Here is a Video recording of of our St. John’s-Tide presentation: “The Forerunner & the Archangel Uriel” Musical Performances by Lucien Dante Lazar; Speech – Geoffrey Norris Eurythmy- Elizabeth Carlson; Practicum-Lisa Dalton; Leading Thoughts – Hazel Archer

A Summary of THE ST. JOHN IMAGINATION, from ~the Four Seasons and the Archangels, Lecture 4, by Rudolf Steiner

Can you hear the voice of conscience?

At the fullness of Summer, the light is so bright that it leaves no room for the shadow to hide. High Noon is the hour of judgment – a good time to remember what John said “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

What is this deep longing we can have as human beings, to understand the purposeful Summer gaze of the powerful Archangel Uriel? Looking downward we have the impression we can learn to look with spiritual eyes into the blue, silver-gleaming depths of the Earth in summer. And Steiner tells us that weaving around these silver-gleaming crystalline rays are shapes — he calls them “disturbing shapes, which continually gather & dissolve”. We can come to an imagination that we may perceive these shapes as “human errors which stand out against the natural order of regular crystals here below”.

It is to this that Uriel directs his earnest gaze. Here during the height of summer the imperfections of humankind, in contrast to the regularity of the growing crystal forms, are measured. From Uriel we gain the impression of how human morality becomes interwoven with nature.

Here we see that the moral world-order is not abstract, we see that humanity has an effect in the world, for good or for ill. On the one hand, “all that is in human virtue & human excellence rises up with the silver-gleaming lines & is seen as the clouds that envelop Uriel (red). It enters into the radiant Intelligence, transmuted into cloud-shaped works of art”.

But it is impossible to look towards the increasingly earnest gaze of Uriel, directed towards the depths of the Earth, without also seeing there the human deeds that have missed the mark. To this the Archangel must direct us with: “wing-like arms, raised in earnest admonition, and this gesture by Uriel has the effect of imparting to humankind, what Steiner calls,  “the historic conscience”.

This is Uriel’s “warning gesture”, pointing out how shabby humanity’s moral compass has become. And this reality comes as a mighty, living picture into our conscience.

“And now if we have gained the impression of the connection of human morality with the crystalline element below and of human virtues with the shining beauty above, and if we take these connections into our inward experience, the real St. John Imagination will come to meet us”.

~hag

16 June 2021– “Speaking with the Stars”: The naked-eye planets span the eastern sky before sunrise, including Mercury and Venus, which lie near the Pleiades. Mercury reaches greatest western elongation at 10A.M. CDT, sitting 23° from the Sun. You can catch it within about an hour of sunrise. The solar system’s smallest planet now forms a nice equilateral triangle with Venus — west of Mercury — and the Pleiades — northwest of the planet.

Farther west, Mars and Jupiter lie in Pisces. Saturn, west of Jupiter, sits in Capricornus, while the Moon lies even farther along the ecliptic in Sagittarius.

Sunrise: 5:31 A.M. – Sunset: 8:31 P.M.
Moonrise: 11:18 P.M. – Moonset: 7:33 A.M.
Moon Phase: Waning gibbous (93%)

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

100 years ago, In June 1917 Rudolf Steiner spoke for the 1st time about Three-Folding…Are we ready to carry this seed to the next stage…?

“Understanding of the world as it actually is, ability to bring spiritual knowledge right down into the practical life of humanity, into the stubborn spheres of technical industry & economics, as well as into the thinking, the moral life & the actions of the human being – this is one side of Rudolf Steiner’s challenge. The other is the development of the inner life of soul which generates love for human beings and the wisdom to promote their spiritual & social wellbeing…The inspirer of the 20^th century has lived among us, & lives among us still. Is it not for us to work as laborers unto harvest?” ~D.N. Dunlop, “Rudolf Steiner and the fulfillment of the Quest.

1361 – Deathday of Johannes Tauler, a disciple of Meister Eckhart, one of the most important Rhineland Mystics. He promoted a neo-platonist dimension in the Dominican spirituality of his time

1858 – Abraham Lincoln delivers his House Divided speech in Springfield, Illinois

1901 – Deathday of Herman Grimm, son of one of the “Brothers Grimm” compilers of indigenous folk tales.  His reputation is that of the arch-Romantic, Gründerzeit art historian, he was viewed as the intellectual successor of Goethe. His approach to art history was through the “Great Masters,” & a biographical account of art history. Rudolf Steiner spoke about his past lives as Pliny the Younger & Beatrice of Tuscany.

1903 – The Ford Motor Company is incorporated

1904 – Irish author James Joyce begins a relationship with Nora Barnacle & subsequently uses the date to set the actions for his novel Ulysses; this date is now traditionally called “Bloomsday”

1911 – IBM founded in Endicott, New York

1920 – Dr. Rudolf Steiner, & Dr. Ita Wegman, founded “Futurum AG“, in Arlesheim, Switzerland, & “Der Kommende Tag AG (an incorporated company to encourage economic & spiritual values) in Stuttgart Germany. Both companies merged for economic reasons, & today is known as Weleda.

1932 – D.N. Dunlop plans “International Association for the Advancement of Spiritual Science”

1936 – Deathday of Emil Molt, used concepts of the 3-fold social order in his business. He was the founder of the first Waldorf School, where Rudolf Steiner was the pedagogical director. Steiner spoke of him as the individuality called Charlemagne.

Emil Molt, orphaned at 13, was born in southern Germany. After finishing high school he was apprenticed to Emil Georgii in the town of Calw, in the Black Forest. There he learned about money, his powerful work ethic, & wonderful customer service. He was diligent & a quick study, valued by his employer, who took the unusual step of asking him to work a year beyond his obligation.

During this time Molt met his wife-to-be, & felt an immediate inner connection. But he was not yet in a position to marry. At 19 he went to serve his obligatory year of military service in Ulm. When he was finished, he signed a four-year contract with a German-run export business in Greece, & moved to Patras. After one year, in which he learned much about international trade, Greece got into a war with Turkey over Crete, & lost. Germany had sided with Turkey, & so Germans were unpopular.

Molt was offered a position in Stuttgart with the son of Emil Georgii (who was also called Emil) which he accepted. He was finally in a position to marry his beloved Berta, with whom he had been corresponding continually. They got married & they settled down in Stuttgart to manage a cigarette manufacturing company owned by the younger Emil Georgii. Molt traces the ups & downs of the business, & tells the story of how he eventually came to be director & part owner of the Waldorf Astoria cigarette company. Under Molt’s direction the brand was highly successful. Molt was a sensitive & progressive manager, he experimented with such novelties as open-book management.

World War One was devastating to Germany, & difficult for the Waldorf Astoria cigarette company. But Waldorf fared better than most of its competitors due to Molt’s foresight in buying several years worth of raw materials at the start of the war, before Germany’s foreign currency became worthless (most of the tobacco came from Greece & Turkey). At the end of the war Molt had too many workers, because Molt had hired replacements for those that went off to fight. When the soldiers returned from the front, Molt did not want to simply fire the replacements. Instead he kept everyone on the payroll, & worked them half days. In the afternoons he held adult-education classes for his workers, & paid for them to attend. He offered courses in history, geography, paper-making, tobacco cultivation, as well as literature. These were popular, but the workers, unaccustomed to learning, found the courses tiring. This made him realize that to make a difference, education had to come to children, & so he started thinking of a school for the children of his workers.

Molt first heard Rudolf Steiner speak in 1904, & became a member of the Theosophical Society in 1906. Stuttgart was a hub of anthroposophical activity, & Steiner came through many times. The area had the first dedicated branch house (in 1911) & regular meetings. After the First World War Steiner spoke several times in lectures about things that could be done, & Molt felt called upon to act.

Molt & several other Stuttgart-based anthroposophists tried to establish the Threefold Social Order in Baden-Württemberg, but despite their tremendous efforts, this did not come about. But Molt did take his idea of a school for his worker’s children, which he had shared with the workers to great enthusiasm, to Rudolf Steiner, who took it up. Molt earmarked a substantial sum from the company profits to pay for the school. The school was opened within six months. For the first year it was a “company” school, with the teachers being paid as employees of the Waldorf Astoria Cigarette Company. A year later, in 1920, the school was made independent, at the insistence of the teachers. A charitable foundation was established to own & manage the school, & the Waldorf Astoria Cigarette Company continued to pay the tuition of the factory worker’s children. Many new pupils joined. Enrollment went from around 300 to 1,100 students in about 5 years. The school was considered a model, & other schools were founded shortly thereafter in other cities. In 1928 a Rudolf Steiner School as far away as New York was established.

While the school flourished, business went downhill in the 1920’s. Molt bought out his partners in the Waldorf Astoria Cigarette Company. Inspired by the idea of a business association to fund anthroposophical work he & several other Stuttgart-based anthroposophists donated their businesses, becoming shareholders in “Die Kommende Tag”. The association was poorly managed, & collapsed a year later. The Waldorf Astoria Cigarette Company, its prized asset, was sold by the association to some banks, who kept Molt on as manager. Molt lost his entire investment, as did many others. In 1928 the banks sold their interest to the largest cigarette manufacturer in Germany, which was in the process of buying out & liquidating the competition. Molt read about the sale in the newspaper, & was shortly out of a job, the Waldorf Astoria Cigarette Company relegated to history.

At his death in 1936 the Waldorf School was being slowly strangled by the Nazi’s, & was shut down a few months later. But the model survived. After the war, it reopened, & today there are over 900 recognized Waldorf Schools worldwide.

1961 – Rudolf Nureyev defects from the Soviet Union

1963 –Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space

1967 – The Monterey Pop Festival begins

1976 – Soweto uprising: A non-violent march by 15,000 students in Soweto, South Africa turns into days of rioting when police open fire on the crowd

2008 – California began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples

Friday 24 June 2021 – St. Johns-Tide Bon-Fire & Prep-Stir Social Gathering
7 pm CT Pot-Luck Dinner at the Home of Hazel Archer & Chuck Ginsberg

Join Rev. Jeana Lee in a St. John’s contemplation by the fire

Please Bring Food & Drink to Share in Community

This is an offical ‘Merry Prepstir‘ synchronized application,
linking us to Biodynamic workers around the world,
so that ‘The Earth May Be Healed’.
We will be working with BD 500 Horn Manure & 501 silica 

RSVP for address & directions

The Holy Grail Study Group with the CRC            The Mysteries of the Holy Grail: From Arthur and Parzival to Modern Initiation July 6, 2022 – 7:15 pm Central (8:15 pm Eastern) “We may describe the astral body as an egotist. This means that every path of development that aims to liberate the astral body must recognize the interests of humanity by expanding and becoming progressively wider in scope. Indeed…it must become interested in the whole earth and all humanity.”~ from Chapter 17 Focus of the July 6 meeting: Rudolf Steiner,The Mysteries of the Holy Grail, Chapter 16 “The Word in Chains,” excerpts from Steiner’s lecture given at Dornach on 11 March 1923 (GA 222, lecture I) AND Chapter 17 “Balancing the Soul,” excerpts from Steiner’s lecture given at The Hague on 26 March 1913 (GA 145, lecture VII).A transcript of the entire lecture for chapter 16 can be found on the RS Archive by clicking this link.A transcript of the entire lecture for chapter 17 can be found on the RS Archive by clicking this link. *  Please consider giving to the development and maintenance of the digital library of Rudolf Steiner’s work.  Scroll to the bottom of this message to read more about the RSArchive.org and SteinerLibrary.org

The Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America invites you to join our ongoing study conversation. The study has been divided among two volunteers who will summarize their section to rebuild it as a foundation for our conversation. Please familiarize yourself with the lecture if possible so you will feel comfortable sharing your reflections and thoughts with the group. This collection of lectures has been republished by Rudolf Steiner Press under the title: “The Mysteries of the Holy Grail: From Arthur and Parzival to Modern Initiation.”  The book was compiled and edited by Matthew Barton, published by Rudolf Steiner Press in 2010. This will be a Zoom conference call allowing us an opportunity to see one another while conversing (or audio only if you prefer).  To connect to the audio/video-conference: Video Conference Details:Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88210505106 Meeting ID: 882 1050 5106 If you have questions, please contact Mary Mertz mary.mcginnis@juno.com  Agenda for this meeting (Central Time) 7:15  Welcome and Introductions         7:18  Verse 7:25  Study led by volunteers Note: CRC team will ID volunteers           Stefano – chapter 16           Camille – chapter 17 7:50  Conversation 8:25  ID volunteers for next meeting 8:28  Close with verse