Category Archives: Soul to Soul

Our Bones Grow Roots

Celestial Event, Festival, Insight, Lecture, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars, Spring

14 April 2017 – Astro-Weather: Arcturus shines brightly in the east these evenings, well to the left or upper left of even brighter Jupiter (by about three fists at arm’s length). Arcturus forms the pointy end of a long, narrow kite asterism formed by the brightest stars of Bootes, the Cowherd.

 

Orion the Hunter stands out in the western sky as darkness falls this week. The conspicuous constellation appears slightly askew compared with its appearance in winter’s evening sky. Now, the three-star belt is aligned parallel to the horizon while blue-white Rigel hangs directly below the belt & ruddy Betelgeuse stands directly above.

Uranus is in conjunction with the Sun at 1 am CDT. From our earthly perspective, this means the distant planet lies behind the Sun & so is out of sight. Uranus will return to view in the morning sky in late May

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Saat Chion

“Everybody should be reminded by the Easter festival, that there will be the resurrection of the spirit out of the present darkened nature of the human being”. ~Rudolf Steiner, The Riddles of the World and Anthroposophy

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

5th Night of Passover

 Arid Rosenkrutez

Good Friday 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

215 – Birthday of Mani the prophet & founder of Manichaeism – see Rudolf Steiner’s lectures GA 104 & 113

1126 – Averroes, a medieval Spanish polymath. He wrote on logic, Aristotelian & Islamic philosophy, theology, the Maliki school of Islamic jurisprudence, psychology, political & Andalusian classical music theory, geography, mathematics, & the mediæval sciences of medicine, astronomy, physics, & celestial mechanics. Averroes was a defender of Aristotelian philosophy against Ash’ari theologians led by Al-Ghazali.

1561 – On Good Friday, around dawn there was a mass sighting of celestial phenomena over Nuremberg, residents of Nuremberg saw what they described as an aerial battle, followed by the appearance of a large black triangular object & then a large crash outside of the city. According to witnesses, there were hundreds of spheres, cylinders & other odd-shaped objects that moved erratically overhead.

A broadsheet news article was printed later that month, describes objects of various shapes including crosses, globes, two lunar crescents, a black spear & tubular objects from which several smaller, round objects emerged & darted around the sky at dawn.

“In the morning of April 14, 1561, at daybreak, between 4 and 5 a.m., a dreadful apparition occurred on the sun, and then this was seen in Nuremberg in the city, before the gates and in the country – by many men and women. At first there appeared in the middle of the sun two blood-red semi-circular arcs, just like the moon in its last quarter. And in the sun, above and below and on both sides, the color was blood, there stood a round ball of partly dull, partly black ferrous color. Likewise there stood on both sides and as a torus about the sun such blood-red ones and other balls in large number, about three in a line and four in a square, also some alone. In between these globes there were visible a few blood-red crosses, between which there were blood-red strips, becoming thicker to the rear and in the front malleable like the rods of reed-grass, which were intermingled, among them two big rods, one on the right, the other to the left, and within the small and big rods there were three, also four and more globes. These all started to fight among themselves, so that the globes, which were first in the sun, flew out to the ones standing on both sides, thereafter, the globes standing outside the sun, in the small and large rods, flew into the sun. Besides the globes flew back and forth among themselves and fought vehemently with each other for over an hour. And when the conflict in and again out of the sun was most intense, they became fatigued to such an extent that they all, as said above, fell from the sun down upon the earth ‘as if they all burned’ and they then wasted away on the earth with immense smoke. After all this there was something like a black spear, very long and thick, sighted; the shaft pointed to the east, the point pointed west. Whatever such signs mean, God alone knows. Although we have seen, shortly one after another, many kinds of signs on the heaven, which are sent to us by the almighty God, to bring us to repentance, we still are, unfortunately, so ungrateful that we despise such high signs and miracles of God. Or we speak of them with ridicule and discard them to the wind, in order that God may send us a frightening punishment on account of our ungratefulness. After all, the God-fearing will by no means discard these signs, but will take it to heart as a warning of their merciful Father in heaven, will mend their lives and faithfully beg God, that He may avert His wrath, including the well-deserved punishment, on us, so that we may temporarily here and perpetually there, live as his children. For it, may God grant us his help, Amen”. Art by Hanns Glaser, letter-painter of Nurnberg

 

1759 – Deathday of G.F. Handel – composer

1865 Abraham Lincoln is shot in Ford’s Theatre by John Wilkes Booth; Lincoln died the next day

1900 – The Exposition Universelle – a world’s fair held in Paris, France, from 14 April to 12 November 1900, to celebrate the achievements of the past century & to accelerate development into the next. The fair, visited by nearly 50 million, displayed many machines, inventions, & architecture that are now nearly universally known, including the Grande Roue de Paris Ferris wheel, Russian nesting dolls, diesel engines, talking films, escalators, & the telegraphone (the first magnetic audio recorder)

1912 – The sinking of the Titanic

1935 – Exclusion from the General Anthroposophical Society of Ita Wegman, Elisabeth Vreed & other members also 2 national societies

1939 – The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck is first published

2010 – Over 2,700 are killed in a magnitude 6.9 earthquake in the Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture

2014 – 276  schoolgirls are abducted by Boko Haram in Chibok, Nigeria 

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Agostino Arrivabene

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~The combustion
Becomes ash
& the seed is cooked in salt
As our bones grow roots
In the Earth-Womb…
~hag

***

“On Good Friday, 1857, Wagner was sitting in the Retreat, “the sanctuary on the green hill.” Looking out over the fields watching the plants come to life, sprouting from the earth, an inkling arose in him of the Power of the germinating force emerging from the earth in response to the rays of the sun: a driving force, a motivating force that permeates the whole world and lives in all beings; a force that must evolve, that cannot remain as it is; a force that, to reach higher stages, must pass through death. Watching the plants, he felt the force of sprouting life, and turning his gaze across the Lake of Zürich to the village; he contemplated the opposite idea, that of death — the two polar concepts to which Goethe gives such eloquent expression in his poem, Blessed Longing.

And until thou truly hast,
This dying and becoming,
Thou are but a troubled guest
O’er the dark earth roaming.

Goethe rewrote the words in his hymn to nature saying: “Nature invented death to have more life; only through death can she create a higher spiritual life.”

On Good Friday, as the symbol of death came before mankind in remembrance, Wagner sensed the connection between life, death and immortality. He felt a connection between the life sprouting from the earth and the Death on the Cross, the Death that is also the source of a Christian belief that life will ultimately be victorious over death, will become eternal life. Wagner sensed an inner connection between the sprouting life of spring and the Good Friday belief in Redemption, the belief that from Death on the Cross springs Eternal Life. This thought is the same as that contained in the Quest for the Holy Grail, where the chaste plant blossom, striving towards the sun, is contrasted with human desire filled nature. On the one hand Wagner recognized that human beings steeped in desires; on the other he looked towards a future ideal — the ideal that human beings shall attain a higher consciousness through overcoming their lower nature, shall attain a higher fructifying power, called forth by the Spirit.

Looking towards the Cross, Wagner saw the blood flowing from the Redeemer, the symbol of Redemption, being caught in the Grail Chalice. This picture, linked itself within him to the life awakening in nature. These thoughts were passing through Wagner’s soul on Good Friday, 1857. He jotted down a few words that later became the basis from which he created his magnificent Good Friday drama. He wrote: “The blossoming plant springs from death; eternal life springs from the Death of Christ.” At that moment Wagner had an inner awareness of the Spirit behind all things, of the Spirit victorious over death.

For a time other creative ideas pushed those concerned with Parsifal into the Background. They came to the fore once more near the end of his life, when, clearer than before, they conveyed to him a person’s path of knowledge. Wagner portrayed the path to the Holy Grail to show the cleansing of a human beings’ desire nature. As an ideal this is depicted as a pure holy chalice whose image is the plant calyx’s chaste fructification to new creation by the sunbeam, the holy lance of love. The sunbeam enters matter as Amfortas’ lance enters sinful blood. But there the result is suffering and death. The path to the Holy Grail is portrayed as a cleansing of the sinful blood of lower desires till, on a higher level, it is as pure and chaste as is the plant calyx in relation to the sunbeam. Only he who is pure in heart, unworldly, untouched by temptation, so that he approaches the Holy Grail as an “innocent fool” filled with questions of its secret, can discover the path.

Wagner’s Parsifal is born out of his mystical feeling for the Holy Grail. At one time he meant to incorporate the idea into his work Die Wibelungen, an historical account of the Middle Ages. He wanted to elevate the concept of Emperor by letting Barbarossa journey to the East in search of the original spirit of Christianity, thus combining the Parsifal legend with history of the Middle Ages. This idea led to his wonderful artistic interpretation of the Good Friday tradition, so that it can truly be said that Wagner has succeeded in bringing religion into art, in making art religious. 

In his artistic new creation of the Good Friday tradition, Wagner had the ingenious idea of combining the subject of faith with that of the Holy Grail. On the one hand stands the belief that mankind will be redeemed, and on the other, that through perfecting its nature humanity itself strives towards redemption; the belief that the Spirit permeating mankind — a drop of which lives in each individual as his higher self — in Christ Jesus foreshadowed humanity’s redemption. All this arose as an inner picture in Wagner’s mind already on that Good Friday in 1857 when he recognized the connection between the legend of Parsifal and Redemption through Christ Jesus.

We can begin to sense the presence of the Christ within mankind’s spiritual environment when, with sensitivity and understanding, we absorb the story of the Holy Grail. And it can deepen to concrete inner spiritual experience when we sense the transition from the midnight of Maundy Thursday — events of Maundy Thursday — to those of Good Friday, which symbolize the victory of nature’s resurrection.

Wagner’s Parsifal was inspired by the festival of Easter. He wanted new life to pour into the Christian festivals, which originally were established out of a deep understanding of nature. This can be seen especially in the case of the Easter festival, which was established when it was still known that the constellation of sun and moon affected human beings. Today people want Easter celebrated an an arbitrarily chosen date, which shows that the festival is no longer experienced as it was when there was still a feeling for the working of nature. When the spirit was regarded as a reality it was sensed in all things. If we could still sense what was bequeathed to us through traditions in regard to the festivals, then we would also have a feeling for how to celebrate Good Friday. Richard Wagner did have that feeling, just as he also perceived that the words of the Redeemer: “I am with you to the end of the world,” called human beings to follow the trail that led to the lofty ideal of the Holy Grail. Then people who lived the Truth would become redeemers.

Mankind is redeemed by the Redeemer. But Wagner adds the question: “When is the Redeemer redeemed?” He is redeemed when He abides in every human heart. As He has descended into the human heart, the human heart must ascend. Something of this was also felt by Wagner, for from the motif of faith he lets sound forth what is the mystical feeling of mankind in these beautiful words from Parsifal:

Greatest Healing Wonder
Redemption for the Redeemer!

These words truly show Wagner’s deep commitment to the highest ideal a person can set himself: to approach that Spiritual Power that came down to us and lives in our world. When we are worthy, we bring what resounds at the dose of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal: Redemption for the Redeemer” ~ Rudolf Steiner, Supersensible Knowledge, Lecture XII, Richard Wagner and Mysticism  From death comes life

From death comes life ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

 ***

Lucas Cranach the Elder

Good Friday From Emil Bock’s The 3 Years John 19: 1-27

As the “still” week really enters into stillness, the bearing of Jesus changes. His fiery fighting will is no longer evident. When between midnight and sunrise the band of soldiers’ lays hand upon Him Whom Judas has kissed, He does not oppose them. Rather, he opposes Peter who wants to fight for Him. Then he is seized by rough hands, dragged through the city, from one end to the other. He is apparently delivered, helpless, to those who scourge Him, press the crown of thorns on His brow, spit upon Him and strike Him in the face. The witnesses of the tragedy are overcome with anguish as He Who has no physical strength is forced to carry the heavy cross and is nailed upon it by the executioners with pitiless cruelty. What has become of the fighting power which blazed in Him during the week? Has He abandoned the battle against the blindness and wickedness of men? No – the fight which was waged on the human level on the previous days is now carried on in a higher sphere, and so takes on still more powerful dimensions. The Christ is not fighting against flesh and blood, but against the invisible demonic powers from whose tyranny He will deliver mankind.

He fights against the Luciferic powers, the glittering beings of deceptive light, who want to estrange man from the earth, and likewise against the Ahrimanic powers who want to harden and fetter man to death matter. As Christ seems to lay down the weapons, He is really following the satanic powers into their hiding – places in order to overcome them there.

Ahriman displays his power over men most triumphantly when he approaches in the form of death. In humanity’s evolution up to the “turning-point of time”, death which had formerly been a friend of man had taken on more and more the features of Ahriman. The dark power knew how to use man’s destiny of death to make it his sharpest weapon. The power of death is not only that we must die: it becomes really manifest only after death. When we have laid aside our earthly body it must then be proved whether we can still maintain a connection with what takes place on Earth among those whom we belong. Here lies death’s actual power – that it can wrest us from earthly things and thrust us out into the unbridgeable exile of life on the other side. The Ahrimanic power of death uses the Earth to mock at man. During earthly life it binds him to the world of matter; it makes all sorts of promises of earthly fulfillment, which are no longer kept after death. The more a man is attached to the things of “this side” during life, the more inexorably he is affected by “other-sidedness” after death. Only those people who have gained a firm foothold in the life of the Spirit during life on Earth can after death remain helpfully united with those who are still living on Earth. After death we have only as much spiritual command over matter as we have gained upon Earth.

When on Maundy Thursday Christ dispenses the Holy Supper to the disciples in the peace of the Coenaculum, there seems to be no conflict. And yet what a wonderful victory over the spirit of dead matter is shown when the Christ takes in His hand the earthly substances of bread and wine, and makes them luminous through the sun-force of His heart. He wrests the terrestrial creature from the powers of darkness and makes it the body and blood of His Being of Light. As He is able during His life to ensoul the earthly elements so that these become radiant, He will have all the more power to do so after death.

In Gethsemane the fight against the power of death enters a decisive phase. Here in the quiet grove of the Mount of Olives, where He has so often been with His disciples for intimate teaching, He must now withstand the most dangerous attack of the enemy in utmost loneliness. The Community which He has just established in the Upper Room for the future well-being of humanity does not bring help and benefit to Himself. The consciousness of the disciples has not grown to the greatness of the moment. Judas has gone out into the night of betrayal, but the others, too, leave their Master in the lurch. They are absorbed in the twilight of their sleep in Gethsemane, out of which Peter will deny Christ.

It is not inner weakness and fear of death with which Christ has to wrestle in Gethsemane. One could not misunderstand more tragically the whole Passion of Christ than by thinking that Jesus prayed in Gethsemane that He might still be spared from death. Not fear of death, but death itself assails Him. Death, already apprehensive of losing control over Him, appears before Him to lay hold of Him. The Destroying Angel wants to possess Him. The secret of the conflict in Gethsemane lies in the fact that death wants to outwit Jesus. It wants to wrest Him away too soon, before He has ended His work and filled the last vestige of the earthly vessel with His Spirit.

For three years the Fire of divine Ego-hood has burned in the body and soul of Jesus. The human vessel – from within outwards – has thus already been consumed almost to ashes. What still has to be suffered and completed demands so much strength from the earthly sheaths that there is a real danger of premature death. Ahriman lies in wait and hopes to make use of this moment. Luke, the physician, describes with precise words what happens, when he says “And being in agony, he prayed more earnestly”. In the clinical sense of the term, the death-struggle had already come. When St. Luke adds, “and His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground”, he adds exact symptoms of the agony of death.

But Christ is victorious and death is repulsed. With the mightiest force of prayer ever known on Earth He wrestles to remain in the body. It is an echo of this fight when He speaks on the Cross the words that seem to betray a weakness: “I thirst”. He still remains, even immediately before He breathes out His soul, true to the Earth. It is not His will to pass into the spiritual world simply through dying. It is His will to remain united with the Earth when He goes through death and it is this that will be His conquest over death. He wrestles to enter still more deeply into the earthly world of matter which He bears in Himself through His physical body. There is still a last remnant to be ensouled. This, too, He will not abandon to the Prince of this World, who has begun to count on the material realm of the earthly as being in his possession once and for all.

The drama returns to human scenes and conditions. On the morning of Good Friday Christ confronts the whole of humanity, as represented by the three figures of Caiaphas, Pilate and Herod. Then the way leads up to Golgotha. Nails are driven by the soldiers into the hands and feet of the Christ, and it seems as though He allows everything to come about quite passively. In fact through the medicine of bitter pain, His inmost Being has gained the ultimate power of spirit over matter, so that Death can no longer claim Him. The Ahrimanic death-powers realize this, and appear for their last effort, furious that their might has been of no avail. When the sun is darkened during the sultry midday hours of Good Friday, it is as though the demon of the sun were straining to the utmost against the God of the sun. And when the earth is shaken by the earthquake, all the demons of the earth seem to storm forward in and endeavour to help the satanic death-power to victory. Anti-Christ moves the earthly elements and even the forces of the heavens. However, death can strip nothing from the sovereignty of Christ’s spirit, from His authority over all earth existence. It is in accord with His own will that the cosmic powers rise up in the hour of Golgotha. He has said to the officers in Gethsemane, “But this is the hour and the power of darkness” (Luke 22, 23).

In the midst of the darkness a Mystery was manifested on Golgotha which may be mentioned only with great reserve. The Body which hung on the Cross began to radiate light. In many country districts of Europe, in a field or at the roadside, one can find crucifixes with a gilded figure on a black wood cross. A momentous secret of Good Friday is living here in the naïve wisdom of folklore. A mysterious brilliance broke through the dreadful noonday light. The Sun of Christ revealed itself as the physical sun suffered eclipse. A ray of Easter already wove itself into the darkness of Good Friday.

The last of the Seven Words from the Cross, “It is finished,” does not refer to the sufferings which have been surmounted, but to the complete conquest over the power of death which has been achieved. Whereas death casts into the banishment of “the other side” the soul of a man whom it has mocked during his lifetime with the power of earthly matter, the Christ, in dying, goes directly to the Earth. The blood streams from His wounds; His soul goes with it into the body of the Earth. When blood streams out from a dying man, the blood and the soul go different ways; here the soul goes with the blood. Later, the body is lowered into the grave; the Earth opens in an earthquake and takes into itself the body of Christ. When a human body given up by the soul is lowered into the grave, body and soul go different ways. Christ’s soul goes the same way, to the Earth. That is the great cosmic sacrifice of Love which Christ is able to accomplish for the whole of earth-existence, because death can no longer hinder Him. The Earth receives the body and the blood of Christ, the great Communion, and therewith the medicine for the spiritualizing of all material existence is incorporated into Earth existence – “the medicine that maketh whole”.

***

Our Easter-Tide Festival for 2017: 

15 April 2017, Holy Saturday –  
‘The Mystery of Golgotha – Then & Now’
2 pm – 4 pm

What was the Mystery of Golgotha?
What is the Mystery now?
What will it be for the future?
~Art Projections & Discourse with Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Group work: Based on Baruch Urieli’s
‘Learning to Experience the Etheric World,
Empathy, the After-Image and a New Social Ethic’

ALSO:  A sneak Preview of our New Art Exhibition by Victoria Martin “I” See Heaven”

$10 Donation & Snacks to Share Encouraged

***

16 April 2017, Easter Sunday – 4 pm – 6 pm

The Midwest Eurythmy Group will perform
The Easter Verse from the Calendar of the Soul by Rudolf Steiner & Bach Fugue Bb minor ‘5 Voices’ & Prelude #22

Then we will explore The Calendar of the Soul Verse for SPRING thru focused discussion & in an Artistic Activity with Karen Hartz. We will end with Group Eurythmy.

$10 Donation goes to support the Midwest Eurythmy Group
& Snacks to Share Encouraged
(Hazel will bring her famous slow cooked leg of lamb :

at the Rudolf Steiner Branch of the Anthroposophical Society 4249 N. Lincoln Ave, Chicago IL. 60618. MAP

 

Exodus

Chicago Event, Festival, Insight, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars, Spring

13 April 2017 – Astro-Weather: This is the time of year when, as the last of twilight fades away, the bowl of the dim Little Dipper extends straight to the right of Polaris. High above the end-stars of the Little Dipper’s bowl, you’ll find the end-stars of the Big Dipper‘s bowl

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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

Dali

4th Night of Passover

Maundy Thursday

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” ~ George Orwell

837 Best view of Halley’s Comet in 2,000 years

1742 George Frideric Handel’s oratorio “Messiah” performed for the 1st time at New Music Hall in Dublin

1743 – Birthday of Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States

1860 1st Pony Express reaches Sacramento, California

1953 – CIA director Allen Dulles launches the mind-control program Project MKUltra

***

Sophie Takata

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~See how the seed falls
From the tree & is buried –
Die & live again…
Grow like that sycamore
Rooted in nature
Bound for boundless sky
Yes, you will, be, blown by the wind
You will be in the center of the storm
You will sing it’s praises thru change –
As you let grace roll down your head
Like rain from the stars of mystery…
~hag

***

My thoughts on Passover:

In the Book of Exodus, we read that when the Hebrew slaves were finally able to break free from Pharaoh’s grip & a mixed multitude of people fled Egypt with them, a mixed multitude of slaves & refugees, people of different languages & beliefs, journeying with the Hebrew people into the unknown wilderness.

As human beings, we have always been a mixed multitude.

Moses himself embodied incredible internal diversity. He was educated by royal Egyptians, taken in as a homeless wanderer by polytheistic Midianites, & ultimately embraced by the Hebrews he led into freedom. With his Egyptian adoptive mother & his Midianite wife & father-in-law, Moses’s life was shaped by the teachings & love of different civilizations.

All of us, whether we are Jewish or Christian or Muslim, or of a complex identity of many influences—all of us have blessings to offer in the ongoing mission to bring the justice & freedom that Passover demands to every part of the world where oppression & inhumanity still prevail.

In our lives we have all been wanderers of one sort or another; we have all felt the pain of being the stranger; & we have all sought to escape bad situations & find liberation of one kind or another. Tonight & every night, we ask God to bless all of us, with the freedom & the courage to seek that same freedom for those who are still denied it. And we ask God to bless us all with the ability to see that together—as the mixed multitude we are —we must continue to weave the human story that seeks liberation & dignity for all.

~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

***

“On Maundy Thursday a holy stillness descends, shortly before the deep red sun sets in the west, faced by the silver disc of the rising full moon, the trumpets sound from the Temple and give the signal for the beginning of the day of Preparation, the eve of the Passover.

Jesus and His disciples also withdraw to the upper room in the house of the Order of the Essenes. There, on Mount Zion, a sanctuary has existed from times immemorial. Here the words of the 23rd Psalm are fulfilled,

“Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.”

Before the Meal, Jesus the Christ follows the custom observed by the Essenes and washes the feet of each of the disciples, even Judas.

“A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another.” This last parable, enacted, not merely spoken, teaches Love as the ultimate purpose of Christ’s Gospel.

Then for the first time Transubstantiation is consummated; now the Spiritual lights up in earthly substance.

The lunar sacrifices of antiquity are at an end; the solar sacrifice of Christianity comes into being.

Christ’s soul surrenders itself and streams into the bread and wine. In the transition from the blood offerings of the past to the bloodless offering of bread and wine; the sacrifice of the soul is founded, and there begins the true tradition of inner sacrifice.

Then the sacred Round Table breaks up dramatically. It is a strict regulation of the Passover that on this night no one may leave the protection of the house.

If he does so, he meets the Destroying Angel. The streets remain empty of people. Yet Judas does go out; to the house opposite, where Caiaphas and his circle are waiting, eager for the business that Judas wants to transact.

Jesus then rises from the table and beckons to the astonished disciples. They follow him out into the night, where the light of the full moon had for some time been extinguished, passing through an eclipse.

The two acts of going-out-into-the-night symbolize inner events. The going out of Judas shows that his true self has abandoned him;  outside he meets the Angel of Death, in reality, ahrimanic spirits make him their pawn.

The going-out of Christ is a picture of the free surrender of the soul, which has been from the beginning, the cosmic bearer of Sacrifice.”      ~summary excerpt from Emil Bock’s “Holy week”

***

Our Easter-Tide Festival for 2017: 

15 April 2017, Holy Saturday –  
‘The Mystery of Golgotha – Then & Now’
2 pm – 4 pm

What was the Mystery of Golgotha?
What is the Mystery now?
What will it be for the future?
~Art Projections & Discourse with Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Group work: Based on Baruch Urieli’s
‘Learning to Experience the Etheric World,
Empathy, the After-Image and a New Social Ethic’

ALSO:  A sneak Preview of our New Art Exhibition by Victoria Martin “I” See Heaven”

$10 Donation & Snacks to Share Encouraged

***

16 April 2017, Easter Sunday – 4 pm – 6 pm

The Midwest Eurythmy Group will perform
The Easter Verse from the Calendar of the Soul by Rudolf Steiner & Bach Fugue Bb minor ‘5 Voices’ & Prelude #22

Then we will explore The Calendar of the Soul Verse for SPRING thru focused discussion & in an Artistic Activity. We will end with Group Eurythmy.

$10 Donation goes to support the Midwest Eurythmy Group
& Snacks to Share Encouraged
(Hazel will bring her famous slow cooked leg of lamb :

at the Rudolf Steiner Branch of the Anthroposophical Society 4249 N. Lincoln Ave, Chicago IL. 60618. MAP

Appeal for Reconciliation

Celestial Event, Chicago Event, Festival, Insight, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars

12 April 2017 – Astro-Weather: Right after dark, the Sickle of Leo stands vertical, high in the south. Its bottom star is Regulus, Leo’s brightest. Leo the lion is walking horizontally westward, with the Sickle forming his front leg, chest, mane, & part of his head

Mars continues to put on a nice show these April evenings  appearing high in the west an hour after sunset & doesn’t dip below the horizon until after 9 pm CDT.

~Seed Moon Full & Bright
Holy week, the Fool takes flight ~hag

***

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

3rd Night of Passover

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1204 – Enrico Dandolo conquers Constaninople.   He is remembered for his blindness, piety, longevity, & shrewdness, & is infamous for his role in the 4th Crusade & the Sack of Constantinople in which he, at age ninety & blind, led the Venetian contingent

1925 – The last Leading thought given by Rudolf Steiner

1927 – Rocksprings, Texas was hit by an F5 tornado that destroyed 235 of the 247 buildings in the town & killed 172 townspeople & injured 205

1934 – The U.S. Auto-Lite strike begins, culminating in a five-day melee between Ohio National Guard troops & 6,000 strikers& picketers

1945 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies in office; Vice President Harry Truman, becomes President upon Roosevelt’s death

1955 – The polio vaccine, developed by Dr. Jonas Salk, is declared safe and effective

2002 – A suicide bomber blows herself up at the entrance to Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda Market, killing 7people & wounding 104.

2007 – A suicide bomber penetrates the Green Zone & detonates in a cafeteria within a parliament building, killing Iraqi MP Mohammed Awad & wounding more than 20other people.

2013 – 2 suicide bombers kill three Chadian soldiers & injure dozens of civilians at a market in Kidal, Mali

***

Karen Bing

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~Into my Inner Essence
Gushes the riches
Of the sense world…
The Wisdom of The Logos finds Herself
In the mirror-image of my Eye,
That Her Power out of me
May shape anew the eternal resurrection…
~hag

***

The Foundation Stone Meditation was given as our spiritual touchstone. And it becomes an actual path with which we can maintain our connection to the being of Rudolf Steiner. If we stand on this Foundation Stone of Love we can live into the destiny given at the Christmas Conference. Our efforts then become a gift of gratitude to this great initiate for the sacrifice he offered up when he united his karma with that of the Society. “We experienced what this sacrificial deed entailed” wrote Marie Steiner von Sivers, “an immense abundance of spiritual revelations he brought down & that he paid for with his death”

At the end of her ‘appeal for reconciliation’ in 1942, Marie Steiner wrote, “Can we not in view of this sacrifice & this death, for which as individuals & as society members all of us certainly bear guilt, for he assumed OUR karma, can we not forget, reconcile, & open wide our gates to the seekers? We must be able to work together again, denying collaboration to nobody who is faithful to the cause & to Rudolf Steiner.”

If we do our part, working on our own inner development, as well as practicing love & forgiveness to work out our karma in community, to merge the 2 streams of the Platonists & Aristotelians into the middle stream of Lazurus-John – then the Anthroposophical Society can become the earthly instrument of Divine Will it is meant to be.

I wrote this in response to the recent AGM in Dornach & after becoming inspired by reading “May Human Beings Hear It” by Sergei O. Prokofieff – a true conscious human being & anthroposopher.

~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

‘At the turning point of time
The cosmic spirit-light of the world
Entered the stream of earth existence.
Darkness of night had ceased its reign;
Day-radiant light
Shone forth in human souls:
Light
That gives warmth
To simple shepherd’s hearts;
Light
That enlightens
The wise heads of kings.

Light divine,
Christ-Sun,
Warm
Our hearts;
Enlighten
Our heads;
That good may become
What from our hearts
We are founding,
What from our heads
We direct,
With focused will’ ~RS FSM

***

An offering from Frank Agrama:

“Elderberries 3Fold Cafe, is a cultural initiative to transform society through service.  The platform blurs the lines between who is serving who, due to the all-around experience of transformation, for both server and docent, co-worker and community.

Our opportunity in Chicago, is fertile.  The well-maintained anthroposophically rooted movements surrounding, will have a space to meet one another.  The social organism can experience a new level of synergy and thus renewal.  In a refreshing and inspiring way, we have an opportunity to redefine the value of an Anthroposophical Community Center.

Besides holding a space for social nourishment, a key ingredient to consider is empowering the youth.  As both a gathering and co-working space, the youth impulse can find a moral and activating home base alongside the elders, welcoming opportunities for mentorship as well as leadership within the space and ultimately out into the world.

 We aim to host the arts, as they emerge in the forms that they arrive to us, be it poetry, music, theater, conversation, workshop, or as studio space rented in the back.

The cafe will bring new opportunities to meeting and sharing anthroposophy, authentic, vital, and personal.  Our goal is to enrich, expand and empower the local community.  Thank you”.

So my friends – We are each sharing our hopes that this initiative can be realized in Chicago. We’d love to hear from you. What do you think?

You can read more from Frank Agrama, (& see his art) & other Youth in the current issue of Being Human: “So, friends, what should we write about the Youth Section?”

***

Holy Wednesday from Emil Bock’s The Three Years – Matthew 26: 3-16

The “Still Week” – as Holy Week is called in some countries – is not really still until the middle day is past. On Palm Sunday the city was in a state of tremor; on Monday the tables of the vendors and money-changers were overturned in the Temple; on Tuesday, sword-thrusts were dealt in spiritual conflict between Christ and His opponents. It is not until the last part of the week that stillness descends. Wednesday, Mercury Day, is the turning point. The mercurial element of living movement represents the transition from the first unquiet days of the “Still Week” to those in which the consummation of Christ’s life moves into ever deeper stillness.

Towards evening on Wednesday a scene stands out which, although it has also occurred before, takes on a special significance on this middle day of balance. The Christ has turned from the tumult of the city to the quiet country town of Bethany, beyond the Mount of Olives. He stays in the circle of those with whom He is particularly united. A meal has been prepared for Him as on other evenings. But it is as though a certain radiance fell upon the scene, shining in advance from the Meal which will be celebrated the next day. A presentment of the Last Supper hovers round the community at the table. The country town of Bethany, quiet as it is, has shortly before been the scene of the raising of Lazarus, the event which had given the signal for battle. Lazarus is one of those gathered round the table; and it is he, as we know, who is described by the Gospel as resting on the heart of Jesus the next evening. At the Last Supper it is he who is nearest to Christ, both outwardly and inwardly.

Two women also belong to the community at table, Martha and Mary Magdalene, whom the Gospel of St. John states to be the sisters of Lazarus. They have been led by the hand of Providence into this circle, which is more related by the spirit than by blood. In the life of each of these three persons there has been an event which brought a radical transformation. For Lazarus it was the awakening from the grave, the great release of the John-spirit for its flight to the heights. For Mary Magdalene the event lay somewhat farther back; it is called in the Gospel a “driving out of devils”. She had been healed of the tragedy of “possession” and had experienced the freeing and purifying of her soul.

For Martha there had also been a significant event; she is said in early Christian tradition to be the woman who was healed of the issue of blood. Destiny had decreed that she should bring with her into life a weakness through which her bodily organism was unable to hold its forces together. Through meeting with the One Who could heal her, a staying power, a formative force, drew into her body, just as an inner peace had entered the soul of Mary Magdalene. The brother and sisters of Bethany became the intimate friends of Christ through healings of the spirit, the soul and the body.

As they all sit at the table with the disciples, Mary is recorded as having anointed the feet of Christ with precious spikenard ointment and wiped them with her hair. St John’s Gospel says that the whole house was filled with the perfume. Mary Magdalene had performed a similar act a year and a half previously. She had experienced a freeing and redeeming through her meeting with the Christ, and in order to show her overflowing gratitude she had, as the Gospel of St. Luke describes, anointed the feet of Christ and dried them with her hair. St. John’s Gospel, in the introductory words to the awakening of Lazarus, refers to this earlier scene (11,2). Mary Magdalene is described in St. Like’s Gospel as the “great sinner”, and it is possible, according to old traditions, that she was a prostitute, driven by demons, in the mundane watering place of Tiberias, near her home at Magdala. But was does her act of anointing signify now? It is the type and symbol of a sacramental act. Therefore, when others declare her deed extravagant and become indignant, Christ can accept what this woman does as a sacrament of death, as a fulfillment of the Last Anointing. On the occasion of the earlier anointing he had said, “Be still; she has loved much, much will be forgiven her.” And one can feel how Mary has since been able to deepen the natural forces of earthly love erring on false paths, and transmute them into religious devotion, and the capacity for sacrifice.

Then the solemn stillness is suddenly broken by a figure who forms a complete contrast to Mary Magdalene.

It is one of the apostles and when he sees the deed of Mary he loses self-control. This is Judas. He says that the precious money which has just been squandered could have been given to the poor, and thus many social needs might have been relieved. St. John’s Gospel, however, makes it plain that his real motives are not the ostensible ones. The Gospel openly calls him a thief. It may well be that the anger which Judas felt at the deed of Mary Magdalene gave the final impetus to his act of betrayal. He had waited a long time in tense expectation that Jesus would come forward publically: then a political miracle would inevitably follow. In this feverish impatience, it seems to him that Christ wastes His time; and finally at Bethany his patience can endure no more. In uncontrolled irritation he goes out to those who lie in wait for the Christ. The second crucial event of the Wednesday is the betrayal by Judas.

Both Judas and Mary Magdalene are typical Mercury people; they are active and temperamental. One of the virtues of their nature is that they are never tedious; something is always happening round them. Mary Magdalene, however, subdues her restlessness and transforms it into devotion, peace and the capacity for love. One can see from the Gospel account that true devotion is the final achievement of an active soul, a soul for whom peace is not mere immobility, but mobility redeemed, made inward. Mary Magdalene has been storm tossed: she has endured sinister experiences. But now an intense power of devotion grows from all that was formerly dark and disturbing. This intensity will later lift her above all other human beings; to her it is granted to be the first to meet and behold the Risen Christ.

Judas is the type of the restless man who must always be outwardly active. He pretends to want something for the poor. However good and commendable social activity may be, it is often only self-deception. The underlying motive is not always a genuine social impulse, but very often one’s own inner restlessness. Many people would be most unhappy if they were obliged to do nothing for a time. It would then be seen that their social zeal is no true inner activity, but a yielding to an unacknowledged weakness. In Judas this kind of mercurial soul meets with a dark fate. His unrest springs from a deeply hidden fear, and it leads to his betrayal of Christ Jesus. Such a soul cannot show devotion; above all, it cannot love. A restless person is not capable of real love; for love is possible only where the soul has found peace. Thus, in the two figures, Mary Magdalene and Judas, two roads separate, as at a crossroads. One leads to the realization of the nearness of Christ; the other into the dark night, into tragedy and suicide.

Marta, the other sister of Lazarus, is a transition, as it were, between Judas and Mary Magdalene. St. Luke’s Gospel tells the story of Mary and Martha earlier on, and has a purpose in doing so. Martha is the constantly active one who could not exist without undertaking some service. One cannot deny the genuine nature of her devotion, but one must not be blind to the fact that the unrest from which she was healed in the body has remained in her soul. Mary, who listens with devotion, is described as the one that has chosen the good part.

The figures taking part in these scenes on the Wednesday show us the crossroads which we must face before we may hope for admittance to the sphere of Maundy Thursday. The ways separate in face of the mystery of the sacrament. Judas is the man without ritual. He becomes restless and loses self-control when he comes into the sphere of true ceremonial worship. Mary Magdalene is the sacramental soul. On the following evening, when the circle of disciples will be united in the Sacrament as under a great dome, it will be apparent who is nearer to Mary, and who to Judas.

Mercury, who for the Greco-Roman world was both the God of Healing and also the God of merchants and of thieves, comes now into the orbit of the Christ Sun. The scene in the house of Lazarus and her sisters at Bethany shows how Mercury, the God of Healing, can himself be healed by the Sun of Christ.»

***

Greetings Friends on this Holy Wednesday –

FYI: NO STUDY Holy Thursday or Good Friday

***

15 April 2017, Holy Saturday – Our Annual Easter Festival: 
‘The Mystery of Golgotha – Then & Now’
2 pm – 4 pm

What was the Mystery of Golgotha?
What is the Mystery now?
What will it be for the future?
~Art Projections & Discourse with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Group work: Based on Baruch Urieli’s
‘Learning to Experience the Etheric World,
Empathy, the After-Image and a New Social Ethic’

A sneak peak of Our New Art Exhibition by Victoria Martin “I” SEE HEAVEN’ 

$10 Donation & Snacks to Share Encouraged

***

16 April 2017, Easter Sunday – 4 pm – 6 pm

The Midwest Eurythmy Group will perform
The Easter Verse from the Calendar of the Soul by Rudolf Steiner & Bach Fugue Bb minor ‘5 Voices’ & Prelude #22

Focused Discussion, an Artistic Activity, & Group Eurythmy

$10 Donation goes to support the Midwest Eurythmy Group

Snacks to Share Encouraged (Hazel will bring her famous slow cooked leg of lamb 🙂

At the Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society, 4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618 (map) rudolfsteinerbranch@yahoo.com – calendar of events Check out our Web site! Chicago, IL (Anthroposophical Society in America)

Etching

Celestial Event, Chicago Event, Festival, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars, Spring

11 April 2017 – Astro-Weather: After passing between the Sun & Earth only two weeks ago, Venus already appears in the predawn sky. It rises more than an hour before the Sun & climbs above the eastern horizon some 30 minutes before sunrise. The planet shines so brightly, that it shows up easily in the brightening twilight

At this time of year, the two Dog Stars stand vertically aligned around the end of twilight. Look southwest. Brilliant Sirius in Canis Major is below, & Procyon in Canis Minor is high above

Todd Young

***

Those who work with the Original indications in the Calendar of the Soul know that Rudolf Steiner lists the birth & death days, as well as other significant occurrences of various individualities, along with the dates in the calendar.  He said of this: “What is presented here can be useful to those who wish to follow the path of mankind’s spiritual development” ~Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

2nd Night of Passover

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

452 AD – Feast Day of Leo the Great, Pope who convinced Attila the Hun to withdraw from Italy

1727 – Premiere of Johann Sebastian Bach’s St Matthew Passion BWV 244b at the St. Thomas Church, Leipzig

1876 – The Order of Elks is organized

1919 – The International Labour Organization is founded

1965 – The Palm Sunday tornado outbreak of 1965: 55 tornadoes hit in 6 Midwestern states, killing 1256 people

1968 – President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, & financing of housing.

1970 – Apollo 13 is launched?

1976 – The Apple 1 is created

***

Hildegard von Bingen

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~I pulled down the stylus of fire & a tablet of crystal
‘Write it all down’ She said…
So I wrote; not what I saw, but what I knew…
Then She parted the bones of my chest
& buried the words in my drumming heart…
Now messages course thru my veins
Etching themselves in the lines of my palms…
~hag

***

Beloved Friends – As some of you may know we are building, what Dottie Zold & the Elderberries 3-Fold folks call: The Michael Grail-Road here in Chicago. We are beginning to spread the word, to see what is living in the community, & in the world. It is an invitation to all, & a call to the Spiritual World, to come together to make this initiative move forward, to help bring an Elderberries 3-Fold Café to Chicago. Here is a letter from one the Elderberries, Daniel Evaeus:

Dear friends at the Chicago Branch,

I write to you from the Youth Section at the Goetheanum where the air is full with the scents of Spring. I had the honor to attend the annual general meeting of the world society here which only just ended. I listen to Gerald Haefner, leader of the social science section, paint a picture of the challenges we face today – from Monsanto’s massive land grabs in the Ukraine to the concentration of wealth. I feel my life forces and hope take a blow and I must find a way to recover them on a personal level. What echo’s in my soul is the question of how to be and grow hope in a world where across the globe the essential gesture of democracy is being greatly threatened.

I recall standing across a row of militarized police at Standing Rock, the water protectors by my side shouting. ‘Did you in freedom choose to show up to work today? We are protecting this water not only for you, but for your children and your children’s children.’ Although they were not allowed to respond to our voices and questions, I could witness how in some of their faces the expression of our humanity had pierced through their armor.

 

Since the US election I’ve been asked by European family and friends how I am doing in the midst of the national events. My answer: ‘if it were not for the depth of meaning I experience daily in my work I don’t know how I could live’. To me, Elderberries is the practice of love in action with the intention to create islands of hope and healing across our country. Today when everything is being polarized, our world cries for more humanity and that is why I am committed to Anthroposophy. ~Daniel

***

William Blake

Holy Tuesday – From Emil Bock “The 3 Years” – Luke 21: 5-38

«In the early morning Jesus enters the city with His disciples once more. The waves of acclamation and enthusiasm have long since died away. Jesus is involved in the tension of His coming decision, but He will be obedient to the Law up to the last moment and fulfill the sacred customs of preparation for the Passover. There is the feeling that He Himself is the sacrifice to be offered. The people’s hatred is already surging up to Him as flames that will consume the sacrifice. From day to day the powerful sense of His spiritual presence in the city has increased. The more silent the crowds, the more majestically His sovereign will shine in His countenance. Now the day of Mars has been reached and the conflict flares up in earnest. The crowd is silent; their leaders are full of anxiety; their fears produced the hatred which leads to the attack. Every hostile group sends out assailants. One after the other they accost Him with their crafty questions. What would otherwise be a blow in the face or a dragger-thrust takes the guise of questioning.

First of all the members of the Jewish Sanhedrin approach, i.e. the High Priests, Scribes and Elders, ask Jesus what authority He has for His actions; He is required to legalize Himself. Then come the others, the Pharisees and the Herodians, and put the insidious question: “Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar?” The Sadducees follow. They ask Jesus’ opinion concerning the resurrection of the dead. Finally, a single question, intending to expose Him before all the people, asks which commandment He considers the most important of all.

These attacks, marking the outbreak of hostilities, are the proof of how strongly the Being of Christ was making itself felt. Just as dogs bark and bite only when they are afraid, so these ostensible questions, which are arrows of hate, are the outcome of fear.

Jesus answers each of the four questions. He is not satisfied, however, with parrying the blows aimed at Him; He accepts battle and fights back with weapons of the spirit. He uses powerful pictures. During the three previous years He has spoken to the people in poetic parables, and to the disciples in parables of deep mystery. To His opponents He now speaks parables of conflict. He tells the Parable of the Husbandmen to whom the vineyard has been entrusted; how they afterwards refuse to surrender the harvest, slay the owner’s messengers, and finally even his son. The opponents realize that they themselves are meant. In fact, Jesus is telling His enemies that they will slay Him. His parable is a last endeavor to reach the souls of His enemies. Perhaps it may bring them to an awakening; perhaps even now they may be shocked into self-knowledge.

The words of the Tuesday on Holy Week, taken together, are wonderfully relevant to every battle of light and darkness, every struggle for Christian discipleship in conflict with the Christ enemies. Goethe’s statement that world history is nothing else than a continuous fight of belief against unbelief touches the truth that is given in all detail during the Tuesday of Holy Week. All opposition to Christ and hostility to the Spirit has its root in unbelief, in deeply hidden weakness and fear. Discipleship of Christ means courage and strength. The battle is not necessarily fought by one group of men against another. It must be carried on within ourselves. In each human soul fear and courage, opposition to Christ and discipleship of Christ are mingled.»

Current Festival & Program Events

 

 

Vernal Full Moon

Celestial Event, Festival, Insight, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars, Spring

10 April 2017 – Astro-Weather: Full Wind Moon (exactly full at 1:08 AM CDT) Bella Luna Moona shines near Jupiter all night, since they’re both at their oppositions. Spica, the sheath of wheat in the hand of the Virgin is below them

Dalia Flexer

TODAY is the 1st night of Passover

***

What is the difference between Knowledge and Wisdom?
Knowledge is understanding how a tool works.
Wisdom is knowing how and when to use it.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

According to Rudolf Stiner’s Calendar of the Soul, this is the Birth Day of the prophets Daniel & Ezekiel. As well as the day Wagner received the inspiration for Parsifal in Zurich, 1857.

Anne Cameron

Daniel – Hebrew “God is my Judge” hero of the Book of Daniel who interprets dreams & receives apocalyptic visions. Daniel & his friends Hananiah, Mishael, & Azariah were among the young Jewish nobility carried off to Babylon following the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. The four are chosen for their intellect & beauty to be trained in the Babylonian court, & are given new names. Daniel is given the Babylonian name Belteshazzar, while his companions are given the Babylonian names Shadrach, Meshach, & Abednego. Daniel & his friends refuse the food & wine provided by the king of Babylon to avoid becoming defiled. They receive wisdom from God & surpass “all the magicians & enchanters of the kingdom.” Nebuchadnezzar dreams of a giant statue made of four metals with feet of mingled iron & clay, smashed by a stone from heaven. Only Daniel is able to interpret it: the dream signifies four kingdoms, of which Babylon is the first, but God will destroy them & replace them with his own kingdom. Nebuchadnezzar dreams of a great tree that shelters all the world & of a heavenly figure who decrees that the tree will be destroyed; again, only Daniel can interpret the dream, which concerns the sovereignty of God over the kings of the earth.

When Nebuchadnezzar’s son King Belshazzar uses the vessels from the Jewish temple for his feast, a hand appears & writes a mysterious message on the wall, which only Daniel can interpret; it tells the king that his kingdom will be given to the Medes & Persians, because Belshazzar, unlike Nebuchadnezzar, has not acknowledged the sovereignty of the God of Daniel. They overthrow Nebuchadnezzar & the new king, Darius the Mede, appoints Daniel to high authority. Jealous rivals attempt to destroy Daniel with an accusation that he worships God instead of the king, & Daniel is thrown into a den of lions, but an angel saves him, his accusers are destroyed, & Daniel is restored to his position.

In the third year of Darius, Daniel has a series of visions. In the first, four beasts come out of the sea, the last with ten horns, & an eleventh horn grows & achieves dominion over the Earth & the “Ancient of Days” (God) gives dominion to “one like a son of man”. An angel interprets the vision.

In the second, a ram with two horns is attacked by a goat with one horn; the one horn breaks & is replaced by four. A little horn arises & attacks the people of God & the temple, & Daniel is informed how long the little horn’s dominion will endure.

In the third, Daniel is troubled to read in holy scripture (the book is not named but appears to be Jeremiah) that Jerusalem would be desolate for 70 years. Daniel repents on behalf of the Jews & requests that Jerusalem & its people be restored. An angel refers to a period of 70 sevens (or weeks) of years.

In the final vision, Daniel sees a period of history culminating in a struggle between the “king of the north” & the “king of the south” in which God’s people suffer terribly; an angel explains that in the end the righteous will be vindicated & God’s kingdom will be established on Earth.

The Prophet Ezekiel describes his calling to be a prophet by going into great detail about his encounter with God & 4 living creatures or Cherubim with four wheels that stayed beside the creatures. For the next five years he incessantly prophesied & acted out the destruction of Jerusalem & its temple, which was met with opposition.

According to the midrash Canticles Rabbah, Shadrach, Meshach, & Abednego asked for his advice as to whether they should resist Nebuchadnezzar’s command & choose death by fire rather than worship his idol. At first God revealed to the prophet that they could not hope for a miraculous rescue; whereupon the prophet was greatly grieved, since these 3 men constituted the “remnant of Judah”. But after they had left the house of the prophet, fully determined to sacrifice their lives to God, Ezekiel received this revelation: “Thou dost believe indeed that I will abandon them. That shall not happen; but do thou let them carry out their intention according to their pious dictates, & tell them nothing”

Ezekiel’s statement about the “closed gate” (Ezekiel 44:2–3) is understood  as another prophecy of the coming Incarnation of Christ : the “gate” signifying the Virgin Mary & the “prince” referring to Jesus. This is one of the readings at Vespers on Great Feasts of the Theotokos in the Eastern Orthodox & Byzantine Catholic Churches. “No one can enter Heaven unless by Mary, as though through a door.” The imagery provides the basis for the concept that God gave Mary to mankind as the “Gate of Heaven” (thence the dedication of churches & convents to the Porta Coeli), an idea also laid out in the Salve Regina (Hail Holy Queen) prayer.

837 – Halley’s Comet makes its closest approach to Earth

***

Sally Vector

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~Look, she said, leaning out the window
To wave at the stream of the Vernal Moon
See
How the reflected Easter light rises…
Mirroring strident spirals of the New Sun
Calling: Become
The cup of victory
& see thru soul eyes
To speak deeds clothed in spirit-light…
~hag

***

Dear Friends –

The date of the moveable feast called Easter, contains a unique mystery. For it is determined by a cosmic alignment. So, as many of you know, 1st the sun must enter into the sign of Spring, then it waits, for the moon to come into its vernal fullness…Then the planetary beings whose names correspond with the days of the week come into play. Holy Week.

We are invited to connect to the Solar forces, so when the first Sun-Day after the Full Moon of Spring arrives, then it is time to celebrate the Easter festival.

And there is deeper meaning still in this alignment. It indicates how through the Christ Impulse, humanity is to be set free from the forces of earth-evolution, pure & simple.

It contains a call to humanity to lift ourselves up to the worlds beyond the earth; to once again speak with the stars. It contains a promise, that in the course of world-history, it will be possible, through the working of the Christ Impulse, for humanity to once again be united with the cosmos, in the New Jerusalem. It is for this that we strive when we celebrate the Easter Fest. 

Its consequence, must be looked for in all human history, in the arts, in human thinking, in all social relationships, & even in the materialistic triumphs of modern science.

~ ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

“Anthroposophy itself must become like an inner festival of Resurrection for the human soul. It must bring an Easter mood into man’s world-conception.” – Rudolf Steiner, The Easter Festival in relation to the Mysteries.

***

Holy Monday – From Emil Bock – Mark 11: 12-25

«Christ approaches the fig tree at Bethphage and wishes to show the disciples how little value should be attached to the “Hosanna” of the previous day. All that it represented was the last fruits of the old visionary clairvoyance, given by nature, and bound to the body. The words He addresses to the fig tree are, as it were, a challenge to the whole realm of ancient ecstatic vision. Here a momentous decision is made in the history of mankind. Jesus rejects the Hosannas of the people, and Himself brings about the transition to their cry, “Crucify Him”. He has the courage Himself to summon the spiritual blindness through which the people will fanatically demand His death. Humanity must act out of a consciousness that leads to freedom, even if it means tragedy; even if men in their spiritual blindness nail Him on the cross.

On that Monday in Holy Week Christ rejects a temptation. Had He allied Himself with the ancient clairvoyant forces, He might have found public recognition. Not only people would have cried “Hosanna”; they would have crowned Him King. But a final pronouncement is made: Christ will find no link with the ancient forces. His sole aim is that mankind should find the way to awakening and freedom. It is no unloving curse that He utters on the fig trees of those who had lent him the ass and its colt. He acts purely from the nature of his own being. He is the Sun and when the Sun rises, the Moon perforce goes pale. So the moon-forces of the old vision fade away.

The Christ appears before the Temple. Many hundreds of pilgrims have assembled, and around the Temple buying and selling, trading and bargaining are being carried on. In the Temple itself a feverish activity prevails; sacrificial beasts are needed for the Festival, the Passover lamb must be slaughtered. This is a source of business; for the animals have to be brought before they are sacrificed. Old Annas, the notorious miser of world history, knows how to make a profit. He has already made a vast fortune from this market. He has been the wire-puller in the political compromise with the Romans which is the basis of the Temple business. The pilgrims must change their local currency into the official currency which is valid in the Temple. This is Roman currency. Thus the Temple comprises also a Roman Exchange market. The Roman fiscal officers have been admitted to the Temple, although they were representatives of the Cult of Caesar, because it was hoped by this compromise to keep them at least out of the Holy of Holies.

Now Christ comes on the scene. He is coming to fulfil the custom of the feast. But the fire of His burning will has its effect. There is no need for Him to say much. The people are immediately seized with panic. Terror-stricken, they realize into what decadence they have fallen. Something similar had taken place at the feast of the Passover, three years before. At that time the terrifying effect came from the divine nature of the Christ, despite the conscious restraint which was still exercised by Jesus.

But now the divinity is entirely transformed into humanity; it has become intensity of will. He has the right to tear down the mask of decadence of the Temple.

The sun of Christ shines, and the glimmer of the Moon must fade away on the moon-hill of Mount Moriah. The spectres of the night flee from the sun. In place of a magnificent Temple appears a simple room on Mount Zion. There, in the Last Supper, the seed of a new ritual and worship, a Sun-like Sacrament, will be sown. The moon-religion of antiquity will be superseded on the evening of Maundy Thursday, when on the sun-hill of Mount Zion, Christ gives Bread and Wine to His disciples.»

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Current Festival & Program Events