Category Archives: Rudolf Steiner Quote

Beyond Alexander the Great

June 11, 2023Biography, Calendar of the Soul, Celestial Event, History, Poetry, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Upcoming Event~hag

POD

~Birthed by a bird song
Foretold in the stars
All that I am
Released in a Summer Storm
Said I should fly
~hag

11 June – Today – is the Death-day of Alexander the Great.

According T.H. Meyer: On this day in 1924, Rudolf Steiner wrote a letter to Ita Wegman, from Koberwitz, during the Whitsun Agricultural Course, speaking about her incarnation as his former pupil, when he was Aristotle, & she, Alexander The Great.

Aristotle’s Influence On Education Of Alexander The Great …

After death, Aristotle & Alexander, just as before, when they worked as Eabani & Gilgamesh, continued to be active in the spiritual world for a long period of time, touching down once for a brief time connected with the Parzival saga. (*see below)

Then in 869 AD the entelechies of Aristotle & Alexander met, in the spiritual world, with Haroun al-Raschid & his counselor.

This coincided with the Council of 869 in Constantinople during which the concept of spirit was eliminated from the 3-fold human being, & was replaced with the polarized concept of body & soul.

Haroun al-Raschid & the opposing forces that he represented did not want Christianized Aristotelianism, only the teaching of natural science that has gradually taken the form of today’s scientific materialism, devoid of any true conception or reverence for divinity & creation; devoid of spiritual science.

This meeting in the spiritual world was a confrontation that was later reflected in earthly life thru the Quest for the Holy Grail & the striving for a union of early Christianity with the Arabian cultures that had preserved Aristotle’s works.

“For the natural science that Aristotle was able to pass on to Alexander needed for its comprehension souls that were still touched with the spirit of the Ephesian age, the time that preceded the burning of Ephesus. Such souls could only be found over in Asia or in Egypt, and it was into these parts that this knowledge of nature and insight into the Being of Nature were brought, by means of the expeditions of Alexander. Only later in a diluted form did they come over into Europe by many and diverse ways – especially by way of Asia Minor, Africa and Spain – but always in a very diluted or, as we might say, sifted form. The writings of Aristotle that came over into Europe directly were his writings on logic and philosophy. These lived on, and found fresh life again in medieval scholasticism.”

“…For we can see how the expeditions of Alexander and the teachings of Aristotle had this end in view: to keep unbroken the threads that unite humanity with the ancient spirituality, to weave them as it were into the material civilization that was to come, so they might endure until such time as new spiritual revelations should be given…” ~Rudolf Steiner, World History and the Mysteries in the Light of Anthroposophy, 1910.

Parcival findet Sigune mit dem toten Schionatulander auf einer …

*Brief indications by Rudolf Steiner say: “…they lived, unknown and unheeded, in a corner of Europe not without importance for Anthroposophy, dying at an early age, but gazing for a brief moment as it were through a window into the civilisation of the West, receiving impressions and impulses but giving none of any significance themselves. That was to come later.” ~GA 240

This points us to the figures of Schionatulander (Rudolf Steiner) & Sigune (Ita Wegman), who play an important, yet mostly overlooked role, in the Parsifal legend.

Sigune loves Schionatulander but she longs to read the stellar script, called “Brackenseil” – seen on the leash belonging to the hound “Gardevias” which means: ‘Guardian of the Pathways‘.

In the attempt to bring it to her, after she had lost it, Schionatulander is killed by Orilus who is actually looking for Parsifal. Schionatulander dies instead of Parsifal; & he becomes a guardian spirit of Parsifal & those on the Quest for the Holy Grail.

In a private conversation with Friedrich Rittelmeyer, Steiner spoke about that incarnation: “I was obliged to incarnate in a stream completely foreign to me in order to acquire the Christian fervor which I needed for the Thomas Incarnation.“

Dominus vobiscum, Et cum spiritu tuo.: Saint Thomas Aquinas, ora …

Incarnating together again to bear a new striving – the transformation of the cosmic Intelligence thru the Christ Impulse – they enter the Order of the Dominicans. Out of the quiet ‘cloister cell’ comes a world-wide influence inspired by the most illustrious scholar of the ecclesiastical system of thought, known as Scholasticism – thru Thomas Aquinas (Rudolf Steiner); & by his side is his confesser, the young Dominican, Reginald of Piperno (Ita Wegman).

Friedrich Walther | Sermon of Saint Albertus Magnus, the teacher of Thomas Aquinas

To grasp spiritual reality in pure thinking, to lead pure thinking with mathematical precision from idea to idea — this was the faculty developed by Scholasticism & bequeathed to the spiritual history of humankind thru its great teachers: Albertus Magnus (Marie Steiner) & Thomas Aquinas (Rudolf Steiner).

In contrast to the Christ Impulse which brings in the possiblity for the individual “I” consciousness to humanity – The Arabian culture adhered firmly to the old idea of cosmic, universal Intelligence. Thomas Aquinas brought the idea of personal Intelligence, to human thinking. The Arabian mind-set persisted in the contention that every human being can be fructified by the universal Intelligence, but that there is no personal thinking, no personal immortality – Much like the ancient Hindu teachings that say: at death a human being passes into the ocean of Cosmic Intelligence.

For Aquinas, whose thinking was combined with fervent Christian piety, the world of Ideas was connected with spiritual reality, coming to expression thru Beings he calls “Intelligences” living behind the world of the senses.

Thru the evolution of human consciousness, our thinking evolves from the cosmic realms of the “Intelligences” (the Planetary & Zodiacal Beings) to the earthly realm of human intelligence.

This is seen in the progression from the Elemental Beings connected with King Arthur’s Castle – to the countenance of Christ in the gaining of the Grail Castle.

In the “Arthurian stream” it was not yet realized that the Cosmic Intelligence had fallen away from Archangel Michael, & had come to human beings.

The Teachers of Chartres, like Alanus ab Insulis, working to foster the stream of the Grail Castle, were representative of the Intelligence that had now become Christian & human – a polar contrast to the Castle of King Arthur.

Steiner’s Spiritual Sceince shows us that the Teachers of Chartres, then working in the spiritual world, had realized the significance of personal immortality, realized that the Intelligence had become human, & were aware of the Christian thinking in the Grail stream, connected with the world of stars, but that this knowledge would have to sleep for a time in the spiritual world, so that the intellect could be born in freedom.

And now in our time the 2 streams must merge, to create a unity within the world.

From the Karmic Relationships lectures: “Aristotle and Alexander had centuries earlier witnessed, from the spiritual world, the departure of Christ from the sphere of the Sun towards Golgotha. This called forth in their souls “the challenge to set a new beginning – not to continue what had been on the earth before this mystery, but to begin completely anew.”

“Henceforth, Aristotle and Alexander must work – who already in antiquity were equal to the concepts and ideas of the fifth post-Atlantean age.” – Karmic Relationships, 1924.

Glass Windows Designed by Rudolf Steiner

Poem written by Rudolf Steiner to Ita Wegman:

There, where the light
In face of green demons
Is tremulous,
And the primordial Powers
Born of the light
To wrestling men
Proclaim the riddle,
Which from the demons
Only by men can be enticed forth
And brought to the Gods
There soul found soul
In order to offer someday to waiting Gods
The secrets of demons
In a darkened place
That light may be born,
Where for want of this deed
Eternal darkness held sway.
Such a place there is
It must vanish
Make it someday vanish,
So speaks the admonishing
Gaze of Michael.

And so it is dear friends, that The future Age of Love & Freedom, prepared thru the marriage of the 2 Streams, is characterized by the fact that human beings must learn to see thru the attacks made by the ‘demons’. We cannot run. We cannot hide. On the contary – We have to step in – We are called to uncover the secrets behind these demons – to awaken to what is really working within their deeds. And to pass on these mysteries of ‘evil’ to the Hierarchies of the ‘good gods’ – our ever present helpers, to receive the Wisdom needed so that we can take on the responsibility of transforming evil.

Since the advent of the Consciousness Soul Age we can use our imaginative cognition to move our thinking in a lemniscate from head to heart, & from heart to head.

We must learn the secret that the Fox told the Little Prince, “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eyes.”

Let us step into the world, to meet our Higher Self, & to meet each other – to stand together in the glory of the Spirirt Sun. And at night, under the myriad canopy of Stars, we will be invited to share in the cosmic conversation of our collective evolution.

So may this anniversary of the Death of Alexander the Great, be our reminder to take up again & once again our tasks at hand.

~hag

11 June 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Brilliant Venus (or as Steiner tells us: Occult Mercury) – our sky’s brightest planet – will take on the roll of queen bee when it passes by the Beehive star cluster. Look west shortly after darkness falls for Venus and the Beehive as they make an interesting and beautiful sight.

RUDOLF STEINER’S CALENDAR OF THE SOUL
translated with added titles by Roy Sadler
TRINITY II
Soul Consecration
v10
The being of the sun ascends to summer’s heights
and takes my human feeling far and wide
and into the sublime, the cosmic harmony
wherein a dawning vision’s intimating faintly,
‘in future you will know:
a holy being felt you now’

The mirror verse
EPIPHANY IV (IMBOLC)
World Consecration
v43
In winter’s depths
true spirit presence warms,
makes new appearance real
and through the heart’s force
intuits earthlife’s rise to glory;
the soul’s revitalising fire in the human core
defies world cold.

Spring Garden Waldorf School Ohio 6th Grade

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day(RSarchives)

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY (Rudolf Steiner’s orginal Calendar of the Soul, Anthrowiki, Wikipedia Commons)

323 – Deathday of Alexander The Great

1184 BC – Trojan War: Troy is sacked and burned

1194 – Fire at Chartres Cathedral

1346 – Birthday of Charles IV (the last initiate to become Holy Roman Emperor)

1364 – Deathday of Agnes of Hungary, patroness of Konigsfelden monastery

1924 – Rudolf Steiner sends Ita Wegman a letter speaking about her incarnation as Alexander The Great.

1963 – Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức burns himself with gasoline in a busy Saigon intersection to protest the lack of religious freedom in South Vietnam

1963 – John F. Kennedy addresses Americans from the Oval Office proposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that would revolutionize American society. Proposing equal access to public facilities, end segregation in education and guarantee federal protection for voting right

https://www.kennedy24.com/

~Kindling Radiance~
A Community Festival Gathering Celebrating St. John’s-Tide
Saturday, June 24, 2023 at Zinniker Farm
5:30 pm – Potluck – Please bring food & drink to share
6 – 7 pm – Artistic Offerings – Poem, Song?… Express yourself!
7 – 9 pm – Bonfire Drum & Song Circle w/ Hazel & Ultra-Violet Archer

Bring lawn chairs & drums if you have them!Show support for Zinniker Farm –
$15 more or less Love Donation
Co-hosted by The Christian Community of Southeast Wisconsin, The Christian Community of Chicago, Mark & Petra Zinniker, Hazel at ReverseRitual.com

Why a St. John’s Festival?
At this time of year, when daylight hours are the longest, “the soul of the earth rises in longing toward the heights, seeking communion with the universe, with the light and warmth of the sun… and the stars.” ~Rudolf Steiner.

Three days after the Summer Solstice, we celebrate St. John the Baptist – a lone voice calling to us from the wilderness to change our hearts and minds – so that we can connect to the ‘True Vine’ & receive the new impulse of Love raditating into the world. Come join us as we come together as a community to support the Farm & celebrate the glories of Summer.

Interested? Please…
RSVP to margaretincommunity@gmail.com Subject: St. John’s
Let us know the number of people you are RSVPing for
And if someone in your group would like to offer a poem, song, story, etc. on the theme
Bring food & drink to share (plates and utensils provided)
Bring a friend, lawn chairs, drums, clothes and shoes for a working farm
All are welcome, but please keep your pets at home.
You can visit the pigs and chickens on the farm, but please remember these are farm animals and not pets. Please just look and say hello quietly and respectfully, with reverence and gratitude for their service.

Zinniker Farm is located at N7399 Bowers Rd., Elkhorn, WI 53121If you are in the area, come join us as we celebrate St. John’s-Tide on the Zinniker Farm.

Can’t make it in person? You can still support the Zinniker Farm and their regenerative work with your good will and contributions.

Regenerative farming is Stewardship that provides true results for the healing of the Earth. It is time to make a lasting investment.Please contact Mark & Petra Zinniker to find out how to make a direct contribution to their regenerative work or sign up at Patreon.com/Zinnikerfarm

Step into Will

June 7, 2023Celestial Event, Community, History, Poetry, Rudolf Steiner Quote~hag

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~My song raps itself around
The belly of the New Sophia
Pulsing in union with The Logos
In rhythm with the Sun streaming
In the All-Space of the Fixed Stars
Forming fresh consonants in Time
Into the aura of imaginations
That inform my soul thru rolling vowels
Of planetary bodies
That sing their echo into my open ear…
~hag

“One gets smart through experience, but wisdom is the force that streams into us from the spiritual world and then streams out again. Wisdom also comes from the mouth of babes. When what streams out comes more from the feeling, it is wisdom, but when it stimulates a person into action so that productivity predominates, it is love.

But one has to know what love really is. Someone may feel sympathy for a person’s misfortune, but that isn’t real love. Sympathy only becomes love if one steps in and helps them.

Wisdom and love make up the I. The I is love and wisdom that have become will. This is the higher triad.” ~Rudolf Steiner, Esoteric Lessons, Hamburg. 31 May 1908

Dear friends – Our task is to make this spiritual wisdom which has imprinted into our feeling life from the spiritual world, conscious. We do this by noticing the after images & complementary colors that come with memory, taking the feelings out of the astral, using them to stimulate the etheric body instead. Then when we stream out with our feelings – we can consciously unite with the soul of all we see in the world.

We become truly wise when our feelings can add to the wisdom in the soul of the world.

When we do this we are using our imagination to become inspired. We look out at the beauty of nature, for instance, & we are filled with reverence & awe. When we bring our soul forces consciously in hand, we can enter the soul-life of another human being to unite with them – we feel ‘moved’ by their joys or misfortune & together we can share a common fellowship or love. This brings in intuition.

~hag

7 June 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: From an article by Dr Elizabeth Vreede: ” Comets represent an element that does not wholly enter the usual sphere of cosmic law, although they still contain a trace of the direct working of spiritual powers, indeed, of the very highest — the Seraphim and Cherubim. Before ordinary law may be broken through, the very highest power and insight is required. The various comets, indeed, are agents of a very special nature in our planetary system, their polar antithesis being in the moons. Just as the moons are a kind of corpse which the planetary system trails along with it, so, on the other side, the comets may be spoken of as constant purifiers of the spiritual atmosphere within the solar system. In earlier times men thought of them as the “scavengers of God,” and many superstitions have gathered around them. To the eye of Spirit, too, the mission of the comets is perpetually to expel impure astral forces from the Cosmos or to introduce new impulses.“

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day(RSarchives)

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY (Rudolf Steiner’s orginal Calendar of the Soul, Anthrowiki, Wikipedia Commons)

7 June 1924 – Beginning of the “Agricultural Course” on the Koberwitz estate of Count & Countess Keyserlingk – The Founding of Biodynamic Agriculture by Rudolf Steiner.

Following the occult responsibility of a great initiate, Rudolf Steiner waited until the seeds of an idea came to him from striving individuals in order, when the time was ripe, to plant, & nurture a new impulse in the world.

Steiner’s Agriculture Course encompassed just 8 lectures presented over a 10 day period during the Whitsun-tide of 1924, from June 7^th thru the 16th, at the small village of Koberwitz, Silesia (now Kobierzyce, Poland).

Count Carl Keyserlingk was an anthroposophist, & the estate manager of 18,500 acres at Koberwitz. He managed 18 farms, with more than 1000 workers. So Keyserlingk was keen for Steiner to present a course for farmers – Especially since there was concern among the farmers about of the rapid change in agricultural practices in the wake of the supply of cheap synthetic nitrogenous fertilizer flowing from the adoption of the Haber-Bosch process for the ‘fixing’ of gaseous nitrogen which was first demonstrated in 1909 & which was then rapidly industrialized on a grand scale for explosives, & after WWI, for fertilizer.

Ehrenfried Pfeiffer’s account relates that: “Count Keyserlingk set to work in dead earnest to persuade Dr. Steiner to give an agricultural course. As Dr. Steiner was already overwhelmed with work, tours & lectures, he put off his decision from week to week. The undaunted Count then dispatched his nephew to Dornach, with orders to camp on Dr. Seiner’s doorstep & refuse to leave without a definite commitment for the course. This was finally given.”

Keyserlingk was the driving force behind the agriculture course. He was described by Elisabeth Vreede, who was at the course, as “one to whom farming itself was a priestly office” According to the Astrosopher: “Count Keyserlingk had realised the dire need for a complete revival of cultural methods”.

Steiner described his Agriculture Course as: “A course of lectures containing what there is to be said about agriculture from an anthroposophical point of view.” Steiner stated that “the contents of these lectures were to serve, in the first place, as working material for the Association of farmers which had just been founded in the Anthroposophical Society”. Steiner stressed the importance of practical demonstrations: “As to the farmers – well, if they hear of these things from a fellow-farmer, they will say, “What a pity he has suddenly gone crazy!” … But eventually when he sees a really good result, he will not feel a very easy conscience in rejecting it outright”.

He empowered the Agricultural Experimental Circle (AEC): “enhance it and develop it by actual experiments and tests. The farmers’ society – the “Experimental Circle” that has been formed – will fix the point of time when in its judgment the tests and experiments are far enough advanced to allow these things to be published”.

He stressed the importance of confidentiality: “No kind of communication was to be made about the contents of the Course until such time as the members of the Association felt impelled to speak out of the results of their own experimental work”. Steiner was cautious because the interests of what we now know as ‘big Ag’ was just starting to put pressure on farmers to use their products. There were spies from the growing industry that wanted to buy up the rights to this new impulse so that they could suppress it. And indeed the Count was very much harassed by those who worked to discredit the Agricultural Experimental Circle (AEC).

It was critical that a project development plan was set in place at Koberwitz to keep the impulse going, because the Ag Course was never repeated as such, since Steiner was seriously ill. His public life – & life itself, were drawing to a close. The continuing vitality of this vital agricultural impulse was dependent on the successful passing of the baton unto others. The AEC began with 60 members of the Koberwitz Course (out of the course’s total enrollment of 111), with Ernst Stegemann & Carl Keyserlingk appointed by Steiner as chairmen.

By 1929, the Natural Science Section of the Goetheanum reported the positive news that the work of translating Steiner’s ‘hints’ was by then a global enterprise: “Dr. Steiner’s new methods for Agriculture have been investigated and applied on a practical and on an experimental basis.”

Steiner was prophetic in much of what he taught. He presented the farm as “a living organism”. He spoke against a purely chemical view & a chemical reductionist view. Long before the costs of nitrogen pollution were monetized, Steiner, with great vision, put it in a nutshell: “There is a big difference between nitrogen and nitrogen. He spoke of “the degradation of the products of agriculture” & observed that: “Nowadays people simply think that a certain amount of nitrogen is needed for plant growth, and they imagine it makes no difference how it’s prepared or where it comes from. Where it comes from, however, is not a matter of indifference.”

Steiner urged the adoption of a holistic view, & he stated that “we’ve lost the knowledge of what it takes to continue to care for the natural world.” He urged his listeners to take “the macrocosmic approach”& to “see individual plants as parts of a single whole.” He was critical of the approach where living things are “neatly pigeonholed into separate species & genera”, adding: “But that is not how things are in nature. In nature, and actually throughout the universe, everything is in mutual interaction with everything else.”

“The most important thing is to make the benefits of our agricultural preparations available to the largest possible areas over the entire earth, so that the earth may be healed and the nutritive quality of its produce improved in every respect. That should be our first objective.” ~Rudolf Steiner

I am grateful every day for our connection to the Zinniker Farm – the oldest Biodynamic Farm in America, just 2 hours from the Windy City.

If you are in the area, come join us as we honor the farm in a community celebration of the St. John’s Festival. Can’t make it in person? You can still support the farm with your good will, & donations are always welcome.

Regenerative farming is Stewardship that provides true results for the healing of the Earth. It is time to make a lasting investment

Please contact Mark & Petra Zinniker to find out how to make a direct contribution to their regenerative work or sign up at Patreon.com/Zinnikerfarm

For more information also visit Familyfarminititive.com

~Kindling Radiance~

A Community Festival Gathering Celebrating St. John’s-Tide

Saturday, June 24, 2023 at Zinniker Farm

5:30 pm Potluck – Please bring food & drink to share

Artistic Offerings – Poem, Song… Express yourself!

7 – 9 pm – Bonfire Drum & Song Circle w/ Hazel & Ultra-Violet Archer –

Bring lawn chairs & drums if you have them!

Show support for Zinniker Farm – $15 more or less Love Donation

Co-hosted by The Christian Community of Southeast WI. & Chicago
http://thechicagochristiancommunity.org/ & https://zinnikerfarm.com/ & ReverseRitual.com

>>> RSVP margaretincommunity@gmail.com Subject: St. John’s

Philosophie des Unbewussten

June 5, 2023Biography, Calendar of the Soul, Poetry, Rudolf Steiner Quote~hag

POD (Poem Of the day)

~Look, I have light
In my eyes
& on my skin…
The star is warming…
And everything alive is turning
Into something else
Deep in the alchemical Heart
Of some annihilating
Ever creative fire
That is burning unnoticed
Waiting to touch
Me & you…
~hag

5 June 2023 – Speaking with the Stars”: The waning gibbous moon will pass through the center of the Teapot – an asterism in Sagittarius the Archer – today & tomorrow. You can catch them around midnight until dawn.

The Arietids are an active shower, but they’re visible mostly in daytime. Watch for them in the sunrise direction in the dark hour before dawn peaking today thru June 17. You’ll be looking for meteors that shoot up from the horizon. The radiant is below the constellation Aries.

RUDOLF STEINER’S CALENDAR OF THE SOUL
translated (with added titles) by Roy Sadler
CORPUS CHRISTI
My Spirit Vision Is To Lose Myself In Light
v9
And when I let my own will go
the comming of the summer’s warmth
will fill my soul and spirit being;
my spirit vision is commanding me
to lose myself in light, and ardently
my foresight’s calling: ‘lose yourself.
to find your Self’.

The third line of the mirror verse, a translation of ‘Eingedenk vollzogener Geistgeburt’, is the Soul Calendar’s only trochaic one: the other 336 are iambic, which Steiner described as essential for meditations leading to the world from the heart. The emphasis of ‘Mindful of the spirit’s birth fulfilled’ acts as a balance to all the other lines; and the Soul Calendar would be meaningless without the birth of the child that gave rise to the Christ on Earth.

CANDLEMAS
Mindful Of The Spirit Birth Fulfilled
v44
And when I grasp the senses’ new allure
the clarity of soul,
mindful of the Spirit-birth fulfilled,
imbues the world’s bewildering,
fresh sprouting growth
with my creative will of thinking.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day(RSarchives)

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY (Rudolf Steiner’s orginal Calendar of the Soul, Wikipedia Commons)

World Environment Day – raising global awareness to take positive environmental action to protect nature & the planet Earth.

1752 – Benjamin Franklin flew a kite for the first time to demonstrate that lightning was a form of electricity

1832 – The ‘June Rebellion’ breaks out in Paris in an attempt to overthrow the monarchy of Louis Philippe

1883 – The first regularly scheduled Orient Express departs Paris

1906 – Death day of Eduard von Hartmann – Born 1842, von Hartmann was originally an officer in the Prussian army. Because of an illness, he retired from military service and took up an intensive study of philosophy. In 1869 his Philosophie des Unbewussten (Philosophy of the Unconscious) appeared, and made him famous almost overnight.

Rudolf Steiner describes a personal impression of von Hartmann, when he visited him in Berlin in 1888 after a long correspondence over many years. He describes the chilling effect he had on him – the way this philosopher of pessimism denied that thinking could ever reach reality, but must forever deal with illusions. Steiner was already clear in his mind how such obstacles were to be overcome. He did not stop at the problem of knowledge, but carried his ideas from this realm into the field of ethics, to help him deal with the problem of human freedom. He wanted to show that morality could be given a sure foundation without basing it upon imposed rules of conduct.

From Rudolf Steiner’s biography: “…More than anything else at that time I craved to know personally Eduard von Hartmann, with whom I had corresponded for years in regard to philosophical matters. This was to take place during a brief stay in Berlin which followed that in Weimar.

I had the privilege of a long conversation with the philosopher. He lay upon a sofa, his legs stretched out and his upper body erect. It was in such a posture that he passed by far the greater part of his life from the time when the suffering with his knee began. I saw before me a forehead which was an evident manifestation of a clear and keen understanding, and eyes which in their look revealed that assurance felt in the innermost being of the man as to that which he knew. A mighty beard framed in the face. He spoke with complete confidence, which showed how he had woven certain basic thoughts about the whole world-concept and thus in his way illuminated it. In these thoughts everything which came to him from other points of view was at once overwhelmed with criticism. So I sat facing him while he sharply passed, judgment upon me, but in reality never inwardly listened to me. For him the being of things lay in the unconscious, and must ever remain hidden there so far as concerned human consciousness; for me the unconscious was something which could more and more be raised up into consciousness through the strivings of the soul’s life. During the course of the conversation about this, I said that one should not assume beforehand that a concept is something severed from reality and representing only an unreality in consciousness. Such a view could never be the starting-point for a theory of cognition. For by this means one shuts oneself off from access to all reality in that one can then only believe that one is living in concepts and that one can never approach toward a reality except, through hypothetical concepts – that is, in an unreal manner. One should rather seek to prove beforehand whether this view of the concept as an unreality is tenable, or whether it rises out of a preconception. Eduard von Hartmann replied that there could be no argument as to this; in the very definition of the term “concept” lay the evidence that nothing real is to be found there. When I received such an answer I was chilled to the soul. Definitions to be the point of departure for conceptions of life! I realized how far removed I was from contemporary philosophy. While I sat in the train on my return journey, buried in thoughts and recollections of this visit, which was nevertheless so valuable to me, I felt again that chilling of the heart. It was something which affected me for a long time afterward.” ~Rudolf Steiner, THE STORY OF MY LIFE, GA 28
Chapter IX

He also speaks about von Hartmann in Wahrheit und Wissenschaft (Truth and Knowledge) & in His Karmic Relaionships Vol 1 lecture 9:

“…Now when I came to study this personality, it dawned upon me one day that there was very special importance in the onset of this knee affliction…When I was able to bring the affliction of the knee into its right relation with the whole personality, I began to perceive how destiny manifested in the life of this man. And then I could go back. It was not by starting from the head of Eduard von Hartmann, but from the knee, that I found the way to his earlier incarnations.

And in the case of Eduard von Hartmann, as soon as I turned my attention to the affliction of the knee, I was guided to his earlier incarnation, during which at a certain moment in his life he had a kind of sunstroke. In respect of destiny, this sunstroke was the cause that led in the next earthly life, through metamorphosis, to an infirmity of the knee — the sunstroke being, as you will realise, an affliction of the head. One day he was no longer able to think. He had a kind of paralysis of the brain, and this came to expression in the next incarnation as an affliction of one of the limbs. Now the destiny that led to paralysis of the brain was due to the following circumstances. — This individuality was one of those who went to the East with the Crusades and fought over in Asia against the Turks and Asiatic peoples, acquiring, however, a tremendous admiration for the latter. The Crusaders encountered very much that was great and sublime in the East, and the individuality of whom we are speaking absorbed it all with deep admiration. And now he came across a man concerning whom he felt instinctively that he had had something to do with him in a still earlier life. The account, so to speak, that had now to be settled between this and the still earlier incarnation, was a moral account. The metamorphosis of the sunstroke in one incarnation into the affliction of the knee in the next appears at first to be a purely physical matter, but when it is a question of destiny we are invariably led back to something that appertains to the moral life. This individuality bore with him from a still earlier incarnation the impulse to wage a fierce battle with the man whom he now encountered and in the heat of the blazing sun he set about persecuting his opponent. The persecution was unjust, and it recoiled upon the persecutor himself inasmuch as his brain was paralysed by the heat of the sun. What was to be brought to an issue in this fight originated in a still earlier incarnation when this individuality had been brilliantly, outstandingly clever. The opponent whom he encountered during the Crusades had suffered injury and embarrassment in an earlier incarnation at the hands of this brilliant individuality. As you see, it all leads back to the moral life, for the forces in play originated in the earlier incarnation.

Thus we have three consecutive incarnations of an individuality. A remarkably clever and able personality in very ancient times — that is one incarnation. Following that, a Crusader, who at a certain time in his life gets paralysis of the brain, brought about as the result of a wrong committed by his cleverness which had, however, in the next incarnation, caused him to acquire tremendous admiration for oriental civilisation. Third incarnation: a Prussian officer who is obliged to retire owing to an affliction of the knee, does not know what to do with his time, goes in for philosophy and writes a most impressive book, a perfect product of the civilisation of the second half of the 19th century: The Philosophy of the Unconscious.

Once this connection of lives is perceived, things that were previously obscure become quite clear. When I was reading Hartmann while I was still young, without knowing anything about these connections, I always had the feeling: Yes, this is extremely clever! But when I had read one page I used to think: There is something brilliantly clever here, but the cleverness is not on this particular page! I always felt I must turn the page and look at the previous one to see if the cleverness were there. In short, the cleverness in this writing was not of today, but of yesterday, or of the day before yesterday.

Light came to me for the first time when I perceived: the outstanding cleverness really lies two incarnations ago and is working on from there. Great illumination is shed upon the whole of this Hartmann literature — which, as I said, is a library in itself — as soon as one realises that the cleverness in it is working on from a much earlier incarnation.

And when one came to know Eduard von Hartmann personally and was talking with him, one also felt: another man is there behind him, but even he is not the one who is talking; behind him again is a third, and it is the third who is really the source of the inspirations. For listening to Hartmann was often enough to drive one to despair! There was an officer, talking philosophy without enthusiasm, apathetically, speaking with a certain crudity of the loftiest truths. One could see how things really were only when one knew: the cleverness behind what he says is that of two incarnations ago.

It may seem disrespectful to relate such things, but no disrespect whatever is intended. Moreover I am convinced that it can be of great value for any human being to know of such connections and apply them to his own life, even if it means that he has to say to himself: Three incarnations ago I was an out-and-out scoundrel! It can be of immense benefit to life when a man can say to himself: In one incarnation or another, perhaps not only in one, I was a thoroughly bad lot! In speaking of such things, just as in other circumstances present company is always excepted, so here present incarnations are excepted!”

1915 – Denmark amends its constitution to allow women’s suffrage

1917 – American men began registering for the World War I draft

1924 – Ernst F. W. Alexanderson transmitted the first facsimile message across the Atlantic Ocean

1933 – President Roosevelt signed the bill that took the U.S. off of the gold standard

1967 – The Six Day War between Israel and Egypt, Syria and Jordan began today

1968 – Robert F. Kennedy, is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

1981 – The first recognized cases of what later became known as AIDS

2012 – The last transit of Venus (occult Mercury) of the 21st century begins

~Kindling Radiance~

A Community Festival Gathering Celebrating St. John’s-Tide

Saturday, June 24, 2023 at Zinniker Farm

5:30 pm Potluck – Please bring food & drink to share

Artistic Offerings – Poem, Song… Express yourself!

7 – 9 pm – Bonfire Drum Circle w/ Hazel & Ultra-Violet Archer –

Bring lawn chairs & drums if you have them!

Show support for Zinniker Farm – $15 more or less Love Donation

Co-hosted by The Christian Community of Southeast WI. & Chicago
http://thechicagochristiancommunity.org/ & https://zinnikerfarm.com/ & ReverseRitual.com

>>> RSVP margaretincommunity@gmail.com Subject: St. John’s

“Charis”

June 2, 2023Community, Festival, History, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Speaking with the Stars, Upcoming Events~hag

Michael Stevens’ *The Pentecost (After Maíno)*

This season of Whitsun-tide is the world-festival of the NOW, highlighting the challenging relationships of Self & community. How do we work as individuals to transform our ingrained sympathies & antipathies? How do we purify our astral nature in order to make ourselves into a vessel worthy to receive the Holy Spirit, giving us the possibility of manifesting the ‘Spirit Self’ – healing the formative forces of our Life-Spirit, which will provide the capacity to create new social forms..?

In ancient times the human being experienced the True Self, the Higher I AM, in the cosmos outside of them in the Sun sphere thru initiation, by leaving the body. – This was outpictured in the time of the ancient Summer Solstice Festivals – Which have now become mysteries of St. John the Baptist, where the Spirit is called to become manifest, by applying the powers of the Archangel Uriel.

The Whitsun-tide inaugurates a new age, when human beings thru a personal path of self-guided catharsis comes to an awakening of the Higher I AM in “their inmost being” as a force of transformative power, which is the force of love.

The Greek word for grace is, “Charis”, which means the free love from God.

This brings us back to the great social question of our time: the individual in relation to the whole – the community, & the cosmos.

Only by a social & personal catharsis which allows the true spirit of freedom, the true I AM, to eclipse our small personal egotism & the lower impulses of our nature, can a new community & new language of universal sister/brotherhood be created.

Only out of the spiritual recognition of the universal Human Being, will the ideas & applications of a new approach to fraternity in economics; equality in human rights; & freedom in the cultural/spiritual life, be accomplished.

May we strive to serve this goal out of the spirit of The Sophia.

~hag

2 June 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: The bright waxing gibbous moon will glow near fiery Antares, the brightest star in Scorpius the Scorpion, after sunset this evening. The following evening finds the full moon close to Antares. You can watch them move across the sky all night.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

“The Master said, “A true teacher is one who, keeping the past alive, is also able to understand the present.” (Analects 2.11)” ~Confucius

455 – Sack of Rome

1098 – First Crusade: The first Siege of Antioch ends as Crusader forces take the city; the second siege began five days later.

1692 – Bridget Bishop is the first person to go to trial in the Salem witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts; she was found guilty and later hanged

1882 – Deathday of Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italian general & politician. Spoken of as a high initiate in the Hibernian Mysteries in ‘Karmic Relationships’ Vol 1, lec. 11 by Rudolf Steiner (June 2^nd is also Festa della Repubblica -The Italian National Republic Day)

One of my fav. stories: “…Garibaldi became acquainted in a most extraordinary way with the woman who was to be the mainstay of his happiness for many years. He was out at sea, on board ship, looking landwards through a telescope. To fall in love through a telescope — that is certainly not the way it happens to most people!

Destiny again made it easy for him to become quickly acquainted with the one whom he had chosen through the telescope to be his beloved. He steered at once in the direction in which he had looked through the telescope, and on reaching land he was invited by a man to a meal. It transpired, after he had accepted the invitation, that this man was the father of the girl he had seen! She could speak only Portuguese, and he only Italian; but we are assured by his biographer, and it seems to be correct, that the young woman immediately understood his carefully phrased declaration of love, which seems to have consisted simply of the words — in Italian of course — “We must unite for life.” She understood immediately. And it really happened so, that from this meeting came a life-companionship that lasted for a long, long time.

Garibaldi’s wife shared in all the terrible and adventurous journeys he made in South America, and some of the recorded details of them are really most moving. For example, the story is told of how a report got about that Garibaldi had been killed in battle. His wife hurried to the battlefield and lifted up every head to see if it were her husband’s. After a long time, and after undergoing many adventures in the search, she found him still alive. It is most affecting to read how on this very journey, which lasted a long time, she gave birth to a child without help of any kind, and how, in order to keep it warm, she bound it in a sling about her neck, holding it against her breast for hours at a time. The story of Garibaldi’s South American adventures has some deeply moving aspects.” ~Rudolf Steiner, KARMIC RELATIONSHIPS I, GA 235

THE TENSION BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, GA 83, Part I: Anthroposophy and the Sciences
2. Psychology, *2 June 1922, Vienna*

1922 – Start of the West-East Congress in Vienna, opened by Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz. At this conference Rudolf Steiner gave his last lecture on Threefolding (1917 – 1922)

~Kindling Radiance~

A Community Festival Gathering Celebrating St. John’s-Tide

Saturday, June 24, 2023 at Zinniker Farm

5:30 pm Potluck – Please bring food & drink to share

Artistic Offerings – Poem, Song… Express yourself!

7 – 9 pm – Bonfire Drum Circle w/ Hazel & Ultra-Violet Archer

Show support for Zinniker Farm – $15 more or less Love Donation

Co-hosted by The Christian Community of Southeast WI. & Chicago
http://thechicagochristiancommunity.org/ & https://zinnikerfarm.com/ & ReverseRitual.com

>>> RSVP margaretthom27@yahoo.com Subject: St. John’s

‘The full power of the “I”

May 29, 2023Biography, Festival, Rudolf Steiner Quote~hag

Since time immemorial, the Divine Feminine has been connecting humanity with the inspiration to acquire wisdom.

This year during the 10 days between Ascension & Pentecost, I took up again the 3rd-century Gnostic text known as the Pistis Sophia, a compelling fav. of mine, like the Gospel of Mary Magdalene.

The name Pistis Sophia means ‘Faith in Wisdom’ – One of the inspirations for Velsum’s Pentecost song. In her story, we hear how Wisdom is a co-creator with the Creator beings; & how she takes a fall after being seduced by a false light.

And like Parzival the Holy Fool, the trial of ‘Faith in Wisdom’ embodies the cosmic drama of the human soul – a hero’s journey giving birth to Love in freedom. The theme of renunciation is part of this path.

In some versions of the battle between Lucifer & Michael, a brilliant green stone, a jewel in the crown of Lucifer, fell to earth when he was cast out of heaven. This stone was taken up by the angels; who fashioned it into a chalice; & guarded it in ethers between heaven & earth.

Then when Christ came to earth – the star-chalice came with him – & became the cup at the Last Supper. This stone became the Holy Grail after the blood of Christ filled it.

This, my friends is a parable revealing the beginning of Lucifer’s redemption.

Rudolf Steiner explains: “A wonderfully beautiful legend tells us that when Lucifer fell from heaven to earth, a precious stone fell from his crown…This precious stone is, in a certain respect, none other, than the full power of the ‘I.’

ok folks let’s let that sink in … This precious stone from the crown of Lucifer is ‘the full power of the “I”. What’s going on here?

In Eschenbach’s Parzival, the stone is called the Lapis Exillis – which in alchemy is the name of the Philosopher’s Stone. This secret was guarded by the Templars.

When we reclaim “the full power of our ‘I’” each human being will live for the other, creating a shared life on Earth that nourishes the soul just like the Holy Grail is able to feed every questing Templar knight providing them with their most desirable meal. Love feeds all.

This now, & future task for humanity, takes us on our own transformative Parzival journey, enabling us to achieve ‘Faith in Wisdom’ thru crystalized pain – Our faith leading us to the Joy of purpose. Thru trial & error we strive to become worthy to receive the Holy Grail – to foster the Philosopher Stone.

This will eventually allow us to sanctify the gemstone that fell from the crown of Lucifer, bringing a healing redemption, that re-claims the true forces of this Sun-Being – to be used in service of the Christos.

On this WhitMonday, this Memorial Day, may we re-member the Holy Spirit as the Physician of all worlds…

~hag

I’m still waiting for the recording of our Pentecost festival from zoom…

29 May 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: We were contemplating & communing with this last night around the bonfire! The waxing gibbous moon along the western side of the Spring Triangle – an asterism made of the bright stars Arcturus in Boötes the Herdsman, Spica in Virgo the Maiden and Regulus in Leo the Lion – at its corners. Bella Luna & the Spring Triangle will be visible up until aroun 2:30 am CDT.

Cognitive Ritual

~Confessions of a Modern Rosicrucian

Category Archives: Rudolf Steiner Quote

Beyond Alexander the Great

Step into Will

Philosophie des Unbewussten

“Charis”

‘The full power of the “I”

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