17 August 2020 – “Speaking with the Stars”: The brightest star high in the southeast these evenings, high to the upper left of Jupiter & Saturn, is Altair. Look for little orange Tarazed above it by a finger-width at arm’s length. Hardly more than a fist-width to Altair’s left is delicate Delphinus, the Dolphin, leaping left: toward the east. Slightly less far above or upper left of Altair, look for smaller, fainter Sagitta, the Arrow. It too points east.

The Kappa Cygnids are a minor meteor shower that occurs between Aug 03 – Aug 25 with the peak occurring on the 17th Aug. every year.The name comes from the fact that the radiant point is close to Kappa Cygni. The star is within the boundaries of the constellation of Cygnus. The meteor shower.

Dear friends – It was at this time last year that I went on my Parsifal Journey to Cornwall. I did not find the Holy Grail. In fact more often than not I met the Guardian at the Threshold who brought admonishment into my soul forces. I have yet to speak or write about this deep inner & outer voyage. I guess I’m still not ready. But it has been up in me, & I have wanted to let it breath out a bit, so it is interesting that today in 1924 Rudolf Steiner visits Tintagel:

On his final visit to Britain, Rudolf Steiner’s schedule of lecturing was hectic. He delivered three lectures a day during the Anthroposophical Society’s Summer School at Torquay (11-22 August 1924) – but that is another story…Steiner took one day out of that busy schedule, to go as far west as he ever ventured in that lifetime – to the west coast of Cornwall.

Tintagel is the legendary home of King Arthur, Merlin, the sword Excalibur, the Lady of the Lake, the Knights of the Round Table, Sir Lancelot, Queen Guinevere, & the court of Camelot.

Midway through the Torquay Summer School, on Sunday August 17th, 1924, Rudolf Steiner declared “I want to go to King Arthur” (see Eleanor Merry, 1956, in Villeneuve, 2004, p.1051). A cavalcade of three cars ventured forth from the southern beachside resort town of Torquay, across the verdant moors of Dartmoor, to the spectacularly positioned Tintagel, on the west coast of Cornwall.

Eleanor Merry & D.N. Dunlop were the two organizers of the Torquay Summer School. Both were part of the entourage to Tintagel. Merry reports that: “At last we came again to the sea, and straight ahead of us, at the top of a green cliff, were the last fragments of King Arthur’s castle of Tintagel. A deep rocky chasm divided this from a second rugged cliff, where still other remains could be seen” (quoted in Villeneuve, 2004, p.1052) Merry continues: “Dr. Steiner was at first silently absorbed in the wonderful view. All around was sunshine, and fleeting cloud-shadows and little hurrying rainbows – and a stormy and angry sea”.

The entourage included at least two of the 11 attendees of Steiner’s Agriculture Course at Koberwitz, namely Dr. Elisabeth Vreede & Guenther Wachsmuth. That course (7-16 June, 1924) laid the foundations for the development of biodynamic agriculture.

Wachsmuth remembered: “On that unforgettable day Rudolf Steiner went with us to the place on the rough rocky western coast of Cornwall, Tintagel, where the castle of King Arthur had once stood … That strangely densified spiritual atmosphere we shall never forget, so intensely to be felt as Rudolf Steiner climbed the strange projecting cliff on the lonely coast of Cornwall where the last walls of the castle of King Arthur towered over the roaring sea … He spoke there, standing on the cliff, about the experience of the Knights of King Arthur … He spoke of the teachings of Merlin … The immediacy of the spiritual vision in this place was so intense that, during his descriptions, the entire reality, the external life and action … of King Arthur’s knights, stood before us as actual experience” (Wachsmuth, 1989, pp.563-4)

The Tintagel visit occurred just two months after Steiner’s Agriculture Course & less than six weeks before Rudolf Steiner retreated from public life entirely. On this, his tenth visit to Britain, Steiner taught about Anthroposophy & Waldorf education. An opportunity for agriculture lectures in Britain did not arise, & there had been no British attendees at the Koberwitz course. We can speculate that the attendance of Wachsmuth & Vreede, who had attended at Koberwitz – as well as Tintagel, in this case along with Marna Pease – may have seeded the early interest in Britain in Anthroposophic agriculture which evolved into biodynamics.

Marna Pease went on to be the secretary of Britain’s Anthroposophical agricultural Foundation which was founded in 1928. Elizabeth Vreede attended, in London, as a guest at the first Annual Meeting of the Anthroposophical Agricultural Foundation.

Despite the intensity with which Rudolf Steiner engaged with his missions, including the Torquay Summer School, he was, by this time terminally ill from being ‘poisoned’ eight months earlier. Wachsmuth described this final visit to Britain: “During … the last trip of Rudolf Steiner in his life on earth, he suffered tragically from the destructive illness. Outwardly, nothing of this could be observed. He met daily all the requirements of the comprehensive program & his lecturing activity. He spoke introductory words at artistic programs, had numerous conferences, & took part in the excursions, but every meal caused in his ill condition renewed suffering, which he bore courageously without a word of complaint … He permitted nothing to be known by those at the conference regarding his illness” (Wachsmuth, 1989, p.563).

Just a month after this tenth visit to Britain, Rudolf Steiner retreated entirely from public life (on 28 September, 1924), & he died on 30 March 1925

***

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~Light-Streaming Archetypes
Flashing & quivering.
Ocean-floor of Spirit
My soul deserted you.
In the Divine She
Stayed awhile,
& had Her rest.
Into the zone that wraps existence round
I consciously came.
I am
Here Now…
~hag

***

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1586 – Birthday of Johann Valentin Andrea, who wrote: The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz

1687 – Deathday of Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen , kidnapped at the age of 10 by Hessian soldiery, – in their midst tasted the adventures of military life in the Thirty Years’ War. He was made Schultheiss (magistrate) at Renchen in Baden where he devoted himself to literary pursuits. Greatly influenced by previous utopian & travel literature, he wrote the Simplicissimus series, inspired by the events & horrors of the Thirty Years’ War which devastated Germany from 1618 to 1648, it is regarded as the first adventure novel in the German language & the first German novel masterpiece. The full subtitle is “The life of an odd vagrant named Melchior Sternfels von Fuchshaim: namely where and in what manner he came into this world, what he saw, learned, experienced, and endured therein; also why he again left it of his own free will.” It attained a readership larger than any other seventeenth-century novel

1798 – The Vietnamese report a Marian apparition in Quảng Trị, an event which is called Our Lady of La Vang. Fearing the spread of Catholicism, the Cảnh Thịnh Emperor restricted the practice of Catholicism in the country in 1798. Soon thereafter, the emperor issued an anti-Catholic edict & persecution ensued.

Many people sought refuge in the rainforest of La Vang in Quảng Trị Province, Vietnam, & many became very ill. While hiding in the jungle, the community gathered every night at the foot of a tree to pray the rosary. One night, an apparition surprised them. In the branches of the tree a lady appeared, wearing the traditional Vietnamese áo dài dress & holding a child in her arms, with two angels beside her. They said that Our Lady comforted them & told them to boil certain leaves from the trees for medicine to cure the illness. Legend states that the term “La Vang” was a derivative of the Vietnamese word meaning “crying out”. Modern scholars believe it comes from the ancient practice of naming a location for a genus of a tree or plant native to the area, La meaning “leaf” and ‘”Vang “herbal seeds”.

In 1802 the Catholics returned to their villages, passing on the story of the apparition in La Vang & its message. As the story of the apparition spreads, many came to pray at this site& to offer incense. In 1820, a chapel was built.

From 1830-1885 another wave of persecutions decimated the Catholic population, during the height of which the chapel in honour of Our Lady of La Vang was destroyed. In 1886, construction on a new chapel began. Following its completion, Bishop Gaspar (Loc) consecrated the chapel in honour of Our Lady Help of Christians, in 1901.

On December 8, 1954, the statue of Our Lady of La Vang was brought from Tri Bun back to the holy shrine. The Vietnamese Bishops Conference chose the church of Our Lady of La Vang as the National Shrine in honour of the Immaculate Conception. La Vang became the National Marian Center of Vietnam on April 13, 1961. Pope John XXIII elevated the Church of Our Lady of La Vang to the rank of a minor basilica on August 22, 1961.

1807 – Robert Fulton’s North River Steamboat leaves New York City for Albany, New York, on the Hudson River, inaugurating the first commercial steamboat service in the world

1911 – The 1^st performance of Rudolf Steiner’s 2^nd Mystery Drama, The Trial of the Soul, in the Gardener’s Place Theatre in Munich. In all 4 four plays. Steiner showed how spiritual development might manifest in a freely formed, but karmically-knit group of people. The experiences of the main characters of the play, particularly Johannes, Capesius & Strader, represent 3 different aspects of the path of initiation – “differing according to the karma of the respective individualities.” Steiner described his process of artistic creation as “images that grew like the leaves of a plant”.

1924 – Rudolf Steiner visits Tintagel, mystery center & court of King Arthur. 

1942 – World War II: U.S. Marines raid the Japanese-held Pacific island of Makin

1943 – World War II: The U.S. Eighth Air Force suffers the loss of 60 bombers on the Schweinfurt–Regensburg mission.

1943 – World War II: First Québec Conference of Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, & William Lyon Mackenzie King begins.

1943 – World War II: The Royal Air Force begins Operation Hydra, the first air raid of the Operation Crossbow strategic bombing campaign

1950 – Hill 303 massacre: 41 American POWs are shot to death by the North Korean Army

1959 – Quake Lake is formed by the magnitude 7.5 earthquake near Hebgen Lake in Montana

1959 – Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, highly influential, best-selling jazz recording of all time, is released

1962 – Peter Fechter is shot & bleeds to death while trying to cross the new Berlin Wall

1969 – Deathday of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, a German-American architect. Along with Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius & Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of modernist architecture. He called his buildings “skin and bones” architecture. He is often associated with his quotation of the aphorisms, “less is more” & “God is in the details”.

1982 – The first compact discs are released to the public in Germany

1999 – A 7.4-magnitude earthquake strikes İzmit, Turkey, killing more than 17,000 & injuring 44,000

***

Join us for the HOMECOMING of the Classroom Alive Crew-

Bring a dish to share to welcome the travelers back to Chicago

Details of when & what time TBA

ANY FINANCIAL SUPPORT IS ALSO APPRECIATED FOR FOOD & SUPPLIES https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/UrbanFirstAid?locale.x=en_US

With love and light,
Ultra, Stefan, Robbie, Frank, Dottie, and the rest of the Classroom Alive sole-power team

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: COMMUNITY POTLUCK GATHERING to Welcome the Youth. Please bring a dish & beverages to share – Time TBA

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 WELCOME HOME POTLUCK COMMUNITY GATHERING – Please support the youth with dinner, beverages & desert!

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!

Elderberries Biodynamic Outpost + Threefold Cultural Hub, 4251 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618

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

***

August 27-30 How We Will 2020: 3-Folding our Cultural Revolution is continuing its journey of transforming our ideals into action. The theme this year is Forming Curative Communities: actively uniting with one another in the emerging economic, political/rights and social/cultural/spiritual forms seeking to reshape the ills plaguing humanity into a healthy social organism for our time. Please join us if you’d like to hear from, and collaborate with those on the front lines inspired out of the fruits of Rudolf Steiner’s work: can your own hopes for the world find a way to connect with others striving to do the good as our friend Bernard Lievegoed was wont to say? Our own hero Ella Baker shares: ‘we must not stop until we can get people to recognize that they themselves have to make the struggle for freedom and human dignity everyday, in the year, every year, until they win it.’

Invitation and Registration are now open:How We Will 2020

Michaela Gloeckler of the Medical Section in Dornach and cofounder of Allianz ELIANT brings the Archetypal Picture of Ita Wegman and the Young Doctors and their courageous movement for a Michaelic renewal of civilization as a World War II raged all around them. 



Bart Eddy of Brightmoor Makers and Sunbridge will speak to what it takes to initiate our ideals into action that are inspired by the our higher natures and our wish to serve others in our time. His ‘brought down to earth visioning’, is serving the youth in one of the poorest parts in Detroit where entrepreneurs for the good are in training, not only learning to support their own livelihoods but also empowering change in their communities where devastating health and environmental issues abound: his inspired ideas for our time keep unfolding new forms for these youth! 



Kait Ziegler of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, and Repairers of the Breach, working with Reverends William Barber and Liz Theoharis, and a small beyond dedicated team, will share on this ‘turning inside out’ and what it takes to organize for social change along side of four pillars: Racism, Poverty, Ecological Devastation and the War/Prison Economy which requires a new narrative above all and a capacity to work with those who have very divergent views in the activist community. John Bloom of Rudolf Steiner Finance and General Secretary of the Anthropsophical Society will offer a conversation Toward Justice and Freedom and Capital, Money, Spirit and Matter.



Nicanor Perlas, a long time advocate for social change in the Philippines and youth mentor, will shape a conversation around ‘The Future will be what we Fight For’. His country continues to be on lockdown where they are not allowed to go outside their houses even for food and whose president recently said that he ‘would work with the military to distribute the vaccine’.



Laura Summer of Free Columbia, an art and education initiative in Philmont New York, will present on New Forms Around Art – Art Dispersal and Local Grants to increase diversity in diverse communities. Art Accessible to 100% of the People! 

Naim Edwards, Seneca Gonzalez, Melody Brink, Kristin Buckbee, Akil Bell, Monika Pudelko, Joan Jaeckel, Patrice Maynard, Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, 

Dottie Zold and Frank Agrama of the Elderberries community and newly formed Circles for a Renewal of Culture non profit, will invite an open conversation as to how it is that the Steiner students here in our country and around the world can be good advocates for emergent healing forms, where the essence of what is human is at the center of our concerns. This threefold social form has yet to be realized and yet we see all around us new forms coming into being. What do the Steiner students have to contribute to the conversation of human rights in these three realms and do we have the will to unite together for the common good of humanity? Can we organize for the future needs out of the fruits of Rudolf Steiner’s work in the world? Do we have the will for this? If so can we make a beginning at organizing and shaping our actions now?


 

Invitation and Registration are now open:How We Will 2020