Category Archives: The Bridging Project: Life & Death

The Past & Future Dream Us

August 10, 2016Celestial Event, Central Regional Council, Insight, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, The Bridging Project: Life & Death~hag

19 August 10, 2016 (the 222nd day of the year) International Biodiesel Day

Astro-weather – First Quarter Moon occurs at 2:22 p.m. CDT. By the time the Sun sets this evening, the Moon appears in the south-southwest, one-third of the way from the horizon to the zenith. As darkness descends, our satellite grows more prominent & the background stars of Libra the Scales come into view

238 – Feast of St. Lawrence martyred on thus day

955 – Battle of Lechfeld: Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor defeats the Magyars, ending 50 years of Hungarian invasion of the West

1270 – Yekuno Amlak takes the imperial throne of Ethiopia, restoring the Solomonic dynasty to power after 100-years

1675 – The foundation stone of the Royal Greenwich Observatory in London, England is laid

The term ‘the 10th of August’ is widely used by historians as a shorthand for the Storming of the Tuileries Palace on the 10th of August, 1792, the effective end of the French monarchy until it was restored in 1814

1793 – The Musée du Louvre is officially opened in Paris, France

1810 – Birthday of Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, 1st Prime Minister of Italy. Steiner refers to him as a pupil of Garibaldi in a Hibernian mystery center in Alsace in his Karmic Relationships lectures, Vol. 1, lecture 11.

1874 – Birthday of Herbert Hoover

1896 – Deathday of Otto Lilienthal, German pilot & engineer

1961 – First use in Vietnam War of the Agent Orange by the U.S. Army

1990 – The Magellan space probe reaches Venus

***

Dwight Wriller

My POD (Poem Of the Day)

~In the hot wind around my hair

I hear the voices of the old ones:

“The past & future dream us

Perch on our bodies like skin

That we might pass the days with grace…

To us are opened all roads of truth

All warrens of love,

All channels to the sea…

Together we walk a single path into the heart of the infinite”

~hag

***

Greetings Friends –

I have triumphantly returned from the International Faust Festival at the Goetheanum in Dornach!

I will be processing the ‘Relevance of Goethe’s Faust Today’ for many a day to come. But for now, in my striving to digest, I turn to what is on my plate this morning, in the hopes that you will share in this bounty:

Kari Marie Olson

The Bridging Project

Between Life and Death from Soul to Soul

August 10, 2016 – 7:15 pm CST (8:15 pm EST)

The Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America invites you to our conversation with special guest Maureen Flannery.

Maureen will talk about her Threshold Work experience and will share some of her own poems about caring for the dead, connecting with Dr. Steiner’s indications about what the living can provide to assist the dead. She will also talk about the National Home Funeral Alliance, Funeral Consumer’s Alliance, and the Green Burial Foundation.

This will be a “go-to-meeting” 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:

Option 1. Click link below if you wish to connect through your computer (a headset is recommended)
https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/191873221

Option 2. Call in using your telephone.
United States: +1 (571) 317-3117

Canada: +1 (647) 497-9379

Access Code: 191-873-221

Option 3. You can use a combination of Options 1 and 2 (computer and phone)

Please join us!

7:15 Verse

7:18 Welcome

7:21 Overview of Project and the schedule changes going forward

7:25 Introduce Guest Speaker

7:30 Guest Speaker: Maureen Flannery (45 minutes)

“After twenty years of serving on the Board of my sister’s assisted living facility in Boulder, I realized that I was also interested in threshold work. I began to attend National Home Funeral Alliance conferences and work with the Christian Community priests to assist in the vigils and care of the dead when requested.

I would like to give some history of the National Home Funeral Alliance, of which I am a member and regional coordinator. I will elucidate the missions and distinction between three organizations which work closely in mutual support— National Home Funeral Alliance, Funeral Consumer’s Alliance, and the Green Burial Foundation.

I will give personal history about caring for my own parents when they passed— my mother at the Christian Community in Denver and my father at home. I would like to read some of my own poems about caring for the dead and relate all of this to Dr. Steiner’s indications about what the living can provide to assist the dead. We will explore how this work can be of mutual benefit to the grieving and those who have recently crossed the threshold“. ~Maureen Tolman Flannery

8:15 Q&A – Please state your name, location before asking a question

8:28 close with verse

May love of hearts reach out to love of souls
May warmth of love ray out to Spirit-light
Even so would we draw near to you
Thinking with you Thoughts of Spirit
Feeling in you the Love of Worlds
Consciously at one with you
Willing in silent being. ~Rudolf Steiner

We will be taking up the study of Rudolf Steiner’s lecture cycle entitled Historical Necessity and Freewill given in Dornach, December 9, 1917 on our September 14^th call.

This collection of lectures has been republished under the title: “The Influence of the Dead on Destiny”, here is the link:
https://steiner.presswarehouse.com/books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=179577

Until Soon –

Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Vitae Sophia

May 9, 2016Celestial Event, Chicago Event, Festival, Insight, Lecture, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars, Spring, The Bridging Project: Life & Death~hag

Moonday May 9, 2016 –

TODAY an amazing transit of Mercury in front of the Sun – an ‘inferior conjunction’ with our day star, which only occurs 13 times in a century, & only during a loop when Mercury is retrograde. Mercury, which is usually hidden behind the Sun, is then visible, between the Earth & the Sun.

Also, Jupiter, having been in retrograde since January 7^th goes direct.

Jupiter seal by Rudolf Steiner

1760 – Death-day of Count Zinzendorf , A social reformer & bishop of the Moravian Church. The Zinzendorf family belonged to one of the most ancient of noble families in Lower Austria. Among his ancestors was the Emperor Maximillian I.

Zinzendorf did not intend to found a religious organization distinct from the area’s Lutheran Church, but to create a Christian association, by demonstrating practical benevolence, that might awaken dull Lutheranism. He began to think that true Christianity could be best promoted by free associations of Christians, which in the course of time might grow into churches with no state connection.

In 1722, Zinzendorf offered asylum to a number of refugees from Moravia & Bohemia & built the village of Herrnhut on a corner of his estate.

Out of study & prayer, the community formed a document known as the Brüderlicher Vertrag, the ‘Brotherly Agreement’, today known as “The Moravian Covenant for Christian Living.” The Moravian Church is one of the few denominations that emphasizes a code of Christian behavior over specific creeds.

In these communities, a radical equality of spiritual life was practiced. Nobility & Native Americans shared common quarters; slaves were full members of the Church & could be elected to offices of leadership.

Zinzendorf’s interest in missionary work was sparked by meeting two Inuit children.

In 1736, accusations from neighboring nobles & questions of theological orthodoxy caused Zinzendorf to be exiled from his home in Saxony. He & a number of his followers moved to Marienborn (near Büdingen) & began a period of exile & travel, during which he became known as the “Pilgrim Count.”

In 1741, Zinzendorf visited Pennsylvania, becoming one of the few 18th century European nobles to have actually set foot in the Americas. In addition to visiting leaders such as Benjamin Franklin, he met with the leaders of the Iroquois.

Zinzendorf’s theology strongly included the emotional life of the believer as well as the intellectual. He criticized the coldly intellectual approach common in his day, & built a great deal of practice around the transformation of the emotions. He referred to this as the “religion of the heart.”

1805 – Death-day of Friedrich Schiller, some say he was poisoned (GA 64) The coffin containing what was purportedly Schiller’s skeleton, was brought in 1827, into the Weimarer Fürstengruft (Weimar’s Ducal Vault), later also Goethe’s resting place. On 3 May 2008, scientists announced that DNA tests showed that the skull of this skeleton is not Schiller’s, & his tomb is now vacant.

Friedrich Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, physician, historian, & playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with the already famous & influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. They frequently discussed issues concerning human freedom. Schiller encouraged Goethe to finish works he left as sketches. This relationship & these discussions led to a period now referred to as Weimar Classicism. They also worked together on Xenien, a collection of short satirical poems in which both Schiller & Goethe challenge opponents to their philosophical vision.

Schiller wrote many philosophical papers on ethics & aesthetics. He synthesized the thought of Immanuel Kant with the thought of the German Idealist philosopher, Karl Leonhard Reinhold. He elaborated Christoph Martin Wieland’s concept of die schöne Seele (the beautiful soul), a human being whose emotions have been educated by reason, so that Pflicht und Neigung (duty & inclination) are no longer in conflict with one another. Beauty, for Schiller, is not merely an aesthetic experience, but a moral one as well: the Good is the Beautiful.

His philosophical work was particularly concerned with the question of human freedom, a preoccupation which also guided his historical researches, & found its way as well into his dramas. Schiller wrote important essays on the question of the sublime, addressing one aspect of human freedom—the ability to defy one’s animal instincts, such as the drive for self-preservation, when, for example, someone willingly sacrifices themselves for conceptual ideals.

~ ~ ~

Pikishi

~Today I am

The thought of myself

In my Mothers forehead…

May I listen to the voice of the messenger

Bringing her song up from the dead –

A silver star bruised & hanging on a cloud

As I roll gold into life

Like the scarab

& stand with the flowering hawthorn on the obsidian altar…

~hag

~ ~ ~

St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite

Part 1 in a series from the lecture: Vitae Sophia- The New Mysteries of ‘I’ and ‘WE’, a ‘Hero’s Journey’ from head to heart by Hazel Archer Ginsberg

As we move deeper into the glories of Spring, the elementals awaken & we experience in nature, signs & images of the Earth-soul in ascension.

The sense of arising spreads all around us. And in the play of the elements, fire seems to have the last word in the essential dialogue between the heights & depths. From above resounds the fiery word & the other elements follow the creative call with joy & the beauty of ascent.

Whitsun has been called a festival of flowers. We see this out among the buds opening under the increasing power of the sun, under the etheric & astral influences. The heart of humanity as it opens to warmth & light is like the flower, aligning itself to the sun which permeates the earth. And what pours down from the sun, giving the flower, our image in reverse, the potency it needs, is like the tongues of fire descending upon the heads of the disciples, for us humans.

Rudolf Steiner lectured a great deal about Whitsun. He spoke about Spiritual Science as a Whitsun gift.

Today we can see Whitsun as a festival of the 1st fruits of the Spirit. The festival of today is not bestowed on us by nature. It must be called forth…

Some say it is a festival of the future, for we must grow ripe to withstand the surging of the Spirit. Whitsun is the festival of our true higher self, which as yet only hovers above us like a dove.

At the same time it is the festival of community, arising from the harmonizing of our higher selves which are ONE in the Spirit – The Cosmic Spirit of all pervading Love, Healing Spirit, Spirit of Wisdom, The Comforter, Councilor, Paraclete, Sophia, The Spirit of Truth.

“You shall know the truth & the Truth shall make you free.”

Christ fulfilled His Deed for all mankind. And, to each human individual, in order that we may be able to understand this Deed, Christ sends the Healing Spirit, Fulfilling his promise that each person may have access to the effects of the Deed, which was accomplished for all.

Whitsun presents us with a remarkable & dramatic picture of spirit-filled individuals, anointed & en-kindled with the impulse to speak out of individual freedom regarding the truth & healing power of the Spirit…Speaking the Language of the heart, that all can understand.

The intense rush of spirit planted in the hearts of human beings highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts, our individual ego, in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is strongly felt during this time of the consciousness soul era.

Our groups striving to know Spiritual Science, working together as a community, have the possibility to create this type of culture, & the opportunity is here for each of us to meet, human to human, where a sacrament is possible in every encounter.

Our individual strength comes from our personal development & is enhanced by weaving our gifts together with others, knitting our social world in conscious community.

During the Christmas Conference the time had come to take up this new evolutionary task, that of transforming or spiritualizing the human social sphere. This mighty impulse was given inspiration by the foundation stone meditation along with the daily rhythms as presented during the conference.

It was Rudolf Steiner’s hope that a “spiritual foundation stone of Love” would be laid in the etheric hearts of all people, providing a bridge between the macro & microcosmic streams in the world & in human beings striving to create a conscious Michaelic community.

This Sophia inspired Michaelic community can be seen as a vessel in which the Christ Being can unite with humanity. Rudolf Steiner created the Anthroposophical Society so that striving individuals can meet to continue this work of evolution. We get a foreshadowing of this through the Whitsun experience of the 1st apostles.

Click to read the entire lecture

Come join us for our upcoming Whitsun Festival May 15

~ ~ ~

Tomorrow we look into the hearts of the apostles to see the mirror of our own loneliness.

Until soon

Blessings & Peace –

~hag = Hazel ArcherGinsberg

MotherPeace

May 8, 2016Insight, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, The Bridging Project: Life & Death~hag

MOTHER’S DAY May 8^th 2016

1870 – The origins of Mother’s Day –

The earliest mother’s day celebrations can be traced back to the spring festivals of the ancients honoring The Mother of the gods…

Much later, in the 1600’s, England celebrated a day called ‘Mothering Sunday’, honoring the matriarchy; the Queens of England…

As Christianity spread throughout Europe the celebration changed to honor the ‘Mother Church’…

In the U.S. Mother’s Day was 1st suggested as a day dedicated to peace. This was the brain child of feminist Julia Ward Howe, the woman that actually wrote the words to the battle hymn of the republic…

The radical origins of Mother’s Day, as a powerful feminist call against war, penned in the wake of the U.S. Civil War in 1870, are fully compatible with the universal notion of honoring mothers.

Women, even more so now, are the primary sufferers of warfare. In the last Century, civilian populations bore 90 percent of war’s casualties around the world; mass & indiscriminate attacks, popularized in WWII by the Holocaust, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, the Allied firebombings in Japan & Germany, & the rape of Nanjing, are only the most spectacular examples of a phenomenon in which women become the rape & famine victims, the refugees, the forgotten statistics in what are invariably the wars of men.

Hear the words of The Mother’s Day Proclamation by Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910)

“Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts,
Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears
Say firmly:
“We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We women of one country
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says, “Disarm, Disarm!”
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice!
Blood does not wipe out dishonor
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war.
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God. In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions.
The great and general interests of peace.”

Later Ana Jarvis, inspired to pay homage to her ancestors, began a campaign to establish a national Mother’s Day on the 2nd Sunday of May, which was the anniversary of her mother’s death; & which just happened to be 50 days after Easter, Pentecost or Whitsun, when the fiery dove of Wisdom, the Sophia, baptizes us with fire…

President Woodrow Wilson eventually made it official…

But what does it mean to us today…? I’m not taking about the commercialized happy-faced take-your-mother-to-brunch-cliché’s…Hallmark may not be talking…but this is deep stuff…The concept of ‘mother’ is highly charged for most of us…We all have, or have had, a mother…good or bad or in-between…We may be a mother ourselves…What does that bring up…? Plenty…right…How can we be ‘The Good Mother’ to ourselves?…

Ernst Fuchs

A glimpse into Whitsun-tide (which was on the same day as the 1st Mother’s day, & which falls this year a week from today, May 15^th 2016)

Current Festival & Program Events

The lusty, merry month of May, has some other important celebrations which further express the creative fires:

The Feast of Weeks, also called the Feast of first-fruits, marks the end of the barley harvest.; the down time before the beginning of the wheat harvest. The Hebrew name is Shavuot (sha-voo-ote) in remembrance of the day Moses received the 10 commandments, engraved with fire on stones…

50 days after Passover, the time of the liberation of the Jews from Egypt…

The Greek version of this festival is called Pentecost…Meaning 50 days after the resurrection of The Christ, when the new law of, ‘Love thy neighbor as thy self ‘, was engraved in the heart, with the fire of the holy spirit, among roaring winds & tongues of fire…

It is also called Whitsun-day after the white robes worn by those baptized with fire during this vigil…

In Italy it was customary to scatter rose petals from the ceiling to recall the miracle of the fiery tongues resting on the heads of the prophets…

In France they blow trumpets to suggest the sound of the mighty wind which accompanied the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove of peace…

In Russia the congregation carries flowers & sheaves of barley…

Rudolf Steiner calls Whitsun:

*The Festival of the free Individuality”

*Symbol of the Immortality of the Ego

*Festival of the higher self and the universal human being

*Festival of the Holy Spirit

*Festival of Flowers

*Festival of United Soul Endeavor and Spirit Community

*Festival of the purified astral body

-the lifting out of one’s egotism into universal caring

– out of opinion into truth

– out of opinion into wisdom

*Festival of the human unbound from materialism

‘You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free’

The Whitsun thought — Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus.

Liane Collot

WHITSUN VERSE by RUDOLF STEINER

‘Wo Sinneswissen endet,
Da stehet erst die Pforte,
Die Lebenswirklichkeiten
Dem Seelensein eröffnet;
Den Schlüssel schafft die Seele,
Wenn sic in sich erstarket
Im Kampf, den Weltenmächte
Auf ihrem eignen Grunde
Mit Menschenkräfte führen;
Wenn sic durch sich vertreibt
Den Schlaf, der Wissenskräfte
An ihren Sinnesgrenzen
Mit Geistesnacht umhüllet. ‘

‘There first
Where sense can know no more,
Stands the portal, which discloses
Life-reality
To Soul-being;
This portal’s key the Soul may fashion
If she herself grow strong within the strife
By World-Powers waged on their own ground
With human forces;
If of her own accord she puts to flight
The sleep, which at the frontier of her senses
Cloaks the forces of knowledge
In spirit-night.’

You don’t need to have given birth to be the mother of your own creation…Let your labor be one of love, filled with nurturing joy…

~hag

~ ~ ~

Alex Grey

M + V [Maria Virgo]

You are,

The Hymen, Of the gleaming one,

Self-contained, Diamond mind manifested, Atlantean root revised,

Tied to the secret solar angels…

You are

The bright ear of Spica, First crypt of Christ, Solving the Sphinx

To bear

The 6th gate, Of Solomon’s Seal

To shield, To nurture, & finally to reveal,

A branch of fruit, In the mutable cross, Of your arms…

Vulcan under your feet, The caduceus in your head

You are

The valley of work, Conferring soul, Inside the cave, Of every Adam…

Protectress of the divine order, Incentive behind the goal…

O you who are

The Mother of images, Shape & mould matter, With your mindful mercury

Conceive the avatar in us, With your quickening vision

Feed us, With your perfect understanding

Give birth to peace in your womb of time.

~hag

~ ~ ~

Calendar of the Soul – Seventh Week [May 08, 2016 – May 14, 2016]

My self is threatening to fly forth,

Lured strongly by the world’s enticing light.

Come forth, prophetic feeling,

Take up with strength your rightful task:

Replace in me the power of thought

Which in the senses’ glory

Would gladly lose itself.

~ ~ ~

Tomorrow begins a series on Whitsun

Until soon

Blessings & Peace –

~hag = Hazel ArcherGinsberg

Learning Peace

May 7, 2016Insight, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Soul to Soul, The Bridging Project: Life & Death~hag

May 7, 2016

The Fire Of Jerusalem. Eugene Alexis Girardet

Siege of Jerusalem, May 7, 1099 by Godfrey of Bouillon, a medieval knight who was one of the leaders of the First Crusade. He became the first ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Instead of the title of King, Godfrey preferred the title of Advocatus Sancti Sepulchri = Advocate of the Holy Sepulchre. He is also known as the “Baron of the Holy Sepulchre” or the “Crusader King”.

On May 7, 1915, less than a year after World War I (1914-18) erupted across Europe, a German U-boat torpedoed & sank the RMS Lusitania, a British ocean liner on route from New York to Liverpool, England. Of the 1,900 passengers & crew members on board, 1,100 perished. Nearly two years would pass before the United States formally entered World War I, but the sinking of the Lusitania played a significant role in turning public opinion against Germany, both in the United States & abroad.

Death-day in 973 of Otto the great. Otto inherited the kingship of the Germans, unifying all German tribes into a single kingdom & greatly expanded the king’s powers at the expense of the aristocracy. Otto transformed the Roman Catholic Church in Germany to strengthen the royal office & subjected its clergy to his personal control.

By 961, Otto had conquered the Kingdom of Italy & extended his realm’s borders to the north, east, & south. The patronage of Otto facilitated a limited cultural renaissance of the arts & architecture. Following the example of Charlemagne, Otto was crowned Emperor in 962 by Pope John XII in Rome.

Casper Fredrich

Death-day in 1840 of Casper David Fredrich, a German Romantic landscape painter, considered the most important artist of his generation. He came of age during a period when, across Europe, a growing disillusionment with materialistic society was giving rise to a new appreciation of spirituality. This shift in ideals was often expressed through a re-evaluation of the natural world, as a “divine creation, to be set against the artifice of human civilization”.

Friedrich’s paintings characteristically set a human presence in diminished perspective amid expansive landscapes, reducing the figures to a scale that, directs “the viewer’s gaze towards their metaphysical dimension.”

~ ~ ~

Odilon Redon

~Learning Peace:

O it’s easy to know

The air when it whips my face,

When the wind is still, I forget the smell of lilacs…

Walking thru town, I turn longingly to the sea,

On the shore, I gaze back to the city…

When there’s much talk, I withdraw into silence,

When it is quiet, I strain to hear some song…

Having no woe,

I create some to keep the day interesting…

& on & on &…

~hag

~ ~ ~

Maki Horanai

Tomorrow I will give the origins of Mother’s Day, for today, rest in the warmth of Saturn-day

Until soon

Blessings & Peace –

~hag = Hazel ArcherGinsberg

“Marriage with the supersensible”

May 6, 2016Celestial Event, Festival, Insight, Lecture, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars, The Bridging Project: Life & Death~hag

New Moon Friday 6 May 2016

“What is to be the starting force & impulse for events in social & ethical life must come out of the spiritual world.” Rudolf Steiner, New Spiritual Impulses in History” Dornach 16 December, 1917

Birthday of St. John, the disciple whom Jesus loved. Thru the research of Rudolf Steiner (GA 93, 264, 265) we hear of this individuality in other lives as: Hiram, Lazarus, Christian Rosenkreutz, St. Germain.

1871 – Birthday of Christian Otto Josef Wolfgang Morgenstern a German author & poet from Munich. He worked for a while as a journalist in Berlin, but spent much of his life traveling through Germany, Switzerland, & Italy, in a vain attempt to recover his health. His travels, though they failed to restore him to health, allowed him to meet many of the foremost literary & philosophical figures of his time in central Europe.

Morgenstern’s poetry, much of which was inspired by English literary nonsense, is immensely popular, even though he enjoyed very little success during his lifetime. Embedded in his humorous poetry is a subtle metaphysical streak. He discussed how many angels could sit on a needle. Many Germans know some of his poems & quotations by heart, e.g. the following line from “The Impossible Fact” (“Die unmögliche Tatsache”, 1910): Weil, so schließt er messerscharf / Nicht sein kann, was nicht sein darf. “For, he reasons pointedly – That which must not, cannot be.” Christian Morgenstern was also an acclaimed translator, rendering into German various prominent works from Norwegian & French, including the dramas & poems of Henrik Ibsen, Knut Hamsun, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson , August Strindberg & Rudolf Steiner.

Morgenstern was a member of the General Anthroposophical Society. Dr. Rudolf Steiner called him ‘a true representative of Anthroposophy’. He died in 1914 of tuberculosis.

680 Death-day of Muawiyah Caliph. The meaning of Muawiyah in Arabic is “young fox”. Muawiyah worked as a scribe for Muhammad. The story goes: He had a pen behind his ear which he had not used. The Prophet said, ‘What is this on your ear?’ He said, ‘A pen which I have made ready for Allah & His Messenger.’ The Prophet said. ‘May Allah repay you well on behalf of your Prophet! By Allah, I will only ask you to write down revelation from heaven.”

In 639, Muawiyah was appointed as the governor of Syria. Under his governance the Syrian army became a major military force. Muawiya was one of the first to realize the full importance of having a navy. During his naval expeditions he took Rhodes & later Cyprus; then shifted his focus back towards Constantinople, & Anatolia. By his creation of a fleet, Muawiyah was the driving force of the Muslim effort against Byzantium. His navy raided the Byzantine islands & coasts at will. The shocking defeat of the imperial fleet by the young Muslim navy at the Battle of the Masts in 655 was of critical turning point. It opened up the Mediterranean, considered a “Roman lake”, & began a centuries-long series of naval conflicts over the control of the Mediterranean. This also allowed the expansion of the state into Africa & Spain. Trade between the Muslim eastern & southern shores & the Christian northern shores almost ceased during this period, isolating Western Europe from developments in the Muslim world.

Muawiyah was crowned as caliph at a ceremony in Jerusalem in 661.

We learn from Karmic Relationships Vol. 7 lecture 6 that he was reincarnated as Woodrow Wilson.

~ ~ ~

~Have you seen it…?

How the fist of order tries to hold back chaos…?

How chaos oozes between the grasp of splade digits & arms akimbo…?

How the sun is born & dies 12 hours later…?

How the 2 weights swing in the scale, balanced on the fingertip of a god…?

~hag

~ ~ ~

Climbing Jacob’s Ladder – A Festival of Ascension, part 6 of a Lecture by ~Hazel ArcherGinsberg

I will touch briefly here on a subject that is vast enough for its own series of lectures: the image of the phantom body of Christ as the reconstituted New Adam, & the Resurrection Body, which points us in the direction of our future evolution– not back to the garden – but going forward toward the New Jerusalem. Materializing & dematerializing at will just as the Christ did during the time between Easter & Ascension.

This ‘body’ encompasses the whole of humanity. It is like a cell that is multiplying; growing ever more evident in the etheric realm. – Rudolf Steiner calls it a redeeming of the group-soul of mankind.

Christ has united with the earth in order to make it the new Sun of a new universe.

The expression “Put on the Resurrection Body” used by the apostle Paul, is a true picture of what can happen for us. An imagination of this is hidden in the allegory of the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz .

Goethe’s Fairy Tale is another powerful imagination that came thru when I was brainstorming on images that capture the essence of the Ascension. It’s been said that ‘The Green Snake & the Beautiful Lily’, which is full of esoteric symbolism, was born out of Goethe’s reading of The Chymical Wedding . This Tale was also written as a response to a work by Friedrich Schiller called ‘Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man’. One of the main ideas centers on the question of human freedom. Schiller was trying to build an inner bridge between reality & the ‘ideal human being’.

He wrote these ‘Letters’ during the time of the French Revolution, which was driven by a desire for outer social changes, to enable human beings to become free. But both Schiller & Goethe recognized that freedom cannot be ‘imposed’ from the outside, it must arise from within.

So Goethe took this inspiration & set about writing a Fairy Tale that would show, in imaginative pictures, the way in which a human soul could become whole & free by bridging the abyss between the human & the divine within.

Rudolf Steiner, in his 1918 book ‘Goethe’s Standard of the Soul’, tells us: “On the river stands the Temple in which the marriage of the Young Man with the Lily takes place. The ‘marriage’ with the supersensible. The realization of the free personality is possible in a human soul whose forces have bridged the state of regularity with the divine forces of transformation.”

This article by Steiner lead to an invitation for him to speak to the German Theosophical Society which eventually led to his becoming its General Secretary…& this story continues to live on in us…

To read the entire lecture: Ascension 2014 Climbing Jacobs Ladder

Tomorrow we will turn toward Whitsun

Until soon

Blessings & Peace –

~hag = Hazel ArcherGinsberg

Whitsun-Day – May 15, 2016, 2pm -4pm The Festival of United Soul Endeavor

A Biography Atelier with Leah Walker

Rudolf Steiner suggested that our lives are brought to us by others. We will explore this idea as an active experience in biographical research, where the possibility exists for meeting ourselves and one another on a deeper level.

$10 (art supplies included) For more info. Contact Hazel

Leah Walker has a deep interest in human development and earth evolution, particularly as described by Rudolf Steiner. She is a biography worker and licensed professional counselor (LPC), as well as a certified homeopath. She is a faculty member of the Center for Biography and Social Art. She holds a Master’s degree in educational psychology from the University of Texas at Austin. She lives in Evanston, Il.

Whitsun Verse by Rudolf Steiner:

There first

Where sense can know no more,

Stands the portal, which discloses

Life-reality

To Soul-being;

This portal’s key the Soul may fashion

If she herself grow strong within the strife

By World-Powers waged on their own ground

With human forces;

If of her own accord she puts to flight

The sleep, which at the frontier of her senses

Cloaks the forces of knowledge

In spirit-night. (Translated by Owen Barfield)

Current Festival & Program Events

Cognitive Ritual

~Confessions of a Modern Rosicrucian

Category Archives: The Bridging Project: Life & Death

The Past & Future Dream Us

Vitae Sophia

MotherPeace

Learning Peace

“Marriage with the supersensible”

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