Category Archives: Rudolf Steiner Quote

Pearl

August 29, 2023Rudolf Steiner Quote~hag

~The Lady of Shalott by William Holman Hunt

One of my ongoing Life Questions has to do with understanding Karmic Relationships. So I was excited to jump into this Steiner lecture given on this day in 1906. It is full of the mystery wisdom seen in the Evolution of Human Consciousness – the awareness of our progressive internal & external existence, & is worth the read.

AT THE GATES OF SPIRITUAL SCIENCE, GA 95, lecture 8. Good and Evil. Individual Karmic Questions. 29 August 1906, Stuttgart

“…What does occult science have to say about the origin of conscience? How did such an inner voice come into being?..

Conscience is the outcome of experiences spread over a number of incarnations…it has come into being as a result of trial and error…

A motive such as conscience binds itself to the etheric body, becoming in time a permanent characteristic of it because the astral body has been so often convinced that this or that would not do.

Another interesting karmic relationship is between an habitually selfish attitude and a loving sympathy with others. Some people are hardened egoists — not only in their acquisitiveness — and others are unselfish and sympathetic. Both attitudes depend on the etheric body and may even find expression in the physical body. People who in one life have been habitually selfish will age quickly in their next life; they seem to shrivel up. On the other hand, if in one life you have been ready to make sacrifices and have loved others, you will remain young and hale. In this way you can prepare even the physical body for the next life.

Fabre d’Olivet, who has investigated the origins of the Book of Genesis, once used a beautiful simile, comparing destiny with a natural process. The valuable pearl, he says, derives from an illness: it is a secretion of the oyster, so that in this case life has to fall sick in order to produce something precious. In the same way, physical illnesses in one life reappear in the next life as physical beauty. Either the physical body becomes more beautiful as a result of the illness it endured; or it may be that an illness a man has caught from infection in his environment is compensated by the beauty of his new environment.

Beauty thus develops, karmically, out of pain, suffering, privation and illness. This may seem a startling connection, but it is a fact. Even the appreciation of beauty develops in this way: there can be no beauty in the world without pain and suffering and illness. The same general law holds for the history of man’s evolution. You will see from this how wonderful karmic relationships really are, and how questions about evil, illness and pain cannot be answered without knowledge of the important inner relationships within the evolution of humanity.

What is inward has to become outward, and man will rise still higher when his karma has worked itself out. With all this something of extraordinary interest is connected. Centuries ago, with the future development of humanity in view, secret Orders which set themselves the highest conceivable tasks were established. One such Order was the Manichean…

The power to effect this change will bring about a condition of moral holiness on Earth. But this can be achieved only if the evil has first come into existence; then the power needed to overcome the evil will yield a power that can reach the heights of holiness.

A field has to be treated with manure and the manure has to ferment in the soil; similarly, humanity needs the manure of evil in order to attain to the highest holiness. And herein lies the mission of evil.

A man’s muscles get strong by use; and equally, if good is to rise to the heights of holiness, it must first overcome the evil which opposes it. The task of evil is to promote the ascent of man. Things such as this give us a glimpse into the secret of life.

Later on, when man has overcome evil, he can go on to redeem the creatures he has thrust down, and at whose cost he has ascended. That is the purpose of evolution…

If you do not look beyond the physical world of the senses, you will never understand illness, or the mission of evil. In all such relationships there is a deep meaning. Evolution had to take its course in this way, through a process of splitting off, because man was to become an inward being; he had to put all this out of himself in order that he might be able to see his own self.

So we can come to understand the mission of illness, of evil, and even of the external world. We are led to these great interconnections by studying the law of karma…” ~Rudolf Steiner

29 August 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Tonight is the Eve of the Full Blue (2nd full moon this month) Sturgeon Moon. Both Saturn & Bella Luna are at opposition, so they shine together

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

“History, historical life, will only be seen in the right light when a true consciousness of the connection between the so-called living with the so-called dead can be developed” – The Living and the Dead by Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, 5th February, 1918

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

33 – Beheading of John the Baptist

“If we pass on to the sixth chapter of Mark we hear fully described how King Herod had John the Baptist beheaded. The tortured conscience of Herod arouses a strange foreboding in him. When he hears all that has occurred through Christ Jesus he says, “John, whom I beheaded, has been restored to life!” Herod feels that, though the physical personality of John had gone away, he is now all the more present! He feels that his atmosphere, his spirituality — which was none other than the spirituality of Elijah, is still there. His tormented conscience causes him to be aware that John the Baptist, that is, Elijah, is still there.

~hag

But then something strange happens. We are shown how, after John the Baptist had met his physical death, Christ Jesus came to the very neighborhood where John had worked. I want you to take particular notice of a remarkable passage and not to skim over it lightly, for the words of the Gospels are not written for rhetorical effect, nor journalistically. Something very significant is said here. Jesus Christ appears among the throng of followers and disciples of John the Baptist, and this fact is expressed in a sentence to which we must give careful attention: “And as Jesus came out He saw a great crowd,” by which could be meant only the disciples of John, “and He had compassion on them …” (Mark 6:34.) Why compassion? Because they had lost their master, they were there without John, whose headless corpse we are told had been carried to his grave. But even more precisely is it said, “for they were like sheep who had lost their shepherd. And He began to teach them many things.” It cannot be indicated any more clearly how He teaches John’s disciples. He teaches them because the spirit of Elijah, which is at the same time the spirit of John the Baptist, is still active among them. Thus it is again indicated with dramatic power in these significant passages of the Mark Gospel how the spirit of Christ Jesus entered into what had been prepared by the spirit of Elijah-John. Even so this is only one of the main points, around which many other significant things are grouped.

I will now call your attention to one thing more. I have several times pointed out how this spirit of Elijah or John continued to act in such a way as to impress its impulses into world history. I have often mentioned that the soul of Elijah-John appeared again in the painter Raphael. This is one of those facts that call attention to the metamorphoses of souls that take place under the impetus given by the Mystery of Golgotha. Because it was also necessary that in the post-Christian era such a soul should work in Raphael through the medium of a single personality; what in ancient times was so comprehensive and world encompassing now appears in such a different personality as that of Raphael. Can we not feel that the aura that hovered round Elijah-John is also present in Raphael? That in Raphael there were such similarities to these two others that we could even say that this element was too great to be able to enter into a single personality but hovered round it, so that the revelations received by this personality seemed like an illumination? Such was indeed the case with Raphael!” ~Rudolf Steiner, Gospel of Mark: Lecture 3

Saturday 23 September 2023

Community Prep-Stir / Potluck / Bon-fire

*Autumnal Equinox

*Yom Kippur

*Michaelmas Festival

6 – 8 pm at the Lucchesi-Archer-Ginsberg domicile

Please Bring Food & Drink to share, & a jar for the prep

RSVP Hazel@ReverseRitual.com

30 September 2023 – Michaelmas Festival & Zinniker Farm Day

for more info.

Happy b-day Goethe

August 28, 2023Biography, Birth / Death Days, Celestial Event, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Upcoming Events~hag

In the reckoning of Spiritual Science, humanity is experiencing now in Our Present Age, a ‘recapitulation’ of Ancient Egypt. In that time Sirius was called the Star of Isis – the Sister/Lover/Resurrector of the Sun-god Osiris. On a spiritual-physical level, the body of Osiris was seen as Egypt itself. This was a precursor to the sacrifice of the Cosmic Christ who become the meaning & body of the whole Earth. In that time, the body of Osiris was like an overlay upon the land, dying, & returning to life each year with the flooding of the Nile, which occurred thru the rising of the Star of Isis – the rescuer & life-giver – ‘The soul of Egypt’. The annual appearance of Sirius just before dawn (starting at the Summer Solstice, in those days) heralded the Resurrection of the Nile, on which Egyptian agriculture depended. (And now the rising of Sirius happens 2 months later due to the precession of the equinoxes)

Temple inscriptions describe the star as the ‘Divine Sepat’, meaning the ‘Soul of Isis’.

And here’s an interesting Ah-Ha to roll around with: All these references in Sumerian & Egyptian texts before 500 AD, describe the star as ‘red -orange’ in color.

But dear friends, after that date, the references change – & Sirius is described as blue!

Today, we can look up into the dawn twilight & see that Sirius is the bluest & brightest most scintillating star in the sky.

It makes me think about how Steiner points out that in the ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer, the Iliad & the Odyssey, we read: ‘Wine-dark sea’ from oînos (οἶνος, “wine”) + óps (ὄψ, “eye; face”) oînops can also refer to oxen-blood, in describing a reddish color. Steiner tells that the human being of ancient Greece was not able to perceive the color blue!

There is a Hopi story that speaks about this shift in color; tying it to a change in epochs: “When the blue star Kachina makes its appearance in the heavens, the Fifth World will emerge.”

The ancient Shinto of Japan called Sirius ‘our second sun’ & aligned their Temples in its direction.

This gives me hope that we can continue to evolve in each epoch – so that in time & with intention, we will ALL be able to see what many cannot see today…Christ in the etheric…

Anthroposophy gives us a powerful imagination that describes how when physical matter was forming there was a lot of upheaval on earth, a picture involving the separation of Sun & Moon – no small thing – So most of humanity, still in our formative state, left the volatile earth & spent time in other planets or stars, until our karma brought us down, when the earth was more stable physically.

Well, maybe you have guessed since I speak so much with Sirius, that I resonate to that, & feel that Sirius is ‘My Star’.

What is YOUR Star?

~hag

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Today 28 August in 1749 – The Birthday of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German author, poet, playwright, & diplomat. In 1888, as a result of his work for the Kürschner edition of Goethe’s works, Rudolf Steiner was invited to work as an editor at the Goethe archives in Weimar. As well as the introductions & commentaries to 4 volumes of Goethe’s scientific writings. Steiner wrote 2 books about Goethe’s philosophy: The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe’s World-Conception (1886), which Steiner regarded as the epistemological foundation & justification for his later work, & Goethe’s Conception of the World (1897). Steiner writes about Goethe in many places in his huge exegesis, including commentaries on his play Faust.

Goethe and the Evolution of Consciousness, by Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, August 19th, 1921

“…As a young man Goethe necessarily grew up in the outlook of his contemporaries and in the way in which they regarded the world and the affairs of human beings. But he really did not feel at home in this world of thought. There was something turbulent about the young Goethe, but it was a turbulence of a special kind. We need only look at the poems he composed in his youth and we shall find that there was always a kind of inner opposition to what his contemporaries were thinking about the world and about life.

But at the same time there is something else in Goethe — a kind of appeal to what lives in Nature, saying something more enduring and conveying much more than the opinions of those around him could convey. Goethe appeals to the revelations of Nature rather than to the revelations of the human mind. And this was the real temper of his soul even when he was still a child, when he was studying at Leipzig, Strassburg and Frankfurt, and for the first period of his life at Weimar.

Think of him as a child with all the religious convictions of his contemporaries around him. He himself relates — and I have often drawn attention to this beautiful episode in Goethe’s early life — how as a boy of seven he built an altar by taking a music-stand and laying upon it specimens of minerals from his father’s collection; how he placed a taper on the top, lighting it by using a burning-glass to catch the rays of the sun, in order, as he says later — for at seven years he would not, of course, have spoken in this way — to bring an offering to the great God of Nature.

We see him growing beyond what those around him have to say, coming into a closer union with Nature, in whose arms he first of all seeks refuge. Read the works written by Goethe in his youth and you will find that they reveal just this attitude of mind. Then a great longing to go to Italy seizes him and his whole outlook changes in a most remarkable way.

We shall never understand Goethe unless we bear in mind the overwhelming change that came upon him in Italy. In letters to friends at Weimar he speaks of the works of art which conjure up before his soul the whole way in which the Greeks worked. He says: “I suspect that the Greeks proceeded according to those laws by which Nature herself proceeds, and of which I am on the track.” — At last Goethe is satisfied with an environment, an artistic environment enfilled with ideas much closer to Nature than those around him in his youth. And we see how in the course of his Italian journey the idea of metamorphosis arises from this mood of soul, how in Italy Goethe begins to see the transformation of leaf into petal in such a way that the thought of metamorphosis in the whole of Nature flashes up within him.

It is only now that Goethe finds a world in which his soul really feels at home. And, if we study all that he produced after that time, both as a poet and a scientist, it is borne in upon us that he was now living in a world of thought not easily intelligible to his contemporaries, nor indeed to the man of to-day.

Those who embark upon a study of Goethe equipped with the modern scholarship acquired in every kind of educational institution from the Elementary School to the University, and with habitual thought and outlook, will never understand him. For an inner change of mental outlook is essential if we are to realise what Goethe really had in his mind when, in Italy, he re-wrote Iphigenia in Greek metre, after having first composed it in the mood of the Germanic North. Nor is it possible to understand Goethe’s whole attitude to Faust until we realise the fundamental nature of the change that had taken place.

After he had been to Italy, Goethe really hated the first version of Faust which he had written earlier. After that journey he would never have been able to write the passage where Faust turns away from the

“… heavenly forces rising and descending, Their golden urns reciprocally lending,” where he turns his back upon the macrocosm, crying: “Thou, Spirit of the Earth art nearer to me.”

…And many other passages can be read in the same sense. Take, for instance, that wonderful treatise written in the year 1790, on the Metamorphosis of the Plants (Versuch, die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erkennen). We shall have to admit that before his journey to Italy Goethe could never have had at his command a language which seems to converse with the very growth and unfolding life of the plants. And this is an eloquent indication of the place of Goethe’s soul in the whole sweep of evolution. Goethe felt a stranger to the thought of his time the moment he was obliged inwardly to ‘digest’ the result of contemporary scientific education. He was always striving for a different kind of thinking, a different way of approaching the world, and he found it when he felt that he had brought to life within him the attitude of the Greeks to Nature, to the World, to Man…” ~Rudolf Steiner

430 – Deathday of Saint Augustine an early Christian theologian & philosopher whose writings influenced the development of Western philosophy. Among his most important works are The City of God & Confessions. In his early years, he was heavily influenced by Manichaeism & afterward by the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus. He “established anew the ancient Faith.” After his conversion to Christianity in 387, Augustine developed his own approach to philosophy & theology, believing that the grace of Christ was indispensable to human freedom. He is the patron saint of brewers, printers, theologians, the alleviation of sore eyes.

632 – Deathday of Fatimah, daughter of the Prophet Muhammad

1189 – The Third or Kings’ Crusade, was an attempt to reconquer the Holy Land. The campaign was largely successful, regaining the important cities of Acre & Jaffa, but it failed to capture Jerusalem, the emotional & spiritual motivation of the Crusade. After the Crusaders had driven the Muslims from Acre, Richard the Lionheart finalized a treaty granting Muslim control over Jerusalem, but allowing unarmed Christian pilgrims & merchants to visit the city.

1833 – The Slavery Abolition Act through most of the British Empire

1850 – Wagner’s Lohengrin premieres at the German National Theatre, Weimar

Image result for The Carrington event, Solar Storm d Michael Delton

1859 – The Carrington event, Solar Storm disrupts electrical telegraph services & causes aurora to shine so brightly that they are seen clearly all over the earth’s middle latitudes.

1862 – American Civil War: Second Battle of Bull Run

1943 – World War II: In Denmark, a general strike against the Nazi occupation

1957 – U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond, an ardent segregationist, begins a filibuster to prevent the Senate from voting on Civil Rights Act

Image result for 1963 – March on Washington

1963 – March on Washington for Jobs & Freedom: The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. gives his I Have a Dream speech

1968 – Riots in Chicago, during the Democratic National Convention

1988 – Ramstein air show disaster: Seventy-five are killed & 346 injured

1990 – Iraq declares Kuwait to be its newest province

Saturday 23 September 2023

Community Prep-Stir / Potluck / Bon-fire

*Autumnal Equinox

*Yom Kippur

*Michaelmas Festival

6 – 8 pm at the Lucchesi-Archer-Ginsberg domicile

Please Bring Food & Drink to share, & a jar for the prep

RSVP Hazel@ReverseRitual.com

30 September 2023 – Michaelmas Festival & Zinniker Farm Day

for more info.

Threads Remain

August 24, 2023History, Poetry, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Speaking with the Stars, Upcoming Events~hag

~John Craig

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~Some things always remain
True – Life
From death into life into
Boundlessness & restraint
Intuition & magic
Nature & nurture, the inner Earth & Sky…
The Sun rolls onward
The doors of heaven are open
Light returns to light
The great knowing descends – genius to genesis…
Will you meet me?
~hag

Today 24 August in 1912 was the 1^st performance of Rudolf Steiner’s 3^rd Mystery Drama: “The Guardian of the Threshold”

The Mystery Dramas strike a deep chord within, bringing notes of destiny Wisdom to sound within our individual life circumstances. They contain extremely concentrated karmic wisdom. A clue to the reason why, appears in the following writings of Rudolf Steiner about his Mystery Dramas:

‘And actually, one must understand that if some trouble were to be taken to read the things that lie within this drama—not reading between the lines, but if one were to take the trouble to read what lies in the words themselves spiritually—if one were to take the trouble to grasp the Rosicrucian Mystery in just such a way, seeking for these things in the next few years, then it would not be necessary for me to give so many lectures about this or that in the time to come.’

In relation to the Mystery Dramas, Hans Pusch, who worked deeply with them, states:

‘It is a clear sign of genuine relationship to Anthroposophy, if the forces of destiny become more and more active, even though they may be disturbing and uncomfortable. The spirit of our time is an awakener, a conscious troublemaker, and a dis-illusioner. Anyone who feels inner turmoil as a necessary tribute to the forces of progress will be prepared to enjoy the seemingly long speeches in the dramas. In their composition, he will sense inner laws and rhythms that will bring order to his own soul. The dramatic events in the spirit scenes become as real as any physical happenings.’

Our trials help us to understand & have compassion for one another. As Hans says, sometimes it is indeed a daily, almost hourly inner battle with our self to say ‘Yes’ to what destiny throws in our path.

As the scenes of the Mystery Dramas unfold, we become aware of the various interactions between individuals in the course of time.

In the lecture series ‘The Secrets of the Threshold’ Steiner speaks often of the Mystery Dramas. They give us an objective overview, ‘of knots from threads that karma spun in world becoming’ in the words of Benedictus. (in the Temple Scene of the first Mystery Drama.) In these threads, human lives are interwoven.

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In the Temple Scenes of the Mystery Dramas, we experience the manifestation of karmic configurations & their progression in the spiritual development of individuals.

Within our present incarnation, there are deeds to perform to help rectify misdeeds, before we cross the threshold into the life between death & rebirth. We all have knots to loosen & unbind in our individual destiny. By recognizing the characters & situations in the plays, which are similar to our own life, unexpected karmic understandings may be glimpsed.

Full publicity shot of Reginald Owen as Ebenezer Scrooge, seated ...

We can think about the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, well known in Charles Dicken’s story, ‘A Christmas Carol’. Was it destiny that Scrooge was confronted by the ‘Ghost of Christmas Past’? How was his individual retrospect similar from those in the Mystery Dramas?

Dickens’ story is a Michaelic-kamaloca experience. Seeing the pain of the people he was hurting, Scrooge felt the need to make amends for his miserly misdeeds, thereby changing his future destiny & that of others, as well. This striving for atonement is to be developed at every turn on the wheel of the year. May we take stock of what we have reaped & sown as we move toward the harvest season.

In daily life, our trials along the path appear less objective to see & not so beautifully expressed as the poetry we find in The Mystery Dramas. It is, however, the suffering in destiny situations, which leads to soul-growth. Our present state of mind may hold clues to understanding past misdeeds. Likewise does heightened consciousness assist in planting seeds of service for the future of mankind.

~hag

from Hans Pusch – ‘Working together on Rudolf Steiner’s Mystery dramas

“The Guardian of the Threshold – Scene 10 – The Temple of the Mystic League. Here Benedictus, Torquatus, and Trustworthy have the robes and insignia of their office of Hierophant as described in the ‘Portal of Initiation.’ The Eastern altar supports a golden sphere; a blue sphere rests upon the Southern altar; while the sphere upon the altar of the West is red. As the scene opens Benedictus and Hilary are standing at the altar in the East; Bellicosus and Torquatus at the altar in the South; Trustworthy at the altar in the West; then enter Thomasius, Capesius, Strader then Maria, Felix Balde, and Dame Balde, and later on the Soul of Theodora; and last of all the four Soul-Forces. (East is stage right & West stage left.)

Benedictus:
The souls of all my pupils have received
The spirit-light, each in that special form
Which was appointed for him by his fate.
What they have now achieved each for himself
Each now must render fruitful for the other.
But this can only happen, if their powers
According unto number’s rhythmic law
Desire to join within the holy place
To form the higher unity, which first
Can waken to true life what otherwise
Could only stay in solitary state.
They stand upon the threshold of the shrine,
Whose souls must first unite, and then shall sound
In unison according to the rules
Imprinted in the cosmic book of fate:
That harmony of spirits may achieve
What each alone could never bring to pass.
‘Twill bring fresh inspiration to the old
Which here hath nobly reigned since Time was not.
To you, ye brethren, I these pupils bring
Who found their way here through the spirit-worlds
And through the strictest proving of their souls.
The holy customs will they treat with awe,
And treasure ancient sacred mystic ways
Which here are seen as powers of spirit-light.
Ye too, who have fulfilled in truest wise
Your lofty spirit-service for so long,
Henceforth will be entrusted with new tasks.
The cosmic plan loth call the sons of men
But for a time unto the sacred shrine,
And when in service they exhaust their strength
It guideth them to other fields of work.
Even this temple had to stand its trial;
And one man’s error had to guard it once,
The guardian of the light — from darkness deep,
One cosmic hour big with the fate of worlds.
Thomasius perceived through inward light
Which rules unconscious in the souls of men,
That o’er its threshold he must not pursue
His way unto the holy mystic shrine
Ere he had crossed that other threshold o’er,
Of which this only is the outward sign.
So of himself he shut the door again
Which you would fain have opened wide in love.
He now will as another come again
Worthy of your initiation’s gift.“

24 August 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: the 1st quarter Moon will pass in front of Antares (Alpha Scorpii), creating a lunar occultation visible from the Contiguous United States, Mexico and Canada.. The reddish star will disappear behind the dark limb (edge) of the Bella Lina & reemerge under her lit half.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

01A6AFEQ; Herculaneum is destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius — F Matania

79 – Mount Vesuvius erupts. The cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum,& Stabiae are buried in volcanic ash

410 –Sack of Rome by The Visigoths

1185 – Sack of Thessalonica by the Normans.

1349 – Six thousand Jews are killed in Mainz after being blamed for the bubonic plague.

1391 – Jews are massacred in Palma de Mallorca

Amazon.com: Gutenberg Bible Na Page Of Johann GutenbergS 42-Line ...

1456 – The printing of the Gutenberg Bible is completed

1814 – British troops invade Washington, D.C. burning down the White House, the Capitol & many other buildings

1816 – The Treaty of St. Louis is signed by the Council of Three Fires (united tribes of Ottawa, Ojibwa, & Potawatomi) residing on the Illinois and Milwaukee rivers. By signing the treaty, they relinquished all right, claim, & title to their land, also a 20-mile strip that connected Chicago & Lake Michigan with the Illinois River. In exchange the tribes were to be paid $1,000 in merchandise over 12 years. Today, Indian Boundary Park in West Ridge, Chicago commemorates this Treaty.

File:The War of Wealth by C.T. Dazey, Broadway poster, 1895.jpg ...

1857 – The Panic of 1857 begins, setting off one of the most severe economic crises in United States history. Since the years immediately preceding the Panic were prosperous, many banks, had seized the opportunity to take risks with their investments & as soon as market prices began to fall, they quickly began to experience the effects of financial panic (will we ever learn?)

The Healing Power of Sunlight: Jakob Lorber: 9781885928108: Amazon ...

1864 – Deathday of Jakob Lorber “scribe of God” a Christian mystic &visionary. Lorber’s prose, an ‘inner voice’ from the region of his heart, has been compared with writings by other mystics such as Emanuel Swedenborg, Jakob Boehme & Rudolf Steiner

Documentary: The Story Of Thomas Alva Edison

1891 – Thomas Edison patents the motion picture camera

1912 – 1^st performance of Rudolf Steiner’s 3^rd Mystery Drama: “The Guardian of the Threshold”

1932 – Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly across the United States non-stop (from Los Angeles to New Jersey)

1944 – World War II: Allied troops begin the attack on Paris

1954 – The Communist Control Act goes into effect, outlawing the American Communist Party

1967 – Led by Abbie Hoffman, the Youth International Party temporarily disrupts trading at the New York Stock Exchange by throwing dollar bills from the viewing gallery, causing trading to cease as brokers scramble to grab them

1991 – Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

1991 – Ukraine declares itself independent from the Soviet Union

RFID/NFC Implants for Bitcoin Transactions — Katina Michael

1998 – First radio-frequency identification (RFID) human implantation tested in the United Kingdom

The Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Archive has found a home at Stanford ...

2004 – Deathday of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Swiss-American psychiatrist & death advocate

Tim Rogerson inspired Pluto painting by Danielle Hobby | Disney ...

2006 – The International Astronomical Union (IAU) redefines Pluto as a dwarf planet

Saturday 23 September 2023

Community Prep-Stir / Potluck / Bon-fire

*Autumnal Equinox

*Yom Kippur

*Michaelmas Festival

6 – 8 pm at the Lucchesi-Archer-Ginsberg domicile

Please Bring Food & Drink to share, & a jar for the prep

RSVP Hazel@ReverseRitual.com

30 September 2023 – Michaelmas Festival & Zinniker Farm Day

for more info.

Judge for Yourself

August 23, 2023Rudolf Steiner Quote, Upcoming Events~hag

~Rob Gonsalve

Greetings friends – I am inspired to share this wise mantric tid-bit from our dear Dr. Steiner given today 23 August in 1911, to his Esoteric students in Munich:

“We must learn to think objectively. Those who say that they’re already thinking objectively, are often making a big mistake, for this assumption is only subjective, it’s a delusion.

Pride or ambition leads to error and superstition; we must not succumb to this. We should confront everything that comes to meet us from whatever side, with an alert, open intellect, clear thinking and sharp logic. We shouldn’t swear by what seems right to us at first; investigate it critically, don’t give in blindly to something. That’s also the way it should be in our esoteric life; no belief in authority is demanded.

And my dear sisters and brothers, the masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings let me tell you that you should always maintain and use all of your intellectual powers with respect to the wisdom that’s given by them, with respect to what I’m justified in advocating here, and also with respect to me. One should approach what’s said and advocated here with healthy human understanding, with sensibleness and with an open-minded thinking, if it is only opened far enough. You shouldn’t swear by this or that but should judge for yourself.

And so we’ll summarize everything that this class — which like all esoteric classes should be a sacred one for us — has brought us with the words:

In the spirit lay the germ of my body.
And the spirit has imprinted in my body
The eyes of sense,
That through them I may see
The lights of bodies.
And the spirit has imprinted in my body
Reason and sensation
And feeling and will,
That through them I may perceive bodies
And act upon them.
In the spirit lay the germ of my body.
In my body lies the germ of the spirit.
And I will incorporate into my spirit
The super-sensible eyes
That through them I may behold the light of spirits.
And I will imprint in my spirit
Wisdom and power and love,
So that through me the spirits may act
And I become a self-conscious organ
Of their deeds.
In my body lies the germ of the spirit.”

~Rudolf Steiner, ESOTERIC LESSONS II
GA 266, Lesson 31, Munich, 8-23-’11

23 August 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: On or around August 23 every year, Regulus, the brightest star in constellation Leo, is in conjunction with the Sun – lost in the Sun’s glare. Regulus will return to the morning sky around the September equinox.

Regulus – Latin for ‘prince‘ or ‘little king.’ In Arabic, it is قلب الأسد (Qalb al-Asad, ‘the heart of the lion‘), the same as the Latin Cor Leōnis & Greek Kardia Leontos. In Chinese, it is 轩辕十四, the Fourteenth Star of Xuanyuan, the Yellow Emperor. In Babylonian, it was Sharru, ‘the King,‘ & LUGAL, ‘the star that stands in the breast of the Lion: the King.’ In Persian, it was Miyan, ‘the Centre,‘ & Venant, one of the four ‘royal stars’ of the Persian monarchy, where in 3,000 BC, as the Watcher of the North, it marked the summer solstice. According to Ptolemy, it is of the nature of Mars; while Alvidas states that it is similar to the Sun.

Regulus is said to be one of the most fortunate stars in the heavens. Proclus (412-485) called Regulus the “Royal Star” & asserted that those born under it have a royal-like nativity. ~ Vivian E. Robson

~Joseph Mallord William Turner – Regulus. According to the Tate museum: Regulus was a Roman general who was captured by the Carthaginians. They sent him back to Rome to negotiate the release of Carthaginian prisoners. When he returned to Carthage having failed his mission, he was tortured by being left out in the sun with his eyelids sewn open. The dazzling light in the centre of this work dramatically illustrates Regulus’ cruel punishment.

Turner first exhibited this painting in Rome in 1828. His audience there would have recognised it as a seaport from a work by the 17th-century painter, Claude Lorrain displayed in the Uffizzi gallery in Florence. It appears that Turner wanted to show himself as part of a tradition of landscape painting started by Claude.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY (sourced from Steiner orginal Calendar of the Soul, Wikipedia Commons, Sky&Telescope)

“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.” ~Aldous Huxley

Feast Day of Vulcan – The god of fire – including the fire of volcanoes, deserts, metalworking and the forge in ancient Roman religion and myth. He is often depicted with a blacksmith’s hammer. The Vulcanalia was the annual festival held August 23 in his honor. His Greek counterpart is Hephaestus, the god of fire and smithery.

Black Ribbon Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism & Nazism

International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade & its Abolition

79 – Mount Vesuvius begins stirring, on the feast day of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire

1244 – Siege of Jerusalem: The city’s citadel, the Tower of David, surrenders to Khwarezmian (Persian) Empire

1382 – Siege of Moscow: The Golden Horde led by khan Tokhtamysh lays siege

1572 –St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre a wave of Catholic mob violence, directed against the Huguenots (French Calvinist Protestants) during the French Wars of Religion. Traditionally believed to have been instigated by Catherine de’ Medici, the mother of King Charles IX.

1754 – Birthday of Louis XVI of France – the last King of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. He was referred to as Citizen Louis Capet during the four months just before he was executed by guillotine. He was the son of Louis, Dauphin of France, son and heir-apparent of King Louis XV, and Maria Josepha of Saxony. When his father died in 1765, he became the new Dauphin.

1839 – The United Kingdom captures Hong Kong. The ensuing 3-year conflict will later be known as the First Opium War

1914 – World War I: Japan declares war on Germany

1939 – World War II: Nazi Germany & the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression treaty, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. In a secret addition to the pact, the Baltic states, Finland, Romania, & Poland are divided between the two nations.

1942 – World War II: Beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad

1944 – World War II: Marseille is liberated by the Allies

1944 – Freckleton Air Disaster: A United States Army Air Forces B-24 Liberator bomber crashes into a school in Freckleton, England killing 61 people

1970 –César Chávez leads the Salad Bowl strike, the largest farm worker strike in U.S. history

1973 – A bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden, turns into a hostage crisis, who begin to sympathize with their captors, leading to the term “Stockholm syndrome”

1989 – Singing Revolution: Two million people from Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania stand on the Vilnius–Tallinn road, holding hands for restoration of independence

1990 – Armenia declares its independence from the Soviet Union

1990 – Saddam Hussein appears on Iraqi state television with a number of Western “guests” (actually hostages) to try to prevent the Gulf War

1991 – Tim Berners-Lee opens the World Wide Web to new users

1996 – Osama bin Laden issues message entitled ‘A declaration of war against the Americans occupying the land of the two holy places.’

2000 – Gulf Air Flight 072 crashes into the Persian Gulf killing 143

2011 – A magnitude 5.8 earthquake occurs in Virginia as a result of ‘Fracking’. Damage occurs to monuments & structures in Washington D.C. with damage estimated at 300 million

Saturday 23 September 2023

Community Prep-Stir / Potluck / Bon-fire

*Autumnal Equinox

*Yom Kippur

*Michaelmas Festival

6 – 8 pm at the Lucchesi-Archer-Ginsberg domicile

Please Bring Food & Drink to share, & a jar for the prep

RSVP Hazel@ReverseRitual.com

30 September 2023 – Michaelmas Festival & Zinniker Farm Day

for more info.

The Octave of the Immaculate Heart

August 22, 2023Festival, History, Poetry, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Upcoming Events~hag

Immaculate Heart of Mary with Doves and Lace –8.5x11" based on a ...

POD (Poem Of the day)

~Searching for the Peace Path
Leading to the Queen of Heaven
Gathering hot iron
From the falling stars along the way
Feeding the Tree of Life
With redeemed Sulphur
To forge the sword of Michael…
My heart beating in Immaculate rhythm
I reach for The Anointed One
In these Dog-Days
Tying the key to the kite
In the gathering
clouds…
~hag

Queen of Heaven - Wikipedia — Diego Velázquez

Today we meet the Octave of the Assumption: Tradition celebrates two main feasts of Mary in August. The first is the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary on August 15, & the second is the Feast of the Queenship of Mary on August 22 (also known as The feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary)

The feast of the Assumption has been celebrated since the 5^th or 6th century & for many years its festival was extended by an octave.

Our ancestors celebrated all major feasts for eight days = for an octave. Essentially the same liturgy was said, using the same liturgical texts each day of the octave.

The eighth day of the octave was seen as a heightened experience, honoring the spiritual themes of the feast for the last time. For this reason a complimentary feast was often instituted on this eighth day.

When it came to the Assumption, it had an octave celebration for many centuries. Then on May 4, 1944, Pope Pius XII established the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary on August 22, the octave day of the feast of the Assumption. He did this so that by her intercession may be obtained “peace among nations, the love of purity and the practice of virtue.”

However, Pope Paul VI decided to switch the feasts of the Immaculate Heart and the Queenship of Mary. The feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary was joined to the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (celebrated on the Saturday following the feast of the Sacred Heart, typically around the Summer Solstice June 20) and the I’m not one to give authority to Papal Bulls but when it comes to the Mary’s I always seek to bring forth the essence of the Divine Feminine from out the Matrix… was moved to August 22. Mary becomes the “Queen of Heaven.” The power of the Queenship of Mary is that she is a “Queen of Peace.”

Queen of Peace, an art print by Qistina Khalidah - INPRNT — Qistina Khalidah

I’m not one to give much authority to Papal Bulls, but when it comes to the ‘Mary’s’ I always seek to bring forth the essence of the Divine Feminine from out the Matrix…

“May all recognize more clearly and venerate more devoutly the merciful and maternal sway of the Mother of God. May this feast help to preserve, strengthen and prolong that peace among nations which daily is almost destroyed by recurring crises. Is she not a rainbow in the clouds reaching towards God, the pledge of a covenant of peace?”

After her Assumption into Heaven, Mary is Queen of Heaven, right there beside her Son, The Being of Love, listening to our prayers. She is the true “Queen of Peace,” who can help us turn the tide of war & conflict thru her powerful intercession.

Pietro Annigoni: Immaculate Heart of Mary — Art+Christianity — Pietro Annigoni

May we strive to make our hearts Immaculate to share the true Crown of our Queen & become a beacon of Love & peace in our world.

~hag

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

~Elizabeth Wang

“The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history… It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science.” ~Rachel Carson

Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary & the Queenship of Mary– a celestial follow-up to the Assumption, now celebrated on the octave day of that feast

392 –Birthday of Eugenius elected – the last Roman Emperor to support polytheism

Image result for OdoacerÂ a soldier became the first King of Italy

476 – Birthday of Odoacer a soldier became the first King of Italy. His reign is commonly seen as marking the end of the Western Roman Empire

565 –Birthday of Columbaa, Christian saint -one of the ‘Twelve Apostles of Ireland’ reports seeing a monster in Loch Ness, Scotland

Image result for Pope Gregory IX, established the PapalÂ Inquisition

1241 – Deathday of Pope Gregory IX, established the Papal Inquisition

Image result for 1849 â TheÂ first air raidÂ in history. Austria launches pilotless balloons against the city of Venice

1849 – The first air raid in history. Austria launches pilotless balloons against the city of Venice

Image result for first geneva convention 1864

1864 – Twelve nations sign the First Geneva Convention

1862 – Birthday of Claude Debussy

1902 – Cadillac Motor Company is founded

1902 – Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first President to ride in an automobile

Image result for Rudolf Steinerâs 4thÂ Mystery Drama:Â The Soulsâ Awakening

1913 – 1^st performance of Rudolf Steiner’s 4^th Mystery Drama: The Souls’ Awakening

Image result for 1932 â TheÂ BBCÂ begins television broadcastingÂ using John Logie Bairdâs system

1932 – The BBC begins television broadcasting using John Logie Baird’s system

1941 – World War II: German troops begin the Siege of Leningrad

1944 – World War II: Holocaust of Kedros in Crete by German force

*1947 – Deathday of Francis Delaisi, French social economist spoken of by Rudolf Steiner in ‘Fall of the Spirits of Darkness’ Lecture 14 Dornach, 28 October 1917

“For once, therefore, a man woke up and saw that what mattered was not to proclaim democracy but to see the full reality, not to follow slogans, but to see things as they are. This would be particularly important today, for people would then realize that the events which reign with such blood and terror over the whole of humanity are guided and directed from just a few centres. People will never realize this if they persist in the delusion that nation is fighting nation, and allow the European and American Press to lull them to sleep over the kinds of relations that are said to exist between nations. Everything said about antagonism and opposition between nations only exists to cast a veil over the true reasons. For we shall never arrive at the real truth if we feed on words in order to explain these events, but only if we point to actual people. The problem is that this tends to be unpalatable today. And the man who woke up and wrote these statements in 1910 also presented some highly unwelcome accounts in his book. He produced a list of fifty-five individuals who are the real rulers and exploiters of France. The list can be found in Francis Delaisi’s La Democratie et les Financiers, written in 1910; the same man has also written La Guerre qui vient, a book which has become famous. In his La Democratie et les Financiers you will find statements of fundamental significance. There you have someone who has woken up to reality. The book contains impulses which allow one to see through much of what we should see through today, and also to cut through much of the fog which is made to wash over human brains today. Here again, we must resolve to look to reality.

The book has, of course, been ignored. It does, however, raise issues which should be raised all over the world today, for they would teach people much about the reality which others intend to bury under all their declamations on democracy and autocracy and whatever the slogans may be.” ~Rudolf Steiner

Image result for 1961 âÂ Ida SiekmannÂ dies attempting to cross the Berlin Wall

1961 – Ida Siekmann dies attempting to cross the Berlin Wall

1962 – The OAS attempts to assassinate French president Charles de Gaulle

1971 – J. Edgar Hoover & John Mitchell announce the arrest of 20 of the Camden 28, a group of “Christian leftists” anti-Vietnam War activists.