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Blessings friends on the Feast Day of St. John the Baptist 2021. Last night in the Schreinerei at the Rudolf Steiner Branch in Chicago we gathered in community to break bread & celebrate the Festival of St. John’s. Thru song, a few leading thoughts, art, movement & the most precious of all: conversation, we explored the expansiveness of this season. Here are some of the indications we worked with from the Four Seasons and the Archangels, Lecture IV: The St. John Imagination by Rudolf Steiner

“The Sun-gold, formed in the heights, in the dominion of Uriel, during high summer, passes down to weave and flow through the depths of the Earth, where it animates the elements.
Then you will come to feel that all this is a kind of background for the cosmic, light-filled deeds of Uriel, and a clear impression of the countenance and gaze of Uriel will come before you.
We feel a deep longing to understand this remarkable gaze, directed downwards, and we have the impression that we must look around to find out what it signifies. Its meaning first dawns upon the mind when as human beings we learn to look with spiritual eyes still more deeply into the blue, silver-gleaming depths of the Earth in summer. And we see that weaving around these silver-gleaming crystalline rays are shapes — disturbing shapes, I might almost call them — which continually gather and dissolve, gather and dissolve again. Here the moral world-order does not exist only in ourselves as abstract impulses.

On the other hand, all that is in human virtue and human excellence rises up with the silver-gleaming lines and is seen as the clouds that envelop Uriel (red). It enters into the radiant Intelligence, transmuted into cloud-shaped works of art.
It is impossible to look towards the increasingly earnest gaze of Uriel, directed towards the depths of the Earth, without also seeing there something like wing-like arms, or arm-like wings, raised in earnest admonition, and this gesture by Uriel has the effect of imparting to mankind what I might call the historic conscience. Here at high summer appears the historic conscience, which at the present time has become uncommonly feeble. It appears, as it were, in Uriel’s warning gesture.
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.

So to spiritual observation there appears, as a kind of culmination, this picture: Above, illuminated as it were by the power of Uriel’s eyes, the Dove (white). The silver-sparkling blue below, arising from the depths of the Earth and bound up with human weaknesses and error, is gathered into a picture of the Earth-Mother (blue). Whether she is called Demeter or Mary, the picture is of the Earth-Mother. So it is that in directing our gaze downwards, we cannot do otherwise than bring together in Imagination all those secrets of the depths which go to make up the material Mother of all existence; while in all that is concentrated in the flowing form above we feel and experience the Spirit-Father of everything around us. And now we behold the outcome of the working together of Spirit-Father with Earth-Mother, bearing so beautifully within itself the harmony of the earthly silver and the gold of the heights. Between the Father and the Mother we behold the Son (see Plate V). Thus arises this Imagination of the Trinity, which is really the St. John Imagination. The background of it is Uriel, the creative, admonishing Uriel.
All this, too, would have to sound forth in musical tones — tones which carry these motifs on their wings and make them part of human experience. Here it is that Imagination passes over into Inspiration.

The human being lives in a certain sense as an embodied Inspiration, as a being brought into existence by Inspiration, in the Mysteries of the heights and depths and in the Mysteries of their conjunction. He lives in the Mysteries to which the Spirit-Father points upward; the Mysteries to which the Spirit-Mother points downwards, the Mysteries which are united by the fact that the Christ, though the working together of the Spirit-Father and the Spirit-Mother, stands directly before the human soul as the sustaining Cosmic Spirit.
Here in these nine lines are the Mysteries of the Heights, the Mysteries of the Depths, and the Mysteries of the Midst, which are also those of the inner being of man. And then we have the whole gathered up as a cosmic statement of these Mysteries of the Heights, the Depths and the Midst, sounding out as though with organ and trumpet tones:
Es werden Stoffe verdichtet Es werden Fehler gerichtet Es werden Herzen gesichtet. |
Here you have that which can permeate the human being at midsummer, supporting him, exalting him, confirming him — the St. John Imagination filled with Inspiration, the St. John Inspiration filled with Imagination — in these words:
Schaue unser Weben Das leuchtende Erregen Das warmende Leben | } | The Heights |
Lebe irdisch Erhaltendes Und atmend Gestaltetes — Als wesenhaft Waltendes | } | The Depths |
Fühle dein Menschengebeine Mit himmlischen Scheine Im waltenden Weltenvereine | } | The Midst The inner being of Man. |
Es werden Stoffe verdichtet Es werden Fehler gerichtet Es werden Herzen gesichtet. Behold our weaving, The kindling radiance, The warming life. Live in the earth’s sustaining, And in the form-giving breathing, With the power of true being. Feel your very bones suffused With heavenly glory In the presiding yoga of the worlds. Substances are densified, Errors judged and rectified, Hearts are sifted” |

24 June 2021 “Speaking with the Stars”: Full Honey or Strawberry Moon occurs at 1:40 P.M. CDT today. Best seen rising in the southeast about half an hour after sunset. Tonight, the Moon floats near the lid of Sagittarius’ Teapot asterism.

St. John the Baptist and Uriel the Archangel of Summer –
An Experiential online Festival with Geoff Norris, Elizabeth Carlson, Lisa Dalton, Lucien Dante Lazar, Hazel Archer
Sunday 27 June 2021 on Zoom:
Noon – 1:30 pm PT / 1 – 2:30 pm MT / 2 pm – 3:30 pm CT / 3 – 4:30 pm ET /
8 – 9:30 pm London Time / 9 – 10:30 pm CET
Metanoia – Can you hear the voice of conscience? – Make straight the path, for at the fullness of Summer, the light is so bright that it leaves no room for the shadow, a time to remember what St. John said “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Musicial Performance by Lucien Dante Lazar
Speech – Geoffrey Norris
Eurythmy- Elizabeth Carlson
Living into St. John’s-Tide – Lisa Dalton
Leading Thoughts – Hazel Archer
Hazel Archer is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: St. John’s
Time: Jun 27, 2021 02:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/7052931041?pwd=TkMwcGVVdk5GTVJmVzVJS2s5YVFtQT09
Meeting ID: 705 293 1041
Passcode: Uriel
Find your local number: https://zoom.us/u/a961qZZhF
For more info. contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator Hazel Archer Hazel@reverseritual.com