Category Archives: Upcoming Event

Identity

Greetings friends – I am just now coming back – with the 4th Quarter Moon & the building up of the Perseid Meteor showers – fresh from Seminar 4 of the Association for Anthroposophic Psychology (AAP) where the theme was dealing with the 3rd Septennial – age 14-21 asking: Who Am I ? – The Search for Identity & Authenticity.

When Home Won't Let You Stay: Migration through Contemporary Art |  ICA/Boston - YouTube

And Hallelujah – Because the border restrictions imposed by the Corona crisis finally loosened in May, Dr. James Dyson, Simon Kuttner, & Zheni Nasi were able to join us in person for the 1st time! – Bringing a distinctly glorious soul-shift in the state of our communion this go-round.

Talented 16-Year-Old Artist Turns Her Wildest Dreams Into Paintings | Bored  Panda

I will no doubt be unpacking our deep dive into the polarities that get sparked during the teenage years, on the micro & macro levels – with all its astral dynamics, as the digestion proceeds.

Catherine Fraser | Cowichan Artisans

For now, I’ll just share this echo: Having gathered at Camphill Kimberton on the Full Thunder-Buck Moon during the Cross-Quarter Time of the 2nd Harvest, between the Summer Solstice & The Autumn Equinox – with the local biodynamic sweet corn plumb & golden, I could sense the ‘Spirit of Place’ standing strongly with the guiding Spirit behind AAP, vibrating thru us all.

10. Mood Swings - Biffno in 2023 | Mood swings art, Surreal art, Emotional  art

And as we contemplated together the essence of adolescence – it seemed to me that in looking at the macro level of human evolution, that perhaps society at large is stuck in those teenage years – a reactive raging
turmoil – the result of a lack of identity – of not yet being able to fully achieve a connection to the Higher “I”…  

James Dyson painted a gripping picture of the Youth Movement he was part of – How in 1970, over 400 young people came together for a conference in Spring Valley. Michael Babitch, the long time Camphiller I was staying with was also at this seminal gathering, fresh from the Peace Corp.

Sparked by the success & growing interest within the Youth Movement at that time, James then went on to work with a team of young people to bring a conference to the Goetheanum in 1973. He spoke about the rigidity of the Elders there, & the many obstacles they faced. And yet over 1000 young people from all over the world came together in the light of Anthroposophy!  

Was this the longed for ‘Culmination’ that Steiner spoke about?

Reach For the Stars Painting by Linda Carmel - Pixels

James & so many others in that volatile time were helped to find their star by finding each other. Many of those earnest young people went on to become practitioners of Anthroposophical Initiates in the world.

2nd Holy Night: Christmas 2020 | Reverse Ritual

It reminded me of what Steiner said at the end of the Christmas Conference – 8:30 pm on 1 January, 1924 in The Responsibility Incumbent on Us“And so, my dear friends, bear out with you into the world your warm hearts in whose soil you have laid the Foundation Stone for the Anthroposophical Society, bear out with you your warm hearts in order to do work in the world that is strong in healing. Help will come to you because your heads will be enlightened by what you all now want to be able to direct in conscious willing. Let us today make this resolve with all our strength. And we shall see that if we show ourselves to be worthy, then a good star will shine over that which is willed from here. My dear friends, follow this good star. We shall see whither the gods shall lead us through the light of this star.

Light Divine
Christ-Sun,
Warm thou
Our hearts,
Enlighten
thou

Our heads!

Goetheanum - Wikipedia

Many questions arose about whether this Responsibility Incumbent on Us was heeded. Has Dornach become simply a place holder, a memorial – at worst a mausoleum…? –

File:Wandtafelbild - Gotheanum-Motiv (1924).jpg - Wikimedia Commons

Or is it perhaps a sheath – an inverted chalice over the etheric essence of the 1st Goetheanum – a protective Michaelic Sheild – a concrete cradle, like the moon, holding the host of the etheric substance of ‘The Word’ released by the sacrificial fire to flow into & permeate the cosmic ethers..?

Other Artwork by Rudolf Steiner

Are we willing & able to do the hard work of not only reading the Cosmic Script, but actually putting what has been inscribed in the ethers into practice in our lives, thru the purifying of our soul forces, for the highest human evolution…?

Why cows have horns

The years of biodynamic farming on the Dornach hill gives the land a spiritual glow; & the ancient Hermitage still seems to have some juice – At best – can the Goetheanum become a guiding light to the future…?

It’s up to us – & yes, ‘the Ordering of Space & the Course of Time’ will tell –

Mercury, as evening star, stood in the sign of Libra, the balance.” |  Reverse Ritual

What I do know is – that it’s 100 years since the re-founding – And these are the kind of questions we must be asking.

Christian Rosenkreutz Drawing by Elena Soldatkina - Fine Art America

And of course, as we have discussed many times here on RR – it is a Rosicrucian law that after 100 years ‘the Tomb of Christian Rosenkreutz is opened’. This imagination reveals a deep occult truth – The seeds that were planted by the great Christian Initiates that were not able to bear fruit in the last century, can now rise from the grave to become not only a Resurrection, but a furthering, & a Renewal – an opportunity to meet “I” to “I” to enact the New Mysteries of Love & Freedom.

Christian Rosenkreuz | ReverbNation

And what became clear to me sitting in our circle of 50 earnest souls, is that the Association for Anthroposophic Psychology is a true guiding light, a practical, experientially based Mystery School for our time – chalk full of all the pushes & pullings that are the key notes of initiation – The not so beautiful karmic realtionships, that so sorely test us, & the intense trials that inner development brings…

The Time is at Hand' | Reverse Ritual

Dear friends, together we can stand with the ‘Representative of Humanity’ spared by the flames of jealousy, to unveil the New Isis = to live into the truth that: “Love is the result of Wisdom that has been reborn in the I” – ever cultivating Anthroposophia within ourselves as we ‘Awaken to Community’ – To fulfill ‘the Mystery of the “I” giving back to the Gods’, in the co-creation of a New Golden Civilization – “I” into it”.

~hag

8 August 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Early tomorrow morning, the waning crescent moon will pass the dipper-shaped Pleiades star cluster, aka the Seven Sisters. And on Thursday, the even thinner moon will be close to bright orange star Aldebaran, fiery Eye of the Bull in the constellation Taurus. 

Ripening on the Vine Painting by Ramona Kraemer-Dobson - Pixels

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

The vision of St. Dominic receiving the Rosary from the Virgin by Bernardo Cavallino

1170 – Saint Dominic, founder of the Dominicans

1576 – The cornerstone for Tycho Brahe’s Uraniborg observatory is laid on the island of Hven.

1876 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph.

1879 – Deathday of Immanuel Hermann Fichte, German philosopher and academic

1908 – Wilbur Wright makes his first flight at a racecourse at Le Mans, France. It is the Wright Brothers’ first public flight.

1929 – The German airship Graf Zeppelin begins a round-the-world flight.

1946 – First flight of the Convair B-36, the world’s first mass-produced nuclear weapon delivery vehicle, the heaviest mass-produced piston-engined aircraft, with the longest wingspan of any military aircraft, and the first bomber with intercontinental range.

1974 – President Richard Nixon, in a nationwide television address, announces his resignation from the office of the President of the United States effective noon the next day.

 

Lily Fortenou

RUDOLF STEINER’S CALENDAR OF THE SOUL
translated
(with added titles) by Roy Sadler
LAMMASTIDE II
Can I Imagine My Soul’s Need?
v18
Can I make wide my soul
that she unite with seed
of Cosmic Word conceived?
I feel my foresight asking me
to find the strangth my soul will need
to form her spirit garment worthily.

This is the Soul Calendar’s first question verse
and its mirror is the only other one.

ADVENT II
Can True Being Inspire Me?
v35
Can I experience true being
that it may find itself anew
in soul’s creative urge?
I feel a power trusting me
to make my Self with modesty
a member of the Cosmic Self.

~Dali

Sunday 13 August 2023

Prep-Stir – Potluck – Bonfire

To celebrate The 2nd Harvest = Lammas

The Perseid Meteor Showers, Venus/Sun Conjunction

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

And a bon voyage Blessing for Ultra-Violet Archer

7 – 9 pm

at the Lucchesi-Archer-Ginsberg domicile

Please Bring Food & Drink to share,

& a jar for the prep

RSVP Hazel@ReverseRitual.com

Artemis & Alexander

Greetings friends – Testing 1-2-3 – I am trying something new here – sending these thoughts remotely since I am away at the “The Mysteries of Healing: Realizing AnthropoSophia” Conference. (“work Ahriman, work”)

Those of you who tune-into RR know that I am keen on making karmic connections around the Historic & current events, Feast Days, & birth & death days of influential individualities, inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s Original Calendar of the Soul.

While researching, I came across Steiner attributing 21 July as the Birthday of Alexander the Great – which he also reveals was the very same day in 356 BC that the Temple of Ephesus went up in flames.

Legend has it that the Goddess Artemis, to whom the Temple was dedicated, was away that day – busy attending to the birth of Alexander.

I love to look behind these myths & legends to see the spiritual reality speaking. Steiner connects the Burning of the Temple of Artemis with the burning of the Goetheanum – attributed in the 1st case with ‘The Jealously of the gods’ and with the Johannes Bau – The House of the Word = ‘The Jealously of Men’.

The Mysteries of Ephesus became inscribed into the Cosmic Ethers after the Burning of the Temple. Aristotle, the teacher of Alexander the Great, was able to receive these mysteries by reading the Cosmic Script. Renewing them – he brought these mysteries of The Word back to the world in what we call the ‘Aristotelian Categories’.

So amazing to make these cosmic & historic connections – & bring them into our thinking now – And then really it’s up to us to make something of them.

I have been striving to use my imaginative thinking to carry the clues that Steiner gives to connect the mysteries that stand behind: The Colossus of Artemis, which was a symbol of the Logos before it came to Earth in a human form, & the Representative of Humanity – The Word made manifest – The Christ impulse of Wonder, Compassion, & Conscience giving meaning to human evolution.

A lightbulb goes off in my heart & mind when I add in the open secret that: ‘The Group’ is in reality a veil of the New Isis – which the true human being is called to lift, bringing the full blossom of Wisdom to the seed of Love.

It all becomes clear that we are meant to connect the dots inscribed into the ethers thru the burning of these 2 Temples – One to Artemis, the Comic Logos & the other to Anthroposophia, the Truth-Wrought-Word of the Human Being.

Written in the cosmic script we find the old clairvoyance bestowed thru initiation into the Mysteries of Ephesus, being carried into the thinking of Aristotle, to inform Alexander’s Michaelic Campaign – Bringing the Mysteries of the East in a renewed form to the West; preparing the way for the Christ Event that came at the Turning Point of Time.

And then following the individualities of Aristotle & Alexander into their lives reunited once again on the Dornach hill, standing together before the burning of the Goetheanum – as the New Mysteries of the Reverse Cultus became inscribed also into the ethers, expanding & evolving the Cosmic Script, renewing The Logos – which awaits our interaction.

Friends, the Statue of the Representative of Humanity stands with us today as the living link between the past, present & future – if we will to unveil the New Isis hidden in the hand-hewn carving, whose essence dwells in the Dodecahedron of Love, that we must cultivate within our heart-thinking – to open our humanness to the Wisdom of the Christ – then the burning will not have been in vain…

Here is the Recording from last year’s ‘Roots & Renewal Session’ # 1: From Artemis to the Representative of Humanity and Beyond

21 July 2023 “Speaking with the Stars”: From Astrosopher Jonathan Hilton – “As the Moon passes Mars on Friday, the Sun steps into the stars of Cancer and is opposite Pluto, in Capricorn. So, the Sun will be above in our day consciousness and Pluto will be working through the Earth from below in our night or “unconscious.” We can picture at sunset and sunrise, the Sun on one side at the horizon, rising or setting, and Pluto on the other side, rising or setting. This can, in our time, be a powerful picture of the opposition of the Sun-I, to the anti-Sun forces, or the opposition between the Christic and anti-Christic/Asuric forces.

Pluto has become a central player in recent historical events, particularly beginning in 2020, when it met Jupiter and Saturn leading up to the Great Conjunction of these planets during Holy Nights, 2020. Pluto is now in the same degree as that Great Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in December, 2020.

It is worth noting that Pluto was opposite the Sun on New Year’s Eve 1922/23 when the Goetheanum was burned, when the anti-Christic destructive fire started below in the basement as Rudolf Steiner was lecturing in the hall above. This current opposition in Cancer and Sagittarius/Capricorn can become an imagination for us of the challenges in our time to, out of the Christic I, meet and transform the powerful forces working from Pluto, which carries both the greatest destruction as well as the highest potentiality of the transformation of the physical, ultimately to Spirit Human or Atman.”

Tomorrow 22 July Is the Feast Day of Mary Magdalene. As promised – to receive the Premier Video of Velsum performing ‘The Sanctifier”  go to my YouTube channel to turn on the notification – I believe it will then be sent to you on MM’s Feast Day at 12 am.

Putting technology to work for the Good

Xox

~hag

Syzygy

Greetings dear friends on this New Moon in Gemini – the constellation of the Twins

We have an opportunity to tune into the tide of etheric forces waving in to nourish the Cosmic Seed of manifestation that is available to us now. This syzygy of Sun & Moon is in conjunction with the head of Pollux – the Immortal Twin of Gemini – the boxer – the protective warrior, part of our “I” that can help us confront the current opposition with Pluto reflecting our unconscious shadow side.

Tomorrow I leave for another spiritual adventure at Camphill Soltane, in Glenmoore PA, for the 2023 AHA Biennial Conference:  “The Mysteries of Healing: Realizing AnthropoSophia”. So I will be off-line until next week. Although, because…

Saturday 22 July is the Feast Day of Mary Magdalene I have prepared a surprise!

Actually I was the one surprised on my birthday by Velsum (who are on tour right now on the East coast!) They made a magical video of the song we wrote together, which they performed during our Easter Festival: “Mary Magdalene & the Women at the Tomb”. I had hoped they would re-record it since the sound on the live stream we did on Holy Saturday did not capture its true essence.

I have set it up on my YouTube channel to Premier on MM’s Feast Day at 12 am.

I believe that if you go to the page you can turn on the notification to receive this resplendent gift that keeps on giving, at that time…

Why does Mary Magdalene resonate with so many of us these days? What image comes to mind when you hear her name?… A woman with long red hair holding a vessel of Spikenard ointment, or a skull, & book? Who is this ‘She, who anoints ‘The Anointed One’ – Do you see her as a holy witness – holding sacred space at the rocky entrance to the tomb? And before that for her brother Lazarus/John while he was in the underworld communing with John the Baptist as part of the first Christian Initiation…? Or maybe what speaks to you is the fact that she was the 1st to see the Risen Christ, initially as the Gardener – spiritual symbol of the cultivation of a New Garden of Paradise – a New Adam & Eve, a New humanity in the New Jerusalem that can come to be, because of the Resurrection…Perhaps you resonate with the 3 Mary’s –depicted as The Sacred Myrrh Bearers, who used essential oils to assist the dead at the threshold…

In the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, she uses the Greek word Anthropos, which means the true human being – So maybe we can see her as the 1st AnthropoSophia – vested with the authority of the Risen One to proclaim the good news of the Resurrection to the rest of the disciples. This is the image that lived in ‘The Angelic Doctor’ – our dear Thomas Aquinas, who named her ‘The Apostle of the Apostles’.

Or maybe you are familiar with her many legends that speak of her life after Pentecost? Do you see her holding a red egg, or being ministered by the Angels outside her hermits cave…?

For me, Art is a powerful way to unlock the essence of spiritual truth, which speaks directly to our soul, as well as helping to reveal the spiritual science of these mysteries.  And Velsum’s powerful video of “The Santifier” opens us to the eternal Being of Mary Magdalene & her significance for us today Enjoy.

Until soon

Xox

~hag

Fiery Radiance

Yes, Friends we are still riding the St. John’s-Tide.

Since my experience at the altar last Sunday I have been extra keen on tuning into the Archangel of Summer – Uriel, whose name in Hebrew stands for ‘the radiance & fire of God’. Rudolf Steiner describes Uriel as ‘weaving his being out of the golden radiance of the elemental beings intertwining with the Sun’. If we follow his ‘grave, judicial eyes’, we are directed down towards the crystal realm of the earth, where this fiery being shows us how human thinking, feeling & willing actually affect the earth realm.

Uriel’s gesture is a warning, indicating what we ought to do to receive the baptism of repentance. For just like John the Baptizer, this Archangelic being admonishes us to “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.

Can we rouse ourselves to see that up above in the clouds, appear shining pictures of beauty, of virtue – our highest goals – woven out of the Sun-gold, which humanity can take in, AND must contribute to as well, so that ultimately, we can achieve that radiance for ourselves & for the Earth.

We can use the golden, fiery, radiant light, to lift ourselves up from complacency, to repair the breach – giving us the will to work for a more perfect future.

Uriel calls us to transform our vices into virtues.

If we can understand the connection of human morality with the crystalline element below, & of human virtues with the shining beauty above — & if we take these connections into our inner experience, Steiner tells us that the real St. John’s Imagination will come to meet us.

What is arising here is an Imagination of the Trinity, which Steiner tells us, is the true St. John Imagination – with the admonishing Archangel of Summer Uriel in the background.

After reading my experience a friend sent me this Steiner quote:

 “In the elements of fire, of water, of air and of earth we have only an outer expression. Behind what our eyes see as fire, and what we feel as heat, is a real spiritual entity, which only has its outer expression in the outer fire.

Behind what we inhale as air, behind what enters our eyes as light, and behind what our ears perceive as sound, are active beings, spiritual and divine, whose outer garments we are only beholding in fire, in water, and in all that surrounds us in the different realms of nature.

In the teaching of the mysteries, there is an experience called: the ‘passage through the elementary worlds.’ One then becomes aware that living beings are hidden behind the fire. We become intimately acquainted with fire, as something quite different from what it appears to be in the world of the senses. We become acquainted with the fire-beings, with what is the soul of the fire.

Just as our souls are hidden behind our bodies, so the soul and spirit of fire is hidden by the outward appearance of fire which we perceive with our senses.

We penetrate into a spiritual domain when we experience the soul and spirit of fire in this way. To use the terms of occult science, we now move among the fire-gods, ‘living in the element of fire’.

When one has acquired true self-knowledge, one can ascend to experiencing the beings in the elements of fire, of water, of air and of earth. These four classes of gods or spirits live a real existence in the elements, and a person who has reached the stage which has just been described is in touch with the divine spiritual beings of the elements.” ~Rudolf Steiner, The East in the Light of the West, Lecture two, 24 August 1909.

These Beings wait for us to tune into their essential nature, so that we can work together to spiritualize matter with the Light of Love.

~hag

16 July 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Look southeast after dark tonight and you should immediately spot the bright star Altair in Aquila, which anchors another point of the Summer Triangle (along with Deneb, from last night, and Vega in Lyra). ~astronomy.com

RUDOLF STEINER’S CALENDAR OF THE SOUL
translated
(with added titles) by Roy Sadler
SAINT JOHNSTIDE IV
The Spirit’s Gift
v15
I feel, as if spellbound, the weaving
of spirit in the glory of the world;
it’s veiled my own being
in drowsiness of sense
to give to me the strength
that in my narrow bounds
I’m powerless to give myself.

The soul is given the strength to be pregnant
and at Lammas she will conceive the Cosmic Word
for the Spirit Child’s birth in this week’s mirror verse.
CHRISTMAS
The Spirit Child
v38
I feel the Spirit Child set free
from spell in womb of soul;
in heart’s bright radiance
from seed of holy Cosmic Word
the heaven’s fruit of hope
is growing into farthest worlds
rejoicing from my being’s ground of God.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Our Lady of Mount Carmel: July 16 | saints-feast-family

Feast Day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the title given to the Blessed Virgin Mary in her role as patroness of the Carmelite Order, by Christian hermits living in the Holy Land during the late 12th & early to mid-13th century. They built a chapel conceived of in chivalric terms as the “Lady of the place.” Our Lady of Mount Carmel was adopted in the 19th century as the patron saint of Chile, in South America.

In celebration of the feast day of Our... - Diocese of Palm Beach | Facebook

Since the 15th century, popular devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel has centered on the Scapular, a sacramental associated with promises of Mary’s special aid for the salvation of the devoted wearer. Since the Middle Ages, Our Lady of Mount Carmel has been related to Purgatory, where souls are purged of sins in the fires. In some images, she is portrayed as accompanied with angels and souls wearing Brown Scapulars, who plead for her mediation.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel - Wikipedia

Our Lady of Mount Carmel was seen in the apparitions of Cova da Iria in Fátima, Portugal, by Lúcia Santos & her co-visionary companions Jacinta & Francisco Marto & as many as 70,000 witnesses of the extraordinary events during the Miracle of the Sun. She also appeared to Saint Simon Stock to whom she gave the Brown Scapular. The Garabandal apparitions, in Spain, were reported to be images of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel. Also in Acquafondata, Italy, the apparition of the Virgin of Mount Carmel, was seen on July 16, 1841. There is still today a small sanctuary on the site.

Mohammed's Flight from Mecca in 622 AD; Algerian color postcard from the  1920s or '30s. Mohammed is the figure dressed in red entering th… | Image  archive, Postcard

622 – Mohammed’s flight from Mecca, which came to determine the beginning of the Islamic calendar.

Byzantine Empire Religious & Political Differences Split Christianity,  Decline of the Empire. - ppt download

1054 – Three Roman legates break relations between Western & Eastern Christian Churches through the act of placing an invalidly-issued Papal bull of Excommunication on the altar of Hagia Sophia during Saturday afternoon divine liturgy. Historians frequently describe the event as the start of the East–West Schism.

1879 – Birthday of Elisabeth Vreede – Dutch philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, astrologer & anthroposopher. Elisabeth Vreede came into contact with Theosophy in her home growing up. She was interested early on in the starry sky, read the works of Camille Flammarion & learned French at the same time. At the University of Leyden she studied mathematics, astronomy, philosophy (especially Hegel) & Sanskrit. She was also actively involved in student life, founding a boat club, & was a council member of the students’ union.

Einige Briefe aus dem Jahr 1943, Elisabeth Vreede

Her first meeting with Rudolf Steiner took place at the Theosophical Congress in London in 1903. Vreede was leader of the mathematics & astronomy sections in the Goetheanum in Dornach from 1926 till 1935. In her capacity as leader of the Mathematical-Astronomical Section she wrote a monthly letter, then available by subscription, about both modern astronomy & classical astrology in the light of spiritual science. The letters included explanations of the fundamentals of astronomy & discussions of astrology in the modern world, with reference to such topics as the procession of the equinoxes, comets, solar & lunar eclipses, & the meaning of the Christian holidays such as Easter & Whitsun. The Letters in English translation were published in 2007 with the title Astronomy and Spiritual Science.

Elisabeth Vreede - Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia

In 1935 the separation within the Anthroposophical Society took place & she was expelled from the executive council & excluded along with her long-time friend & co-member, Dr. Ita Wegman from the board of directors. She was also cut off from the observatory & archives that she herself helped assemble.

The last years of her life became more lonely. She was cut off from her friends abroad by the War. The death of Ita Wegman at the beginning of March, 1943, was a great shock for her.

Cichorei | Elisabeth Vreede

Rudolf Steiner said of her: ‘this individuality does not wish to be recognized …’ Elisabeth Knottenbelt in her memoirs describes statements about her: that ‘she incarnated too early’ for the sake of serving Rudolf Steiner. “for this task [the work with Rudolf Steiner] she had assumed the sacrifice of a premature incarnation. One who, for the sake of a spiritual mission, comes in this way to earth too early must forego a lot. To a great extent one leaves one’s karmic circle of human beings behind in the spiritual word. Her life was thus really a quite lonely one, only a few persons were grouped around her without any real connection.”

Astronomy and Spiritual Science: The Astronomical Letters of Elisabeth  Vreede: Vreede, Elisabeth, Koetzsch, Ronald, Riegel, Anne, Davidson,  Norman: 9780880105880: Amazon.com: Books

Here is a quote from a letter written by her prior to her removal from the executive council: “The Being of Anthroposophy – I myself have always felt it as a spiritual being newly created by Dr. Steiner, as it were the first hierarchical Being that men have begotten, quite young and still underdeveloped, as is the case with a child—a Being that must now begin to develop further through our common work as a ‘community of knowledge’, and with the cooperation of its creator from the spiritual world. Just for this reason I find it so painful when attacks are continually made against part of the active members such as to exclude them from the work, from creating together the Being of Anthroposophy.”

Elisabeth Vreede - Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia

Read her biography from the Astrosophy Research Center

Revisiting the Vel d'Hiv roundup through the ca...

1942 – Holocaust: Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup.The government of Vichy France orders the mass arrest of 13,152 Jews who are held at the Winter Velodrome in Paris before deportation to Auschwitz.

Preserving the History of the Atomic Age and the Manhattan Project - Non  Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly

1945 – Manhattan Project: The Atomic Age begins when the United States successfully detonates a plutonium-based test nuclear weapon near Alamogordo, New Mexico.

1948 – The city of Nazareth, revered by Christians as the hometown of Jesus, capitulates to Israeli troops during Operation Dekel, the largest offensive by Israeli forces in the north of Palestine in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Israeli aircraft bombed Saffuriya village & caused panic among the population; many of the villagers fled northwards toward Lebanon, others found shelter in Nazareth, leaving about 100 elderly people behind. Nazareth surrendered to the Israelis.

July 16–17, 1999 — “A Small Plane Is Missing” — The Death Of JFK Jr.

1999 – John F. Kennedy Jr., piloting a Piper Saratoga aircraft, dies when his plane crashes into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. His wife & sister-in-law are also killed

2014 – Deathday of Ruth Zinniker – The biodynamic movement owes so much to Ruth and the whole Zinniker family. Their farm has been a source of inspiration for thousands of people, many of whom came there to work as apprentices when they were young people and have gone on to be important leaders in the biodynamic movement. Ruth had a place in her heart for all these people and many others. She warmed the movement with her social gesture and her fiery enthusiasm. Thank you dear Ruth, thank you Zinniker family, for all you have given to help seed the biodynamic movement in North America.

Then I will be heading out for our next training 1-7 August 2023

After- Image 4

After-Image 1 & After-Image 2 & After-Image 3

Dear friends – Welcome to this last essay in the series based on our work with the After-Image during the ‘Fire in the Heart’ Christian Community Conference.

Anthroposophy asks us to live into the idea that there is a kind of reversal from what we see in the material world & what we experience in the Spiritual Worlds. This kind of Reversal is one of the reasons the Backwards Review or “Ruchschau” is recommended before sleep. In German Ruchschau, actually translates as ‘viewing movement’ which makes sense since the Etheric/Life-Body of Formative Forces is a Time-Body expressed thru rhythm & habits.

The Ruchschau is a potent alchemical force – a practical way of consciously entering into the spiritual world. It centers on taking memory pictures across the threshold into the spiritual world during sleep. We are more likely to then to receive a further after-image in the morning.

Dennis Klocek calls the backward reviewa practice of soul distillationThe backwards review trains us to repeatedly form and dissolve pictures with personal will. When done at the threshold of sleep, this practice amounts to willing life pictures across the abyss of dream and on into the spiritual world. In the morning I can briefly establish a link to them by listening to my heartbeat.”

If the backwards review is done regularly, it fortifies our Etheric/Life-Body, AND our dreams become more lucid

~Odilon Redon

Ok, deep breath – here we go: On Sunday 9 July 2023, I awoke in the twittering twilight of a ‘Driftless-Region’ dawn, with the fragment of a dream:

I was standing in a garden. The air was fragrant. I looked to my left, & saw a large raised bed of tall star-gazer lilies, open & dripping nectar. On my right, was a huge field of rioting roses, some wide-petaled & exposed – others, a tight red bud. I could see their scent like a misty vapor, rising & falling. In the distance, rays of light pierced thru the leaves & clustered flowers of the Linden trees, which formed a ring at the edge of my vision. Swirling in the beamed light were many swarming honeybees – their intense hum & the smell of the flowers made me light-headed.  I looked down at my feet, & dug my toes, which were painted red, into the rich black earth. I looked up at the big sky undulating with white clouds that were forming & re-forming. I was trying to make out the shapes when I awoke.  

I put the dream away, hurrying to pack-up & get ready for the Act of Consecration, in which I was serving on the left.

I was excited to put into practice Steiner’s Candle-Gazing Exercise which we had been working with in our group over the last 2 days, up close at the altar where I could see all 7 flames.

At first I experienced the usual after-image of the yellow flame becoming violet at the center with a kind of rainbow effect bringing in green & orange, the candlesticks flipping from white to black, the firing up of the purple aura outlining the flowers, the altar, the window, & the bodies of the Priests.  

When we got to the part in the service when the Priest makes the sign of the Cross horizontally over the Chalice, I experienced rays of yellow/violet/green light from the 6 candles streaming out – & arching into the tallest center candle. And from that center candle sprang, what I can only describe, perhaps, as a Salamander or Fire-Being of Light. It was shaped like a sea-horse, with bright primary red in the bottom circle ringed with green around the bottom edge, ringed upward with concentric circles of orange into yellow becoming misty white at the top, & at the bottom a white & grey wispy tail curling up like the sea-horse. I blinked & it plunged down into the altar. I felt it like a current in my body, piercing past me into the earth. Then it rose back up again – very fast – & disappeared into the ceiling.

I immediately broke out in a sweat. I felt my vision constricting & expanding at the same time. The light all around seemed overly bright, saturated with little rainbows that appeared in tiny squares, like pixels revealing something behind the light. I got concerned that I was going to faint. I worked to center myself, trying to control my breathing. I was dripping sweat.

While the Transubstantiation was happening, my vision was narrowing, the too bright light becoming velvet black, studded with flickering 4-pointed rainbow stars – like a Christmas card I said to myself.

The sound in the room became highly pitched. I consciously brought my attention down from my head into my throat – engaging my larynx – vibrating The Word within me. “O Christ, sick is the dwelling…O Christ, I confess…”

My vision was now fully inward, yet in the atmosphere I felt a pulsing, a kind of fireworks show – flashing like a coded message – it took me back to my dream. Was this forming & re-forming what the clouds were veiling?

(In retrospect, I woke up this morning thinking it was like the scene in the Bhagavata, when Arjuna opens Krishna’s sight to the eternal world…)

For a second I saw my Self falling like a tree in the forest, & I was concerned about where I would land?

When it came time for folks to come up to receive communion, I stood as the left-server at the end – the pillar reflecting the community. When the 1st round of folks had all lined up, I knew I should slip out the door to get some fresh air.

I sat down on the cool stone steps of The ‘Old Main’ Building where the Christian Community holds their affiliate services, swimming in sweat, pushing up the sleeves of my white vestments. I knew I had a few moments to catch my breath since there would be several rounds with the over 50 folks in the Church who would be taking communion.

Pat, a nurse practitioner saw me leave & came out to check on me. I turned & she gasped: ‘My dear, you are as white as your collar’. She touched my forehead & exclaimed: ‘O, & very clammy’. She sat down with me for a bit until I knew I was good to go back in to take up my position. There were still 2 more rounds to go, so I was able to receive the chalice – & O Lordy – The ‘wine’ was especially enlivening.

Afterward I felt strange about what happened. No one asked me anything, which I wondered about; but I was also relieved, since I wouldn’t have been able to speak about it.

Going around the circle at the closing Plenum, I became uneasy. I didn’t feel ready to share. Would people think I was crazy, or irresponsible, or deluded…? I was so uncomfortable.

It wasn’t until after we had driven the 4 hours home that I was able to talk a bit about it to CG, UVA & LDL. Their open-heartedness took the load right off me. And I remembered that I had felt that same kind of lifting during the service on Friday morning – Such wonder – & reverent gratitude!  And a reminder that my intention during the clay exercise was ‘Let go & let come’.

And now thru the digestion process, which always comes, for me, in having to put the experience into writing, deepening my persepctive, is able to live as an after-image of wholeness. Especially since it has become interwoven with the forces present during this time of my Natal Return, which always brings a profound retrospective.

Thank-you dear friends, for being part of my spiritual biography. May we all move ever closer to our highest destiny – forging the Wisdom of Love in Freedom.

Xox

~hag

Then I will be heading out for our next training 1-7 August 2023