Lab

3757 - Madonna on a Crescent Moon with a cloak of stars - Museum ...

Dear Friends – Our work on earth began with a push & a pull – an often painful, laborious, process of ‘Spirit becoming matter’. Since the ‘Turning Point of Time’ we are called to make the equally labor-some return – to consciously strive to spiritualize matter.

And since the advent of the current age of Michael as Time Spirit, our mission is to redeem the adversarial forces, in particular that side of ‘modern science’ that wants to keep us stuck in matter.

We are called, dear friends, to transform the laboratory bench into an altar.

The moment we work from a place of reverence, & wonder – a sacred space where interest is generated by the warmth of love, we are consecrating matter, recalling, sensing & beholding the spirit in Nature, to co-create a ‘Spiritual Science.’

With Heart-Thinking, the Christ Impulse will permeate the “I” of the scientist. And Spirit, Science, & Art will radiate out as a healing force in the world.

That’s what I am thinking about today, as I sit in this time between Easter & Ascension

What are you thinking?

Marilyn Wilson

POD

I have fallen down upon the earth, to gain the powers of the stars…~hag

Michelle Tripp

RUDOLF STEINER’S CALENDAR OF THE SOUL
translated
 with added titles by Roy Sadler

ASCENSION
The Risen Self
v6

Arisen from my own persona
my real self appears
as revelation of the spheres
that in the powers of time and space
the world is showing me as paradigm
that is divine and everywhere portrays
the image in whose mirror I come true.

Ascension can be felt as the climax of the Soul Calendar’s spring verses,
and its mirror, in the first full week of Lent after the week of Ash Wednesday,
as the first spring verse, wherein we ask for the divine strength to accompany
the joy in growth of nature.
LENT II
Joy Will Arise
v47

From worldwide womb will rise
the joy of growth, enlivening the senses’ glory;
and may it find my strength of thought
defended by the strength of God,
the living bedrock of my being.

This is a quote from Eleanor Merry’s Calendar of the Soul Commentary,
When our thinking can unite with the light of the Sun, it becomes creative
for the future. And when we can be quickened within by the same powers
that quicken the outer world into life, then will joy infill our deeds,
and they will be in harmony with the deeds of Cosmic Beings.”

Charles Hill

May 22, 2022 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Last-quarter Moon (exact at 1:43 p.m. CDT). Bella Luna rises around 1 am CDT in Aquarius, with Saturn now glowing about a fist & a half to herupper right. By Monday’s early dawn the Moon & Saturn are higher in the southeast, forming a big triangle with Fomalhaut very low below them. Far to the Moon’s left by then are bright Jupiter & little Mars.

Mannaah Blackwell

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day(RSarchve.org)

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY ( From Rudolf Steiner’s original Calendar of the Soul, The Present Age Mag., Wikipedia, RSarchive.org)

334 BC – The Macedonian army of Alexander the Great defeats Darius III of Persia in the Battle of the Granicus.

337 – Birthday of Constantine the Great, Roman emperor.

1802 – Death-day of Martha Washington, 1st First Lady of the United States

1813 – Richard Wagner, German composer. Ilona Schubert is credited with connecting him in a former life to Merlin.

1934 – Deathday of Pekka Ervast – the founder of Finnish Section of Theosophical Society. He was a writer, lecturer, linguist, and clairvoyant – very versatile in languages. He learned to read French at the age of five or six. Ervast’s mother died when he was eight years old and he then began to have ‘extrasensory perception’. At the age of twelve he wrote a comparative grammatical study of nine different languages.

In January 1894, Ervast got acquainted with Theosophy through a Swedish translation of Esoteric Buddhism by A. P. Sinnett: “I read a few sentences from the first chapter. There was talk about a brotherhood of adepts, how there has always been and still are human beings who have deeper knowledge about the secrets of nature and life than any scientist. I could read no more. I was overwhelmed by so great a shudder of joy that I was compelled to throw myself on the couch. My whole being sounded as in one voice: this is true, this is true…The aftermath was so immense I could not read anything on that day. I couldn’t think anything else. As if from a revelation I had gained a certainty that adepts do exist and a human being can participate in divine knowledge.” The next year he joined the Scandinavian Section of the Theosophical Society.

In 1896 he went through an experience of rebirth, which formed the basis for his theosophical work: “On October 13, 1896, in the middle of the day, the agony of my soul had reached an utmost point…There seemed to be a dark cloud before my eyes, and I felt as if my pain would transfer itself into the cloud. I then thought, such is life. At the same time the cloud tore apart as if struck by lightning, and the rays of the sun shone warmly on my face, bright but not dazzlingly. Gradually this lovely light surrounded me on every side, so I was as if in a sea of light, and eventually it filtered inside me, filled me, and lit me up totally, so I and my whole being became like a pure light…My old life was wiped away…”

During the years 1896-1898, Ervast belonged to the Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society. He was its representative in Finland. He joined the esoteric school led by Mrs. Katherine Tingley. Ervast intensively followed meditation instructions of the esoteric school.

Ervast started regular lecturing and writing on Theosophy early on in his theosophical career; theosophical work was his full-time occupation. It is worth noting that Theosophy in Finland attracted mainly persons belonging to the so-called working class, whereas in other parts of the Western world Theosophy was more popular among the higher classes.

When the Theosophical Society in Finland was founded in 1907, Ervast was the first to serve as General Secretary, a position he held for ten years. The TS in Finland grew quickly into a vibrant organization.

Ervast and other theosophists founded a commune Tuonenkylä in 1910. The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 was a great disappointment for Ervast. He had believed that theosophists on both sides of the war would follow the ideal of the universal brotherhood and declined to go to war. Ervast was an unconditional pacifist: according to his interpretation, the non-resistance of evil is the cornerstone of Esoteric Christianity (this is well in line with ahimsa in Hinduism and Buddha’s teachings on non-violence).

Ervast published two of his main works during the war time: The Esoteric School of Jesus (the contemporary translation is called The Divine Seed) and The Key to the Kalevala, which is available in English as a free ebook. The former is a detailed investigation of the ethical teachings of Jesus from the perspective of Esoteric Christianity, and the latter is an exploration of the spiritual meaning of the Finnish National Epic, the Kalevala.

The Order of the Star in the East was under intense interest among the theosophists in Finland and elsewhere. However, Rudolf Steiner, who was the Head of the German Section of the T. S. at the time, was very critical towards teachings of Krishnamurti as a new World Teacher. Ervast was also critical. He met Steiner when he visited Helsinki in a lecture tour in 1912 just before Steiner left the T. S.

Ervast founded a new society, The Finnish Rosy Cross (Ruusu-Risti) in the tradition of Rosicrucianism. Ervast lectured on the special status of Jesus Christ in the spiritual evolution of humanity.  Hs teaching on the Christ concur with Rudolf Steiner’s teachings. Ervast remained prolific to the end of his life.

Pekka Ervast wrote over 100 books in several languages:

1849 – Future U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is issued a patent for an invention to lift boats over obstacles in a river, making him the only U.S. President to ever hold a patent.

1885 – Death-day of Victor Hugo. Prior to burial in the Panthéon, the body of Victor Hugo was exposed under the Arc de Triomphe during the night. Rudolf Steiner indicates he was a Hibernian Initiate in the Karma lectures vol. 2 lec. 14.

Now there is a personality upon whom the Initiation rites and ceremonies of the Hibernian Mysteries had made a profound impression; they had a deep effect upon his inner life and his experiences were of such intensity that he forgot the Earth altogether. Then, after this personality had lived through an incarnation as a woman, when the impulses of earlier Initiation showed themselves merely in the general disposition of the soul, he came to the Earth again as an important figure in the 19th century. He had lived out the consequences of his karma in the Saturn-sphere — the sphere where one lives among Beings who, fundamentally speaking, have no present. It is a shattering experience to look with clairvoyant vision into the Saturn-sphere, where Beings live who have no present but only look back on their past. Whatever they do is done unconsciously; any action of theirs comes to consciousness only when it has happened and is inscribed into the world karma. Acquaintance with these Beings who draw their past after them like a spiritual comet’s tail, has a shattering effect. The personality of whom I am speaking, who had at one time been initiated and had thus transcended earthly existence in a certain sense, bore his soul to these Beings who take no part in the present, and elaborated his karma among them. It was as if everything that had been experienced hitherto in an Initiate-existence now illumined with majestic splendour all the past earthly lives. This past was brought to fruition by what had been experienced through the Hibernian Initiation. When this personality appeared again on Earth in the 19th century he had now, by contrast, to unfold impulses for the future. And when, on descending from the Saturn-sphere, this soul, with its gaze into the past illumined by the light of Initiation, arrived on Earth, it presented this contrast: a firm foothold on the Earth while gazing into the future and giving expression to far reaching ideas, impulses and perceptions. This Hibernian Initiate became Victor Hugo.”

1906 – The Wright brothers are granted a U.S. patent for their “Flying-Machine”.

1947 – Cold War begins: President Harry S. Truman – The Truman Doctrine – established that the United States would provide political, military and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces. The Truman Doctrine effectively reoriented U.S. foreign policy, away from its usual stance of withdrawal from regional conflicts not directly involving the United States, to one of possible intervention in far away conflicts. ~ history.state.gov

Yoram Raanan

Announcing an exciting Event on Ascension Thursday, May 26th   7 – 8:30 pm Eastern time.

Climbing Jacob’s Ladder – Celebrating the Festival of Ascension with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg & Eurythmy with Maria Ver Eecke

“In heavy clouds let Him ascend
And so also let Him downward tread.
In cooling streams let Him be sent,
In flames of fire blaze His descent,
In air & essence, sound & dew
To permeate our whole earth thru” ~Novalis

Ascension is a Festival of the Elements, & of the Hierarchies, it relates to the Transfiguration & the fulfillment of the promise of the ‘Second Coming’. Together we will explore the mystery of ‘As Above so Below’.

            Hazel Archer-Ginsberg is a trans-denominational minister, essayist, lecturer, performer, and poet. She writes and curates ‘Reverse Ritual, Understanding Anthroposophy Through the Rhythms of the Year’ and the ‘I Think Speech’ podcast. Hazel’s been the Cultural Events and Festivals Coordinator for the Rudolf Steiner Branch in Chicago for over 10 years. She is a member of the Central Regional Council, the School for Spiritual Science, the Esoteric Youth Circle, and the General Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America.

                  Register by contacting Diane McGary, mcgary.family@comcast.net, by Sunday, May 22nd. You will receive an email with the zoom link on Tuesday May 24.

Hope to see you there!! – YES! Please feel free to spread the word!

Yours, Diane McGary, mcgary.family@comcast.net, for the the Eastern Region

A Whitsun Festival of United Soul Endeavor & Spirit Community

with the Eastern, Central and Western Regional Councils of the Anthroposophical Society in America

Sunday 29 May 2022 – 3 – 4:30 pm PT, 4-5:30 MT, 5-6:30 pm CT, 6-7:30 pm ET

We will be working with Rudolf Steiner’s THE FIFTH GOSPEL GA 148, Lecture II, 2 October 1913, Oslo

The Whitsun Festival highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts, our individual “I”, in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is strongly felt during this time of the consciousness soul age. Our groups striving to know Spiritual Science must work together as a community, to have the possibility to create this type of culture, and the opportunity is here for each of us to meet, human to human, where a sacrament is possible in every encounter. Our individual strength comes from our personal development and is enhanced by weaving our gifts together with others, knitting our social world in conscious community.

For more info. contact Hazel@ReverseRitual.com

Topic: All Regions Whitsun

Time: May 29, 2022 05:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

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Meeting ID: 705 017 4041

Passcode: Whitsun

The Holy Grail Study Group with the CRC
Mysteries of the Holy Grail – from Arthur and Parzival to Modern Initiation
June 1, 2022 – 7:15 pm Central (8:15 pm Eastern)
“Anyone who approaches these mysteries today must feel that they are confronting and challenging themselves by striving for the virtues of Parzival, while knowing that — because of modern conditions — they are in fact someone else also, the wounded Amfortas. Today we bear this divided nature within us: aspiring Parzival, wounded Amfortas. That is what self-knowledge must lead us to feel. From this recognition will flow the forces which make a unity again of this duality, and will thus advance us a little further in world evolution.”~ from Chapter 15,  Rudolf Steiner, The Mysteries of the Holy GrailChapter 15 “Acknowledging Amfortas,” excerpts from Steiner’s lecture given at Berlin on 7 February 1913 (GA 144, lecture IV), will be the focus of the June 1 meeting.

A transcript of the entire lecture can be found on the RS Archive by clicking this link. Please consider giving to the development and maintenance of the digital library of Rudolf Steiner’s work.  Scroll to the bottom of this message to read more about the RSArchive.org and SteinerLibrary.org
The Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America invites you to join our ongoing  study conversation.  The study has been divided among two volunteers who will summarize their section to rebuild it as a foundation for our conversation. Please familiarize yourself with the lecture if possible so you will feel comfortable sharing your reflections and thoughts with the group.

This collection of lectures has been republished by Rudolf Steiner Press under the title: “The Mysteries of the Holy Grail — from Arthur and Parzival to Modern Initiation.”  The book was compiled and edited by Matthew Barton, published by Rudolf Steiner Press in 2010.

This will be a “Zoom” conference call allowing us an opportunity to see one another while conversing (or audio only if you prefer).  To connect to the audio/video-conference:

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There is a knighthood of the 21st century
whose riders do not ride through the darkness
of physical forests as of old,
but through the forest of darkened minds.
They are armed with a spiritual armor
and an inner sun makes them radiant.
Out of them shines healing,
healing that flows from the knowledge
of the human being as a spiritual being.
They must create inner order, inner justice,
peace and conviction in the darkness
of our time. ~Karl Konig

Agenda for this meeting (CST)
 7:15  Welcome and Introductions        
7:18  Verse
7:25  Study led by volunteers
Note: CRC team will ID volunteers
          Mariarosa – pages 117-123b
          Marianne – pages 123b-129
7:50  Conversation
8:25   ID volunteers for next meeting
8:28  Close with verse

14 thoughts on “Lab

  1. One of the things I’m thinking of, is how interesting it is that you’re thinking about “heart thinking” on the same day you post the death day of the Hibernian initiate, Victor Hugo. He’s been my favorite author for a long time, mostly because of the connection I felt from reading the prose he wrote in Les Miserables, a story that features a lot of heart-thinking. Heart thinking is important for me, with my Ascendant in Leo, and my Sun near the Elliptical Zenith in Gemini in my birth chart. Being near the Zenith makes the fact that it’s in Gemini, which I’m told represents “agape love” (the highest form of Greek words for love), a force in my life’s mission. That’s what I’ve been learning in the Basic Astrology courses I’m presently doing. Very interesting that Hugo had an incarnation as a woman; explains his insight into Fantine’s character, and Fantine’s daughter Cossette’s character also.

    The other thing I’ve been thinking is how natural science is not only trying to keep us stuck in this material sphere, but there are forces that are using natural science and technology to deceive humanity, in order to keep us from reaching our true potential. For example, they have many of us believing that we only need to send a few millionaires and billionaires to Moon and Mars and we’ll know the origins of humanity; hence the need for taxpayers to fund a Space Force, and to support the likes of Bezos and Musk in their efforts to become the “saviors” of humanity, by building things like a space grid that will protect us from space debris. Or that we need to send a pyramid called LifeShip to the Moon with some human DNA inside it if we want to expand our consciousness.
    This kind of nonsense diverts people’s attention from the real need – to get to Know Thyself, and to understand how our “I” is emerging in this consciousness soul age. Another of their nonsensical ambitions is taking place in the educational system, where they’re completely confusing young people’s minds on subjects like gender and race relationships. Society needs a jolt of awakening to see the dangerous paths these forces are leading us down.

    1. The artist soul of a person like Victor Hugo can tap into past lives. Artistic expression holds many spiritual truths.

      Yes, to look aroud at our fellows who can’t take art to heart, who can only follow blindly the false carrot, often feels like some sort of delusional reality that I find hard to grasp. And yet like you I strive to bring love, in the hopes that a healing bridge can somehow be built…

      1. What about massage therapists? Can they also tap into past lives? I’ve heard from some how memories are trapped in the body’s cellular structure, and sometimes come out in various emotional forms during therapy.

        Forgot to mention another thing that had me thinking of how deceptive these forces can be – Brian Gray mentioned that there are approximately 40 different systems used to interpret the “houses” in a birth chart. When you consider that the houses are used to give the “reflection of the echo of the zodiac” (from Steiner), a reflection that is meant to lead us to an understanding of our “I”, one wonders why so many systems are available? – my guess is to confuse and deter a person from an understanding their “I” from the cosmos.

        1. I know from my own experience that memory lives in every level, each one of the subtle bodies. And of course Steiner tells us for instance our limb system informs our head in our next life etc… Each layer expressed often in a reversal – a turning inside out, bringing what was within outward & viceversa…

          As far as the different astro systems are concerned, yes, I have friends who work from Vedic systems etc…It’s almost like they are proscribing an illusion, empowering false spiritual beings…look how the Copernican worldview has taken over…All these systems are there to keep the veil on the New Isis…

      2. My thinking tonight is that spiritual science has largely fallen on deaf ears in the 122 years from 1900 to 2022. This is what I am getting from Maverick, who gives a nice digest of idiotic notions that exist today among the elites. Nobody said that spiritual science would be easy, and as a cultural imperative in this day and age, forget it. Spiritual Science today is still looked upon as the work of crackpots by those who would drive materialism right through the bottom of the earth. And we know where that leads. Yes, the War of All Against All, which is actively being sought right before our eyes, is the agenda of those who would race to Armageddon in order to bypass the 6th Cultural Epoch precisely for its intended purpose, which is The Time of Christ. Thus, since 1998, we have entered a new era, and as the compound of 666 and 1332, it means a synthesis, which in the laboratory retort signifies a version of the Trinity.

        Yet, what I am really thinking tonight concerns the approach to Ascension and Pentecost, which you are also contemplating. I love you guys.

        1. It is important to perceive the workings of the adversarial powers in the world, But it is just as important, nay, more so, to not only see, but to add to the cosmic streams that bring in the good. That is the purpose of the Festival life – to unite us with the Divine plan…to engage us with the progressive spiritual beings who strive to help us achieve our highest evolution…

          1. “When We Work on Ourselves. . .”
            “What does it mean when we say we work on ourselves? It means that we purify the etheric body and the astral body.
            Now, once purified, the spiritualized etheric and astral bodies do not dissolve after death but are preserved in accordance with the law of spiritual economy.
            In short, it was known in the mysteries how to preserve the valuable etheric and astral bodies developed by the great initiates, but it would leave me too far afield to speak about this in detail. Suffice it to say that these bodies were kept by the preservers of the mystery schools.”
            – Rudolf Steiner “From Buddha to Christ”
            Budapest 5/31/1909

          2. Thanks Hazel for pointing that out, about the Festival life. It’s a lot like the starry heavens, which can easily get taken for granted, especially for city dwellers whose view of the heavens is diminished by constant artificial light. It’s good to be reminded that there are beings behind these phenomena who want us to engage with them. Thankful that you encourage us to continually restore that healthy engagement.

        2. Thanks for the reminder of 1998 – that was such a pivotal year for so many.

          It’d be interesting to pose the question to the public: “What’s your perspective on Rudolf Steiner and his movement, Anthroposophy?” Maybe somebody’s done it? It’d be interesting, and instructional, to see what the general public thinks. I’m contemplating doing the same with the A.R.E. – I’ve spent so many years involved that I’ve lost touch with how those outside the movement see us.

          1. I think you will find that a great deal of lukewarmness pervades society all ready, and people are simply not up for the virtues that Spiritual Science demands in terms of real “work upon oneself”. The work of Rudolf Steiner is simply not convenient enough to ever be popular. Yet, for those who do, real results exist. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak.

              1. Exactly. Dessert tops off what milk will never provide, although a small leaven is accorded to the pudding. It is Meat which accords to a hermetic axiom somewhere. Is it from the Kybalion? Somebody help me.

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