Earnest Strivings

18 September 2018 – “Speaking with the Stars“: Asteroid hunters have a great opportunity to spot Vesta in the vicinity of one of the Milky Way’s brightest star-forming regions this week. Vesta resides now in western Sagittarius, a region currently hosting the major planet Saturn.

Vesta-Roma.jpg

Vesta is the virgin goddess of the hearth, home, & family in Roman religion. She was rarely depicted in human form, & was often represented by the fire of her temple. Entry to her temple was permitted only to her priestesses, the Vestals, who tended the sacred fire at the hearth in her temple. She was the daughter of Saturn & Ops, & sister of Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto, Juno, & Ceres. Her closest Greek equivalent is Hestia.

Vesta  is a few degrees southwest of Saturn &  the Lagoon Nebula (M8) tonight.

Although autumn arrives with the equinox this coming weekend, the Summer Triangle remains prominent in the evening sky. Look high in the west after darkness falls & your eyes will fall on the brilliant star Vega in the constellation Lyra the Harp. Vega is the brightest member of the Triangle.

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Duncan Regehr.

Anything you dream is fiction, and anything you accomplish is science, the whole history of mankind is nothing but science fiction. ~ Ray Bradbury

Lectures by Rudolf Steiner on this date

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Dierec Bouts the Older

900- Feast Day of Saint Richardis, was the Holy Roman Empress, born in Alsace. She married Charles the Fat & was crowned with him in Rome by Pope John VIII The marriage was childless.

Charles’ reign was marked by internal and external strife, caused primarily by the constant plundering of Norman raiders on the northern French coast. By 887, Charles appears to have succumbed to fits of madness. During this crisis, Richardis attempted to rule in her husband’s stead, but was unsuccessful. In an effort to bring down the over-powerful and hated Liutward, Charles’ archchancellor, he & Richardis were accused by Charles of adultery. Charles asserted that their marriage was unconsummated & demanded a divorce.

In a bid to assure him of her innocence, she finally assented to an ordeal by fire. Barefoot, & wearing a shirt covered in wax, the flames nevertheless refused to touch her. Disheartened by her husband’s continued mistrust, Richardis left the imperial palace & wandered into the forest. There she was visited by an angel, who ordered her to found a convent in a certain spot, which a bear would indicate to her. In Val d’Eleon, at the banks of the river, she saw a bear scratching in the dirt. There she built the abbey of Andlau.

An alternative legend recounts that Richardis found the mother bear grieving over her dead cub in the forest. When Richardis held the cub, it returned to life. After the working of this miracle, both mother & cub remained devoted to the saint for the rest of their lives.

1793 – The first cornerstone of the Capitol building is laid by George Washington

Image result for 1812 – The 1812 Fire of Moscow

1812 – The 1812 Fire of Moscow dies down after destroying more than three-quarters of the city. Napoleon returns from the Petrovsky Palace to the Moscow Kremlin, spared from the fire.

Image result for 1850 – The Fugitive Slave Act

1850 – The Fugitive Slave Act passed by the United States Congress as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave-holding interests & Northern Free-Soilers. It required that all escaped slaves were, upon capture, to be returned to their masters & that officials & citizens of free states had to cooperate in this law. Abolitionists nicknamed it the “Bloodhound Law” for the dogs that were used to track down runaway slaves

Image result for 1851 – First publication of The New-York Daily Times

1851 – First publication of The New-York Daily Times, which later becomes The New York Times

Image result for 1873 – Panic of 1873: The U.S. bank Jay Cooke & Company declares bankruptcy,

1873 – Panic of 1873: The U.S. bank Jay Cooke & Company declares bankruptcy, triggering a series of bank failures.

Image result for 1882 – The Pacific Stock Exchange opens.

1882 – The Pacific Stock Exchange opens.

Image result for 1895 – Booker T. Washington delivers the “Atlanta compromise” address

1895 – Booker T. Washington delivers the “Atlanta compromise” address. The agreement was that Southern blacks would work &submit to white political rule, while Southern whites guaranteed that blacks would receive basic education & due process in law. Blacks would not agitate for equality, integration, or justice, & Northern whites would fund black educational charities

Image result for 1906 – A typhoon with tsunami kills an estimated 10,000 people in Hong Kong

1906 – A typhoon with tsunami kills an estimated 10,000 people in Hong Kong

William-Adolphe Bouguereau

1909 – 1st mention by Rudolf Steiner of the two Jesus Children. GA 114

Image result for 1910 – In Amsterdam, 25,000 demonstrate for general suffrage

1910 – In Amsterdam, 25,000 demonstrate for general suffrage

Image result for 1916 – 1st lecture by Rudolf Steiner on the Mexican Mysteries

1916 – 1st lecture by Rudolf Steiner on the Mexican Mysteries

“…Now at a certain time a being was born in Central America who set himself a definite task within this culture. The old, original inhabitants of Mexico linked the existence of this being with a definite idea or picture. They said he had entered the world as the son of a virgin who had conceived him through super earthly powers, inasmuch as it was a feathered being from the heavens who impregnated her. When one makes researches with the occult powers at one’s disposal, one finds that the being to whom the ancient Mexicans ascribed a virgin birth was born in the year 1 A.D. and lived to be thirty-three years old. These facts emerge when, as stated, one examines the matter with occult means. This being set himself a quite specific task.

At this same time in Central America another man was born who was destined by birth to become a high initiate of Taotl. This man had in his previous earthly incarnations been initiated as described above and through the fact that he had many, many times repeated the procedure involving the excision of the stomach, which has been described to you and which there is no need to recapitulate, he had been gradually equipped with a lofty earthly and super-earthly knowledge. This was one of the greatest black magicians, if not the greatest ever to tread the earth; he possessed the greatest secrets that are to be acquired on this path. He was faced directly with a momentous decision as the year 30 A.D. approached, namely whether or not, as a single human individual, to become so powerful through continuous initiation that he would come to know a certain basic secret. Through knowledge of this secret he would have then been able to give such a shock and impetus to the coming evolution of man on earth that humanity in the fourth and fifth post-Atlantean epochs would have been thrown into terrible darkness, with the result that what the ahrimanic powers had striven for in these epochs could have come into existence.

Then a conflict began between this super-magician and the being to whom a virgin birth was ascribed, and one finds from one’s research that it lasted for three years. The being of the virgin birth bore a name that, when we try to transpose it into our speech approximates Vitzliputzli. He is a human person who, among all these beings who otherwise only moved about in spirit form and could only be perceived through atavistic clairvoyance, in actual fact became man, so the story goes, through his virgin birth. The three year conflict ended when Vitzliputzli was able to have the great magician crucified, and not only through the crucifixion to annihilate his body but also to place his soul under a ban, by this means rendering its activities powerless as well as its knowledge. Thus the knowledge assimilated by the great magician of Taotl was killed. In this way Vitzliputzli was able to win again for earthly life all those souls who, as indicated, had already received the urge to follow Lucifer and leave the earth. Through the mighty victory he had gained over the powerful black magician, Vitzliputzli was able to imbue men again with the desire for earthly existence and successive incarnations.

Nothing survived from these regions of what might have lived on if the mysteries of Taotl had borne fruit. The forces left over from the impulse that lived in these mysteries survived only in the etheric world. They still exist subsensibly, belonging to what would be seen if, in the sphere of the spirit, one could light a paper over a solfatara. The forces are there under the covering of ordinary life, which is like the surface crust of a volcano.

So, on one side, what came from the inspirer of Genghis Khan entered into the forming of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch and, on the other, what worked on as the ghost or spectre of the events that had taken place in the Western Hemisphere. No more than a feeble echo was left of this when the Europeans discovered America. But it is even known in ordinary history that many Europeans who set foot on Mexican-American soil were murdered by the decadent priesthood, which, though no longer as evil as in earlier times, still cut out the stomach, as I described. This was the fate of many Europeans who trod the soil of Mexico after the discovery of America, and the fact is even known to history.

In Vitzliputzli these people revered a Sun being who was born of a virgin, as I have said. When one investigates it occultly, one finds that he was the unknown contemporary in the Western Hemisphere of the Mystery of Golgotha. One can, indeed, also describe these things superficially as modern people like to do to avoid giving pain. If, however, one desires real knowledge, the one must cast a fleeting glance upon these concrete facts of the past, as we have done today. Yes, when we regard this modern human soul, we see how below, in the direction of the subsensible, and how above, in the direction of the super-sensible, it is exposed to great and serious dangers, and how forces play in that remain unknown. Yet it is good that they remain unknown because it is only in this way that the fifth post-Atlantean epoch can develop. The veil must be lifted now so that consciousness may be added to what still remains unconsciousness, because enough time has passed since America has been discovered. Otherwise, if consciousness did not gradually enter, these forces would become paramount, and the relatively beneficent conditions of the time of unconsciousness would turn around and become the curse of humanity. After all, many things, which in the way they have made their appearance have proved a benefit, bear the inherent tendency to become a curse to mankind.” ~Rudolf Steiner

Image result for 1919 – The Netherlands gives women the right to vote

1919 – The Netherlands gives women the right to vote

Image result for 1927 – The Columbia Broadcasting System goes on the air

1927 – The Columbia Broadcasting System goes on the air

1936 – Deathday of Konrad Burdach, author of Faust and Moses

Image result for Lord Haw-Haw 

1939 – The Nazi propaganda broadcaster known as Lord Haw-Haw begins transmitting.

1940 – The British liner SS City of Benares is sunk by German submarine U-48; those killed include 77 child refugees

1943 – The Jews of Minsk are massacred at Sobibór

1944 –  The British submarine HMS Tradewind torpedoes Jun’yō Maru, 5,600 killed

Image result for 1947 – The National Security Council & the Central Intelligence Agency

1947 – The National Security Council & the Central Intelligence Agency are established in the United States under the National Security Act

Image result for 1960 – Fidel Castro arrives in New York 

1960 – Fidel Castro arrives in New York City as the head of the Cuban delegation to the United Nations

1962 – Deathday of Therese Neumann, mystic, stigmatic

1988 – End of pro-democracy uprisings in Myanmar after a bloody military coup. Thousands, mostly monks & civilians (primarily students), are killed

Image result for 2001 – First mailing of anthrax letters

2001 – First mailing of anthrax letters from Trenton, New Jersey in the 2001 anthrax attacks.

Image result for Saffron Revolution

2007 – Buddhist monks join anti-government protesters in Myanmar, starting what some call the Saffron Revolution

***

Valerie Sjodin

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~my words are forged in star-fire
that i may speak the language of earth
a sacrifice on the altar of angels…
~hag

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THE “AMERICAN” or “THREEFOLD” VERSE by Rudolf Steiner given to Ralph Courtney, a pioneer of Anthroposophy in North America for the Threefold Group in New York City, which later established the Threefold Community in Spring Valley (now Chestnut Ridge). This verse for the American spirit speaks of the inner unity of human beings and of support from the spiritual world for our efforts:

May our feeling penetrate to the center of our hearts –
And seek, in love, to unite with those who share our goals,
And with the spirits who look down benevolently on our hearts earnest strivings. Sending us strength from realms of light, to illuminate our love.

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Veil Painting Workshop with David Dozier 773-627-0060

Friday Sept. 21, 2018, 7 -9pm, Saturday Sept. 22, 10 am – 5 pm, Sunday Sept. 23, 10 am -1pm

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Friday 28 September 2018 – COMMUNITY MEETING at 7 pm with Ann Burfeind 

Checking in on our local Anthroposophical Initiatives:

Are you a Waldorf Teacher, Branch Member, Christian Community Member, Involved with Anthroposophical Medicine, or Bio-Dynamics, Interested in serving the Being of Chicago…? Please come & bring a report, of the new school, or your Spiritual Scientific research…ETC…

We will also have a review of the How We Will Forum2

All in the spirit of Michaelmas

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AGM 2018 Friday, Oct 5 – Sunday, Oct 7 in New Orleans, Louisiana

First Grace United Methodist Church 3401 Canal Street, New Orleans (Check out their amazing history here!)

Pre-conference: Thursday, Oct 4: Living in the Branches National Branch and Group Gathering

Free event! $25 lunch/refreshments fee.

Some travel scholarships available.
Email with questions.

National Youth Conference (Wed pm, Thurs, Fri am October 3-4-5):
MY HEART’S VOCATION: Finding Ourselves within Community

Click here for Youth Conference schedule and registration!

$250 Early Bird (until September 5th), $275 Standard

$375 Sponsorship (supports financial assistance) $60 Youth

Includes Friday light reception, snacks, beverages, and Sunday light brunch! Limited financial assistance available. Email to find out more. 

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER ONLINE!

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