24 September 2016 – Astro-Weather: Uranus reaches opposition three weeks from today, but it is already showing its face. The ice giant world rises before twilight ends & climbs above the eastern horizon by 11 pm CDT. The planet lies in Pisces, north-northwest of Piscium.
This is the time of year when the rich Cygnus Milky Way crosses the zenith in the hour after nightfall is complete. The Milky Way rises straight up from the southwest horizon, passed overhead, & runs straight down to the northeast.
***
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
According to the Calendar of the Soul today is the Festival of Persephone, part of The Eleusinian Mysteries, held annually in honor of Demeter & Persephone. The most sacred & revered of all the ritual celebrations of ancient Greece. They were instituted in the city of Eleusis, just west of Athens, possibly as far back as the early Mycenaean period, & continued for almost two thousand years. Large crowds of worshippers from all over Greece (& later, from throughout the Roman empire) would gather to make the holy pilgrimage between the two cities & participate in the secret rites, generally regarded as the high point of Greek life.
622 – Muhammad & his followers completed their Hijra from Mecca to Medina to escape religious persecution. Rudolf Steiner tells us Muhammad was able to see into the etheric realm. Legend has it that the enemy was just seconds from capturing them when they ducted into a cave, where they surly would been found, except a spider wove a giant web & a dove made a nest at the entrance, so when the enemy come to the cave they thought – they can’t be here, since the web was so intricate & the nest so well established.
787 – Second Council of Nicaea: The council assembled at the church of Hagia Sophia
1046 – Deathday(drowned) /Feast of St. Gellert
1541 – Deathday (murdered) Theophrastus Paracelsus, a Swiss German philosopher, physician, botanist, astrologer, & occultist. He is credited as the founder of toxicology. He is also a famous revolutionary for utilizing observations of nature, rather than referring to ancient texts, something of radical defiance during his time. He is credited as the first to note that some diseases are rooted in psychological conditions.
Paracelsus’ most important legacy is his critique of the scholastic methods in medicine, science & theology. As a physician of the early 16th century, Paracelsus held a natural affinity with the Hermetic, Neoplatonic, & Pythagorean philosophies central to the Renaissance. Paracelsus rejected the magic theories of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa & Nicolas Flamel in his Archidoxes of Magic.
Astrology was a very important part of Paracelsus’ medicine & he was a practicing astrologer. Paracelsus devoted several sections in his writings to the construction of astrological talismans for curing disease. He also invented an alphabet called the Alphabet of the Magi, for engraving angelic names upon talismans.
1916 – Rudolf Steiner’s 2nd lecture on the Mexican Mysteries
1789 – The United States Congress passes the Judiciary Act which creates the office of the United States Attorney General & the federal judiciary system, & orders the composition of the Supreme Court of the United States
1869 – “Black Friday“: Gold prices plummet after Ulysses S. Grant orders the Treasury to sell large quantities of gold after Jay Gould & James Fisk plot to control the market
1896 – Birthday of F. Scott Fitzgerald, novelist & short story writer
1906 – U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt proclaims Devils Tower in Wyoming as the nation’s first National Monument
1914 – World War I: The Siege of Poland begins
1948 – The Honda Motor Company is founded
1950 – Forest fires black out the sun over portions of Canada & New England. A blue moon is seen as far away as Europe
1957 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends 101st Airborne Division troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce desegregation
1960 – USS Enterprise, the world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, is launched
1996 – Representatives of 71 nations sign the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty at the United Nations.
2005 – Hurricane Rita makes landfall in the United States, devastating portions of southwestern Louisiana & southeastern Texas
2007 –100,000 people take part in anti-government protests in Yangon, Burma
2009 – The G20 summit begins in Pittsburgh with 30 global leaders in attendance. It marks the first use of Long-Range Acoustic Devices in U.S. history
2013 – A 7.7-magnitude earthquake strikes southern Pakistan, killing more than 1327 people
2015 – At least 1,100 people are killed & another 934 wounded after a stampede during the Hajj in Saudi Arabia
***
Mirach Ravaia
~Like a candle calling to the sun
I strive…
My flame guttering in the wind
Lashes the wet branches of sleep tossed trees
My resolve wavers
But my bones carry star stuff
Unconcerned
~hag
***
MICHAELMAS AND THE SOUL-FORCES OF MAN by RUDOLF STEINER
Summary by Hazel Archer Ginsberg
Lecture 4. The far-reaching social significance of a Michael Festival. Earth spirit and human spirit. The cosmic breathing process. Nature-consciousness, self-consciousness, and spirit-consciousness. “
In the Gemüt, through anthroposophical endeavor — we learn to distinguish between nature-consciousness, engendered during the spring and summer, and self-consciousness proper which thrives in the fall and winter.
“When the human Gemüt receives into itself spirit-consciousness — the spirit-consciousness engendered by the transition from nature-consciousness (spring-summer) to self-consciousness (autumn-winter) — then will the solution to our social problems of the moment comes clear.”
A Michael Festival calls for us to feel in our souls everything that can activate spirit-consciousness.
“…What does Easter represent in the year’s festivals? First death, then resurrection: that is the outer aspect of the Mystery of Golgotha. One who understands the Mystery of Golgotha in this sense sees death and resurrection in this way of redemption; and can feel in their soul that we must unite in our Gemüt with Christ, the victor over death, in order to find resurrection in death.”
But Christianity does not end with the traditions associated with the Mystery of Golgotha: it must advance. The human Gemüt turns inward and deepens more and more as time goes on; and in addition to this festival that brings alive the Death and Resurrection of Christ, humanity needs that other one which reveals the course of the year as having its counterpart within us, so that we can find in the round of the seasons, first of all the resurrection of the soul — in fact, the necessity for achieving this resurrection — in order that the soul may then pass through the portal of death in a worthy way.
Easter: death, then resurrection; Michaelmas: resurrection of the soul, then death. This makes of the Michael Festival a reversed Easter Festival. Easter commemorates for us the Resurrection of Christ from death; but in the Michael Festival we must feel with all the intensity of our soul: In order not to sleep in a half-dead state that will dim our self-consciousness between death and a new birth, but rather, to be able to pass through the portal of death in full alertness, we must rouse the soul through our inner forces before we die. First, resurrection of the soul — then death, so that in death that resurrection can be achieved which the human being celebrates within.
In Spiritual Science Death must Become
A Resurrection
For this we strive
In gratitude ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg
