my POD (Poem Of the Day)

~I hear echoes in vibration
Sculpting – unfolding – dematerializing –
Reforming forces
Rising in the sap of ancient trees
Up building
Where my tongue curls
Over words shot thru with bones of nimble Sun
& Crystalline structures that thrust the flowers
Into a cold field of refracted light
~hag

6 February 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Draco the dragon winds his way beneath the Little Dipper in the north shortly after sunset tonight. The Dragon’s head is marked by the asterism the Lozenge, which lies to the lower left (southeast) of the Litter Dipper’s bowl just after dark. There is a short dark-sky window in the hour between sunset and moonrise, so take advantage of it if you can.

If you look along the Dragon’s body as it curls beneath Ursa Minor, you’ll reach Thuban (Alpha [α] Draconis) west of the Lozenge. This star was once the North Star, sitting close to Earth’s Celestial Pole as the sky appeared to spin around it. That honor now belongs to Polaris in Ursa Minor — the change is due to the fact that Earth’s rotational axis wobbles, or precesses, over the course of about 25,000 years. As the axis moves, it points at various stars in the sky at different times, so our North Star can change over the course of thousands of years.

Sunrise: 7:04 A.M.
Sunset: 5:25 P.M.
Moonrise: 6:22 P.M.
Moonset: 7:55 A.M.
Moon Phase: Waning gibbous (99%)

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

356 -The Burning of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus AND the Birthday of Alexander the Great

1347 – Birthday of Dorothea of Montau, the guardian of the country of the Teutonic Knights & patron saint of Prussia. Born to a wealthy farmer from Holland, she was married at the age of 16 to the swordsmith Adalbrecht of Danzig (Gdańsk), an ill-tempered man in his 40s. Almost immediately after marrying she began to experience visions. Her husband had little patience with her spiritual experiences & abused her. Later, both made pilgrimages to Cologne, Aachen, & Einsiedeln. While Dorothea, with her husband’s permission, was on pilgrimage to Rome, he died in 1389. Of their nine children eight died. The surviving daughter, Gertrud, joined the Benedictines. In the summer of 1391 Dorothea moved to Marienwerder (Kwidzyn), & with the blessing of the Teutonic Order, established a hermit’s cell against the wall of the cathedral. She never left that cell for the rest of her life. Dorothea led a very austere life. Numerous visitors sought her advice & consolation, & she had visions & revelations

1748 – Birthday of Adam Weishaupt, German philosopher & founder of the Illuminati. After Pope Clement XIV’s suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773, Weishaupt became a professor of canon law, a position that was held exclusively by the Jesuits until that time. In 1775 Weishaupt was introduced to the empirical philosophy of Johann Georg Heinrich Fede. Both Feder &Weishaupt would later become opponents of Kantian idealism.

“At a time, however, when there was no end of making game of and abusing secret societies, I planned to make use of this human foible for a real and worthy goal, for the benefit of people. I wished to do what the heads of the ecclesiastical and secular authorities ought to have done by virtue of their offices…” ~ Adam Weishaupt

On 1 May 1776 Weishaupt founded the “Illuminati” in the Electorate of Bavaria. He adopted the name of “Brother Spartacus” within the order. The character of the society was an elaborate network of spies & counter-spies. Each isolated cell of initiates reported to a superior, whom they did not know: a party structure that was effectively adopted by some later groups.

Weishaupt was initiated into the Masonic Lodge “Theodor zum guten Rath“, at Munich in 1777. His project of “illumination, enlightening the understanding by the sun of reason, which will dispel the clouds of superstition and of prejudice” was an unwelcome reform. He used Freemasonry to recruit for his own quasi-masonic society, with the goal of “perfecting human nature” through re-education to achieve a communal state with nature, freed of government & organized religion. Presenting their own system as pure masonry, Weishaupt & Adolph Freiherr Knigge, who organized his ritual structure, greatly expanded the secret organization.

Weishaupt’s character & intentions have been variously assessed: from those such as the Abbé Barruel & John Robison who regarded him as a ‘human devil’ & saw his mission as one of malevolent destructiveness, to those who view him as a humane & benign, albeit willful, social reformer. Writing on this topic, Dr. Tony Page comments: “Weishaupt’s plan was to educate Illuminati followers in the highest levels of humanity and morality (basing his teachings on the supremacy of Reason, allied with the spirit of the Golden Rule of not doing to others what one would not wish done to oneself), so that if Illuminati alumni subsequently attained positions of significance and power (such as in the fields of education and politics), they could exert a benevolent and uplifting influence upon society at large. His project was utopian and naively optimistic, and he himself was certainly not without flaws of character – but neither he nor his plan was evil or violent in and of themselves. It is one of the deplorable and tragic ironies of history that a man who tried to inculcate virtue, philanthropy, social justice and morality has become one of the great hate-figures of 21st-century ‘conspiracy’ thinking.

After Weishaupt’s Order of Illuminati was banned & its members dispersed, it left behind no enduring traces of an influence, not even on its own former members, who went on in the future to develop in quite different directions.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobin_(politics)

From Steve Hale: Yet, there is clear evidence that after being banned in 1784, due to the direct intervention of Count Saint Germain, who exposed the aims of the Illuminati just before his own death on February 27th of that year, that Weishaupt simply regrouped and cloaked his movement in the religious veneer of the Dominicans, as the Jacobins, who influenced the French Revolution, which began in 1789, and had Robespierre as its autocratic leader in the so-called, ‘Reign of Terror’.

Maybe Tony Page doesn’t know this part, but this kind of strategic scheming in order to uphold the aims of Freemasonry has had a long history of its efforts within the political domain for the purpose of controlling the world ever since the French Revolution, which was all about upholding the aristocracy instead of the people. America had its own version of it with the Revolutionary War.

John Robison wrote the seminal book, “Proofs of a Conspiracy”, in 1798, about the aims of the Illuminati Order which Weishaupt had created in 1776. What Robison didn’t know because it was not possible to know at the time, was that Count St. Germain, an incarnation of Christian Rosenkreutz, had exposed the order in 1784.

1891 – Birthday of Walter Johannes Stein. Stein grew up in Vienna as the son of a lawyer & a Theosophist . He studied mathematics, physics & philosophy in Vienna & received his doctorate there in 1918 with a dissertation entitled Historical-Critical Contributions to the Development of Modern Philosophy , which he had developed with the help of Rudolf Steiner . He had previously participated in the First World War as an artillery officer .

In the same year he married & campaigned for the threefolding of the social organism with writings & lectures . After their failure, he was appointed to teach German & history at the first Waldorf school in Stuttgart. To this end, he was committed to the Anthroposophical Society in Germany, from 1923 to 1928 as a board member.

In 1932 he left the Waldorf School & moved to England to work for Daniel Nicol Dunlop’s research office at the World Energy Council, founded in 1924 . After his death in 1935 he published the monthly The Present Age until the beginning of World War II .

During the war he began to work as a non-medical practitioner – he had been involved in medicine since around 1920, he was also close friends with the anthroposophical doctor Ita Wegman & his school friend Eugen Kolisko in Vienna – and held public lectures on medicine until his death in 1957 & worked on a book on the basics & perspectives of spiritually advanced medicine.

I just re-read this amazing book!

The Women at the Tomb – A Festival of Resurrection

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Song-Circle with Velsum,

Eurythmy – & an artistic break out session

Holy Saturday 8 April 2023

1 pm – 3pm CT a hybrid event in-person at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago & on zoom

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/7050174041

Meeting ID: 705 017 4041

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map)
www.rschicago.org/donate

The Mystery of Ascension with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

This course is available on Zoom. You will be emailed a Zoom link closer to the time of the class. The course will be recorded and you will receive a link to watch it. Go to the Infinity Foundation web site to enroll

Course Number 231154 / Zoom
Date: Thursday, May 11
Time 7:00 – 8:30 PM CST
Cost $33/23 payment 10 days in advance

When we tune into the Cycle of the Seasons, we experience that as the Earth breathes out in the Springtime, the beings of nature reach upwards towards the heights. The longing of the human soul also strives to meet this mood of ascension, which attunes all life to the cosmic expanses.

Together we will gain insights in how to rise up to our Higher Self by participating in this harmonizing spring-dialogue between the worlds.

This reconnection between heaven & earth was prefigured in the story of Jacob’s ladder from the Old Testament. Through his dream of the ‘stairway to heaven’, Jacob gave us a prophecy in the picture of a golden ladder on which choirs of Angels traverse between the ‘Above & Below’. The Mystery of the Ascension of Christ, 40 days after the Resurrection at Easter, fulfilled Jacob’s Prophecy. Christ as the Being of Love became the living bridge connecting us to the eternal.

Through this workshop we will learn how humanity will also be transfigured in the fullness of time. The company of the Angelic Hierarchies wait for us, their younger siblings, to ascend, first of all in our thinking, to meet them in fellowship, as they work all the while by our sides.

~Vitae Sophia~A Whitsun Festival of United Soul Endeavor with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Velsum Voices & Eurythmy

Saturday 27 May 2023 a Hybrid event in person* & on zoom

We are called to redeem the ether spheres to create an Ecclesia, a chalice for The Sophia. Then the spirit flame can spread out to become what Steiner called a “World Whitsun”, which began in earnest at the Christmas Conference. The Whitsun Festival highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts, in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is especially strong now during this ‘pandemic’. Our groups striving to know Spiritual Science must work together as a community, to have the possibility to create a new culture where a sacrament is possible in every encounter. Our individual strength is enhanced by weaving our gifts together, kindling our social world in conscious community.

Zoom: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83663366670?pwd=L292UzlOR1pkZjBXSWpxK1B2b0o1dz09 Meeting ID: 836 6336 6670 / Passcode: 397593

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
*Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map) www.rschicago.org/donate