I feel the fire burning – my thoughts spark the flame A voice calls out the question Echoing my name Hidden in dark chambers – a purpose dwells deep Be patient to unveil Her What is unlocked, will never sleep Where is Love to pulse in tempo Pain ringing the alarm: What you reap, this you sow Then will the seed be watered, & then begin to grow So crack the code to Freedom From the heart a rhythmic flow To let the Sun of Wisdom speak A cosmic anthem we all know ~hag
~Chart via John Jardine Goss/ EarthSky.
27 August 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Earth flies between the sun and Saturn on placing the ringed planet opposite the sun – at opposition – in our sky. Saturn at opposition is in the dim constellation Aquarius the Water Bearer. In addition, if you have a dark sky, you can see the dim but pretty constellation Capricornus the Sea-goat. It has the shape of an arrowhead. Indeed, you can see them crossing the sky all night, traveling along the ecliptic, the same path the sun travels during the day. Also, the bright star Fomalhaut is nearby.
RUDOLF STEINER’S CALENDAR OF THE SOUL translated (with added titles) by Roy Sadler At times I imagine the Calendar’s verse development as if it were a human biography, with each verse number having a meaning in itself. The senses’ dream in early summer can resemble child experience, new gifts and beginnings in the second quarter teenage creative imagination, v20 is like a trial to become adult (Overcoming Lucifer) and now v21, the magic 3×7, offers the key to the door that opens life’s destiny in its mirror verse, 32: 4×8. After 52 years can the 53rd birthday become a resurrection that ‘unites with light as one’ and proceeds through the years of verses with conscious destiny?
AUTUMN PRELUDE I The Key To Selfhood’s Door v21 I feel a strange new strengthening, fruit-bearing power of becoming; I sense the seed maturing and on a starlit loom a dawning vision weaving the pathway to my real being.
ALL HALLOWTIDE III The Gift Of Destiny v32 I feel my own fruit-bearing power present me to the world and strengthen my innate intent to turn towards the clarity within life’s web of destiny
~Some things always remain True – Life From death into life into Boundlessness & restraint Intuition & magic Nature & nurture, the inner Earth & Sky… The Sun rolls onward The doors of heaven are open Light returns to light The great knowing descends – genius to genesis… Will you meet me? ~hag
Today 24 August in 1912 was the 1st performance of Rudolf Steiner’s 3rd Mystery Drama: “The Guardian of the Threshold”
The Mystery Dramas strike a deep chord within, bringing notes of destiny Wisdom to sound within our individual life circumstances. They contain extremely concentrated karmic wisdom. A clue to the reason why, appears in the following writings of Rudolf Steiner about his Mystery Dramas:
‘And actually, one must understand that if some trouble were to be taken to read the things that lie within this drama—not reading between the lines, but if one were to take the trouble to read what lies in the words themselves spiritually—if one were to take the trouble to grasp the Rosicrucian Mystery in just such a way, seeking for these things in the next few years, then it would not be necessary for me to give so many lectures about this or that in the time to come.’
In relation to the Mystery Dramas, Hans Pusch, who worked deeply with them, states:
‘It is a clear sign of genuine relationship to Anthroposophy, if the forces of destiny become more and more active, even though they may be disturbing and uncomfortable. The spirit of our time is an awakener, a conscious troublemaker, and a dis-illusioner. Anyone who feels inner turmoil as a necessary tribute to the forces of progress will be prepared to enjoy the seemingly long speeches in the dramas. In their composition, he will sense inner laws and rhythms that will bring order to his own soul. The dramatic events in the spirit scenes become as real as any physical happenings.’
Our trials help us to understand & have compassion for one another. As Hans says, sometimes it is indeed a daily, almost hourly inner battle with our self to say ‘Yes’ to what destiny throws in our path.
As the scenes of the Mystery Dramas unfold, we become aware of the various interactions between individuals in the course of time.
In the lecture series ‘The Secrets of the Threshold’ Steiner speaks often of the Mystery Dramas. They give us an objective overview, ‘of knots from threads that karma spun in world becoming’ in the words of Benedictus. (in the Temple Scene of the first Mystery Drama.) In these threads, human lives are interwoven.
In the Temple Scenes of the Mystery Dramas, we experience the manifestation of karmic configurations & their progression in the spiritual development of individuals.
Within our present incarnation, there are deeds to perform to help rectify misdeeds, before we cross the threshold into the life between death & rebirth. We all have knots to loosen & unbind in our individual destiny. By recognizing the characters & situations in the plays, which are similar to our own life, unexpected karmic understandings may be glimpsed.
We can think about the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, well known in Charles Dicken’s story, ‘A Christmas Carol’. Was it destiny that Scrooge was confronted by the ‘Ghost of Christmas Past’? How was his individual retrospect similar from those in the Mystery Dramas?
Dickens’ story is a Michaelic-kamaloca experience. Seeing the pain of the people he was hurting, Scrooge felt the need to make amends for his miserly misdeeds, thereby changing his future destiny & that of others, as well. This striving for atonement is to be developed at every turn on the wheel of the year. May we take stock of what we have reaped & sown as we move toward the harvest season.
In daily life, our trials along the path appear less objective to see & not so beautifully expressed as the poetry we find in The Mystery Dramas. It is, however, the suffering in destiny situations, which leads to soul-growth. Our present state of mind may hold clues to understanding past misdeeds. Likewise does heightened consciousness assist in planting seeds of service for the future of mankind.
~hag
from Hans Pusch – ‘Working together on Rudolf Steiner’s Mystery dramas
“The Guardian of the Threshold – Scene 10 – The Temple of the Mystic League. Here Benedictus, Torquatus, and Trustworthy have the robes and insignia of their office of Hierophant as described in the ‘Portal of Initiation.’ The Eastern altar supports a golden sphere; a blue sphere rests upon the Southern altar; while the sphere upon the altar of the West is red. As the scene opens Benedictus and Hilary are standing at the altar in the East; Bellicosus and Torquatus at the altar in the South; Trustworthy at the altar in the West; then enter Thomasius, Capesius, Strader then Maria, Felix Balde, and Dame Balde, and later on the Soul of Theodora; and last of all the four Soul-Forces. (East is stage right & West stage left.)
Benedictus: The souls of all my pupils have received The spirit-light, each in that special form Which was appointed for him by his fate. What they have now achieved each for himself Each now must render fruitful for the other. But this can only happen, if their powers According unto number’s rhythmic law Desire to join within the holy place To form the higher unity, which first Can waken to true life what otherwise Could only stay in solitary state. They stand upon the threshold of the shrine, Whose souls must first unite, and then shall sound In unison according to the rules Imprinted in the cosmic book of fate: That harmony of spirits may achieve What each alone could never bring to pass. ‘Twill bring fresh inspiration to the old Which here hath nobly reigned since Time was not. To you, ye brethren, I these pupils bring Who found their way here through the spirit-worlds And through the strictest proving of their souls. The holy customs will they treat with awe, And treasure ancient sacred mystic ways Which here are seen as powers of spirit-light. Ye too, who have fulfilled in truest wise Your lofty spirit-service for so long, Henceforth will be entrusted with new tasks. The cosmic plan loth call the sons of men But for a time unto the sacred shrine, And when in service they exhaust their strength It guideth them to other fields of work. Even this temple had to stand its trial; And one man’s error had to guard it once, The guardian of the light — from darkness deep, One cosmic hour big with the fate of worlds. Thomasius perceived through inward light Which rules unconscious in the souls of men, That o’er its threshold he must not pursue His way unto the holy mystic shrine Ere he had crossed that other threshold o’er, Of which this only is the outward sign. So of himself he shut the door again Which you would fain have opened wide in love. He now will as another come again Worthy of your initiation’s gift.“
24 August 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: the 1st quarter Moon will pass in front of Antares (Alpha Scorpii), creating a lunar occultation visible from the Contiguous United States, Mexico and Canada.. The reddish star will disappear behind the dark limb (edge) of the Bella Lina & reemerge under her lit half.
79 – Mount Vesuvius erupts. The cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum,& Stabiae are buried in volcanic ash
410 –Sack of Rome by The Visigoths
1185 – Sack of Thessalonica by the Normans.
1349 – Six thousand Jews are killed in Mainz after being blamed for the bubonic plague.
1391 – Jews are massacred in Palma de Mallorca
1456 – The printing of the Gutenberg Bible is completed
1814 – British troops invade Washington, D.C. burning down the White House, the Capitol & many other buildings
1816 – The Treaty of St. Louis is signed by the Council of Three Fires (united tribes of Ottawa, Ojibwa, & Potawatomi) residing on the Illinois and Milwaukee rivers. By signing the treaty, they relinquished all right, claim, & title to their land, also a 20-mile strip that connected Chicago & Lake Michigan with the Illinois River. In exchange the tribes were to be paid $1,000 in merchandise over 12 years. Today, Indian Boundary Park in West Ridge, Chicago commemorates this Treaty.
1857 – The Panic of 1857 begins, setting off one of the most severe economic crises in United States history. Since the years immediately preceding the Panic were prosperous, many banks, had seized the opportunity to take risks with their investments & as soon as market prices began to fall, they quickly began to experience the effects of financial panic (will we ever learn?)
1864 – Deathday of Jakob Lorber “scribe of God” a Christian mystic &visionary. Lorber’s prose, an ‘inner voice’ from the region of his heart, has been compared with writings by other mystics such as Emanuel Swedenborg, Jakob Boehme & Rudolf Steiner
1891 – Thomas Edison patents the motion picture camera
1912 – 1st performance of Rudolf Steiner’s 3rd Mystery Drama: “The Guardian of the Threshold”
1932 – Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly across the United States non-stop (from Los Angeles to New Jersey)
1944 – World War II: Allied troops begin the attack on Paris
1954 – The Communist Control Act goes into effect, outlawing the American Communist Party
1967 – Led by Abbie Hoffman, the Youth International Party temporarily disrupts trading at the New York Stock Exchange by throwing dollar bills from the viewing gallery, causing trading to cease as brokers scramble to grab them
1991 – Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
1991 – Ukraine declares itself independent from the Soviet Union
1998 – First radio-frequency identification (RFID) human implantation tested in the United Kingdom
2004 – Deathday of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Swiss-American psychiatrist & death advocate
2006 – The International Astronomical Union (IAU) redefines Pluto as a dwarf planet
Saturday 23 September 2023
Community Prep-Stir / Potluck / Bon-fire
*Autumnal Equinox
*Yom Kippur
*Michaelmas Festival
6 – 8 pm at the Lucchesi-Archer-Ginsberg domicile
Please Bring Food & Drink to share,& a jar for the prep
Greetings dear friends on this Eve of the Summer Solstice –
Listen – a mysterious chorus is magicing the atmosphere, vibrating in the twilight of this long lingering day. Look – there – as the sapphire sky merges into cobalt blue – there – bright in the West – spreading on the wings of Venus, holding the occult powers of Mercury, we meet the Holy Grail.
Supporting from below, we see The Dioscuri = Castor and Pollux – The Twins of Gemini, showing us our immortal human-ness.
And there – Capping Space – Above the Goddess of Healing Love, stands virile Mars.
Dear Ones, Will you endeavor to read the starry script? – What will come forth with the pronouncing of the secret name inscribed there on the cup?
20 June 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”
And so it is that for 3 days ‘The Sun Stands Still‘ at Solstice. In our present age, our Day-Star- Sun enters the fixed stars of Gemini, the Twins; which puts Mother-Earth in the opposite stars of the Archer -the constellation connected to the Winter Solstice. This is the vertical axis in the life of Sun & Earth.
The Equinoxes of Spring & Autumn hold the horizontal axis, forming ‘The Great Cross’ of nature – the seasonal life & symbol of Earth.
Upon this cross we have the Christian festivals, with St. John’s & Christmas coinciding with this vertical axis, & Easter & Michaelmas along the horizontal axis.
Judith Pillar
When thinking about the breathing, living cycle of the Earth, we learn from Spiritual Science, that at Summer Solstice the Soul & Spirit of the Earth, (which is now imbued with the Christ) are fully exhaled out to the periphery of the cosmos, to become intermingled with the grandeur of the highest cosmic mysteries, where the primal forces of life exist amongst the stars.
The soul of the Earth is dreaming now in the heights. The forces which live in the seeds are held now in these Summer dreams of the Earth in union with the hierarchies, & it is this dreaming which is brought back into the Earth to become assessable during the sacred time of the Holy Nights.
The Summertime union between the Sun & Earth is actually a re-union between the spiritual beings of the Sun & their human offspring. Through ‘the great window of heaven’ we experience this interaction which helps us develop an awareness of our higher “I”. We can contemplate this dynamic & bring it to life in our soul most strongly at this time of year.
~Father Tambera
At Midsummer the Trinity reveals itself out of the heart of this cosmic activity – A sounding in the music of the spheres, that calls us to explore our own inner harmony with the cosmos – an answering echo that unites us to the eternity of the Trinity.
At this time when the ‘Sun Stands Still’ – Can WE learn to be still enough to hear the voice of conscience?
~hag
~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
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.
If 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.
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..?
Rea Vena
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.
Alex Fiskgogt
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.
Jonna Powell
This brings us back to the great social question of our time: the individual in relation to the whole – the community,& the cosmos.
Kim Heale
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
~John Jardine Goss/ EarthSky.
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.
“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 2nd 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, June24, 2023 at Zinniker Farm
5:30 pm Potluck– Please bring food & drink to share
The Whitsun Festival highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts, our individual “I”, in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is strongly felt during this time of the consciousness soul age. Our groups striving to know Spiritual Science must work together as a community, to have the possibility to create this type of culture, and the opportunity is here for each of us to meet, human to human, where a sacrament is possible in every encounter. Our individual strength comes from our personal development and is enhanced by weaving our gifts together with others, knitting our social world in conscious community.
We can think about the ‘7 gifts of the Holy Spirit’, and ask ourselves: What are my gifts? How can I place them in right relationship within the social realm? How can I hone them, to strengthen and enhance the world? How do we turn the ME into a WE?
In 1907 Steiner created the ‘Whitsun Congress’ in Munich as a new Rosicrucian impulse, displaying the 7 seals of St. John’s Apocalypse, a representation of the 7 stages of Christian initiation. The Whitsun spirit came alive again, through Rudolf Steiner for the 3rd time in history with the re- founding of the Anthroposophical Society at the Christmas Conference.
When we take up the mantric expression of the Foundation Stone Meditation, it becomes the key in which the individual and social principles are harmoniously united – Lifting us out of the ‘ME’ into the ‘WE’, so that the spirit flame can enter and spread out through us, creating a radiating vessel for the Christ – Anthroposophia – and the powerful Michaelic forces wanting to be employed by us.
Our job as Michaelites is to take our individual Inner Whitsun and expand it, into what Steiner calls the “World Festival of Knowledge” a path leading from ‘Sprit Recalling’, to ‘Sprit Sensing’, to ‘Sprit Beholding.’
Through Steiner’s profound mystery deed at the Christmas Conference, an altogether new relationship between the spiritual world and the human being was conceived. If, today, together, we will to turn our hearts towards a higher wisdom in Love, to set fire to the forces of knowledge in our souls, redeeming our intelligence, our Anthroposophical angel, if you will, can anchor and embody itself in the environment we prepare for it.
Schiller once said “Take the divine into your will & it descends from its cosmic throne.”
We are called to create an Ecclesia, a vessel, a chalice, a sheath for The Sophia. Then the spirit flame can spread out to become what Steiner called a “World Whitsun”, which began in earnest at the Christmas Conference, where the ‘inverted Whitsun’, was born. The idea of taking the spirit that has flowed through the head into the heart, and then out from the heart, back as a gift to humanity, to redeem the Cosmic Intelligence of Michael.
In this sense the Christmas Conference, in all its spiritual reality, reveals itself as the true Whitsun for those who strive to take into their souls the Wisdom of the Holy Spirit concerning the human being – Anthropos-Sophia, which is the knowledge of the grail held aloft by Michael in this present age of the consciousness soul.
~hag
Here are some Whitsun presentations for your inspirational viewing:
This years offering: Anthroposophia & the Redemption of Lucifer, featuring Velsum,coming soon! Stay tuned…
~John Jardine Goss/ EarthSky.
28 May 2023 – “Speaking with the stars”: Shortly before sunrise tomorrow Mercury (occult Venus) will reach greatest distance from the Sun and will be very low in the east. To its upper right shines the brighter planet Jupiter.
RUDOLF STEINER’S CALENDAR OF THE SOUL translated with added titles byRoy Sadler WHITSUN DREAM LIFE’S PRESENCE v8 In concert with the spirit’s birth the senses’ power grows; it presses thinking down to dimness of a dream. When Holy Spirit would bond with soul; the mind must rest in dream life’s presence.
the mirror verse CANDLEMAS II THOUGHT’S LIGHT v45 In concert with the spirit’s birth thought’s power grows; it lights up senses’ vague allure to vivid clarity. When soul would bond with springtime’s coming, thought’s light must shine on sense revealing.
TODAY: Whitsunday 28 May 2023
NEW TIME: 7 pm – 9 pm
50 Days after The Resurrection = Our Community Pentecost Gathering –
