MOTHER’S DAY May 8th 2016
1870 – The origins of Mother’s Day –
The earliest mother’s day celebrations can be traced back to the spring festivals of the ancients honoring The Mother of the gods…
Much later, in the 1600’s, England celebrated a day called ‘Mothering Sunday’, honoring the matriarchy; the Queens of England…
As Christianity spread throughout Europe the celebration changed to honor the ‘Mother Church’…
In the U.S. Mother’s Day was 1st suggested as a day dedicated to peace. This was the brain child of feminist Julia Ward Howe, the woman that actually wrote the words to the battle hymn of the republic…
The radical origins of Mother’s Day, as a powerful feminist call against war, penned in the wake of the U.S. Civil War in 1870, are fully compatible with the universal notion of honoring mothers.
Women, even more so now, are the primary sufferers of warfare. In the last Century, civilian populations bore 90 percent of war’s casualties around the world; mass & indiscriminate attacks, popularized in WWII by the Holocaust, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, the Allied firebombings in Japan & Germany, & the rape of Nanjing, are only the most spectacular examples of a phenomenon in which women become the rape & famine victims, the refugees, the forgotten statistics in what are invariably the wars of men.
Hear the words of The Mother’s Day Proclamation by Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910)
“Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts,
Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears
Say firmly:
“We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We women of one country
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says, “Disarm, Disarm!”
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice!
Blood does not wipe out dishonor
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war.
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God. In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions.
The great and general interests of peace.”
Later Ana Jarvis, inspired to pay homage to her ancestors, began a campaign to establish a national Mother’s Day on the 2nd Sunday of May, which was the anniversary of her mother’s death; & which just happened to be 50 days after Easter, Pentecost or Whitsun, when the fiery dove of Wisdom, the Sophia, baptizes us with fire…
President Woodrow Wilson eventually made it official…
But what does it mean to us today…? I’m not taking about the commercialized happy-faced take-your-mother-to-brunch-cliché’s…Hallmark may not be talking…but this is deep stuff…The concept of ‘mother’ is highly charged for most of us…We all have, or have had, a mother…good or bad or in-between…We may be a mother ourselves…What does that bring up…? Plenty…right…How can we be ‘The Good Mother’ to ourselves?…
Ernst Fuchs
A glimpse into Whitsun-tide (which was on the same day as the 1st Mother’s day, & which falls this year a week from today, May 15th 2016)
Current Festival & Program Events
The lusty, merry month of May, has some other important celebrations which further express the creative fires:
The Feast of Weeks, also called the Feast of first-fruits, marks the end of the barley harvest.; the down time before the beginning of the wheat harvest. The Hebrew name is Shavuot (sha-voo-ote) in remembrance of the day Moses received the 10 commandments, engraved with fire on stones…
50 days after Passover, the time of the liberation of the Jews from Egypt…
The Greek version of this festival is called Pentecost…Meaning 50 days after the resurrection of The Christ, when the new law of, ‘Love thy neighbor as thy self ‘, was engraved in the heart, with the fire of the holy spirit, among roaring winds & tongues of fire…
It is also called Whitsun-day after the white robes worn by those baptized with fire during this vigil…
In Italy it was customary to scatter rose petals from the ceiling to recall the miracle of the fiery tongues resting on the heads of the prophets…
In France they blow trumpets to suggest the sound of the mighty wind which accompanied the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove of peace…
In Russia the congregation carries flowers & sheaves of barley…
Rudolf Steiner calls Whitsun:
*The Festival of the free Individuality”
*Symbol of the Immortality of the Ego
*Festival of the higher self and the universal human being
*Festival of the Holy Spirit
*Festival of Flowers
*Festival of United Soul Endeavor and Spirit Community
*Festival of the purified astral body
-the lifting out of one’s egotism into universal caring
– out of opinion into truth
– out of opinion into wisdom
*Festival of the human unbound from materialism
‘You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free’
The Whitsun thought — Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus.
Liane Collot
WHITSUN VERSE by RUDOLF STEINER
‘Wo Sinneswissen endet,
Da stehet erst die Pforte,
Die Lebenswirklichkeiten
Dem Seelensein eröffnet;
Den Schlüssel schafft die Seele,
Wenn sic in sich erstarket
Im Kampf, den Weltenmächte
Auf ihrem eignen Grunde
Mit Menschenkräfte führen;
Wenn sic durch sich vertreibt
Den Schlaf, der Wissenskräfte
An ihren Sinnesgrenzen
Mit Geistesnacht umhüllet. ‘
‘There first
Where sense can know no more,
Stands the portal, which discloses
Life-reality
To Soul-being;
This portal’s key the Soul may fashion
If she herself grow strong within the strife
By World-Powers waged on their own ground
With human forces;
If of her own accord she puts to flight
The sleep, which at the frontier of her senses
Cloaks the forces of knowledge
In spirit-night.’
You don’t need to have given birth to be the mother of your own creation…Let your labor be one of love, filled with nurturing joy…
~hag
~ ~ ~
Alex Grey
M + V [Maria Virgo]
You are,
The Hymen, Of the gleaming one,
Self-contained, Diamond mind manifested, Atlantean root revised,
Tied to the secret solar angels…
You are
The bright ear of Spica, First crypt of Christ, Solving the Sphinx
To bear
The 6th gate, Of Solomon’s Seal
To shield, To nurture, & finally to reveal,
A branch of fruit, In the mutable cross, Of your arms…
Vulcan under your feet, The caduceus in your head
You are
The valley of work, Conferring soul, Inside the cave, Of every Adam…
Protectress of the divine order, Incentive behind the goal…
O you who are
The Mother of images, Shape & mould matter, With your mindful mercury
Conceive the avatar in us, With your quickening vision
Feed us, With your perfect understanding
Give birth to peace in your womb of time.
~hag
~ ~ ~
Calendar of the Soul – Seventh Week [May 08, 2016 – May 14, 2016]
My self is threatening to fly forth,
Lured strongly by the world’s enticing light.
Come forth, prophetic feeling,
Take up with strength your rightful task:
Replace in me the power of thought
Which in the senses’ glory
Would gladly lose itself.
~ ~ ~
Tomorrow begins a series on Whitsun
Until soon
Blessings & Peace –
~hag = Hazel ArcherGinsberg
