Every morning I go out into my wild garden. I do my meditations. I breathe in the sunrise. I watch & listen to the signs & signals from the natural world, ever present in my little piece of bio-dynamic bottom-land, at the edge of the Great Inland Sea of Chicago.

The Milkweed is flowering & the butterflies have come to lay their eggs on the leaves. So fascinating to contemplate this delicate creature – I think of what Steiner says: “…it is the butterfly corona, which first calls us into earthly existence.” (Symphony of the Creative Word) I spoke about this in ‘The Crowning’.

The clover, feverfew, & spiderwort are rampant & the bees are all over it.

Bees have a special place in human history. The mythology, art & mystery that surrounds them is potent, & indicates a close & reciprocal relationship between the bee, the secrets of the Universe, & humanity, as partners in life’s great journey.

Traditionally the bee was perceived as a being that bridged the gap between the physical & the unseen world, the intermediary between two states of existence.

In many cultures priestesses or ‘illumined ones’ have been referred to as ‘Bees’. The bee was an emblem of Potnia, the Minoan-Mycenaean “Mistress”, also referred to as “The Pure Mother Bee”. Her priestesses received the name of “Melissa” which means bee.

Those worshipping Artemis & Demeter, as well as the Delphic priestess, are also referred to as a “bee”. Pindar, an Ancient Greek poet from Thebes, notes that she remained “the Delphic bee” long after Apollo had usurped the ancient oracle & shrine. “The Delphic priestess chewed a laurel leaf, & sought her inspiration in the honeycomb”.

The Homeric Hymn to Apollo acknowledges that Apollo’s gift of prophecy first came to him from three bee maidens, usually identified with the Thriae – a trinity of pre-Hellenic Aegean bee goddesses.

The Kalahari Desert’s Sand people tell of a bee that carried a mantis across a river. The exhausted bee left the mantis on a floating flower but planted a seed in the mantis’s body before it died. The seed grew to become the first human.

In Egyptian mythology, bees grew from the tears of the sun god Ra when they landed on the desert sand.

The bowstring on Hindu love god Kamadeva’s bow is made of honeybees.

Orators, powerful speakers, & those who can enrapture their audience thru their linguistic ability are said to have lips that have been anointed with honey.

From the earliest times of our agrarian history the relationship between farmers & the bees that pollinate & confirm their crops has been one of reciprocal respect. The bee is the agent of pollination, the catalyst that brings about change & the connection that facilitates fertilization, allowing the crop to mature, develop & reproduce. It is easy to see why their function is considered so important & why the bee is ascribed a mystical place within the human experience.

In the last decade there has been an alarming decline in bee colony numbers. It is a worldwide happening & indicative of a shift occurring within the planet’s own equilibrium – a call to ‘Repent, & make straight the path’, as John the Baptist would say.

The bees are allies; not only the key to our food supply, but an important intermediary, a messenger from those peripheral realms of human awareness where perceptions come from ‘beyond the veil’ – they are messengers of the Sun.

The bee carries a signal or a frequency that enables transformation; what is barren becomes fertile, initiating the process of regeneration.

The bee, in this context, represents an interlocutor between our immediate mundane awareness & the potential of human cognizance.

Look to the flora & fauna; experience & honor the elemental worlds; all nature – as messengers of what was, what is, & what is to come.

Yes, friends, we live in challenging times. Good, bad or indifferent is not a criteria; we are seeing events in our lifetimes that have a significant bearing upon the way human evolution will unfold.

The relationship between human interaction & the planet is fragile, & the most potent expression of what we will become – either architects of our own demise, or the agents of a transcendent future, is in our hands.

~hag

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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

 2 July 2020 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Today is the midpoint of the year. There were 182 days before today & 182 days after.

Look for Antares to the lower right of bright Bella Luna this evening. The name Antares means anti-Ares, “rival of Mars” in Greek. Both are fiery orange. Around 1 or 2 a.m. these nights you can compare them yourself. Mars & the Moon get low in the southwest, & Mars will rises in the east. Mars, is 4 X’s brighter than than rival Antares.

Perhaps no month better epitomizes summer in the Northern Hemisphere than July. The Summer Triangle is on prominent display. The trio’s brightest member, Vega in the constellation Lyra the Harp, stands nearly overhead shortly after midnight. The asterism’s second-brightest star, Altair in Aquila the Eagle, then lies more than halfway from the southeastern horizon to the zenith. Deneb, the luminary of Cygnus the Swan, marks the Summer Triangle’s third corner. Although it is the dimmest star, it’s the brightest point of light in the northeastern sky.

Maria Heimsuchung – Rudolf Steiner lists this in his original Calendar of the Soul, as an ancient German Feast Day celebrating the Visitation Of Mary to Elisabeth.

437 – Emperor Valentinian III begins his reign over & ongoing dismemberment the Western Roman Empire.

1566 – Deathday of Nostradamus, French astrologer & author

1698 – Thomas Savery patents the first steam engine

1778 – Deathday of Procopius of Caesarea the last major historian of the ancient Western world. He Accompanied the Roman general Belisarius in the wars of the Emperor Justinian, writing the Wars (or Histories), the Buildings of Justinian & the celebrated (& infamous) Secret History discovered centuries later in the Vatican Library. The Secret History reveals his deep disillusion with the emperor Justinian & his wife, Empress Theodora, as well as Belisarius, his former commander & patron, & Antonina, Belisarius’ wife. The anecdotes expose the secret springs of their public actions, as well as their private lives. Justinian is portrayed as cruel, venal, prodigal & incompetent; as for Theodora, the reader is treated to the most detailed & titillating portrayals of vulgarity & insatiable lust combined with shrewish & calculating mean-spiritedness: “Often, even in the theatre, in the sight of all the people, she removed her costume and stood nude in their midst, except for a girdle about the groin: not that she was abashed at revealing that, too, to the audience, but because there was a law against appearing altogether naked on the stage, without at least this much of a fig-leaf. Covered thus with a ribbon, she would sink down to the stage floor and recline on her back. Slaves to whom the duty was entrusted would then scatter grains of barley from above into the calyx of this passion flower, whence geese, trained for the purpose, would next pick the grains one by one with their bills and eat.”

Her husband Justinian, meanwhile, was a monster whose head could suddenly vanish—at least according to this passage: “And some of those who have been with Justinian at the palace late at night, men who were pure of spirit, have thought they saw a strange demoniac form taking his place. One man said that the Emperor suddenly rose from his throne and walked about, and indeed he was never wont to remain sitting for long, and immediately Justinian’s head vanished, while the rest of his body seemed to ebb and flow; whereat the beholder stood aghast and fearful, wondering if his eyes were deceiving him. But presently he perceived the vanished head filling out and joining the body again as strangely as it had left it.”

1816 – The French frigate Méduse struck the Bank of Arguin & 151 people on board had to be evacuated on an improvised raft, a case immortalised by Géricault’s painting The Raft of the Medusa

1822 – Thirty-five slaves are hanged in South Carolina, including Denmark Vesey, after being accused of organizing a slave rebellion

1839 – Twenty miles off the coast of Cuba, 53 rebelling African slaves led by Joseph Cinqué take over the slave ship Amistad

1897 – British-Italian engineer Guglielmo Marconi obtains a patent for radio in London

1900 – The first Zeppelin flight takes place on Lake Constance near Friedrichshafen, Germany

1921 – U.S. President Warren G. Harding signs the Knox–Porter Resolution formally ending the war between the United States & Imperial Germany

1934 – The Night of the Long Knives, sometimes called Operation Hummingbird, or in Germany, sometimes mockingly called Reichsmordwoche (Reich Murder Week), a purge that took place in Nazi Germany from June 30 to July 2, 1934, when the Nazi regime carried out a series of political executions. Leading members of the left-wing Strasserist faction of the Nazi Party (NSDAP), along with its figurehead, Gregor Strasser, were killed, as were prominent conservative anti-Nazis (such as former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher & Gustav Ritter von Kahr, who had suppressed Adolf Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch in 1923). Many of those killed were leaders of the Sturmabteilung (SA) – the paramilitary Brownshirts.

Hitler moved against the SA & its leader, Ernst Röhm because he saw the independence of the SA as a direct threat to his newly gained political power. Hitler was uncomfortable with Röhm’s outspoken support for a “second revolution” to redistribute wealth.

At least 85 people died during the purge, although the final death toll may have been in the hundreds, & more than a thousand perceived opponents were arrested. Most of the killings were carried out by the Schutzstaffel (SS) & the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei), the regime’s secret police. The purge provided a legal grounding for the Nazi regime, as the German courts & cabinet quickly swept aside centuries of legal prohibition against extra-judicial killings to demonstrate their loyalty to the regime. The Night of the Long Knives was a turning point for the German government. It established Hitler as “the supreme judge of the German people,” as he put it in his July 13, 1934 speech to the Reichstag. “The New York Times”stated that Hitler had acted to crush a revolt & that SA leader Ernst Röhm had committed suicide.

1947 – World UFO Day, commemorating the supposed UFO crash at Roswell

1964 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 meant to prohibit segregation in public places

1976 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty was not inherently cruel or unusual.

2001 – The AbioCor self-contained artificial heart is first implanted

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Not being able to travel to present my Spiritual Research, I made a little page to share some recorded offerings. Please tune in & freely pass them on…Thanks…xox

As of September 2020 I am ready to bring my Festivals, Lectures & Programs to your community once again! 

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August 8-18 ‘Classroom Alive’ Youth Open-Source Learning in Chicago

We’re starting up with Culture in our community – join young people here in Chicago for a 10 day walking journey – Classroom Alive Chicago!

Exploration & experiencial learning all over Chicagoland, starting at at Elderberries 3-Fold Bio-dynamic Outpost & Cultrual Hub 4251 N. Lincolon Ave. Chicago, IL. 60618

for more info. contact Ultra-Violet Archer, or Frank Agrama

Details TBA #ClassroomAliveChicago2020

Thank you for forwarding this flier for any interested young people –

Co-sponsored in part by The Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Festival & Program Coordinator

August 20-23, 2020 Questions of Courage Youth Conference at Elderberries

Questions of Courage 2020 in Chicago – August 20-23 Elderberries Biodynamic Outpost and 3Fold Cultural Hub 4251 N. Lincolon Ave. Chicago, IL. 60618

August 20: Check-in, share conversation, build the ground for the journey together.

August 21-22: Travel to Wisconsin Move together towards the land, link up with Farmer John and Haidy Angelic Organics Biodynamic Farm, and also with Dana and Phil Burns at Healing Traditions and Alizur farm. Connect with the land, plants, animals, and one another, through creative explorations and “roughin’ it” type amendments. Sleep under the stars or indoors.

August 23: Return to Chicago Enter back into the metropolitan context, into the social questions of urban life, and close the gathering together at Elderberries, setting the ground for future work out of questions of courage that are present.

Other locations and collaborators are currently in dialogue, and will be updated here.

The gathering is essentially about stepping into the living natural element, step by step, making an integral connection, with one another, ourselves, and the elements that support us here on the Earth…”

registration: https://docs.google.com/…/1FAIpQLSdY7KXHkjUPV2h9UD…/viewform

Thank you Elderberries for giving us an anchor to build our heartland gathering around!

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August 27-30, HOW WE WILL 2020

At Elderberries 3-fold Bio-Dynamic Outpost

for more info. contact Frank Agrama or Dottie Zold

Details TBA Co-sponsored in part by The Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago -Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Festival & Program Coordinator

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