Category Archives: Speaking with the Stars

Demeter’s letter to Kore

Biography, History, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Speaking with the Stars, Upcoming Events
Demeter and Persephone | Etsy

Listen on ‘I Think Speech’ to Demeter’s Letter to Kore

Dear daughter – Yes, the dark red pomegranate seeds have made you more than Maiden. A dusky stain of transformation marks you with a new tattoo – a karmic calling card for your own re-birth – Mother to yourself.

The Daily Oracle: Friday April 12th – Joanna-Kate Grant

In this stark emergent great time of turning, Persephone – your new name – is your teacher. She who is ever seeking wholeness from out the belly of the Underworld; willingly suffering its trials & lessons, to test, & come to know Herself – to emerge in the fullness of true Being.

Persephone, Queen of the Underworld | Smite Amino
Janaina Mederious

By dark travails, the light is honed. You return to life, sleepy maiden no longer, but Goddess & Queen in your own right – able to discern & strategize destinies web.

PERSEPHONE RETURNS Oil Painting By Dana Zivanovits | absolutearts.com
Dana Zivanovits

You must find the full range of your nature, both the shadow & light – the horror & beauty. As you emerge from this cyclic trek into the Underworld of your karmic shadow-side, you follow Persephone’s example – You become powerful & wise – ready to embrace the full scope of your humanity, adding to your life experiences; & in doing so, you are a child no more, but a sovereign human being. In charge of knowing when to wield the sword – either for benediction or slaughter as the case may be – Ready to receive the consequences & divine messages from every action & reaction, every non-action that pricks you into fuller consciousness.  By your trials & lessons your fruit ripens & matures in its season – able to bear the burden you have wrought – with forgiveness & mercy.

Persephone Paintings | Fine Art America
Kerry Smithe

Whatever Joy or pain you feel, or burden or responsibility you carry, from your ever sprouting fate-full life-story, know that it conveys you to another evolutionary cusp, ever higher, ever awakening. You need not be trapped by a forgetful, carefree slumber that no longer serves; instead you can use the twists & turns of woke dreaming – to graduate from naiveté, thru stark reality, to a willed destiny of your own making.  An organic fuel made from a compost that you consciously regulate for your journey of soul, to help you step with grace from phase to phase, rising & falling & ever emerging into a Spring of fresh new beginnings, a Summer of purpose & action; an Autumn of applied plenty, fortifying you for a regal Winter.

loumargi | Hekate, Goddess of the underworld, Hecate

As Mother & Crone I release the fruited seeds of experience to let them fly into the future as they will. Humanity’s long Winter of soul must end. The ancestors’ stories must become the descendant’s wisdom. What comes next will be of your own choosing & making.

Persephone - Original Oil Painting — Kristina Carroll Art
Kristena Carrol

Let your sufferings be the fertilizer that feeds your new growth, & let your joy draw your hungry limbs upward to embrace life. Trust yourself. Trust each other. Begin again, & again & ever again…

Demeter welcomes Persephone's Return - Painting Dreams
Wendy Andrews

Love is who you are – Go be you –

Xox ~mom

24 March 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Yep that’s Venus shining below the waxing crescent Moon in the west during and after twilight this evening.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

806 – The death-day of Harun al Raschid. Interesting that Rudolf Steiner speaks about this individuality in the Young Doctors Easter Course: Lecture IV, which Steiner gave at the time of the Easter Paradox in 1924.

“…But now just think of the Court of Harun al Raschid, where ancient medicine flourished. The Old Mystery Wisdom, still preserved in tradition, was living in the existing knowledge concerning the being of man. There were two men at that court: Harun al Raschid himself, the organizer of the great academy of spiritual life which grew and developed under his influence; and another, who in earlier times had been an initiate. In the days of Harun al Raschid the initiation did not come to the surface.

Harun al Raschid reincarnated as Lord Bacon of Verulam (1561–1626) and with his kind of thinking which was thoroughly steeped in Arabism, he renewed the natural-scientific thinking, from the West. Such was the path he took in his life between death and rebirth. If you would study Lord Bacon you would find how greatly medicine was influenced thereby. Indeed you would be amazed. The other man, the initiate, was reborn in the soul of Amos Comenius (1592–1670). Comenius’ life was one of aspiration towards the spirit, but he turned everything into intellectual conceptions.

Again, another personality in Arabism — he did not live at exactly the same time as Harun al Raschid, but he played a part in the battle of Zeres de la Frontera — was reborn as Charles Darwin (1809–1882). And so the influences that are working in natural science and especially in medicine, are re-embodiments of ancient conceptions from which Christianity was excluded. Such conceptions did not constitute an evolution of Christianity, but Christianity was excluded as Arabism embraced Europe in its fold. Medicine itself was most of all affected in this sense.”

1830 – Birthday of Robert Hamerling – an Austrian poet and writer . He was one of the most widely read German-speaking authors of his time. His main works include the epic Ahasuerus in Rome (1865), which first made him known to a wide readership, and The King of Sion (1869).

From Rudolf Steiner in: THE PRESENCE OF THE DEAD, GA 154, Appendix II. Robert Hammerling: Poet and Thinker, 26 April 1914, Berlin

“Hamerling’s life and personality are an example of a soul growing out of and beyond its environment, and of an individuality’s development. He was the son of a poor weaver. Since they were completely impoverished, his parents were evicted from their home at a time when Hamerling was not yet capable of even saying “I.” His father was forced to go abroad while his mother remained in the Waldviertel area, in Schonau, with the young boy. There the child experienced the beauties of the Waldviertel region. A scene from that time remained always in his memory of an experience he believed actually gave him his own being. The seven-year-old boy was going down a hill. It was evening, and the sun was setting in the west. Something came toward him, golden, out of the golden sunshine, and Hamerling describes what was shining forth in the golden light as follows:

Among the most significant memories of my boyhood, but also most difficult to convey, are the often strange moods that passed through my soul when I was a roaming boy. In part they came from the moment’s lively impressions and stimulation, usually from nature around me, in part they were waking dreams and premonitions. Speaking about himself, the mystic Jakob Böhme used to say that the higher meaning, the mystical life of the spirit was awakened in him miraculously at the moment when he was dreamily absorbed in gazing at a pewter bowl sparkling in the sunlight. 8 Perhaps every spiritual person has a pewter bowl like Böhme’s as the origin of his real inner awakening. I vividly recall a certain evening when I was about seven years old. I was going down a hill, and the sunset shone toward me like a miracle, a spiritual vision. It filled my heart with an unforgettably strange mood, with a presentiment that today seems to me like a calling, reflecting my future destiny. In high spirits, I hurried toward an unknown destination; yet, at the same time my soul was filled with a melancholy that made me want to cry. If that moment could have been explained out of the surrounding circumstances, if it had not been so completely unique, it would surely not have remained so indelibly in my memory.

Thus, in the poet’s seventh year the poetic and spiritual muse drew near. At that time, the seed for everything that was later to become of this soul was laid into it from out of the cosmos, so to speak. The nice thing is that Hamerling ascribes his poetic calling to such an event, as if it were a miracle the cosmos itself performed on him.

Because of his parents’ poverty, the boy had to be educated at the Cistercian monastery of Zwettl. 10 In return for his school lessons, he had to sing in the monastery choir. At that time, Hamerling was between ten and fourteen years old. He formed a close relationship to a strange personality at the monastery, namely, Father Hugo Traumihler, a person completely given over to mystical contemplation and a strict ascetic life. At that time the boy already possessed a thirst for the beauty of the cosmos and an urge to deepen his soul. You can imagine that he was inspired by the inner experiences Father Traumihler described from his inner contemplation of the secrets of the heart and soul. He was a mystic of a very elementary, primitive kind who nevertheless made a deep impression on Hamerling’s soul.

But it is impossible to talk about the poet Hamerling without mentioning what was such a great part of his longing: the longing to be a great human being.”

Catt Landa

1905 – Deathday of Jules Verne – prolific French author whose writings laid much of the foundation of modern science fiction. (a fav. of mine growing up)

The Categories of Aristotle – a process of contraction…
Is there a path to expansion…..?

PUBLIC LECTURE AND EURYTHMY WORKSHOP WITH CLAUDIA FONTANA

Friday 24 March 2023 – Lecture 7 pm CT – 8:30 pm –

Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $12

Saturday 25 March 2023 – Workshop – 9 am CT– (10:30 am 1/2 hour break – 11 am) 12:30 pm CT Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $50

Does one have to be a philosopher of great erudition to approach Aristotle’s gift to humanity……his Categories?

Perhaps , YES! But an initial acquaintance with them can lead out of the confinement of the intellectual concept to an experience of expansion supported by Eurythmy.

In the evening lecture Claudia will introduce the life of the Categories before they became concepts – Bringing the symbols in a sequence of sounds  (called the Evolutionary Sequence ) out of their conceptual form, to life, supported by Eurythmy and examples of poetry.

During the workshop we will enter into the movement of the poetry presented  during the lecture. This will be accessible to Eurythmists as well as to anyone interested in the life of language, poetry and our alphabet.

at the Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society
4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618 (map)
https://www.rschicago.org/happenings/calendar 
www.rschicago.org/donate

For more info contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Claudia Fontana saw a Eurythmy performance when still a teenager. Unbeknownst to her at the time, that performance was the gate to her destiny path. Soon thereafter she studied Eurythmy in Vienna and subsequently spent fourteen years as a performer with the Dornach, London and Stuttgart Eurythmeum ensembles. Teaching became the next challenge which she happily met in the United States, Europe. Before Covid, she spent seven years teaching all levels in Thailand, Malaysia and China. She resides in Ann Arbor, MI still performing and teaching.

Juan de Flandes

“Lazarus – Come Forth” – Through The Word & Eurythmy

w/ Rev. Jeana Lee, Mary Ruud & Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Starting at Sundown Friday 31 March 2023
7 pm – 8:30 pm CT at the Christian Community 2135 W. Wilson

Leading Thoughts & Close of Day with Rev. Jeana Lee

Continuing on Lazarus Saturday 1 April 2023
10 am – 12 noon CT
at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago 4249 N. Lincoln Ave

Night School Check-in w/ Hazel Archer – Eurythmy w/ Mary Ruud

$10 more or less or pay what you will
Please bring a potluck dish to share for the luncheon after the Festival

For more info. contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator Hag@rschicago.org

Mary Magdalene & the Women at the Tomb – A Festival of Recogniton

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg,

Song-Circle with Velsum, 

Holy Saturday 8 April 2023

1 pm – 3pm CT a hybrid event in-person at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago & on zoom

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/7050174041

Meeting ID: 705 017 4041

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map)
www.rschicago.org/donate

PRESENTS:

The Mystery of Ascension with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

This course is available on Zoom. You will be emailed a Zoom link closer to the time of the class. The course will be recorded and you will receive a link to watch it. Go to the Infinity Foundation web site to enroll

Course Number 231154 / Zoom
Date: Thursday, May 11
Time 7:00 – 8:30 PM CST
Cost $33/23 payment 10 days in advance

For more info contact Aline Hanle aline@infinityfoundation.org

Gerald Shepherd

When we tune into the Cycle of the Seasons, we experience that as the Earth breathes out in the Springtime, the beings of nature reach upwards towards the heights. The longing of the human soul also strives to meet this mood of ascension, which attunes all life to the cosmic expanses.

Together we will gain insights in how to rise up to our Higher Self by participating in this harmonizing spring-dialogue between the worlds.

This reconnection between heaven & earth was prefigured in the story of Jacob’s ladder from the Old Testament. Through his dream of the ‘stairway to heaven’, Jacob gave us a prophecy in the picture of a golden ladder on which choirs of Angels traverse between the ‘Above & Below’. The Mystery of the Ascension of Christ, 40 days after the Resurrection at Easter, fulfilled Jacob’s Prophecy. Christ as the Being of Love became the living bridge connecting us to the eternal.

Through this workshop we will learn how humanity will also be transfigured in the fullness of time. The company of the Angelic Hierarchies wait for us, their younger siblings, to ascend, first of all in our thinking, to meet them in fellowship, as they work all the while by our sides.

Nancy Poer

~Vitae Sophia~A Whitsun Festival of United Soul Endeavor 

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Velsum Voices & Eurythmy

1- 3 pm CT – Saturday 27 May 2023 a Hybrid event in person* & on zoom

We are called to redeem the ether spheres to create an Ecclesia, a chalice 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. The Whitsun Festival highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts, in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is especially strong now during this ‘pandemic’. Our groups striving to know Spiritual Science must work together as a community, to have the possibility to create a new culture where a sacrament is possible in every encounter. Our individual strength is enhanced by weaving our gifts together, kindling our social world in conscious community.

Zoom: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83663366670?pwd=L292UzlOR1pkZjBXSWpxK1B2b0o1dz09 Meeting ID: 836 6336 6670 / Passcode: 397593

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
*Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map) www.rschicago.org/donate

Find a collection of the many RECORDINGS of Presentations, Programs & Festivals HERE

a human generation

History, Insight, Poetry, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Speaking with the Stars, Upcoming Events

Dear friends – As I am preparing for our Easter Festival, opening to the mysteries of Mary Magdalene, which starting coming thru over the Holy Nights, I came across this highly evocative quote from Rudolf Steiner that awakens us to the cycles we are immersed in – so powerfully rendered in the Foundation Stone Meditation as: For the Christ-will encircling us holds sway, In world rhythms, bestowing Grace upon souls – giving us much food for thought as we move thru the Cycle of the Year as a Path of Initiation…

I hope it stimulates you as it has me:

“…The time interval between Christmas and Easter is to be understood as consisting of thirty-three years. This is the key. What does this mean? That the Christmas festival celebrated this year (2023) belongs to the Easter festival that follows thirty-three years later (2056), while the Easter festival we celebrate this year belongs to the Christmas of (1990). In (1990) humanity celebrated a Christmas festival that really belongs to the Easter of this year (2023), and the Christmas festival we celebrate this year belongs, not to the Easter of next spring but to the one thirty-three years hence (2056). According to our reckoning, this period — thirty-three years — is the period of a human generation, thus a complete generation of humanity must elapse between Christmas festivals and the Easter festivals that are connected with them. This is the key, my dear friends, for reading the new astrology, in which attention is directed to the stars that shine within the historical evolution of humanity itself.

How can this be fulfilled? It can be fulfilled by human beings using the Christmas festival in order to realize that events happening at approximately the present time (we can only say approximately in such matters) refer back in their historical connections in such a way that we are able to perceive their birthdays or beginnings in the events of thirty-three years ago, and that events of today also provide a birthday or beginning for events that will ripen to fruition in the course of the next thirty-three years.

…All things in historic evolution arise transfigured after thirty-three years, as from a grave, by virtue of a power connected with the holiest of all redemptions: the Mystery of Golgotha.

It does not suffice, however, to sentimentalize about the Mystery of Golgotha. An understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha demands the highest powers of wisdom of which the human being is capable. It must be experienced by the deepest forces that can stir the soul of man. When he searches its depths for the light kindled by wisdom, when the human being does not merely speak of love but is enflamed by it through the union of the soul with the cosmic soul that streams and pulses through this turning point of time, only then does he acquire insight and understanding into the mysteries of existence. In days of old the wise men who sought for guidance in the conduct of affairs of human beings asked knowledge of the stars, and the stars gave an answer; so, today, those who wish to act wisely in guiding the social life of humanity must give heed to the stars that rise and set in the course of historic evolution. Just as we calculate the cyclic rotations of celestial bodies, so must we learn to calculate the cyclic rotations of historic events by means of a true science of history. The time-cycles of history can be measured by the interval that extends from Christmas to the Easter thirty-three years ahead, and the spirits of these time-cycles regulate that element in which the human soul lives and weaves in so far as it is not a mere personal being but is part of the warp and woof of historic evolution…

Christ spoke to humanity in these words, “Lo! I am with you always even to the end of the world...”

Just as Christ Jesus passed through death in such a way as to make death an illusion and resurrection the reality — this is the content of the Easter mystery — so did Christ Jesus pass through birth in such a way as to render birth an illusion and “transformation of being” within the spiritual world the reality, for in the spiritual world there is neither birth nor death, only changes of condition, only metamorphoses. Not until humanity is prepared to look up to that world in which birth and death both lose their physical meaning will the Christmas and Easter festivals regain their true import and sanctity…”  ~Rudolf Steiner, Et Incarnatus Est: The Time Cycle of Historic Events, 23 December 1917, Basel, GA 180

Metonic cycle - Wikipedia

And so dear friends – What is coming to birth from 1990 at Easter-Tide this year? And what are we implanting that will come to light for the Holy Nights of 2056?

~hag

22 March 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Look very low in the west during twilight for the thin crescent Moon paired with departing Jupiter.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1828 – Birthday of Fercher von Steinwand, an Austrian poet. Here is what Rudolf Steiner had to say about him in THE RIDDLE OF MAN, GA 20, Pictures from the Thought-Life of Austria

“I learned to know him at the end of the 1880’s in Vienna and for a short time associated with him personally. He was sixty years old at the time: a true figure of light, even externally; an engaging warmth shone from his noble features, eloquent eyes, and expressive gestures; through tranquil clarity and self-possession, this soul of an older man still gave the effect of youthful freshness. And when one came to know this soul better, its particular nature and creations, one could see how a feeling life instilled by the Carinthian Mountains united in this soul with a contemplative life in the power of the idealism in German world views. This contemplation (Sinnen) was already entirely native to his soul as a poetic world of pictures; this contemplation pointed with this world of pictures into the depths of existence; it confronted world riddles artistically, without the originality of artistic creation paling thereby into thought-poetry; one can observe this kind of contemplation in the following lines from Fercher von Steinwand’s Chorus of Primal Dreams:

Out of all regions
Ever ascended,
Wanders an ether in far-radiant arches;
Travel the billows to
Depths ever silent.
There with our all-seeing
Will as their cargo,
Wending their way through the fog go our ferries;
Sail between wonderful
Banks new arising.
There before all-warming
Eyes of soft mildness
Winding and turning we fashion our patterns
Out all around dreaming
Regions of star-fields.
There to misfortune we
N’er are indebted,
There we constructed our fortresses hovering, And tribulations we
Joyfully shattered.
He who would paint you with
Most holy features,
Highest abode of our contemplative urgings:
Wait for the swiftest
Servants of love!

The following verses seek to portray how the soul, in thinking-waking daydreams, lives in far-away starry worlds and in immediate reality; then the poet continues:

No matter what careful
Powers accomplish,
Only on dreaming’s own wide-spreading pinions
Can what is mighty be
Gained now forever.
Every o’erpowering greatness of action,
All of the angels who guard what was planted
Are given counsel by
Dreams that inspire them.

Fercher von Steinwand then sings further about the penetrating of thinking, spiritualized to the point of dreaming, into the depths of the world, and about the penetrating of that kind of dreaming which is an awakening out of our ordinary waking state into those depths where the life of what is spiritual in the world can make itself tangible to the soul:

Life that our pulsating
Hearts have perceived,
Life that our struggling hearts have ascended
To all the welcoming
Cries of the spirits:

And then Fercher von Steinwand lets sound forth to the human spirit what the beings of the spirit realm speak to the soul that opens itself to them in inner contemplation:

Healed ones, now be here by
Loving encircled!
What you were seeking in uplifting hours,
Here, you selected ones,
Is it disclosed;
Here in the grandeur of
Halls of the Godhead,
Where to the heart other hearts are so pleasing,
Where buried voices are
Sounding forth newly
Where now the care-worn are
Royally striving,
Radiant souls now in smiles are all wreathed,
Round all the wrecks of the
Wheels of the ages —
Only the blinded ones,
Earth-bound and foolish,
Were for the gulf of destruction begotten,
Lost to the worlds of
Spirit perfection!
Weal to the sens’tive one
Round whom we hover,
Whom we enliven to bloss’ming existence,
All without weaving in
Fugitive shadows!

In the literary works of Fercher von Steinwand there then follows upon this Chorus of Primal Dreams his Chorus of Primal Impulses:

In the distances unbounded
Of our ancient mother Night.
Hark — to be in inward conflict
Seems the deep mysterious might!
Do we hear present’ment striding?
Is our longing wide awake?
Was a spirit-lightning lit?
Are our dreams through spaces gliding?
How now are powers by powers enraptured,
Blessed exchanges!
Now sudden hastenings.
Then quiet lingerings,
Reveling listenings
Change into beckonings
Marveling fearings!
Charm of desiring
Mounts, and sinks down,
Sinks into hatred.
Faced with the pallid
Picture of embracing
Cannot clasp hatred.
Ramifications dim,
Inclinings burgeoning,
Send forth their tendrils.
Ponderous inklings
Dawn and go faltering
O’er the wide spaces,
Seem to give counsel
Or to give guidance.
What they’re preparing
Is it the sowing
Of immense actions,
Of radiant ages?
Who felt the furrows
To be creative!
Who wandered through them
Blissfully savoring,
Or disentangling,
Grandeurs discovering!
Yonder the stir is like spirits embracing
We are enwarmed
And are receiving,
Seeking, and thinking,
See ourselves lifted,
Woven in joy with
Highest beginnings.
You wafting ‘round us,
In us arising:
“You are ideas! —”

May duration grow accustomed
To what urge has conjured up;
May adorning and appeasement
In creation’s stream prevail.
Sweetest light! in noble ringing
Mounts my heart aloft to you:
Linger at your western gate;
Help to crown the deed of love!
Risen from all earthly bonds is our impulse Soul — resurrected!
But what is ripened
Ruling, and valid
Proves to be spirit!
All that is circling,
All earth foundations,
All heavenly kindlings are
Self-made in spirit,
Came forth from spirit,
Work through the spirit
Powerful freedom from chaos did fashion
Space for good fortune!
Cloaked, with the dew of its deep-breathing mildness, Forest and field!
Cared that the dew and the light be companions,
Forming the hem of deep transfiguration —
Cared that each droplet should float at the threshold
of Spiritual radiance!

In Ferchervon Steinwand’s Complete Works there are also several indications about his life given by the poet himself when pressed by friends on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, He wrote, “I began life on March 22, 1828 upon the heights of the Steinwand above the banks of the Möll in Carinthia (Kärten); that means, in the midst of a defiant congregation of mountains with their heads held high, beneath whose domineering grandeur burdened human beings seem continuously to grow poorer.”

Since, in his Chorus of Primal Impulses, we find the world view of German idealism cast in the form of a poetic creation, it is interesting to see how the poet, on his paths through Austrian spiritual life, receives impulses from this world view already in his youth. He describes how he enters the university in Graz: “With my credentials — which of course consisted only of my report cards — held tight against my chest, I presented myself to the dean. That was Professor Edlauer, a criminologist of high repute. He hoped to see me (he said) industriously present in his lecture course on natural law. Behind the curtain of this innocent title he presented us for the whole semester, in rousing lectures, with those German philosophers who, under the fatherly care of our well-meaning spiritual guardians were banned and kept from us: Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and so on — heroes, therefore; that means men who founded and fructified all areas of pure thinking, who gave the language and created the concepts for all the other sciences, and who, consequently, are illustrious names shining from our street comers today and seeming almost strange there in their particular diamond clarity. This semester was my vita nuova!”

Whoever learns to know Fercher von Steinwand’s tragedy Dankmar, his Countess Seelenbrand, his German Tones from Austria, and other works of his will be able through this to feel many of the forces that were working in the Austrian spiritual life of the second half of the nineteenth century. And everything about Fercher von Steinwand testifies to the fact that one receives out of his soul a picture from this spiritual life in clarity, truth, and genuineness. The amiable Austrian poet in dialect Leopold Hormann felt rightly when he wrote the words:

Far from all baseness
All avarice and meanness;
Foe of publicity,
That loathesome false lady;
German in soul,
Strong yet with kindness
Great in his thinking,
No faltering and wavering,
Proof against all objections: —
Fercher von Steinwand!

1832 – The DeathDay of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – who Steiner names as a ‘sculptor & follower of Plato’ in Karmic Relations Vol 4 Lecture 10 – Where is he now?

The Categories of Aristotle – a process of contraction…
Is there a path to expansion…..?

PUBLIC LECTURE AND EURYTHMY WORKSHOP WITH CLAUDIA FONTANA

Friday 24 March 2023 – Lecture 7 pm CT – 8:30 pm –

Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $12

Saturday 25 March 2023 – Workshop – 9 am CT– (10:30 am 1/2 hour break – 11 am) 12:30 pm CT Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $50

Does one have to be a philosopher of great erudition to approach Aristotle’s gift to humanity……his Categories?

Perhaps , YES! But an initial acquaintance with them can lead out of the confinement of the intellectual concept to an experience of expansion supported by Eurythmy.

In the evening lecture Claudia will introduce the life of the Categories before they became concepts – Bringing the symbols in a sequence of sounds  (called the Evolutionary Sequence ) out of their conceptual form, to life, supported by Eurythmy and examples of poetry.

During the workshop we will enter into the movement of the poetry presented  during the lecture. This will be accessible to Eurythmists as well as to anyone interested in the life of language, poetry and our alphabet.

at the Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society
4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618 (map)
https://www.rschicago.org/happenings/calendar 
www.rschicago.org/donate

For more info contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Claudia Fontana saw a Eurythmy performance when still a teenager. Unbeknownst to her at the time, that performance was the gate to her destiny path. Soon thereafter she studied Eurythmy in Vienna and subsequently spent fourteen years as a performer with the Dornach, London and Stuttgart Eurythmeum ensembles. Teaching became the next challenge which she happily met in the United States, Europe. Before Covid, she spent seven years teaching all levels in Thailand, Malaysia and China. She resides in Ann Arbor, MI still performing and teaching.

Juan de Flandes

“Lazarus – Come Forth” – Through The Word & Eurythmy

w/ Rev. Jeana Lee, Mary Ruud & Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Starting at Sundown Friday 31 March 2023
7 pm – 8:30 pm CT at the Christian Community 2135 W. Wilson

Leading Thoughts & Close of Day with Rev. Jeana Lee

Continuing on Lazarus Saturday 1 April 2023
10 am – 12 noon CT
at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago 4249 N. Lincoln Ave

Night School Check-in w/ Hazel Archer – Eurythmy w/ Mary Ruud

$10 more or less or pay what you will
Please bring a potluck dish to share for the luncheon after the Festival

For more info. contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator Hag@rschicago.org

Mary Magdalene & the Women at the Tomb – A Festival of Recogniton

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg,

Song-Circle with Velsum, 

Holy Saturday 8 April 2023

1 pm – 3pm CT a hybrid event in-person at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago & on zoom

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/7050174041

Meeting ID: 705 017 4041

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map)
www.rschicago.org/donate

PRESENTS:

The Mystery of Ascension with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

This course is available on Zoom. You will be emailed a Zoom link closer to the time of the class. The course will be recorded and you will receive a link to watch it. Go to the Infinity Foundation web site to enroll

Course Number 231154 / Zoom
Date: Thursday, May 11
Time 7:00 – 8:30 PM CST
Cost $33/23 payment 10 days in advance

For more info contact Aline Hanle aline@infinityfoundation.org

Gerald Shepherd

When we tune into the Cycle of the Seasons, we experience that as the Earth breathes out in the Springtime, the beings of nature reach upwards towards the heights. The longing of the human soul also strives to meet this mood of ascension, which attunes all life to the cosmic expanses.

Together we will gain insights in how to rise up to our Higher Self by participating in this harmonizing spring-dialogue between the worlds.

This reconnection between heaven & earth was prefigured in the story of Jacob’s ladder from the Old Testament. Through his dream of the ‘stairway to heaven’, Jacob gave us a prophecy in the picture of a golden ladder on which choirs of Angels traverse between the ‘Above & Below’. The Mystery of the Ascension of Christ, 40 days after the Resurrection at Easter, fulfilled Jacob’s Prophecy. Christ as the Being of Love became the living bridge connecting us to the eternal.

Through this workshop we will learn how humanity will also be transfigured in the fullness of time. The company of the Angelic Hierarchies wait for us, their younger siblings, to ascend, first of all in our thinking, to meet them in fellowship, as they work all the while by our sides.

Nancy Poer

~Vitae Sophia~A Whitsun Festival of United Soul Endeavor 

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Velsum Voices & Eurythmy

1- 3 pm CT – Saturday 27 May 2023 a Hybrid event in person* & on zoom

We are called to redeem the ether spheres to create an Ecclesia, a chalice 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. The Whitsun Festival highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts, in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is especially strong now during this ‘pandemic’. Our groups striving to know Spiritual Science must work together as a community, to have the possibility to create a new culture where a sacrament is possible in every encounter. Our individual strength is enhanced by weaving our gifts together, kindling our social world in conscious community.

Zoom: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83663366670?pwd=L292UzlOR1pkZjBXSWpxK1B2b0o1dz09 Meeting ID: 836 6336 6670 / Passcode: 397593

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
*Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map) www.rschicago.org/donate

Find a collection of the many RECORDINGS of Presentations, Programs & Festivals HERE

Vernal Balance

Community, Festival, History, Poetry, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Speaking with the Stars, Spring, Upcoming Events

HAPPY SPRING – Check out my Video Recording about the Vernal Equinox

20 March 2023 – “speaking with the Stars”: Today at 4:24 p.m CT is the Vernal Equinox – when the center of the Sun’s disk crosses the equator — both Earth’s equator & the celestial equator are heading north for the season.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Nowruz (Persian: literally “New Day”) the Iranian New Year, also known as the Persian New Year. Nowruz is partly rooted in the traditions of Mitraism & Zoroastrianism. In Mitraism, festivals had a deep linkage with the sun light. The Iranian festivals such as Mehrgan (autumnal equinox), Tirgan, & the eve of Chelle ye Zemestan (winter solstice) also had an origin in the Sun god (Surya). Among other ideas, Zoroastrianism is the first monotheistic religion that emphasizes broad concepts; such as the corresponding work of good & evil in the world,& the connection of humans to nature. Zoroastrian practices were dominant for much of the history of ancient Iran.

Although having Iranian & religious Zoroastrian origins, Nowruz has been celebrated by people from diverse ethno-linguistic communities for thousands of years. It is a secular holiday for most celebrants that is enjoyed by people of several different faiths, but remains a holy day for Zoroastrians

OSTARA (pronounced O-STAR-ah) is celebrated on the Vernal or Spring Equinox. The name for this Sabbat actually comes from that of the Teutonic lunar Goddess, Eostre. Her chief symbols are the bunny (for fertility & because the Ancient Ones who worshiped her often saw the image of a rabbit in the full moon), & the egg (representing the cosmic egg of creation). This is where the customs of “Easter Eggs” & the “Easter Bunny” originated.

Ostara is a time to celebrate the arrival of Spring, the renewal & rebirth of Nature herself, & the coming lushness of Summer. It is at this time when light & darkness are in balance, yet the light is growing stronger by the day. The forces of masculine & feminine energy, yin & yang, are also in balance at this time. At this time we think of renewing ourselves. We renew our thoughts, our dreams, & our aspirations. We think of renewing our relationships. This is an excellent time of year to begin anything new or to completely revitalize something. This is also an excellent month for prosperity rituals or rituals that have anything to do with growth.

Customs such as the lighting of new fires at dawn for healing, renewed life, & protection of the crops still survive in the Southern Americas as well as in Europe. Eggs were gathered & used for the creation of talismans & also ritually eaten. The gathering of different colored eggs from the nests of a variety of birds has given rise to two traditions still observed today – the Easter egg hunt, & coloring eggs in imitation of the various pastel colors of wild birds. It is also believed that humankind first got the idea of weaving baskets from watching birds weave nests. This is perhaps the origin of the association between colored Easter eggs & Easter baskets.

There is much symbolism in eggs themselves. The golden orb of its yolk represents the Sun God, its white shell is seen as the White Goddess, & the whole is a symbol of rebirth. The Goddess Eostre’s patron animal was the hare.

The Spring Equinox is a time of new beginnings, of action, of planting seeds for future grains, & of tending gardens. Spring is a time of the Earth’s renewal, a rousing of nature after the cold sleep of winter. As such, it is an ideal time to clean your home to welcome the new season. “Spring cleaning” is much more than simply physical work. It may be seen as a concentrated effort to rid your home of the problems & negativity of the past months, & to prepare for the coming spring and summer. To do this, we may approach the task of cleaning our homes with positive thoughts. This frees the home of any negative feelings brought about by a harsh winter. A common rule of thumb for Spring cleaning is that all motions involving scrubbing of stains or hand rubbing the floors should be done “clockwise”. This custom aids in filling the home with good energy for growth.

Appropriate Deities for Ostara include all Youthful and Virile Gods and Goddesses, Sun Gods, Mother Goddesses, Love Goddesses, Moon Gods and Goddesses, & all Fertility Deities. Some Ostara Deities to mention by name here include Persephone, Blodeuwedd, Eostre, Aphrodite, Athena, Cybele, Gaia, Hera, Isis, Ishtar, Minerva, Venus, Robin of the Woods, the Green Man, Cernunnos, Lord of the Greenwood, The Dagda, Attis, The Great Horned God, Mithras, Odin, Thoth, Osiris, & Pan.

Key actions to keep in mind during this time in the Wheel of the Year include openings & new beginnings. Work for improving communication & group interaction are recommended, as well as fertility & abundance. Ostara is a good time to start putting those plans and preparations you made at Imbolc into action. Start working towards physically manifesting your plans now

43 BC – Birthday of Ovid, Roman poet

1616 – Sir Walter Raleigh is freed from the Tower of London after 13 years of imprisonment

1726 – Deathday of Isaac Newton, English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, & philosopher

1815 – After escaping from Elba, Napoleon enters Paris beginning his “Hundred Days” rule

1828 – Birthday of Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian poet, playwright, & director

1852 – Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is published

1915 – Albert Einstein publishes his general theory of relativity

1928 – Birthday of Fred Rogers, American television host & producer

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~Will you
Sow the seeds of peaceful premonition
Into a fruitful action
To ignite the weave
In radiant expectation…?
~hag

Equinox means “equal night” when the sun is positioned above the equator & day and night are about equal in length all over the world. This is the start of the Astrological year. Many ancient cultures built structures to point directly toward the rising Sun on this day every year. The celebration of the Vernal Equinox is about new life & hope, the planting of seeds & the activation of the fertility cycle.

A look into the ancient Mystery Schools honoring The Vernal Equinox: The Spring Equinox is also called: Alban Eilir, Eostar, Eostre, Feast of Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Festival of Trees, Lady Day, NawRuz, No Ruz, Ostara, Ostra, Rites of Spring. The Old Testament heroine of Spring was the goddess Ishtar- Persian for ‘star'(Esther is the Aramaic word for Ishtar).  So Ishtar was the goddess of the morning & evening star, as well as being the Great Mother, Shining One, Lady of Visions, Priestess of Priestess’, she was the source of the Oracles of Prophesy, & Possessor of the Tablets of Life’s Records.Her symbols were the eight pointed star, the pentagram, dove, serpents, & the double axe. Her planet was Venus. She wore a rainbow necklace. The Persians converted this necklace (the rainbow) into a razor-sharp bridge that led to the Mount of Paradise. In ancient Sumeria, she had 180 shrines where women gathered daily for prayer, meditation, & socializing. The night of the full moon, known as Shapatu, saw joyous celebrations in her temples.

In Ireland, the spring equinox was celebrated long before the arrival of the Celtic tribes. The best known of the ancient Irish equinox temples is Knowth, which is near to Newgrange (Brú na Boinne). Knowth has a 100-foot long passage that accepts the Sun on the morning of the Spring & Autumn Equinox. A second & older stone cairn equinox temple is found at Longhcrew & is given the name Cairn T. Both Knowth & Cairn follow a sunbeam on the morning of the Equinoxs to enter a passageway lighting up the sacred geometry on a back stone inside the temple. This precise timing from a period of over 6 thousand years ago still works today.

The German fertility Goddess was Ostara, who was associated with fertility. Ostara mated with the solar god on the Spring Equinox & nine months later she gave birth to a child at the Winter Solstice.

The Saxon name for the Germanic lunar goddess Ostara was Eostre. Her festival was held at the full moon after the Spring Equinox just like our Easter celebrations.

The Mayans of Central American have also honoured the spring equinox. For ten centuries they have held their unique celebration using their ancient knowledge of the Sunbeam. El Castillo is the name of their great pyramid of the Equinox & as the sunsets on its western face light & dark compliment each other creating a very special pattern of a diamond backed snake descending the pyramid. This solar magic has always been known as the “The Return of the Sun Serpent”.

For the Greeks the god-man of the Spring Equinox was Dionysus. He was associated with flowering plants & fruitful vines & he was always in pain during winter, symbolizing hibernation & the cessation of growth. He returned triumphant on the Spring Equinox & many researchers see direct parallels with the story of Jesus Christ.

Mesopotamia, Sumeria, Babylonia, Elam (5000 years ago) celebrated the start of their new year at the time of the spring equinox. Zoroastrianism was the religion of Ancient Persia until the advent of Islam 1400 years ago. “Nooruz,” their ‘new day’ or New Year was celebrated on the Spring Equinox. Many religious historians connect Judeo-Christian concepts to Zoroastrianism.

In Rome, about 200 years before the birth of Christ there was a wide range of what are today called “mystery cults”. Attis & Cybele held their Spring Equinox rituals at the location of today’s St. Peter’s on Vatican hill. Attis was also known under various names such as Osiris, Dionysus, Tammuz & Orpheus. The Attis & Cybele festival had a death or day of blood & three days of semi-death & then a return to life for the deceased. Attis‘s mother was called Nana & she was a virgin. Attis was crucified on a pine tree.  His blood was spilled to redeem the earth. Attis was both a sacrificial victim & a savior, his death & re-birth was intended to bring salvation to mankind. Most researchers will say that Attis is clearly a prefiguring prototype for The Christ.

In Judaism we can see that the Passover dinner was their spring fertility festival. It records the escape of the ancient Hebrews from slavery in Egypt – its main meal was of unleavened bread & lamb.

In America the native Indians honoured the Spring Equinox in landscape-sized temples such as Mystery Hill in Salem NH. Five standing stones & one recumbent stone are set in a linear alignment that connects the sunrise on both the Spring & Autumn Equinoxes.

March 20-23, is the mid-point of the Waxing Year. The spark of light that was born at Winter Solstice has reached maturity, & from this point forward, the days grow longer than the nights. This is the time of full Dawn, 6:00 a.m. on the Year Clock, & so was the time of the festivals of the Grecian Goddess, Eostre, & the Germanic Ostara, both Goddesses of Dawn. (It is from these Bright Ladies that the modern Easter holiday takes its name). This is the time that is often seen as the time of Kore’s return from the Underworld, where She (as Persephone) has ruled throughout the Winter. It is also the time of the celebration of the rebirth of Adonis the Beautiful.

Spring is the time for a celebration of planting & of the greening of the Earth. Folks start to talk about having ‘Spring Fever’ & doing ‘Spring cleaning’, as the brighter sunshine provides a needed morale boost.

Many traditions associated with Spring Equinox have been retained over the years & grafted onto the Easter celebration. Even today, people arise early on Easter morning to attend ‘Sunrise Service’. (Remember Eostre, the Dawn Goddess?)

May this time of new beginnings bring you the fresh start you need, as you begin to plan & to plant the seeds for the future you want to see grow with the light.

Xox ~Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

The Categories of Aristotle – a process of contraction…
Is there a path to expansion…..?

PUBLIC LECTURE AND EURYTHMY WORKSHOP WITH CLAUDIA FONTANA

Friday 24 March 2023 – Lecture 7 pm CT – 8:30 pm –

Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $12

Saturday 25 March 2023 – Workshop – 9 am CT– (10:30 am 1/2 hour break – 11 am) 12:30 pm CT Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $50

Does one have to be a philosopher of great erudition to approach Aristotle’s gift to humanity……his Categories?

Perhaps , YES! But an initial acquaintance with them can lead out of the confinement of the intellectual concept to an experience of expansion supported by Eurythmy.

In the evening lecture Claudia will introduce the life of the Categories before they became concepts – Bringing the symbols in a sequence of sounds  (called the Evolutionary Sequence ) out of their conceptual form, to life, supported by Eurythmy and examples of poetry.

During the workshop we will enter into the movement of the poetry presented  during the lecture. This will be accessible to Eurythmists as well as to anyone interested in the life of language, poetry and our alphabet.

at the Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society
4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618 (map)
https://www.rschicago.org/happenings/calendar 
www.rschicago.org/donate

For more info contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Claudia Fontana saw a Eurythmy performance when still a teenager. Unbeknownst to her at the time, that performance was the gate to her destiny path. Soon thereafter she studied Eurythmy in Vienna and subsequently spent fourteen years as a performer with the Dornach, London and Stuttgart Eurythmeum ensembles. Teaching became the next challenge which she happily met in the United States, Europe. Before Covid, she spent seven years teaching all levels in Thailand, Malaysia and China. She resides in Ann Arbor, MI still performing and teaching.

Juan de Flandes

“Lazarus – Come Forth” – Through The Word & Eurythmy

w/ Rev. Jeana Lee, Mary Ruud & Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Starting at Sundown Friday 31 March 2023
7 pm – 8:30 pm CT at the Christian Community 2135 W. Wilson

Leading Thoughts & Close of Day with Rev. Jeana Lee

Continuing on Lazarus Saturday 1 April 2023
10 am – 12 noon CT
at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago 4249 N. Lincoln Ave

Night School Check-in w/ Hazel Archer – Eurythmy w/ Mary Ruud

$10 more or less or pay what you will
Please bring a potluck dish to share for the luncheon after the Festival

For more info. contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator Hag@rschicago.org

Mary Magdalene & the Women at the Tomb – A Festival of Recogniton

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg,

Song-Circle with Velsum, 

Eurythmy – & an artistic break out session

Holy Saturday 8 April 2023

1 pm – 3pm CT a hybrid event in-person at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago & on zoom

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/7050174041

Meeting ID: 705 017 4041

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map)
www.rschicago.org/donate

PRESENTS:

The Mystery of Ascension with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

This course is available on Zoom. You will be emailed a Zoom link closer to the time of the class. The course will be recorded and you will receive a link to watch it. Go to the Infinity Foundation web site to enroll

Course Number 231154 / Zoom
Date: Thursday, May 11
Time 7:00 – 8:30 PM CST
Cost $33/23 payment 10 days in advance

Gerald Shepherd

When we tune into the Cycle of the Seasons, we experience that as the Earth breathes out in the Springtime, the beings of nature reach upwards towards the heights. The longing of the human soul also strives to meet this mood of ascension, which attunes all life to the cosmic expanses.

Together we will gain insights in how to rise up to our Higher Self by participating in this harmonizing spring-dialogue between the worlds.

This reconnection between heaven & earth was prefigured in the story of Jacob’s ladder from the Old Testament. Through his dream of the ‘stairway to heaven’, Jacob gave us a prophecy in the picture of a golden ladder on which choirs of Angels traverse between the ‘Above & Below’. The Mystery of the Ascension of Christ, 40 days after the Resurrection at Easter, fulfilled Jacob’s Prophecy. Christ as the Being of Love became the living bridge connecting us to the eternal.

Through this workshop we will learn how humanity will also be transfigured in the fullness of time. The company of the Angelic Hierarchies wait for us, their younger siblings, to ascend, first of all in our thinking, to meet them in fellowship, as they work all the while by our sides.

Nancy Poer

~Vitae Sophia~A Whitsun Festival of United Soul Endeavor 

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Velsum Voices & Eurythmy

Saturday 27 May 2023 a Hybrid event in person* & on zoom

We are called to redeem the ether spheres to create an Ecclesia, a chalice 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. The Whitsun Festival highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts, in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is especially strong now during this ‘pandemic’. Our groups striving to know Spiritual Science must work together as a community, to have the possibility to create a new culture where a sacrament is possible in every encounter. Our individual strength is enhanced by weaving our gifts together, kindling our social world in conscious community.

Zoom: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83663366670?pwd=L292UzlOR1pkZjBXSWpxK1B2b0o1dz09 Meeting ID: 836 6336 6670 / Passcode: 397593

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
*Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map) www.rschicago.org/donate

Find a collection of the many RECORDINGS of Presentations, Programs & Festivals HERE

Shriven

Biography, Community, Festival, History, Quote, Speaking with the Stars, Upcoming Events

In honor of Ita Wegman’s Birthday which this year falls tomorrow on Ash Wednesday: THE ADMISSION RITUAL FOR LEADERSHIP IN THE MICHAEL SCHOOL ~ Peter Selg

When Ita Wegman wrote to Albert Steffen on August 21, 1925, five months after Rudolf Steiner’s death, about her relationship with the First Class of the School for Spiritual Science, she mentions a Rose Cross given to her by Rudolf Steiner: ‘Before his illness the Doctor gave me a Cross with small rubies set in roses, which he used to wear on a red ribbon around his neck. He put it on me with his own hands after we had performed a ritual act‘. Rudolf Steiner’s Rose Cross can be found as part of Ita Wegman’s estate. A few years later, on April 25, 1930, Ita Wegman spoke about the circumstances of the handing over of the cross, the preceding ‘ritual act’, and their connection with the First Class during the Executive Council meeting with the general secretaries and delegates of the General Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum: ‘I also received his cross directly. He took it from his neck and put it on me with his own hands, saying: ‘From this moment we will be there together for the Michael School’.

This meant that Rudolf Steiner, after performing the ritual act, and through the ritual of handing over the cross, admitted Ita Wegman to the Michael School as co – leader with joint responsibility. There is sufficient reason to believe that Rudolf Steiner performed the ritual act and the passing on of the cross at the beginning of September 1924 (after his return from England) in his studio.

In all the Class Lessons Steiner held from September 6 onward, he emphasized Ita Wegman’s special co-responsibility for the mantras of the ritual lessons and for the esoteric school.

People who were admitted to the First Class in September 1924 were ritually introduced by Steiner and Wegman together: ‘Admissions took place in the studio. I had to stand next to the Doctor; members were shown into the studio by Dr. Wachsmuth. Dr. Steiner would ask applicants a few questions, and if they were to be admitted, Dr. Steiner would speak the following words: ‘If you are willing to remain faithful to the Michael School, take my hand. Take also Frau Dr. Wegman’s hand, who will lead the Michael School together with me‘. (Ita Wegman )

Among the class members who were admitted in September 1924 was Wolfgang Moldenhauer, who described the admission procedure in exactly the same way in a letter to Kurt Franz David: ‘On November 5, 1924, I was admitted to the First Class by R. St. After the handshake and troth, he asked me to take the hand of Frau Dr. Wegman who sat next to him as co – leader of the class’.

In notes she took of an internal lecture, Ita Wegman wrote a brief summary about the changes in the affairs of the First Class in the late Sumner of 1924: ‘To me, he {Rudolf Steiner} said that the people should know now that the class was the Michael School in spiritual world. Of that school he was the leader and I was his assistant. It was my task to guard the mantras. Any member who wanted to pass a mantra on to another member had to consult me or him. This was an esoteric act, the beginning of a newly – to – be – introduced esotericism. At the same time it was arranged that during the admission procedure, applicants would hear the words: ‘This is the Michael School, which is led by me and Frau Wegman’.

Since from that time the first ritual elements (the ‘signs and seal of Michael‘) were introduced into the lessons.

The unpublished minutes of an Executive Council meeting of November 29, 1930, reveal that a document about the performed ritual act was in Ita Wegman’s possession. During the crisis of the Executive Council and the Society, Ita Wegman was forced again to confirm to her colleagues that Rudolf Steiner had indeed conferred joint responsibility for the class (nobody apart from Elizabeth Vreede believed her).

The ‘papers’ recording the ritual act, or aspects of that act, form part of a comprehensive collection of mantras and esoteric exercises in Rudolf Steiner’s handwriting, which she had received from him. The collection was preserved in full by the priest Emanuel Zeylmans van Emmichoven, and was published in 2009. It includes a text in Rudolf Steiner’s and Ita Wegman’s handwriting, covering several sheets. The text focuses on the Rose Cross and its transfer, culminating in the actual handing over: and contains ritual elements of a ritual antiphony between two people. Emmanuel van Emmichoven wrote: “Because Ita Wegman wrote down Rudolf Steiner’s oral instructions, it is possible for us to place the text, right into its individual images and personal statements before our souls‘. The text includes an evening and a morning meditation for Ita Wegman, both culminating in the meeting with a ‘priest figure’ and the handing over of a Rose Cross. The mantric verses are associated with the esoteric training of the First Class, and end with a blessing on the meditating person who receives the Rose Cross from the priest figure — the ‘spirit guide’.

The evening meditation exercise for Ita Wegman begins with the review of the experiences of the day. (‘imagine an experience of the day in reverse order’ ) This is followed by exact instructions given by Rudolf Steiner, taken down in her handwriting: a breathing exercise that is to be repeated seven times; an IAO exercise: and then the Rose Cross imagination. The imagination was linked to a mantra referring to the spiritual human form, and was to be meditated in relation to that form (focusing on heart and limb organization)

“Primal Powers hold me
Spirits of fire free me
Spirits of light illumine me
So that I reach toward spirit life
So that I feel beings of soul
So that I traverse uncertainties
So that I stand above the abyss.”

In meditating accordingly, the Rose Cross imagination will convey strength and support to the human being from the third hierarchy (in the region of the heart), so that inner certainly can be gained for meeting the tasks and dangers of humanity with confidence.

The process of strengthening, affirmation, and empowerment (or encouragement) was to be followed by further deepened concentration — full inner immersion into the Christ Mystery with the mantra:

“In me let Christ live
And change my breath
And warm the course of my blood
And shine into my soul being.”

Rudolf Steiner’s transcript of the evening meditation ends with the instructions: ‘Maintain inner poise’. In the margin of the page Steiner had added a square bracket: ‘White robe. Red belt and pendant. Red headband. I: Ave frater {Hale thee, brother}. He: rosae et aureae {of the rosy and golden}. I: crucis {cross}. He: Benedictus deus qui dedit nobis signum {Blessed be God who gave us the sign}’.

What Steiner had written down and passed on to Ita Wegman was obviously a summary, which served as a reminder. He would have specified the inner process to her verbally in much more detail. According to Wegman’s notes, the ‘Rose Cross’ had to be retrieved from the heart of the meditating person, where it had previously been ‘placed‘ after the Christ meditation. The Rose Cross had to be created, or reproduced, mantrically and internalized during the exercise. After the Rose Cross had been ‘retrieved” from the heart, it had to be carried imaginatively up a mountain, ‘step by step’. On the mountain peak an encounter should take place in the imagination with a figure {‘person‘} in priestly ritual vestment (with white robe, red stole, red band around the neck, and red belt: the colours of Christian Rosenkreutz, white and red, in the “Chymical Wedding’).

Ita Wegman wrote about that meeting: “One has to hand the Rose Cross over to that person with the words: Ave frater and sense the others response: Rosae and aureae. With devotion one answers: Crucis. The other speaks: Benedictus deus qui dedit nobis signum’. After the imaginative experience of such a meeting; that is, the joint, antiphonal speaking of the words: ‘Hail thee, Brother of the Rosy and Golden Cross’: The blessing of God through the priestly figure; and the handing over to that figure of the Rose Cross that has been carried up, the meditating person turns back. Then the imagination that one leaves the other again. After that, allow a sense of calm to enter into the soul. Empty the mind“. The Rose Cross remains on the mountain.

As a reminder for the morning meditation Rudolf Steiner wrote simply:

Imagination on the mountain. Being received. Holding up the Rose Cross.
‘May my head condense the spirit of worlds
Extracting for me the living light of thoughts
May my throat parch the breath of soul
Infusing it with spirit word meaning
Live in my heart, you, my spirit guide
There to unite me with you
That I move live weave in spirit soul life.

Ita Wegman added more details to her notes: Imagine in the morning: That one has climbed up the mountain again; that one meets the same person in the same robe; that the figure gives back the Rose Cross given to him {her} on the previous evening. Imagination to be meditated, kneeling down:

  1. May my head condense the spirit of worlds
    Extracting for me the living light of thoughts
  2. May my throat parch the breath of soul
    Infusing it with spirit word meaning.
  3. Live in my heart, you, my spirit guide
    There to unite with me with you
    That I move live weave in spirit soul life!
  4. Feel the head — the thinking — like a stone
  5. The throat like a parched plant
  6. Concentration on the heart while meditating the above.
    Now meditate that the person gives back the Rose Cross and places the right hand on top of the left; then both hands on the forehead, speaking the words:
    ‘Benedictus deus qui dedit nobis signum’
    Empty the mind again.

The meditation of the pupil climbing the mountain again, which is carried out while kneeling, culminates in the spiritual union with the priestly figure in the heart, the human organ of destiny. (‘Live in my heart, you, my spirit guide, there to unite me with you‘) After that, as Ita Wegman’s notes suggest, the ‘spirit guide‘ returns the Rose Cross to the pupil, with a blessing and laying of hands on the pupils forehead.

~hag

The same motif of assistance and union appeared at the end of another mantric verse that Rudolf Steiner had already given to Ita Wegman in September 1923, a year before the ritual of the First Class, asking her to meditate it every evening:

“Ever shining supreme light;
To you I entrust my soul.
May the light of my soul weave
With the weaving light of worlds.
As light I feel,
Light in the smallest point;
Light that widens boundlessly.
Pure transparent light am I.
I seize hold of the spirit world
At the end of my soul of light,
I hold the spirit world
With my arms of light;
I sense your presence,
You want to carry me
To worlds of light and spirit.”
~’Rudolf Steiner and Christian Rosenkreutz’

21 February 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY 

TODAY is Shrove Tuesday, Pancake Day, Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Carnival, .

The word shrove is a past-tense form of shrive “to take confession.” 

The day before Ash Wednesday is the last day to use up rich ingredients that should be avoided during the Lenten season, including sugar, eggs, and fats. Throw in a bit of flour, and what’ve you got? Pancakes! It has become a tradition in many places, especially in Europe, to make pancakes on the day before Ash Wednesday. In fact, in some communities, the people are called to confession by the ringing of a bell which some people call “the pancake bell.”

Fat Tuesday, which in French is Mardi Gras, a last chance for overindulgence.

The word carnival — comes from the Latin caro “flesh, meat” and levare “to remove, to raise.”

The Categories of Aristotle – a process of contraction…
Is there a path to expansion…..?

PUBLIC LECTURE AND EURYTHMY WORKSHOP WITH CLAUDIA FONTANA

Friday 24 March 2023 – Lecture 7 pm CT – 8:30 pm – Purchase tickets at the door or pay online
$12

Saturday 25 March 2023 – Workshop – 9 am CT– (10:30 am 1/2 hour break – 11 am) 12:30 pm CT CT– Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $50

The Categories of Aristotle: A process of contraction…exploring a path to expansion…

Does one have to be a philosopher of great erudition to approach Aristotle’s gift to humanity……his Categories?

Perhaps , YES! But an initial acquaintance with them can lead out of the confinement of the intellectual concept to an experience of expansion supported by Eurythmy.

In the evening lecture Claudia will introduce the life of the Categories before they became concepts – Bringing the symbols in a sequence of sounds  (called the Evolutionary Sequence ) out of their conceptual form, to life, supported by Eurythmy and examples of poetry.

During the workshop we will enter into the movement of the poetry presented  during the lecture. This will be accessible to Eurythmists as well as to anyone interested in the life of language, poetry and our alphabet.

at the Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society
4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618 (map)
https://www.rschicago.org/happenings/calendar 
www.rschicago.org/donate

For more info contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Claudia Fontana saw a Eurythmy performance when still a teenager. Unbeknownst to her at the time, that performance was the gate to her destiny path. Soon thereafter she studied Eurythmy in Vienna and subsequently spent fourteen years as a performer with the Dornach, London and Stuttgart Eurythmeum ensembles. Teaching became the next challenge which she happily met in the United States, Europe. Before Covid, she spent seven years teaching all levels in Thailand, Malaysia and China. She resides in Ann Arbor, MI still performing and teaching.

Mary Magdalene & the Women at the Tomb – A Festival of Resurrection

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg,

Song-Circle with Velsum, 

Eurythmy – & an artistic break out session

Holy Saturday 8 April 2023

1 pm – 3pm CT a hybrid event in-person at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago & on zoom

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/7050174041

Meeting ID: 705 017 4041

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map)
www.rschicago.org/donate

PRESENTS:

The Mystery of Ascension with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

This course is available on Zoom. You will be emailed a Zoom link closer to the time of the class. The course will be recorded and you will receive a link to watch it. Go to the Infinity Foundation web site to enroll

Course Number 231154 / Zoom
Date: Thursday, May 11
Time 7:00 – 8:30 PM CST
Cost $33/23 payment 10 days in advance

Gerald Shepherd

When we tune into the Cycle of the Seasons, we experience that as the Earth breathes out in the Springtime, the beings of nature reach upwards towards the heights. The longing of the human soul also strives to meet this mood of ascension, which attunes all life to the cosmic expanses.

Together we will gain insights in how to rise up to our Higher Self by participating in this harmonizing spring-dialogue between the worlds.

This reconnection between heaven & earth was prefigured in the story of Jacob’s ladder from the Old Testament. Through his dream of the ‘stairway to heaven’, Jacob gave us a prophecy in the picture of a golden ladder on which choirs of Angels traverse between the ‘Above & Below’. The Mystery of the Ascension of Christ, 40 days after the Resurrection at Easter, fulfilled Jacob’s Prophecy. Christ as the Being of Love became the living bridge connecting us to the eternal.

Through this workshop we will learn how humanity will also be transfigured in the fullness of time. The company of the Angelic Hierarchies wait for us, their younger siblings, to ascend, first of all in our thinking, to meet them in fellowship, as they work all the while by our sides.

Nancy Poer

~Vitae Sophia~A Whitsun Festival of United Soul Endeavor 

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Velsum Voices & Eurythmy

Saturday 27 May 2023 a Hybrid event in person* & on zoom

We are called to redeem the ether spheres to create an Ecclesia, a chalice 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. The Whitsun Festival highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts, in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is especially strong now during this ‘pandemic’. Our groups striving to know Spiritual Science must work together as a community, to have the possibility to create a new culture where a sacrament is possible in every encounter. Our individual strength is enhanced by weaving our gifts together, kindling our social world in conscious community.

Zoom: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83663366670?pwd=L292UzlOR1pkZjBXSWpxK1B2b0o1dz09 Meeting ID: 836 6336 6670 / Passcode: 397593

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
*Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map) www.rschicago.org/donate

Find a collection of the many RECORDINGS of Presentations, Programs & Festivals HERE

Tap in

Poetry, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Speaking with the Stars, Upcoming Events
Padro Cardona

POD (Poem Of the day)

Come celebrate the unseen powers that sustain the world…
Pay reverence to what’s underneath:
The Holy column of support
The liminal benediction from above
The christened periphery
An awakened still-point within
Elusive, uncanny & darkly delicious…
Harken to inner vitality peaking
with thinking as smart as it gets
acting as if
every move is a tap dance…
~hag

10 February 2021 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Sirius the Dog Star blazes in the southeast after dinnertime, below Orion. It’s the brightest star of Canis Major. Comet ZTF passes Mars this evening and tomorrow evening. Right after the end of twilight, face south and look very high, almost overhead. The comet is upper left of Mars. Tomorrow evening, Saturday, the comet will be below Mars.

Image result for etheric heart

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

547 – Death day of St. Scholastica, foundress of the women’s branch of Benedictine Monasticism. The patron saint of nuns, & convulsive children. She is invoked against storms & rain. The most commonly told story about her is that she would go & visit her twin brother Benedict of Nursia near his abbey once a year, They would spend the day praying & discussing sacred texts. Sensing the time of her death was drawing near, Scholastica asked him to stay with her for the evening so they could continue their discussions. Not wishing to break his Rule, Benedict refused, insisting that he needed to return to his cell. At that point, Scholastica closed her hands in prayer, & after a moment, a wild storm started outside. Benedict asked, “What have you done?”, to which she replied, “I asked you & you would not listen; so I asked my God & he did listen. So now go off, if you can, leave me & return to your monastery.” Benedict was unable to return to his monastery, & they spent the night in discussion. Three days later, from his cell, her twin saw her soul leaving the earth & ascending to heaven in the form of a shining white dove

Image result for St. Austrebertha.

630 – Feast Day of St. Austrebertha. A popular legend states that one day, while looking for the donkey whose task it was to carry the laundry of the monks to the convent, she came across a wolf. The wolf admitted to killing the donkey & begged for forgiveness. Austrebertha forgave the wolf but commanded him to carry the laundry himself, a task that the wolf performed for the rest of its life

1909 – Deathday of Felix Koguzki – a peasant herb collector – a simple man of the land who had deep insights into the spiritual world . Rudolf Steiner got to know him during his student days in 1880, when he regularly took the train from Inzersdorf to Vienna, where they exchanged ideas about the spiritual world. Steiner says that he was endowed with a totally elemental & creative wisdom. With the herb gatherer he finds a spiritual friend & does not feel so alone. Thru Félix Koguski, he comes into contact with a very high spiritual master who initiates him. ‘Master M’ shows him the Rosicrucian connection between modern & occult science, religion & the spiritual forces that weave the threads of history. The master led Steiner to read Fichte which aided in strengthening his thoughts so that young Steiner came to a decisive awakening of his soul forces. From this the germs of his book Occult Science were born. The masters main guideline was: “You can only defeat the dragon if you wear its skin” an awakening to the Micaelic Impulse. Felix Koguzki was the living model of Felix Balde from Steiner’s Mystery Dramas & is regarded as the messenger of the secret master as reported in GA 262 (pp. 30-31 ). There it says: “I did not meet M. ( Master) right away, but first of all a messenger from him who was fully initiated into the secrets of the effectiveness of all plants and their connection with the cosmos and with human nature. “( GA 262 , p. 16). Steiner writes about his encounter with Koguzki in “My Course of Life”:

…as if he as a personality were only the organ of speech for a spiritual content that wanted to speak from hidden worlds. When you were with him you could look deep into the secrets of nature. He carried his bundle of medicinal herbs on his back; but in his heart he carried the results which he had gained from the spirituality of nature in his gathering. I have seen some people smile, who at times joined them as a third party when I walked through Wiener Alleegasse with this “initiated” person. It was no wonder. Because its expression was not understandable from the start. In a sense, you first had to learn your “intellectual dialect”. At first I couldn’t understand him either. But from the first time I met him, I had the deepest sympathy for him. And so it gradually became to me.

Image result for rudolf stiener 1880

If one takes the usual concept of “learning”, one can say: “Learning” could not be done from this man. But if you yourself had the view of a spiritual world, you could gain deep insights into it through someone else, which was completely fixed in it.

And at the same time everything that was enthusiasm was far removed from this personality. When you came into your home, you found yourself in the midst of the most sober, simple country family. Above the door of his house were the words: “In God’s blessing everything lies.” One was entertained, as with other villagers. I always had to drink coffee, not from a cup, but from a “mug” that held almost a liter; in addition I had to eat a piece of bread that was huge. But the villagers didn’t look at the man for a fanatic either. The way he behaved in his hometown made every ridicule bounce off. He also had a healthy sense of humor and knew how to talk to young and old at every meeting in the village in such a way that people enjoyed his words.

This man remained close to my soul, even when life had led me away from him again. You can find him in my Mystery Dramas in the figure of Felix Balde. “( GA 28)

The Categories of Aristotle – a process of contraction…
Is there a path to expansion…..?

PUBLIC LECTURE AND EURYTHMY WORKSHOP WITH CLAUDIA FONTANA

Does one have to be a philosopher of great erudition to understand Aristotle’s gift to humanity – his Categories? Let us explore a path to an experience supported by Eurythmy.

Friday 24 March 2023 – Lecture 7 pm CT – 8:30 pm – Purchase tickets at the door or pay online
$12

Saturday 25 March 2023 – Workshop – 9 am – 12 noon CT– Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $50

at the Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society
4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618 (map)
https://www.rschicago.org/happenings/calendar 
www.rschicago.org/donate

For more info contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Claudia Fontana saw a Eurythmy performance when still a teenager. Unbeknownst to her at the time, that performance was the gate to her destiny path. Soon thereafter she studied Eurythmy in Vienna and subsequently spent fourteen years as a performer with the Dornach, London and Stuttgart Eurythmeum ensembles. Teaching became the next challenge which she happily met in the United States, Europe. Before Covid, she spent seven years teaching all levels in Thailand, Malaysia and China. She resides in Ann Arbor, MI still performing and teaching.

The Women at the Tomb – A Festival of Resurrection

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg,

Insights about Mary Magdalene with Faith DiVecchio, 

Song-Circle with Velsum, 

Eurythmy – & an artistic break out session

Holy Saturday 8 April 2023

1 pm – 3pm CT a hybrid event in-person at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago & on zoom

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/7050174041

Meeting ID: 705 017 4041

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map)
www.rschicago.org/donate

PRESENTS:

The Mystery of Ascension with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

This course is available on Zoom. You will be emailed a Zoom link closer to the time of the class. The course will be recorded and you will receive a link to watch it. Go to the Infinity Foundation web site to enroll

Course Number 231154 / Zoom
Date: Thursday, May 11
Time 7:00 – 8:30 PM CST
Cost $33/23 payment 10 days in advance

Gerald Shepherd

When we tune into the Cycle of the Seasons, we experience that as the Earth breathes out in the Springtime, the beings of nature reach upwards towards the heights. The longing of the human soul also strives to meet this mood of ascension, which attunes all life to the cosmic expanses.

Together we will gain insights in how to rise up to our Higher Self by participating in this harmonizing spring-dialogue between the worlds.

This reconnection between heaven & earth was prefigured in the story of Jacob’s ladder from the Old Testament. Through his dream of the ‘stairway to heaven’, Jacob gave us a prophecy in the picture of a golden ladder on which choirs of Angels traverse between the ‘Above & Below’. The Mystery of the Ascension of Christ, 40 days after the Resurrection at Easter, fulfilled Jacob’s Prophecy. Christ as the Being of Love became the living bridge connecting us to the eternal.

Through this workshop we will learn how humanity will also be transfigured in the fullness of time. The company of the Angelic Hierarchies wait for us, their younger siblings, to ascend, first of all in our thinking, to meet them in fellowship, as they work all the while by our sides.

Nancy Poer

~Vitae Sophia~A Whitsun Festival of United Soul Endeavor 

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Velsum Voices & Eurythmy

Saturday 27 May 2023 a Hybrid event in person* & on zoom

We are called to redeem the ether spheres to create an Ecclesia, a chalice 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. The Whitsun Festival highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts, in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is especially strong now during this ‘pandemic’. Our groups striving to know Spiritual Science must work together as a community, to have the possibility to create a new culture where a sacrament is possible in every encounter. Our individual strength is enhanced by weaving our gifts together, kindling our social world in conscious community.

Zoom: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83663366670?pwd=L292UzlOR1pkZjBXSWpxK1B2b0o1dz09 Meeting ID: 836 6336 6670 / Passcode: 397593

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
*Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map) www.rschicago.org/donate