10 November 2018 – “Speaking with the Stars”: The “star” glowing upper left of the crescent Moon during & just after dusk is Saturn.
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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
461 – Birthday of Pope Leo, the first pope to be called “the Great”. He is perhaps best known for having met Attila the Hun in 452, persuading him to turn back from his invasion of Italy. He is also a Doctor of the Church, most remembered theologically for issuing the Tome of Leo, a document which was a major foundation to the debates of the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon which elucidated the orthodox definition of Christ’s being as the hypostatic union of two natures, divine & human, united in one person.
1483 – Birthday of Martin Luther, German monk & priest, leader of the Protestant Reformation
1493 – Birthday of Paracelsus “In order to understand Paracelsus, one must look at the basic character of his work as a doctor and as a philosopher, and grasp him as a theosophist, as he combined these both soul characters with each other. This personality was uniform. With brilliant look, he tried to grasp the construction of the world edifice. His surprised sight looked up at the secrets of the starry heaven, became engrossed in the construction of the earth and in particular in the construction of the human being himself. This brilliant sight penetrated also into the secrets of the spiritual life. He was also a theosophist, while he tried to enclose the nature of the astronomical knowledge and at the same time the nature of anthropology, the doctrine of the human being in connection with the doctrine of all living beings. Nothing was mere theory in him, everything was immediate in such a way that it was bent on practise, that he wanted to use all that he knew for the welfare, the spiritual and physical health of the human being. This gives his work, his thinking, and investigations the big, immense unity. This makes him appear as sharply carved from one single piece of wood. Thus, he stands before us as an original, elementary personality.” see The Riddles of the World and Anthroposophy by Rudolf Steiner.
1759 – Birthday of Friedrich Schiller, German poet, playwright, & historian. From Rudolf Steiner in Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies – Volume VI “I should like to speak today about an individual who was incarnated about the second century A.D. in Rome, as it then was, and who with great sensitiveness of perception had witnessed the willing martyrdom suffered by the Christians in their efforts to promulgate their cause in the Roman Empire. This individual had also witnessed the terrible injustices and the many forms of depravity and corruption which were so rife in the Roman Empire at that time. Numberless manifestations of Good and Evil were witnessed and experienced by this individual. With the methods of spiritual research which enable such happenings to be recognised, we find this individual drawn into the tumultuous happenings which at that time, during the second half of the second century A.D., were experienced in the Roman Empire in connection with the spread of Christianity. There is something extremely moving about this individual when the eye of spirit is directed upon him in the way I explained last time with reference to other individuals in their repeated earthly lives.
In this individual who lived to a very great age and who had witnessed so much Good in deeds of supreme sacrifice in the sphere of germinating Christianity, and so much that was evil and bad in Roman life at that time, there arose a kind of realisation which was also a question: Where is the balance, the mean? Is there only the wholly Good and the wholly Evil in the world?
With the consciousness of Imagination and Inspiration one can follow quite clearly how this individual was subsequently reborn in the eleventh century, as a woman. The experiences undergone in the life as a woman levelled out the hard, steel-like angularity of soul which had developed during the Roman incarnation when he had reached a great age. This trait was softened and mellowed and became a faculty of inner, thoughtful contemplation of Good and Evil. This individual then came again to the Earth in the eighteenth century and was born as the German poet, Friedrich Schiller.
And now study Schiller’s life and see how it develops, striving to find a middle condition, a balance, a mean. Schiller needed Goethe before he could get rid of all that had remained in him from the conviction that there is only Good, there is only Evil. Read Schiller’s dramas, and you will understand them if you think of his earlier incarnation.
What circumstances lie behind Schiller’s life and outlook? The experiences he had undergone in the Roman incarnation continued to be alive within him, but he had subsequently incarnated as a woman in the Middle Ages. And then, in his life between death and a new birth, it was in the Saturn sphere that the most significant development of his karma took place.”
1939 – Deathday of Frederick Eckstein, an Austrian polymath, theosophist, Anthroposophist, & friend & co-worker of Sigmund Freud. Emil Molt states: ‘ Frederick Eckstein was the benefactor of Bruckner and Hugo Wolf, indeed the right arm of Bruckner, taking care that affairs went smoothly. He was a world traveller, had mastered Jui-jitsu and taught himself all sorts of difficult tricks. The story went around that he had trained himself to jump off a fast moving train without getting hurt. He too, was a highly gifted mathematician and a learned man in many respects.’
Also the husband of fellow theosophist & writer Bertha Diener, Eckstein’s penchant for occultism first became evident as a member of a vegetarian group which discussed the doctrines of Pythagoras & the Neo-Platonists in Vienna at the end of the 1870s. His esoteric interests later extended to German & Spanish mysticism, the legends surrounding the Templars & the freemasons, Wagnerian mythology & oriental religions. In 1886, in the week after the tragedy at Mayerling, in which Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, & his mistress were found dead in mysterious circumstances, he & his friend, the composer Anton Bruckner (for whom he also served as private secretary) traveled to the monastery of Stift Heiligenkreuz to ask the abbot there for details of what happened.
He introduced C. G. Harrison to Rudolf Steiner, the writer of ‘Transcendental Universe, Six Lectures on Occult Science, Theosophy and the Catholic Faith’. Most spiritual impulses at work today can be traced back to the nineteenth century explosion of esotericism. In The Transcendental Universe, one of the most enigmatic and thought-provoking works of the period, C. G. Harrison, a mysterious and unknown figure, examines Theosophy from an esoteric Christian standpoint and separates the true gnosis from the false. With great personal courage, he makes public much esoteric knowledge that had remained hidden within the occult orders. Self-initiated and unaffiliated, he speaks authoritatively on: the secret history of Spiritualism and Theosophy; the nature of initiates, esoteric societies, and secret brotherhoods; occult science; the true nature of God, matter, evil, and the evolution of consciousness; the angelic hierarchies: the Archangel Michael, Beelzebub, and the War in Heaven; the coming sixth epoch, and more. Previously known only to esotericists, this important work is now made available to the general public ninety-nine years after its original publication.
1940 – The Vrancea earthquake strikes Romania killing an estimated 1,000 & injuring approximately 4,000 more
1975 – The 729-foot-long freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald sinks during a storm on Lake Superior, killing all 129 crew on board.
1975 – Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the United Nations General Assembly passes Resolution 3379, determining that Zionism is a form of racism
1983 – Bill Gates introduces Windows 1.0
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POD (Poem Of the Day)
I spin & dive thru smoke
I smash the tail of false history
Opening the way to change
& make the shadow dance
~hag
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Be like Water:
“Water is sometimes sharp and sometimes strong, sometimes acid and sometimes bitter, sometimes sweet and sometimes thick or thin, sometimes it is seen bringing hurt or pestilence, sometime health-giving, sometimes poisonous.
It allows change into as many natures as are the different places through which it passes. And as the mirror changes with the colour of its subject, so it alters with the nature of the place, becoming noisome, laxative, astringent, sulfurous, salty, incarnadined, mournful, raging, angry, red, yellow, green, black, blue, greasy, fat or slim.
Sometimes it starts a conflagration, sometimes it extinguishes one; is warm and is cold, carries away or sets down, hollows out or builds up, tears or establishes, fills or empties, raises itself or burrows down, speeds or is still; is the cause at times of life or death, or increase or privation, nourishes at times and at others does the contrary; at times has a tang, at times is without savor, sometimes submerging the valleys with great floods.
In time and with water, everything changes” ~Leonardo da Vinci
‘She focused on the words: “He gives moisture to the dead.” It was a gift to the shadow world – tears. They would be sacred beyond a doubt. Nothing on this planet had so forcefully hammered into here the ultimate value of water. Not the water-sellers, not the dried skins of the natives, nor the stillsuits or the rules of water discipline. Here there was a substance more precious than all others – it was life itself and entwined all around with symbolism and ritual.
Water reflects the truth’. from Dune ~Frank Herbert
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The Changing Nature of Childhood Health & Illness
Lecture: Dr. Thomas Cowan, M.D.
Nov 15, 2018 — Morning Lecture (WE ARE LOOKING FOR SOMEONE TO BE WITH THE CHILDREN DURING THE LECTURE FOR $) 10:30am—12noon; Location: 4251 N. Lincoln Ave. Chicago, IL 60618 (Elderberry Cafe, next to Rudolf Steiner Branch); childcare available for additional $5 cash donation at day of event as needed. Click link below for tickets and more info.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-changing-nature-of-childho…
7:00 pm—8:30pm; Location: 2135 W. Wilson Ave. Chicago, IL 60625 (The Christian Community Church) Click link below for tickets and more info.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-changing-nature-of-childho…
Please join us in welcoming world-renowned doctor and author Dr. Thomas Cowan, M.D. from San Francisco, CA as he describes his research and experience with today’s children and their health, based on his newest book, Vaccines, Autoimmunity and the Changing Nature of Childhood Illness.We are providing two opportunities to hear Dr. Cowan speak. We will provide childcare for the morning session in an adjoining space to the lecture, to help parents of young children attend. Childcare will not be available for the evening lecture.
Dr Thomas Cowan M.D. is board-certified in anthroposophic medicine. He is a founding board member of the Weston A Price Foundation and is author ofThe Fourfold Path to Healing,a companion book to Nourishing Traditionsby Sally Fallon. He writes the “Ask the Doctor” column in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts. He is author of Human Heart, Cosmic Heart(A Doctor’s Quest to Understand, Treat and Prevent Cardiovascular Disease). He has three grown children and currently practices medicine in San Francisco where he resides with his wife Lynda Smith Cowan.
This series is presented and sponsored by:
Waldorf Learning Support
http://arcturus.info
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Friday 30 November 2018 – 7 – 9 pm
HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT: THE MYSTERY OF THE APOCALYPSE with Margaret Shipman
‘Apocalypse’ today almost always means war, but its primary definition is REVELATION. the Book of Revelations seems warlike until we begin to delve into the messages, seals, trumpets and bowls as stages of initiation! We will explore the complexities of this amazing book of the Bible by taking a journey through the 7-pointed star and the Apocalyptic Seals of the 1907 Munich Conference.
AND:
Saturday 1 December 2018 – 10 am – noon
THE CHRISTMAS CONFERENCE
How can we begin to understand the importance of The Christmas Conference of 1923/24? Can it be understood as so profound to consider it a second turning point of time?
We will take a journey with the foundation stone, beginning with the laying of the first stone, a physical one, for the first Goetheanum, in 1913. Then — through the phoenix experience of the 1922/23 fire, and its journey back to earth a year later—we find it again, as a foundation stone meditation planted into our hearts. The introduction of The Foundation Stone Meditation was a central focus of the Christmas Conference week. It was one of three great gifts which Rudolf Steiner brought at this time as powerful spiritual tools for human evolution.
Margaret Shipman has been a member of the Anthroposophical Society for 30 years and considers the work of Rudolf Steiner to be the core of her life. In 2002 she started a national study group for anthroposophy – ‘Geographically Engaged Members Studygroup’, or G.E.M.S. She is also a cellist and pianist and spent 36 years repairing and making instruments of the violin family. She co-authored the book titled Violin Restoration with her mentor, Hans Weisshaar, who was in the second-ever Waldorf class and met Rudolf Steiner as a child.
For more info. contact Hazel Archer Ginsberg
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Wed. 5 December 2018 CRC Zoom Call 7:15pm – 8:30pm – Reincarnation & Karma
with special guest: Dr. Ross Rentea: “A presentation from the karma and the work together of Rudolf Steiner and Ita Wegman”
Steiner considered I. Wegman a true “friend”, companion over many incarnations, and invaluable helper. In her incarnation in the 20th century she collaborated with him in writing a book, asked decisive questions that led to the Christmas Foundation Conference, the First Class, and more. We will look especially at their working together on the “Fundamentals of Therapy” a work on which R. Steiner put finishing touches until hours before crossing the threshold.
Ross Rentea, MD, has been practicing anthroposophical medicine in Chicago for 35 years. He is a member of the Anthroposophical Society(1972), the First Class of the School for Spiritual Science(1974), the Physicians Association for Anthroposophic Medicine (1984) and the Christian Community (1976). He has served on the Board of the American College of Anthroposophic Medicine. He has lectured nationally and internationally, and published and written numerous scientific research articles and recently (2017) the book “Childhood Illnesses and Immunizations”. Besides anthroposophical medicine his current interests are in better understanding the seven Rhythms of the Foundation Stone. He is a co-founder of the True Botanica Company www.truebotanica.com and the Lili Kolisko Institute for Anthroposophical Medicine www.koliskoinstitute.org .
For more info. contact Hazel Archer Ginsberg
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Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society, 4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618 (map) Check out our Web site! Chicago, IL (Anthroposophical Society in America)
The newly renovated (& lazured) Elderberries 3-Fold Space is currently available for rental on PEER SPACE for classes, events, meetings, retreats, art exhibits, family parties, etc…