, being involved in the process. We find such an individuality passing through the spiritual world and appearing again, not perhaps with the same splendour, but with a similar trend of soul.

And so we see Haroun al Raschid appearing again in the history of European spiritual life as a personality who is once again of wide repute, namely, as Lord Bacon of Verulam. I have spoken of Lord Bacon in many different connections. All the driving power that was in Haroun al Raschid and was conveyed to those in his environment, this same impulse was imparted by Lord Bacon in a more abstract form — for he lived in the age of abstraction — to the various branches of knowledge. Haroun al Raschid was a universal spirit in the sense that he united specialists, so to speak, around him. Lord Bacon — he has of course his Inspirer behind him, but he is a fit subject to be so inspired — Lord Bacon is a personality who is also able to exercise a truly universal influence.

When with this knowledge of an historic karmic connection we turn to Bacon and his writings, we recognise why these writings have so little that is Christian about them and such a strong Arabic timbre. We discover the genuine Arabist trend in these writings of Lord Bacon. And many things too in regard to his character, which has been so. often impugned, will be explicable when we see in him the reincarnated Haroun al Raschid. The life and culture pursued at the Court of Haroun al Raschid, and justly admired by Charles the Great himself, become the abstract science of which Lord Bacon was the bearer. But men bowed before Lord Bacon too. And whoever studies the attitude adopted by European civilisation in the 8th/9th centuries to Haroun al Raschid, and then the attitude of European learning to Lord Bacon, will have the impression: men have turned round, that is all! In the days of Haroun al Raschid they looked towards the East; then they turned round in Middle Europe and looked towards the West, to Lord Bacon.

And so what may have disappeared, outwardly speaking, from history, is carried from age to age by human individualities themselves. Arabism seems to have disappeared; but it lives on, lives on in its fundamental trend. And just as the outer aspects of a human life differ from those of the foregoing life, so do the influences exercised by such a personality differ from age to age.

1729 – Birthday of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, German philosopher & author. Rudolf Steiner speaks about him at length in in Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies – Volume I lecture 11:

“.…At the close of his life Lessing wrote the remarkable essay, The Education of the Human Race, at the end of which, quite isolated, as it were, the idea of repeated earth-lives appears. The book shows how mankind goes through one epoch of development after another, and how the Gods gave into man’s hand as a first primer, so to speak, the Old Testament, and then as a second primer the New Testament, and how in the future a third book will come for the further education of the human race. And then all at once the essay is brought to a close with a brief presentation of the idea that man lives through repeated earth-lives. And there Lessing says, again in a way that is absolutely in accord with his character (I am not quoting the actual words, but this is the gist of it): Ought the idea of repeated earth-lives to seem so absurd, considering that it was present in very early times, when men had not yet been spoilt by school learning? The essay then ends with a genuine panegyric on repeated earth-lives, finishing with these beautiful words: “Is not all Eternity mine?”…”

1788 – Birthday of Lord Byron, English poet & playwright. In the same lecture that Rudolf Steiner speaks about Lessing, he also mentions Lord Byron. So interesting that they share the same birthday. Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies – Volume I lecture 11:

“It was when, in another connection, I began to take a special interest in the life of Lord Byron. And at that same time I got to know some Byron enthusiasts. One of them was the poetess, Marie Eugenie delle Grazie, of whom I shall have much to say in my autobiography. During a certain period of her life she was a Byron enthusiast. Then there was another, a most remarkable personality, a strange mixture of all possible qualities — Eugen Heinrich Schmidt. Many of you who know something about the history of Anthroposophy will be familiar with his name…”

Gosta Adrian Nilsson

 

1849 – August Strindberg, Swedish novelist, poet, & playwright. Rudolf Steiner speaks of him as Julia, the daughter of Augustus in Karmic Relationships, Volume IV: Lecture II. So interesting that  Bacon, Lessing, Byron & Strindberg all share the same Birthday & were all researched by Rudolf Steiner, who looked into their former incarnations & reported this research in his Karmic Relationships lectures the focus of his life’s work right before he died.

This date was also the Deathday of Rudolf Steiner’s father Johann Steiner in 1910.

***

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~I greet teeth white with biting bitter heads…
Devour time, dear ally, to make my bread rise
& free my blood to be
Reborn of spirit unbound & beauteous...
~hag

***

Alfred Agache

The 3 Fates are celebrated & worshiped by many names, in many traditions: the Nordic Norns, the Greek Moirae, in Scandinavia we have the Wyrd Sisters, Wyrd=the Word, a prefiguring of The Logos. In mythology we hear about ‘the Daughters of Necessity’. In fairy tale we meet the Maiden Crones from Giant-Land. From Medieval Europe in Shakespeare’s Macbeth we have the 3 Witches, also called The Harsh Spinners. In the Judeo/Christian tradition this concept evolves into: Faith, Hope & Charity. In the Americas we see this image of the Triple Goddess, in a mountain in Oregon called the 3 Sisters, outpictured in the Native American legend of Squash, Corn & beans, the 3-sisters that work together to feed humanity. We will also look into what Spiritual Science reveals about the Sibyls…& so I invite you to come join us to receive the cyphers of their stories:

Spinning Destiny with the Fates

An Experiential Workshop with Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Saturday, 10 February 2018 – 10:30 AM – 4:30 PM

At the Theosophical Society 1926 N Main St, Wheaton, IL 60187

Come face the Fates & meet the Sibyls in the Light of Anthroposophy & ask: Does Fortune smile? Is Justice blind? How can I Co-Create with Destiny, to spin the thread of my life with integrity, to heal and clear the collective karma, & achieve my True Becoming?

Through the insights of Rudolf Steiner,  the power of Myth-Telling, & Ritual-Tasks, such as interactive drumming, & Socratic questioning; we will journey into our soul-depths to stand before the “Daughters of Necessity” that we will transform to meet our true calling; asking: ‘What is my Highest Purpose?’

Please bring your own vegetarian lunch

$60 nonmembers $50 members $70 at the door

Register here

Hazel Archer-Ginsberg  –Spiritual Midwife, Trans-denominational Minister, Essayist, Lecturer, Blogger – Anthroposopher, working as the Festivals Coordinator for the Rudolf Steiner Branch of Chicago. Founder of  www.reverseritual.com