Thank you to all who joined us on the Longest Night of Winter Solstice for the presentation offered by Adriana Koulias. The recording & PDF of her Power Point will be posted soon on the Rudolf Steiner Branch Web Site
This POD (Poem Of the Day) was inspired by the night:
Come celebrate the unseen powers that sustain the world…
Pay reverence to what’s underneath:
The Holy column of support
The liminal benediction from above
The christened periphery
An awakened still-point within
Elusive, uncanny & darkly delicious…
Harken to inner vitality peaking
with thinking as smart as it gets
acting as if
every move is a dance…
It’s the Sun-@-Midnight time on the wheel of the year…
To participate in the grand Cosmic-cycle
this phase invites us to throb in luminescence
with soft vitality & active silence
peppering the cold acoustic with our hot breath…
Be a fluid bolt of ingenious reverence
Etherizing the righteous blending of grace & power
in communal service to the Divine “I” in every eye
As we imprint the Holy Nights with sublime intent…
~hag
22 December 2022 – “Speaking with the Stars”
Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.” ~Aldous Huxley
The 5th Night of Hanukkah
304 – Deathday of Saint Florian a Christian holy man, and the patron saint of Linz, Austria; chimney sweeps; soapmakers, & firefighters. The “Florian Principle” (known in German language areas as “Sankt-Florians-Prinzip”) is named after a somewhat ironic prayer to Saint Florian: “O heiliger Sankt Florian, verschon’ mein Haus, zünd’ and’re an”, equivalent to “O Holy St. Florian, please spare my house, set fire to another one”. This saying is used in German much like the English “not in my back yard“, when the speaker wants to point out that some person tries to get out of an unpleasant situation by an action that will put others in that very same situation. The name Florian is considered synonymous with fireman in the German speaking world. In some cases call for a fireman will actually be spoken as calls for Florian.
856 – Damghan earthquake kills an estimated 200,000 people, the sixth deadliest earthquake in recorded history
1808 – Ludwig van Beethoven conducts & performs in concert at the Theater an der Wien, Vienna, with the premiere of his Fifth Symphony, Sixth Symphony, Fourth Piano Concerto (performed by Beethoven himself) & Choral Fantasy (with Beethoven at the piano)
~Follow the Star~
Epiphany Friday 6 January 2023
Potluck: 5:30 pm – Program: 7 pm-8:30 pm
To cap the Holy Nights, we gather to co-create an Epiphany on the Birthday of Joan of Arc, calling in the aid of Christ-Sophia-Michael, for an art-full community envisioning of the New Year 2023
Eurythmy with Jan Rank
Singing with Velsum Voices
Leading Thoughts with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg
Doors Open at 5:45 pm – Please Bring Food & Drink to Share
$10 more or less Love Donation Encouraged
For more info contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator Hazel Archer-Ginsberg
Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society
4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618 (map)
https://www.rschicago.org/happenings/calendar
www.rschicago.org/donate
“…the Divine “I” in every eye…” , from your poem. That seems to encapsulate fully the sense of Sight for me. Not just what we perceive with our eyes, but energizing that with the Life force that comes from the Divine. Hope I’ll remember this phrase when we come to our study of the sense of Sight.
And remember as you “follow the Star”, that the Star of Bethlehem was Zarathustra, whose mission was to point us to the Sun Being coming to Earth; in fact, every star in our heavens is a spiritual being, and not just a clump of matter, as natural science might claim.
How funny, right before I came to see your post, I was just contemplating the 3 Magi, former students of Zarathustra in their last lives following that star that would lead them back to their teacher born anew as the Matthew/Solomon Jesus child. And I was thinking how the Sun is a star & a planet…
A star and a planet … that will evolve into a zodiac, and it’s all part of the ability to make a sacrifice:
“Just as man receives life into himself, so does this Being radiate life through the whole of our universe. This is the Being Who has the power to make the great sacrifice and Who is inscribed in the Zodiac as the Being Who for the sake of our world offers Himself in sacrifice” GA 102, Lect. 2.
Yes, it’s such a beautiful revelation – that we all must become little Suns…
It is the Book of Daniel that describes these 3 Magi in their former incarnations as disciples, along with Daniel, of the Chaldean teacher of wisdom, Ashpenaz, who bore the personality of Zarathustra.
The Choice Young Men
1 In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. 2 The Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the vessels of the house of God; and he brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his god, and he brought the vessels into the treasury of his god.
3 Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, the chief of his officials, to bring in some of the sons of Israel, including some of the royal family and of the nobles, 4 youths in whom was no defect, who were good-looking, showing intelligence in every branch of wisdom, endowed with understanding and discerning knowledge, and who had ability for serving in the king’s court; and he ordered him to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans. 5 The king appointed for them a daily ration from the king’s choice food and from the wine which he drank, and appointed that they should be educated three years, at the end of which they were to enter the king’s personal service. 6 Now among them from the sons of Judah were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. 7 Then the commander of the officials assigned new names to them; and to Daniel he assigned the name Belteshazzar, to Hananiah Shadrach, to Mishael Meshach and to Azariah Abed-nego.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Daniel+1&version=NASB1995
Thus, we have Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, the transformed Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, reincarnating at the time of the Solomon Jesus, and seeing the Star that would lead them to Bethlehem. Their names are immortalized today as Balthasar, Caspar, and Melchior. They brought the gifts for the child.
Yet, it was Daniel, who was renamed Belteshazzar, who had the visions and prophecies. As the fourth, what role and place might she/he have had at the time of the Zarathustra Jesus?
Etherizing the Night is so appropriate for this kind of contemplation.