3 June 2019 – “Speaking with the Stars”: The New Moon near the horns of the sidereal Bull occurred predawn, at 4:02 am. CDT. In Her New phase, Bella Luna crosses the sky with the Sun veiled by our Day Star’s glare & so remains hidden, or as the ancients liked to say: The goddess is taking Her monthly initiation in the Underworld.

This is the time of year when Leo the Lion walks downward toward the West, on his way to departing into the sunset in early summer. Right after dark, look for Regulus, his forefoot, & Denebola in the Lions Tail. (featured at the Spring Equinox Full Moon)

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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

“Greek philosophy beautifully compared the human soul with a bee. The world of colour and light offers the soul honey which it brings with it into the higher world. The soul must spiritualize sense experience and carry it up into higher worlds.” ~Rudolf Steiner 1906

545 – Deathday of Saint Clotilde – patron saint of Les Andelys, Normandy. Wife of the Frankish king Clovis I, & princess of the kingdom of Burgundy. In 511, the Queen founded a convent for young girls. The natural spring there is known for healing skin diseases.Queen Clotilde’s cult made her the patron of queens, widows, brides & even those in exile. In Normandy she was venerated as guarding the lame & those who suffered violent death from ill-tempered husbands.

1924 – Deathday of Franz Kafka a German novelist & short story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work, which fuses elements of realism & the fantastic, typically features isolated protagonists faced by bizarre or surrealistic predicaments & incomprehensible social-bureaucratic powers, & has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, & absurdity. His best known works include “Die Verwandlung” (“The Metamorphosis”), Der Process (The Trial), & Das Schloss (The Castle). The term Kafkaesque has entered the English language to describe situations like those in his writing. Kafka was born into a middle-class, German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, today part of the Czech Republic. He trained as a lawyer, & after completing his legal education he was employed with an insurance company, forcing him to relegate writing to his spare time. Over the course of his life, Kafka wrote hundreds of letters to family & close friends, including his father, with whom he had a strained & formal relationship. He became engaged to several women but never married. He died in 1924 at the age of 40 from tuberculosis.

1943 – The founding of the Nachlassverein by Marie Steiner

1989 – Deathday of Ayatollah  Khomeini, Iranian religious leader & politician

2013 – The trial of United States Army private Chelsea Manning for leaking classified material to WikiLeaks begins in Fort Meade, Maryland

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POD (Poem Of the day)

~Look, I have light
In my eyes
& on my skin…
The star is warming…
And everything alive is turning
Into something else
Deep in the alchemical Heart
Of some annihilating
Ever creative fire
That is burning unnoticed
Waiting to touch
Me & you…
~hag

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 In the 10 Days…

Dear friends, as seekers on the path, have you ever felt utterly alone, overwhelmed, or even a bit lost? Rudolf Steiner speaks of this in ‘How to know Higher Worlds’ & in the ‘5^th Gospel’.

We have an opportunity, especially at this time of year, to recognize & acknowledge that uncomfortable feeling of isolation that can come from our striving; a mirroring of the experience of the disciples those 10 days between Ascension & Whitsun, when waiting feels like wrestling.

Since the time of Christ’s Ascension, humanity can now follow in the expansion of the one who has ascended to heaven. A path up to the heights has been prepared for us to tread.  There, we grow wings.  For this to happen we must let the ground of our soul become warm.  Just as air only rises when it becomes warm, so it is with our inner being.  If our soul does not become warm with enthusiasm, it does not rise to meet the heights. 

Meditation & prayer are ways of warming our “I” so that our soul can carry out its own ascension.

Not the type of prayer consisting of mere words recited by rote from the head—which does not warm the soul’s ground—& not the kind of prayer into which all sorts of wishes & desires make an appeal ‘for something.’ 

But a meditation, like the Foundation Stone, spoken from the heart, from the feeling human nature, which not only warms the soul of the individual, but adds light to the community of other souls who are also working to build the ‘Dodecahedron of Love’ with unselfish feeling. This allows our soul to ascend to where our True Self exists. 

The soul’s union with the spirit then comes to be; & only in this way does the human being become complete.  Our “I”, which until it is cultivated, merely hovers above us, but with this kind of warmth, we then become filled with the Higher Self. In this way during the 10 days, we can do our part to approach that sphere out of which the flames of Whitsun descend.

On the one hand, the Whitsun flames have warmth, & on the other hand, they possess light.  Their warmth must arise out of human hearts like a fire.  Then the Spirit responds out of the sphere of the Father, where The Christ & the Father are One. The light flame of the Spirit sinks down, joining the warmth flame of the praying heart.  The light flame from above answers to the warmth flame from below.  Only when we actively strive, with sufficient patience & endurance, working to become warm, may we hope for illumination. Becoming warm is our task, then illumination is the answer from heaven. 

As the gifts of light from a higher realm come towards us, Whitsun expands into the world – But only if our thinking can change into heart-thinking; which will have an effect on the whole activity of human life, softening the prevailing intellectual forces which are so rigid & dark, with a cold hard cleverness. 

Once the human being begins to truly think with warmth, then the Holy Spirit enters our heart-thinking, for then our True Higher Self thinks in us. 

Let us sit in the loneliness together during days, feeling the blessing of Christ’s Grace bestowed on us thru the Ascension. Knowing that in the future, which we are creating in each moment even now, a new thinking, a new culture, can finally come into being from the breath that touches us out of the Spirit of the coming Pentecost.

Move will be revealed…

Until soon ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

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Food For Thought @ Elderberries Sunday 9 June 2019, 6 pm – 8 pm

You’re invited to the first ever FOOD FOR THOUGHT – an evening for inter-generational connection and community re-forming with food and live music!

Join us for a POTLUCK DINNER & OPEN CONVERSATION

Sunday, June 9th, 6-8 pm, Elderberries Chicago 4251 N. Lincoln Ave

As our community grows and changes, we invite you to come reconnect and reflect on how we will continue to create meaningful relationships. Join us in a space striving to become a community cultural hub for social and creative experiences that are inclusive, wholesome and healing. Elderberries 3Fold Cafe needs our support to raise the rent and carry this mission forward into reality — will you stand with us, as a growing generation, and as a community in transition?

RSVP to uvarcher@gmail.com

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The ‘Easter Paradox’ Workshop

The 2nd Coming leading to a “World Whitsun”

Eurythmy: A – I stand for myself, U- I stand for humanity, M – I stand for Life

Social Sculpture: Are you an ‘Autumn Person’ or a ‘Spring-time Person’? Through Art, the bridge between science & spirit, we warm the ‘I’, to open the heart, in support of healthy community.

What are my gifts-What are my tools? How can I place them in right relationship within the social realm? How can I hone them to strengthen and enhance the world? Leading Thoughts & original art-collage projections with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Enter the Labyrinth of Vitae Sophia – Human hearts, once warmed, can rise up to meet the source of wisdom, like flowers turning toward the sun.  

Eurythmy: Living into the Foundation Stone of Love  – How can we take our individual Inner Whitsun & expand it, into what Steiner calls the “World Festival of Knowledge” a path leading from ‘Sprit Recollection’, to ‘Sprit Sensing’, to ‘Sprit Beholding’?

Read a compilation of research into this year’s interesting ‘Easter Paradox’ – A Cosmic Wake Up Call: The Easter Paradox of 2019

10 am – 1 pm Saturday 8 June 2019 -4804 Sewanee Road, Nashville, TN 37220. for more info. contact Cathy Green cgreen@grasslandaquatics.com

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‘Preparation, Illumination & Initiation’ – The Rosy Cross

Incorporating ‘The Golden Legend’, & the Plant vs. Human Kingdoms, To enliven our work with ‘The Rose Cross Meditation’.

Using our head, hands & heart we will enact this powerful Rosicrucian tool given to us by Rudolf Steiner, as a soul path of initiation, using imaginative cognition to build spiritual etheric forces; a Metamorphoses of Self & of World.

Friday 7 June 2019, 7-9pm 4804 Sewanee Road, Nashville, TN

also:

Sunday, June 9, 2019, Bonnie and Bill Rogers’ house,  12:00pm – 1:00pm Pot Luck lunch, 1:00pm – 5:00pm Presentation

Hazel Archer-Ginsberg – Founder of Reverse Ritual Understanding Anthroposophy through the Rhythms of the Year. Essayist, Lecturer, Poet, Trans-denominational Minister, Anthroposopher, working as the Festivals Coordinator & Council Member of the Chicago Rudolf Steiner Branch, The Traveling Speakers Program, & the Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society.