20 May 2018 – Astro-Weather: Venus crossed the border from Taurus the Bull into Gemini the Twins yesterday, & tonight She slides north of the Beehive Cluster.
Sun in Bull: Pentecost by Jonathan Hilton
Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
“Love is the final end of the world’s history, the Amen of the universe” ~Novalis
Jim Whalen
Pentecost (50 Days after Easter) Whitsunday:
- Festival of United Soul Endeavor & Spirit Community
- Festival of the Higher Self & the Universal Human Being
- Festival of the Holy Spirit
- Festival of Flowers
- Festival of the human being released from materialism
- Festival of the purified astral body
Martin Bridge
World Bee Day – Birthday in 1734 of Anton Janša, the pioneer of beekeeping.The purpose of this international day is to acknowledge the role of bees & other pollinators for our ecosytem
First Council of Nicaea
325 – The First Council of Nicaea is formally opened, starting the first ecumenical council of the Christian Church. Its main accomplishments were settlement of the Christological issue of the divine nature of God the Son & His relationship to God the Father, the construction of the first part of the Nicene Creed, & establishing uniform observance of the date of Easter, & the promulgation of early canon law.
1497 – John Cabot sets sail from Bristol, England, on his ship Matthew looking for a route to the west.
1498 – Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama discovers the sea route to India when he arrives at Calicuta India.
1570 – Cartographer Abraham Ortelius issues Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the first modern atlas.
1609 – Shakespeare’s sonnets are illicitly published in London, by Thomas Thorpe.
1631 – The city of Magdeburg in Germany is seized by forces of the Holy Roman Empire & most of its inhabitants massacred, in one of the bloodiest incidents of the Thirty Years’ War.
1645 – Yangzhou massacre: the 10-day massacre of 900,000 residents of the city of Yangzhou, part of the Transition from Ming to Qing.
1802 – By the Law of 20 May 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte reinstates slavery in the French colonies, revoking its abolition in the French Revolution.
1813 – Napoleon Bonaparte leads his French troops into the Battle of Bautzen in Saxony, Germany, against the combined armies of Russia and Prussia. The battle ends the next day with a French victory
1862 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln signs the Homestead Act into law
1883 – Krakatoa begins to erupt; the volcano explodes three months later, killing more than 36,000 people.
1891 –The first public display of Thomas Edison’s prototype kinetoscope.
1902 – Cuba gains independence from the United States.
1940 –The first prisoners arrive at a new concentration camp at Auschwitz.
1956 – In Operation Redwing, the first United States airborne hydrogen bomb is dropped over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean
1983 – First publications of the discovery of the HIV virus that causes AIDS in the journal Science by Luc Montagnier.
1989 – The Chinese authorities declare martial law in the face of pro-democracy demonstrations, setting the scene for the Tiananmen Square massacre.
***
Elaine Welker
POD (Poem Of the Day)
~To my body I gave the power of my heart
Bee love & create I said
Beat within the grace of the world’s rhythms
A radiant sun
In tune with the music of becoming
A ferry thru dark churning waves
An oasis flowing with fresh waters
On the high tide of blessings
To open my head
to pure thought unfolded
~hag
***
Whitsun Contemplation
At the Turning Point of Time the ego or “I” of Zarathustra had to leave the body of Jesus at the Baptism, to allow the Christ Being to enter; appearing 1st like a dove above the head of John the Baptist as the voice of the father god was heard. Only the “I” of the Nathan Jesus, which was pure, could bear the Christ, & only for 3 years.
Knowing this we may ask: How can The Christ live in us without driving out our “I” or completely extinguishing our individuality with its cosmic forces?
We are able to strive to live into the ideal of ‘Not I, but Christ in me’, only because Christ sent the Holy Spirit, which enables the human “I” to receive the Christ Being fully. Rudolf Steiner tells us: “Christ wanted to dwell amongst humankind, but He did not want to obscure the emerging ego-consciousness of human beings. He had done this once in Jesus, in whom from the Baptism onwards a consciousness of the Son lived in place of his ego-consciousness. But this was not something that was to take place in people of future times. In the case of such people the ego was to be able to rise up in full consciousness, and yet the Christ could dwell with them…so Christ sent that divine being who does not extinguish ego-consciousness, that humanity might be able to retain their ego-consciousness and have the Christ dwell within them.” (GA 214, 30 July 1922)
In the ‘Farewell Discourses’ from St. John’s Gospel, Christ Himself characterizes this coming of the Spirit of Truth: “But the Comforter, the Holy Spirit Whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and awaken your memory of all that I have said to you” (John 14:26)
In the 5th Gospel, Steiner talks about how for 40 days after the Resurrection, The Christ was able to provide secret teachings to the disciples about the mysteries of the spiritual world, together with its significance not only for the evolution of the human & earthly world, but also for the world of the gods. But that the disciples were in a sort of mystic state of mind, not fully conscious.
So, as also indicated in the ‘Farewell Discourses’, The Holy Spirit comes to reach right into the inner being of the disciples in order to dwell there as Wisdom, leading to a clear & conscious understanding of these essential secrets of the Mystery of Golgotha.
And so it is that this promise comes to fulfillment 50 days after the Resurrection, on that 1st Whitsun morning, amidst the surging winds, that the disciples might become apostles, taking up their individual tasks; speaking from the heart -the language that all may understand.
As spirit-pupils in the School of Spiritual Science striving to make the content of the Lessons of the 1st Class alive within us, especially the 18th lesson, which brings us to the Cosmic Realm of the Holy Spirit of Truth, the source of the Paraclete; we can achieve a reality where a renewed Whitsun is possible, now & in the times to come.
~hag
Here are my art collages from our Whitsun 2018
