Inverted Reality

Poetry, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Speaking with the Stars

4 May 2019 – “Speaking with the Stars”: New Moon occurs at 5:46 pm CDT. At its New phase, the Moon crosses the sky with the Sun & so remains hidden in our star’s glare.

Head outside late this evening & you can’t miss Jupiter. The giant planet rises shortly after 11 pm & climbs highest in the south around 4 am. The Benevolent King is the brightest point of light in the sky in the constellation Ophiuchus, until Venus rises during twilight.

Image result for vega draco May 2019

Vega is the brightest star in the northeast late these evenings. Look to Vega’s upper left for Eltanin, the nose of Draco the Dragon. Closer above & upper left of Eltanin are the three fainter stars of Draco’s stick-figure head, also called the Lozenge. Draco always points his nose to Vega no matter in what part of the sky we see them. He seems awfully curious about it. Do dragons eat jewels?

Image result for draco the dragon eating jewels in the sky painting
Ann Paler

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY – Past/Present/Future:

250 AD – Feast day of St. Florian the patron of Upper Austria, chimney sweeps; soapmakers, & firefighters. The “Florian Principle” (known in German language areas as “Sankt-Florians-Prinzip”) is named after a somewhat ironic prayer to Saint Florian: “O heiliger Sankt Florian, verschon’ mein Haus, zünd’ and’re an”, equivalent to “O Holy St. Florian, please spare my house, set fire to another one”. This saying is used in German much like the English “not in my back yard. The name Florian is considered synonymous with fireman in the German speaking world. In some cases call for a fireman will actually be spoken as calls for Florian.

Image result for 1493 - The Division of the world: The Spanish-born Pope Alexander VI

1493 – The Division of the world: The Spanish-born Pope Alexander VI decreed in a Papal Bull that all lands west & south of a pole-to-pole line one hundred leagues west & south should belong to Spain. Portugal objected because its status & rights had been omitted & overlooked. King John II of Portugal began negotiations directly with King Ferdinand & Queen Isabella of Spain to push the line west & allow him to lay claim to lands discovered east of it. The result was the Treaty of Tordesillas.

1875 – Birthday of Hermann Beckh a pioneering German Tibetologist & prominent promoter of anthroposophy.

Due to his unusual memory skills, & his many interests & talents, his peers encouraged him towards law. It became clear to him that he was not made out to be a judge when he had to impose a fine on a poor married couple for stealing wood. He paid the couple’s fine out of his own pocket & left his position.

He later took up the study of oriental languages, Indology, & Tibetology. In 1907, he received his doctorate with a thesis on Kalidasa’s poem Meghaduta.

In 1911, he met Rudolf Steiner & Friedrich Rittelmeyer, which led to his intensive study of Steiner’s work. On Christmas Day, 1912, he became a member of the Anthroposophical Society.

In 1916, Beckh was drafted into military service, shortly after he published two volumes about the Buddha & his teachings. Stationed in the Balkans, he was called to work in the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. Due to his task, he learned the Scandinavian languages in addition to: English, French, Italian, Classical Greek & Latin, Hebrew, Egyptian, Sanskrit, Tibetan & Old Persian.

From 1920 onwards, he worked as a lecturer of anthroposophy. In March 1922, he joined the Circle of Priests of The Christian Community & worked until his death as a priest, seminary teacher, lecturer, independent researcher & writer. In 1928, “Mark’s Gospel: The Cosmic Rhythm” was published, in which he related the narration of the gospel of Mark to the path of the sun through the twelve zodiac signs. In Beckh’s exposition, Mark’s gospel could be understood more in connection with the “earthly” signs seen in the planets, & John’s gospel more in connection with the “stellar” zodiac  of the fixed stars. At the time of The Mystery of Golgotha the planets & the constellations were together, not separate as they are now, due to the progression of the equinoxes.  In the Introduction to the sequel, “The Cosmic Rhythm, the Secrets of the Stars & Earth in the Gospel of John” (1930), Beck favorably mentioned Wilhelm Kaiser’s “Die geometrischen Vorstellungen in der Astronomie” (1928), & referred to The Novices of Sais, of Novalis.  Beckh died in Stuttgart, in 1937.

~   ~   ~

John Lautermilch

(POD )Poem Of the Day)

~My heart pulses with power
In the balance of the elements
Beatbeatbeat
I am the eagle in the light of the Sun
My wings beat in time to my thoughts…
I am a Taurus Bull in the pleasure glade
Glad am I – the thoughts that love felt
I fly to the far edge of sky
I rest in the deep folds of earth
I am a child of eternity
I am Free
~hag

~   ~   ~

Image result for hilma af klint opposites
Hilma af Klint

From the Esoteric Lessons Part II: Berlin, October 11, 1911

“We know that the physical world is only an inverted mirror image of the astral world.

 A very important meditation to make the words “The world is only maya” effective is the following: Everything is really there in reverse.

What we see from above downwards is really there from below upwards.

A plant’s root is above and the flower down below.

The starry heavens we have before us is the result of spiritual beings who are really active behind us.

Any sound that’s received by the left ear comes from the right.

We must become familiar with these facts and also with complementary colors. If someone has a lot of red spots imagine that they’re green, or imagine that projecting limbs are cavities. One imagines the green in a plant as reddish purple and a brown root as dark blue.

One should permeate all of these exercises with reverence and devotion. That’s the feeling with which we can hope to approach the world’s Godhead; otherwise God remains an abstraction to mere thinking.

If we glow through our thinking with reverence, devotion and humility, we may hope to penetrate the spiritual world”.  ~Rudolf Steiner

~~~

Tuesday 7 May 2019 in Ann Arbor Michigan

& also

Sat. 25 May 2019 –  7 pm – 9 pm in Chicago

Climbing Jacobs Ladder: Celebrating the Feast of Ascension

Leading Thoughts & original art-collage projections with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Eurythmy with Mary Ruud

Social Art with Nancy Melvin

$10 Donation & Snacks to Share Encouraged

Read about this year’s interesting ‘Easter Paradox’ – A Cosmic Wake Up Call: The Easter Paradox of 2019

***

The Karma Project 
A Western Approach to Reincarnation & Karma
May 8, 2019 – 7:15 pm CST (8:15 pm EST)View this email in your browser
The Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America invites you to a presentation on the psychological understanding of karma, with special guests Drs. Roberta Nelson and David Tresemer.

Guidance – and challenge – from Rudolf Steiner (August 3, 1924): “If we want to experience our karma in a comfortable way — it will surely take vengeance on us in one way or another … to be anthroposophists we must be able to observe our own experience of karma with constant wide-awake attention.”
Roberta Nelson is Faculty Chair in the 3-year programs offered by the Association for Anthroposophic Psychology (AAP). She has a doctorate in Counselor Education that qualifies her to supervise, educate, and counsel. In addition, Roberta is dual licensed as a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor (LPCC) as well as a Licensed Addiction Counselor (LAC) in the state of North Dakota. She has other trainings and certifications in Psychosynthesis, EMDR, NVC, and other modalities.
 
David Tresemer is President of AAP. He has a doctorate in psychology from Harvard. He has written about various aspects of anthroposophy applied to issues in our world, the most relevant for this webinar being contributing to and editing of The Counselor: As If Soul and Spirit Matter (to which Roberta Nelson was a major contributor) and Slow Counseling, as well as quarterly columns in Lilipohmagazine.

Our approach on May 8: An anthroposophic psychology must take seriously the different functions of body, soul, and spirit. Spirit—light, freedom, beyond time and space; Physical Body—vehicle for experience and expression; Soul—the mediator. Karma—held as precious in Spirit, stamped into the Physical Body, and worked in Soul. Whereas the Spirit sings in light and freedom, the Soul learns through darkness and constraints, through struggles. The anthroposophic notion of karma helps us understand how we can wrestle with our own being, transforming through experience.
 
Audio-video: We will have some images on screen, though we will describe these to those who join by telephone.

PREPARATION: Please have a pen and blank paper. If you have chalk-based pastels, please have those ready as well.

 Audioconference Details
 
Option 1.  Click link below if you wish to connect through your computer (a headset is recommended): https://zoom.us/j/689514145
 
Option 2.  Call in using your telephone.
United States: (646) 558-8656 or: (669) 900-6833
Access Code: 689-514-145
 
Please join us!Agenda (Central Time)
 
7:15  Welcome and introductions
7:18  Verse
7:20  Introduce guest speaker
7:25  Guest Speakers: Drs. Roberta Nelson & David Tresemer (45 minutes)
8:10  Q&A – Please state your name, location before asking a question
8:28  Close with verse

***

Sunday 19 May 2019, 2 pm – 4 pm- Social Sculpture Workshop around the ‘URPFLANZE’ with Victoria Martin. More details to follow

$20 for art supplies + Snacks to Share Encouraged 

for more info. contact Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

***

Whitsun: A Festival of United Soul Endeavor with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Sunday 2 June 2019 at the Branch 2 pm – 4 pm

also

10 am – 1 pm Saturday 8 June 2019 -4804 Sewanee Road, Nashville, TN 37220. for more info. contact Cathy Green cgreen@grasslandaquatics.com

also

12 Noon Potluck, Program 1 pm -4 pm Whitsunday 9 June 2019, In Knoxville, TN. for more info. contact William Rogers wmerogers@gmail.com

also

7 pm – 10 pm 11 June 2019, Ashville, TN. for more info. contact Marnie Muller 

Eurythmy: AUM = A – I stand for myself, U- I stand for humanity, M – I stand for Life

Social Sculpture: Steiner’s ‘Blue Dot Exercise’: Through Art, the bridge between science & spirit, we warm the ‘I’, to open the heart, in support of healthy community.

Leading Thoughts with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg*

What are my gifts-What are my tools? How can I place them in right relationship within the social realm? How can I hone them to strengthen and enhance the world?

Enter the Labyrinth of Vitae Sophia: Human hearts, once warmed, can rise up to meet the source of wisdom, like flowers turning toward the sun.

Living into the Foundation Stone of Love: How can we take our individual Inner Whitsun & expand it, into what Steiner calls the “World Festival of Knowledge” a path leading from ‘Sprit Recollection’, to ‘Sprit Sensing’, to ‘Sprit Beholding’?

*Hazel Archer-Ginsberg is the founder of the website and blog Reverse Ritual – Understanding Anthroposophy through the Rhythms of the Year (www.reverseritual.com). She is an Essayist, Lecturer, Poet, Trans-denominational Minister, and “Anthroposopher.” She works as the Festivals Coordinator & Council Member of the Chicago Rudolf Steiner Branch as well as with the Traveling Speakers Program, and she serves on the Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society.

Read about this year’s interesting ‘Easter Paradox’ – A Cosmic Wake Up Call: The Easter Paradox of 2019

*** 

Traversing Eternity

History, Insight, Lecture, Poetry, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Speaking with the Stars, Spring,

2 May 2019 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Venus rises above the eastern horizon about an hour before sunrise. The brilliant planet of Love dominates the predawn sky as the rosy glow heralding the Sun’s arrival grows brighter. Look for her next to the waning crescent Moon.

Image result for venus moon painting

***

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Image result for leonardo da vinci

1519 – Death Day of Leonardo da Vinci, Italian painter, sculptor, & architect. “…We know how Leonardo worked at the “Last Supper”. He often went and sat on the scaffolding and brooded for hours in front of the wall, then he would take a brush and make a few strokes and go away again. Sometimes he only went and stared at the picture and went away again. When he was painting the Christ Figure, his hand trembled. Indeed, if we put together all that we can find concerning this subject we must say that neither outwardly nor inwardly was Leonardo happy when painting this world-renowned picture. Now there were people at that time in Milan who were displeased with the slow progress of the picture, for instance a Prior of the monastery, who could not see why an artist could not paint such a picture quickly, and complained to the Duke. He too thought the affair had lasted too long. Leonardo answered: “The picture is to represent Jesus Christ and Judas, the two greatest contrasts; one cannot paint them in one year; there are no models for them in the world, neither for Judas nor for Christ”. After he had been working at the picture for years, he said he did not know whether he could finish it after all! Then he said that if finally he found no model for Judas he could always use the Prior himself! It was thus extraordinarily difficult to bring the picture to a conclusion but within himself Leonardo did not feel happy. For this picture showed the contrast between what lived in his soul and what he was able to represent on the canvas. Here it is necessary to bring forward a hypothesis of Spiritual Science, which may be reached by anyone who studies what can by degrees be learned about this picture.” ~Rudolf Steiner, Leonardo da Vinci, His Spiritual and Intellectual Greatness, At the Turning Point of the New Age

Image result for 1611 – The King James Version of the Bible is published

1611 – The King James Version of the Bible is published for the first time in London, England, by printer Robert Barker

Image result for Catherine the Great of Russia

1729 – Birthday of Catherine the Great of Russia, the longest-ruling female leader of Russia. The Catherinian Era, is often considered the Golden Age of the Russian Empire & the Russian nobility. She enthusiastically supported the ideals of The Enlightenment, thus earning the status of an enlightened despot. As a patron of the arts she presided over the age of the Russian Enlightenment, a period when the Smolny Institute, the first state-financed higher education institution for women in Europe, was established.

Image result for Novalis

1772 – Birthday of Novalis, the pseudonym & pen name of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg, poet, author, mystic, & philosopher of Early German Romanticism. His study of mineralogy & management of salt mines in Saxony, was often ignored by his contemporary readers Novalis concerned himself with the scientific doctrine of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, which greatly influenced his world view, transforming Fichte’s Nicht-Ich (German “not I”) to a Du (“you”), an equal subject to the Ich (“I”). This was the starting point for Novalis’ Liebesreligion (“religion of love”) dedicated to his beloved Sophie who died of tuberculosis.

Image result for Raphael the painter young

“…When we consider the life of Novalis, what an echo we find there of the Raphael life for which Hermann Grimm had so fine an understanding! His beloved dies in her youth. He is himself still young. What is he going to do with his life now that she has died? He tells us himself. He says that his life on Earth will be henceforth to “die after her”, to follow her on the way of death. He wants to pass over already now into the super-sensible, to lead again the Raphael life, not touching the Earth, but living out in poetry his magic idealism. He would fain not let himself be touched by Earth life.

When we read the “Fragments” of Novalis, and give ourselves up to the life that flows so abundantly in them, we can discover the secret of the deep impression they make on us. Whatever we have before us in immediate sense-reality, whatever the eye can see and recognise as beautiful — all this, through the magic idealism that lives in the soul of Novalis, appears in his poetry with a well-nigh heavenly splendour. The meanest and simplest material thing — with the magic idealism of his poetry he can make it live again in all its spiritual light and glory.

And so we see in Novalis a radiant and splendid forerunner of that Michael stream which is now to lead you all, my dear friends, while you live; and then, after you have gone through the gate of death, you will find in the spiritual super-sensible worlds all those others — among them also the being of whom I have been speaking to you today — all those with whom you are to prepare the work that shall be accomplished at the end of the century, and that shall lead mankind past the great crisis in which it is involved.” ~Rudolf Steiner, The Individuality of Elias, John, Raphael, Novalis – The Last Address – Dornach, Michaelmas Eve, 1924

1933 – Gleichschaltung: Adolf Hitler bans trade unions

Image result for 1945 –Fall of Berlin

1945 –Fall of Berlin: The Soviet Union announces the capture of Berlin & Soviet soldiers hoist their red flag over the Reichstag building

Image result for 1952 – The world's first ever jet airliner, the De Havilland Comet 1

1952 – The world’s first ever jet airliner, the De Havilland Comet 1 makes its maiden flight, from London to Johannesburg

1972 – In the early morning hours a fire breaks out at the Sunshine Mine located between Kellogg and Wallace, Idaho, killing 91 workers.

1986 –The City of Chernobyl is evacuated six days after the disaster

1998 – The European Central Bank is founded in Brussels in order to define & execute the European Union’s monetary policy

Image result for GPS Clinton

2000 – President Bill Clinton announces that accurate GPS access would no longer be restricted to the United States military

2008 – Cyclone Nargis makes landfall in Burma killing over 138,000 people & leaving millions of people homeless

2008 – Chaitén Volcano begins erupting in Chile, forcing the evacuation of more than 4,500 people.

2011 – Osama bin Laden, is killed by the United States special forces in

2014 – Two mudslides in Badakhshan, Afghanistan, leave over 2,500 people dead

***

Jeanie Tomanek

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~The portals of perception
Raw & cluttered await
The revealing –
It is my Self I see –
A 1000 colors swirling in liquid light
A star covered in rising clouds
Hung by a thread from its ocean Moon
Hail Self
Traversing eternity
In moral steps of time
Where the Guardian beckons
~hag

***

“…The hatred and antipathy in the world today can indeed be followed by international love with healing in its wings. This is indeed possible. But we are living in an age when all that is possible must be consciously, deliberately and freely striven for by human beings. There must be knowledge of the conditions requisite for uniting the peoples of the Earth, in order that, as a result of this knowledge, each individual people may help to make the waves of love follow those of hatred.

Human love alone has power to heal the wounds of hatred. If humankind has no wish for this love, chaos will remain. That is the terrible alternative now facing human beings who have knowledge. Those who realize its terrors know that the souls of men dare not sleep, for otherwise, as a result of the powerlessness caused by the sleep into which the souls of the peoples have fallen, the healing waves of love will not be able to flow over the waves of hatred.

Human beings who realize this will acquire the kind of knowledge that flows from a spiritual conception of the relationships between the peoples. They will take this knowledge into their feeling — love for humanity will be born. They will take this knowledge into their will – deeds for humanity will be accomplished.

The evolution of the age, with all the terrible paralysis that is appearing at the present time, places a solemn duty before the soul: to gather together all that can unite humankind in love and array it in opposition to the destructive elements that have made their appearance in recent times. This quest for loving unification, for unifying love is not merely a vague feeling. To those who understand the conditions of life today, it is the very highest duty of man.” ~Rudolf Steiner, ‘The Peoples of the Earth in the Light of Anthroposophy’, Stuttgart, March 10th, 1920 http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/19200310p01.html

In 1962, Karl König offered this verse to the friends in America:
The eternal rays
Of the Holy Spirits of Light
Build the tower of human trust,
Which is formed in our hearts
Out of brotherly love.
The eternal piers
of the helping Spirit-Messengers
Bear the bridge of faithfulness
That arches from I to I
In what we do.
So do we become united and strong
In the work that we have begun
And which we are committed in the spirit
To bring to completion.
May the greeting from soul to soul
Ring through the fellowship of our doing.

***

Tuesday 7 May 2019 in Ann Arbor Michigan

& also

Sat. 25 May 2019 –  7 pm – 9 pm in Chicago

Climbing Jacobs Ladder: Celebrating the Feast of Ascension

Leading Thoughts & original art-collage projections with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Eurythmy with Mary Ruud

Social Art with Nancy Melvin

$10 Donation & Snacks to Share Encouraged

Read about this year’s interesting ‘Easter Paradox’ – A Cosmic Wake Up Call: The Easter Paradox of 2019

***

The Karma Project 
A Western Approach to Reincarnation & Karma
May 8, 2019 – 7:15 pm CST (8:15 pm EST)View this email in your browser
The Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America invites you to a presentation on the psychological understanding of karma, with special guests Drs. Roberta Nelson and David Tresemer.

Guidance – and challenge – from Rudolf Steiner (August 3, 1924): “If we want to experience our karma in a comfortable way — it will surely take vengeance on us in one way or another … to be anthroposophists we must be able to observe our own experience of karma with constant wide-awake attention.”
Roberta Nelson is Faculty Chair in the 3-year programs offered by the Association for Anthroposophic Psychology (AAP). She has a doctorate in Counselor Education that qualifies her to supervise, educate, and counsel. In addition, Roberta is dual licensed as a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor (LPCC) as well as a Licensed Addiction Counselor (LAC) in the state of North Dakota. She has other trainings and certifications in Psychosynthesis, EMDR, NVC, and other modalities.
 
David Tresemer is President of AAP. He has a doctorate in psychology from Harvard. He has written about various aspects of anthroposophy applied to issues in our world, the most relevant for this webinar being contributing to and editing of The Counselor: As If Soul and Spirit Matter (to which Roberta Nelson was a major contributor) and Slow Counseling, as well as quarterly columns in Lilipohmagazine.

Our approach on May 8: An anthroposophic psychology must take seriously the different functions of body, soul, and spirit. Spirit—light, freedom, beyond time and space; Physical Body—vehicle for experience and expression; Soul—the mediator. Karma—held as precious in Spirit, stamped into the Physical Body, and worked in Soul. Whereas the Spirit sings in light and freedom, the Soul learns through darkness and constraints, through struggles. The anthroposophic notion of karma helps us understand how we can wrestle with our own being, transforming through experience.
 
Audio-video: We will have some images on screen, though we will describe these to those who join by telephone.

PREPARATION: Please have a pen and blank paper. If you have chalk-based pastels, please have those ready as well.

 Audioconference Details
 
Option 1.  Click link below if you wish to connect through your computer (a headset is recommended): https://zoom.us/j/689514145
 
Option 2.  Call in using your telephone.
United States: (646) 558-8656 or: (669) 900-6833
Access Code: 689-514-145
 
Please join us!Agenda (Central Time)
 
7:15  Welcome and introductions
7:18  Verse
7:20  Introduce guest speaker
7:25  Guest Speakers: Drs. Roberta Nelson & David Tresemer (45 minutes)
8:10  Q&A – Please state your name, location before asking a question
8:28  Close with verse

***

Sunday 19 May 2019, 2 pm – 4 pm- Social Sculpture Workshop around the ‘URPFLANZE’ with Victoria Martin. More details to follow

$20 for art supplies + Snacks to Share Encouraged 

for more info. contact Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

***

Whitsun: A Festival of United Soul Endeavor with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Sunday 2 June 2019 at the Branch 2 pm – 4 pm

also

10 am – 1 pm Saturday 8 June 2019 -4804 Sewanee Road, Nashville, TN 37220. for more info. contact Cathy Green cgreen@grasslandaquatics.com

also

12 Noon Potluck, Program 1 pm -4 pm Whitsunday 9 June 2019, In Knoxville, TN. for more info. contact William Rogers wmerogers@gmail.com

also

7 pm – 10 pm 11 June 2019, Ashville, TN. for more info. contact Marnie Muller 

Eurythmy: AUM = A – I stand for myself, U- I stand for humanity, M – I stand for Life

Social Sculpture: Steiner’s ‘Blue Dot Exercise’: Through Art, the bridge between science & spirit, we warm the ‘I’, to open the heart, in support of healthy community.

Leading Thoughts with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg*

What are my gifts-What are my tools? How can I place them in right relationship within the social realm? How can I hone them to strengthen and enhance the world?

Enter the Labyrinth of Vitae Sophia: Human hearts, once warmed, can rise up to meet the source of wisdom, like flowers turning toward the sun.

Living into the Foundation Stone of Love: How can we take our individual Inner Whitsun & expand it, into what Steiner calls the “World Festival of Knowledge” a path leading from ‘Sprit Recollection’, to ‘Sprit Sensing’, to ‘Sprit Beholding’?

*Hazel Archer-Ginsberg is the founder of the website and blog Reverse Ritual – Understanding Anthroposophy through the Rhythms of the Year (www.reverseritual.com). She is an Essayist, Lecturer, Poet, Trans-denominational Minister, and “Anthroposopher.” She works as the Festivals Coordinator & Council Member of the Chicago Rudolf Steiner Branch as well as with the Traveling Speakers Program, and she serves on the Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society.

Read about this year’s interesting ‘Easter Paradox’ – A Cosmic Wake Up Call: The Easter Paradox of 2019

*** 

Your Wedding Day

Celestial Event, Central Regional Council, Chicago Event, Festival, History, Spring

1 May 2019 – “Speaking with the Stars”: This week provides skywatchers with their final opportunity to get a good view of Sirius, the night sky’s brightest star, before evening twilight swallows it. This scintillating luminary gleams in the southwestern sky.

Related image

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

The feast of ‘Joseph The worker’ Joseph was a “tekton,”, this is often translated as carpenter, but woodworker, craftsman, handyman, or even day laborer, are all good translations. Jesus worked as a “tekton” for upwards of 18 years.

Origins of the Workers May Day

Image result for 1776 – Establishment of the Illuminati in Upper Bavaria, by Jesuit-taught Adam Weishaupt.

1776 – Establishment of the Illuminati in Upper Bavaria, by Jesuit-taught Adam Weishaupt.

Image result for Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro

1786 – In Vienna, Austria, Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro is performed for the first time.

Image result for Albert Parsons, head of the Chicago Knights of Labor, with his wife Lucy Parsons & two children, led 80,000 people down Michigan Avenue,

1884 –At its convention in Chicago the Federation of Organized Trades & Labor Unions resolved that “eight hours shall constitute a legal day’s labour and that we recommend to labour organisations throughout this jurisdiction that they so direct their laws as to conform to this resolution.” Albert Parsons, head of the Chicago Knights of Labor, with his wife Lucy Parsons & two children, led 80,000 people down Michigan Avenue, Chicago, in what is regarded as the first modern May Day Parade, with the cry, “Eight-hour day with no cut in pay.” In support of the eight-hour day. In the next few days they were joined nationwide by 350,000 workers who went on strike at 1,200 factories, including 70,000 in Chicago, 45,000 in New York, 32,000 in Cincinnati, & additional thousands in other cities. Some workers gained shorter hours (eight or nine) with no reduction in pay; others accepted pay cuts with the reduction in hours.

Image result for chicago board of trade building

1885 – The original Chicago Board of Trade Building opens for business

1893 – The World’s Columbian Exposition opens in Chicago.

Image result for pluto painting
Caravaggio 

1930 – The dwarf planet Pluto is officially named.

Image result for empire state building

1931 – The Empire State Building is dedicated in New York City.

1942 – Deathday of Gustav Steiner, Rudolf Steiner’s handicapped brother

Image result for Joseph Goebbels & his wife Magda commit suicide

1945 –Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels & his wife Magda commit suicide in the Reich Garden outside the Führerbunker. Their children are also killed by having cyanide pills inserted into their mouths by their mother, Magda

Also on May 1, 1945, hundreds of people committed mass suicide in the town of Demmin, Germany. The suicides occurred during a mass panic that was provoked by atrocities committed by soldiers of the Soviet Red Army, who had sacked the town the day before. It is acknowledged to be the largest mass suicide ever recorded in Germany.

Nazi officials, the police, the Wehrmacht & a number of citizens had left the town before the arrival of the Red Army, while thousands of refugees from the East had also taken refuge in Demmin. The retreating Wehrmacht had blown up the bridges over the rivers, which enclosed the town trapping the remaining civilians. The Soviet units looted & burned down the town, & committed rapes & executions.

Over 2, 500 inhabitants & refugees then committed suicide, with many families committing suicide together. Most bodies were buried in mass graves, & after the war, discussion of the mass suicide was tabooed by the East German Communist government.

Image result for Fidel Castro, proclaims Cuba a socialist nation & abolishes elections.

1961 – The Prime Minister of Cuba, Fidel Castro, proclaims Cuba a socialist nation & abolishes elections.

Related image

1987 – Pope John Paul II beatifies Edith Stein, a Jewish-born Carmelite nun who was gassed in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz.

Image result for 2009 – Same-sex marriage is legalized in Sweden.

2009 – Same-sex marriage is legalized in Sweden.

***

Congratulations Beloved –
& Welcome to Your Royal Wedding Party
Where You marry You…Come on, Say I do…
as you dance to the beat of your laughing heart
around the blazing bonfire in MayDay Jubilation…
Break taboos, buck the rut rote,
& overthrow conventional surface stuff
with your blithe grace & jaunty charm
in your one-of-a-kind Wedding gown…

There are a couple of caveats though:
the beautiful truth won’t always be simple & bright;
a good marriage takes work to gleam & Green…
it can get murky & dense, convoluted, or kaleidoscopic…
the bird song whispering sweet somethings may sound
more like a marching band
pounding out a kinky version of Beethoven’s 5th
than a double flute playing a quaint folk song…
(if you’re lucky)

When you Give Peace & Dance (remember when?)
you’re likely to be quivery & atwitter in your vows
due to encounters with the Great Unknown –
arrivals from beyond the Wild Blue Yonder –
that will blow your mind to recalibrate
your philosophy of life. So Rejoice…
Your appointments with the numinous
are likely to be stirring, awe-inspiring & fire-friendly…

Your old self is the fuel you will use to burn
your old self to the ground…This bonfire will liberate
your new self, which may be trapped
in a gnarly snarl deep inside your old self…
don’t let the flames freak you –
for very quickly a sense of relief & release will predominate…
Then, as the New You commits its way to freedom,
escaping its cramped quarters – flexing its vital force
in mystic union…you will be blessed
with a foreshadowing of your future bliss…
The intoxication that follows will bring you clarity, peace of mind
& a mighty orgasm of communal de-light…
See you there…

Blessings & peace –
~hag

***

Tuesday 7 May 2019 in Ann Arbor Michigan

& also

Sat. 25 May 2019 –  7 pm – 9 pm in Chicago

Climbing Jacobs Ladder: Celebrating the Feast of Ascension

Leading Thoughts & original art-collage projections with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Eurythmy with Mary Ruud

Social Art with Nancy Melvin

$10 Donation & Snacks to Share Encouraged

Read about this year’s interesting ‘Easter Paradox’ – A Cosmic Wake Up Call: The Easter Paradox of 2019

***

The Karma Project 
A Western Approach to Reincarnation & Karma
May 8, 2019 – 7:15 pm CST (8:15 pm EST)View this email in your browser
The Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America invites you to a presentation on the psychological understanding of karma, with special guests Drs. Roberta Nelson and David Tresemer.

Guidance – and challenge – from Rudolf Steiner (August 3, 1924): “If we want to experience our karma in a comfortable way — it will surely take vengeance on us in one way or another … to be anthroposophists we must be able to observe our own experience of karma with constant wide-awake attention.”
Roberta Nelson is Faculty Chair in the 3-year programs offered by the Association for Anthroposophic Psychology (AAP). She has a doctorate in Counselor Education that qualifies her to supervise, educate, and counsel. In addition, Roberta is dual licensed as a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor (LPCC) as well as a Licensed Addiction Counselor (LAC) in the state of North Dakota. She has other trainings and certifications in Psychosynthesis, EMDR, NVC, and other modalities.
 
David Tresemer is President of AAP. He has a doctorate in psychology from Harvard. He has written about various aspects of anthroposophy applied to issues in our world, the most relevant for this webinar being contributing to and editing of The Counselor: As If Soul and Spirit Matter (to which Roberta Nelson was a major contributor) and Slow Counseling, as well as quarterly columns in Lilipohmagazine.

Our approach on May 8: An anthroposophic psychology must take seriously the different functions of body, soul, and spirit. Spirit—light, freedom, beyond time and space; Physical Body—vehicle for experience and expression; Soul—the mediator. Karma—held as precious in Spirit, stamped into the Physical Body, and worked in Soul. Whereas the Spirit sings in light and freedom, the Soul learns through darkness and constraints, through struggles. The anthroposophic notion of karma helps us understand how we can wrestle with our own being, transforming through experience.
 
Audio-video: We will have some images on screen, though we will describe these to those who join by telephone.

PREPARATION: Please have a pen and blank paper. If you have chalk-based pastels, please have those ready as well.

 Audioconference Details
 
Option 1.  Click link below if you wish to connect through your computer (a headset is recommended): https://zoom.us/j/689514145
 
Option 2.  Call in using your telephone.
United States: (646) 558-8656 or: (669) 900-6833
Access Code: 689-514-145
 
Please join us!Agenda (Central Time)
 
7:15  Welcome and introductions
7:18  Verse
7:20  Introduce guest speaker
7:25  Guest Speakers: Drs. Roberta Nelson & David Tresemer (45 minutes)
8:10  Q&A – Please state your name, location before asking a question
8:28  Close with verse

***

Sunday 19 May 2019, 2 pm – 4 pm- Social Sculpture Workshop around the ‘URPFLANZE’ with Victoria Martin. More details to follow

$20 for art supplies + Snacks to Share Encouraged 

for more info. contact Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

***

Whitsun: A Festival of United Soul Endeavor with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Sunday 2 June 2019 at the Branch 2 pm – 4 pm

also

10 am – 1 pm Saturday 8 June 2019 -4804 Sewanee Road, Nashville, TN 37220. for more info. contact Cathy Green cgreen@grasslandaquatics.com

also

12 Noon Potluck, Program 1 pm -4 pm Whitsunday 9 June 2019, In Knoxville, TN. for more info. contact William Rogers wmerogers@gmail.com

also

7 pm – 10 pm 11 June 2019, Ashville, TN. for more info. contact Marnie Muller 

Eurythmy: AUM = A – I stand for myself, U- I stand for humanity, M – I stand for Life

Social Sculpture: Steiner’s ‘Blue Dot Exercise’: Through Art, the bridge between science & spirit, we warm the ‘I’, to open the heart, in support of healthy community.

Leading Thoughts with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg*

What are my gifts-What are my tools? How can I place them in right relationship within the social realm? How can I hone them to strengthen and enhance the world?

Enter the Labyrinth of Vitae Sophia: Human hearts, once warmed, can rise up to meet the source of wisdom, like flowers turning toward the sun.

Living into the Foundation Stone of Love: How can we take our individual Inner Whitsun & expand it, into what Steiner calls the “World Festival of Knowledge” a path leading from ‘Sprit Recollection’, to ‘Sprit Sensing’, to ‘Sprit Beholding’?

*Hazel Archer-Ginsberg is the founder of the website and blog Reverse Ritual – Understanding Anthroposophy through the Rhythms of the Year (www.reverseritual.com). She is an Essayist, Lecturer, Poet, Trans-denominational Minister, and “Anthroposopher.” She works as the Festivals Coordinator & Council Member of the Chicago Rudolf Steiner Branch as well as with the Traveling Speakers Program, and she serves on the Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society.

Read about this year’s interesting ‘Easter Paradox’ – A Cosmic Wake Up Call: The Easter Paradox of 2019

*** 

Walpurgisnacht

Celestial Event, Festival, History, Poetry, Remembering, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars, Spring

30 April 2019 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Arcturus is the brightest star high in the east these evenings. Spica shines lower right of it by about three fists. To the right of Spica by half that distance is the distinctive four-star constellation of Corvus, the Crow of Spring.

Lynnette Shelley

As Mars marches eastward across Taurus this week, it approaches the two stars that represent the Bull’s horns: Beta & Zeta Tauri. This evening, the Red Planet forms an isosceles triangle with the pair.

***

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Fritz Roeber

Walpurgis Night, In Germanic folklore Walpurgisnacht, also called Hexennacht, literally “Witches’ Night” – the eve of the feast day of Saint Walpurga, an 8th-century abbess in Francia.  In Goethe’s Faust we see 2 scenes: ‘Romantic Walpurgis Night’ the night of a witches’ meeting on the Brocken, the highest peak in the Harz Mountains, a range of wooded hills in central Germany; and later in Part 2 a ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ is featured.

65 – Seneca, teacher of Nero, murdered

Image result for 1789 – On the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York City, George Washington takes the oath of office

1789 – On the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York City, George Washington takes the oath of office to become the first elected President of the United States.

Image result for 1812 – Birthday of the enigmatic Kaspar Hauser

1812 – Birthday of the enigmatic Kaspar Hauser

1877 – Birthday of Alice B. Toklas, an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century. Life partner of American writer Gertrude Stein

Image result for 1885 – The Niagara Reservation becomes New York's first state park

1885 – The Niagara Reservation becomes New York’s first state park, ensuring that Niagara Falls will not be devoted solely to industrial & commercial use

Image result for 1939 – The 1939-40 New York World's Fair opens

1939 – The 1939-40 New York World’s Fair opens

Image result for hitler suicide

1945 – Adolf Hitler commits suicide

Image result for 1963 – The Bristol Bus Boycott

1963 – The Bristol Bus Boycott is held to protest the Company’s refusal to employ Black or Asian bus crews, drawing national attention to racial discrimination in the United Kingdom

***

Arthur Rackham

POD (Poem Of the Day) for Flora on Beltane:
May Day Maya
Pleiadian Goddess 
Bright light of the 7 Sisters
Mountain Nymph transformed,
We ascend your beacon mound
& kindle there
The oakwood of the Bel-Fire
To rival the Sun
& call the Summer heat.
Zeus’s lover
Hermes Mother
Inspire processions
Of chimney sweeps & milkmaids
To leap the healing flames
& sky-clad singing:
“Ride a cock horse to Banburry Cross
To see a fine lady on a white horse”
Walk the circuit
& beat the bounds
With the young Summer King
& the Queen of the May
For the feast of flowers
Is calling forth the consort
Come, come, come unto me
& celebrate with the orders of Elementals.
Bold maidens bathing in the dew of May morn
Sword dancing & singing
In deep forest frivolity
Striking open ancient ley lines in bulls-eye archery
Marking the unrestrained tryst,
A Maypole in Holy-Rood-Mass
Wrapped & weaved in ribbons & ivy
For the May-Eve rites.
Robin Hood makes ready the hunt,
Maid Marian has gone-a-Maying. 
~Lady Hazel

***

This is the Eve of Beltane or May Day. Beltane, the old Celtic name for May Day, means bright fire or fire of Bel, the name of the Solar force, whose feast marks the beginning of the 2nd half of the year.

Wood from 9 sacred trees is gathered, & the great Bel-fire is built & ritualistically ignited by the High priestess or Arch-Druid. People would jump these ‘need-fires’ for fertility, healing & protection.

Torches lit from it were carried home to re-light the hearth fires. The folk would walk their animals in-between them to ensure a productive season – this is the mating season after all for man & beast.

There were other May Day customs, like walking the circuit of one’s property, repairing fences & boundary markers, processions of all kinds, archery tournaments, Morris dances, sword play, & of course making merry with music & drinking.

May morning is a time when the veil between the worlds can easily be pushed aside; but instead of the spirits coming into our realm from the other side, which is the case with Halloween, the polar opposite of Mayday on the wheel of the year -the fairies can enchant us over into their mystical realms.

This is a magical time, perfect for gathering ‘wild’ water, especially the May morning dew, or water from hidden wells & springs. These wild waters were collected & used to bath in for beauty, or to drink for health.

May Day is considered the start of summer – the time of milk & honey. This sensuous fertile energy is totally universal, & can be applied on many different levels. When we acknowledge these creative forces in the dance of our lives, it takes us to our own personal, modern-day version of dancing around the maypole, where we weave & combine the opposing energies within ourselves, blending them into one balanced source.

So yes, whether you know it or not, there will be at least one song that plays in your sub-conscious head on this eve of the 1st day of May, when you become perhaps, the Queen of the May, or Jack-in the Green. Our body like the body of the earth instinctively knows its Beltane, the time of vitality & passion & new growth. And the wisdom of our spirit seeks the natural union of polarities that occur at this time, giving us the opportunity for integration, in the alchemical dance of our souls…

Because under all the sexual innuendo & frivolity, it’s really all about the inner mystic marriage, the union of fire & water -opposites complimenting each other, to become one, bringing all the elements into balance.

You’ll just have to go dancing naked in the forest preserve on your own time…

For now, let’s work to unify the polarities of our being, by sparking the new fire of creative fertility & passion, & marrying it with the beautiful, healing waters of compassion & pure love. So we can truly celebrate the marriage feast of our lives, with a grounded, mindful joy.

So if it is your will – light your Bel-fire, marry it to the water, by floating it in the chalice of your choice. Take the time you need there…To do or not, what you will…Whisper your marriage vows into the water…or dance the 1st dance…or smash the glass…whatever your ceremony calls for…short simple or silent…it doesn’t matter…a 3 day bacchanal, with dancing puppets…it’s all good…cause it’s all about what’s inside…

Peace & Love

~Lady Hazel

***

Tuesday 7 May 2019 in Ann Arbor Michigan

& also

Sat. 25 May 2019 –  7 pm – 9 pm in Chicago

Climbing Jacobs Ladder: Celebrating the Feast of Ascension

Leading Thoughts & original art-collage projections with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Eurythmy with Mary Ruud

Social Art with Nancy Melvin

$10 Donation & Snacks to Share Encouraged

Read about this year’s interesting ‘Easter Paradox’ – A Cosmic Wake Up Call: The Easter Paradox of 2019

***

Sunday 19 May 2019, 2 pm – 4 pm- Social Sculpture Workshop around the ‘URPFLANZE’ with Victoria Martin. More details to follow

$20 for art supplies + Snacks to Share Encouraged 

for more info. contact Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

***

Whitsun: A Festival of United Soul Endeavor with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Sunday 2 June 2019 at the Branch 2 pm – 4 pm

also

10 am – 1 pm Saturday 8 June 2019 -4804 Sewanee Road, Nashville, TN 37220. for more info. contact Cathy Green cgreen@grasslandaquatics.com

also

12 Noon Potluck, Program 1 pm -4 pm Whitsunday 9 June 2019, In Knoxville, TN. for more info. contact William Rogers wmerogers@gmail.com

also

7 pm – 10 pm 11 June 2019, Ashville, TN. for more info. contact Marnie Muller 

Eurythmy: AUM = A – I stand for myself, U- I stand for humanity, M – I stand for Life

Social Sculpture: Steiner’s ‘Blue Dot Exercise’: Through Art, the bridge between science & spirit, we warm the ‘I’, to open the heart, in support of healthy community.

Leading Thoughts with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg*

What are my gifts-What are my tools? How can I place them in right relationship within the social realm? How can I hone them to strengthen and enhance the world?

Enter the Labyrinth of Vitae Sophia: Human hearts, once warmed, can rise up to meet the source of wisdom, like flowers turning toward the sun.

Living into the Foundation Stone of Love: How can we take our individual Inner Whitsun & expand it, into what Steiner calls the “World Festival of Knowledge” a path leading from ‘Sprit Recollection’, to ‘Sprit Sensing’, to ‘Sprit Beholding’?

*Hazel Archer-Ginsberg is the founder of the website and blog Reverse Ritual – Understanding Anthroposophy through the Rhythms of the Year (www.reverseritual.com). She is an Essayist, Lecturer, Poet, Trans-denominational Minister, and “Anthroposopher.” She works as the Festivals Coordinator & Council Member of the Chicago Rudolf Steiner Branch as well as with the Traveling Speakers Program, and she serves on the Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society.

Read about this year’s interesting ‘Easter Paradox’ – A Cosmic Wake Up Call: The Easter Paradox of 2019

In the 40 Days

History, Insight, Lecture, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars, Spring, , ,

29 April 2019 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Just after dark, the Sickle of Leo stands vertical, high in the south. Its bottom star is Regulus, the brightest of Leo. In second place is yellow Algieba above it. The Lion is walking horizontally westward. The Sickle forms his front leg, chest, mane, & part of his head. Denebola, in the tip of the Lion’s tail, which was featured in connection with the Vernal Full Moon, is once more revealed for our contemplation…

Related image

***

Image result for joan of arc with Michael

“Appearance of St.. Catherine and Michael to Joan of Arc,” by Hermann Stilke (Left-hand panel of his Joan of Arc triptych)

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Image result for St Endelienta

Feast Day of Saint Endelienta, a Cornish saint of the 5th century. She is believed to be a daughter of the Welsh King Brychan, & legend says that she was a goddaughter of King Arthur. She lived as a hermit at Trentinney where she subsisted on the milk of a cow.

Giovanni-di-Paolo

1380 – Death Day of Catherine of Siena, Italian mystic, philosopher, a Scholastic philosopher & theologian & saint. She is believed to have had miraculous visions & felt herself to be united in marriage with Jesus.

Born as the Black Death-ravaged in Siena, Italy, to Lapa Piagenti, the daughter of a local poet, & Giacomo di Benincasa, a cloth dyer who ran his enterprise with the help of his sons. Lapa was about forty years old when she gave premature birth to twin daughters Catherine & Giovanna. She had already borne 22 children, but half of them had died. Giovanna was handed over to a wet-nurse & died soon after. Catherine was nursed by her mother & developed into a healthy child. She was two years old when Lapa had her 25th child, another daughter named Giovanna. As a child Catherine was so merry that the family gave her the pet name of “Euphrosyne”, which is Greek for “joy” & the name of an early Christian saint.

Catherine had her first vision of Christ when she was five or six years old: She & a brother were on the way home from visiting a married sister when she is said to have experienced a vision of Christ seated in glory with the Apostles Peter, Paul, & JohnAt age seven, Catherine vowed to give her whole life to God.

When Catherine was sixteen, her older sister Bonaventura died in childbirth; already anguished by this, Catherine soon learned that her parents wanted her to marry Bonaventura’s widower. She was absolutely opposed & started a massive fast, & cut off her long hair as a protest.

“Build a cell inside your mind, from which you can never flee.” In this inner cell she made her father into a representation of Christ, her mother into the Blessed Virgin Mary, & her brothers into the apostles. Serving them humbly became an opportunity for spiritual growth. She chose to live an active & prayerful life outside a convent’s walls following the model of the Dominicans. Eventually her father gave up & permitted her to live as she pleased.

Her custom of giving away clothing &food without asking anyone’s permission cost her family significantly, but she demanded nothing for herself.

In about 1368, age twenty-one, Catherine experienced what she described in her letters as a “Mystical Marriage” with Jesus. Catherine received, not the ring of gold & jewels that her biographer reports in his version, but the ring of Christ’s foreskin.” Catherine herself mentions the foreskin-as-wedding ring motif in one of her letters, equating the wedding ring of a virgin with a foreskin; she typically claimed that her own wedding ring to Christ was simply invisible

As social & political tensions mounted in Siena, Catherine found herself drawn to intervene in wider politics. She began travelling with her followers throughout northern & central Italy advocating reform of the clergy & advising people that repentance &renewal could be done through “the total love for God.” In Pisa, in 1375, she used what influence she had to sway that city & Lucca away from alliance with the anti-papal league whose force was gaining momentum & strength. It was in Pisa that she received the stigmata.

She received the Holy Eucharist almost daily. This extreme fasting appeared unhealthy in the eyes of the clergy & her own sisterhood. Her confessor ordered her to eat properly. But Catherine claimed that she was unable to, describing her inability to eat as an infermità (illness). From the beginning of 1380, Catherine could neither eat nor swallow water. On February 26 she lost the use of her legs. St Catherine died in Rome, on 29 April 1380, at the age of thirty-three, having suffered a stroke eight days earlier.

Image result for 1429 – Joan of Arc - the Maid of Orléans, defeats the English

1429 – Joan of Arc – the Maid of Orléans, defeats the English which begins the process that ended with England’s complete expulsion from the continent.

“It was necessary that the Maid of Orleans went through a kind of unaware initiation to fulfill her historical mission.It concerned an initiation that could take place in the time of the thirteen nights between the 25th December and 6th January.In the last time before birth the human being is especially accessible to unaware influences from the spiritual world.

On the 6th January the Maid of Orleans was born, to whom the Christ Impulse was implanted just before she saw the physical sunlight.The Maid of Orleans intervened in the course of history in such a way that everything that happened later was determined through it.

The whole map of Europe would be different, also the spiritual life if the English had won.

The Maid was a servant of St. Michael. She was a warrior of his Will and brought this spiritual will to Earth by her determination and actions.In the Central European civilisation were the springs for the whole spiritual culture of the future, the foundation of the ego-culture.

The human ego had to enkindle itself in the outside world, to be awake and realised internally. Thus the ego-culture of Central Europe was aroused from the objective events, the heroic sacrifices, that have brought the changes into etheric bodies and continue to do so, through the recorded memory.

It is necessary that, there would be souls, who send thoughts into the spiritual world like extending arms and bring down the consciousness from the spiritual world, souls conscious of spirit.The proper purpose of all our endevours is to gain a living connection between the physical and spiritual worlds.

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation’s sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit land.”

~Rudolf Steiner, Spiritual Science, a Necessity for the Present Time, The Relation of Man to his Folk Soul – Nuremberg, March 13, 1915, GA 159

“In order to throw a little light on the occult understanding of history, we may ask the question: What would the development of modern Europe have been if at the beginning of the 15th century the Maid of Orleans had not entered the arena of events? Anyone who thinks, even from an entirely external point of view, of the development that took place during this period, must say to himself: Suppose the deeds of the Maid of Orleans were erased from history … then, according to the knowledge obtainable from purely external historical research, one cannot but realise that without the working of higher, super-sensible Powers through the Maid of Orleans, the whole of France, indeed the whole of Europe in the 15th century, would have taken on an altogether different form. Everything in the impulses of will, in the physical brains of those times, was directed towards flooding all Europe with a general conception of the State which would have extinguished the folk-individualities and under this influence a very great deal of what has developed in Europe during the last centuries through the interplay of these folk-individualities would quite certainly have been impossible.

Imagine the deed of the Maid of Orleans blotted out from history, France abandoned to her fate without this intervention, and then ask: Without this deed, what would have become of France? And then think of the role played by France in the whole cultural life of humanity during the centuries following! Add to this the facts which cannot be refuted and are confirmed by actual documents concerning the mission of the Maid of Orleans. This young girl, certainly not highly educated even by the standards of her time, suddenly, before she is twenty years old, feels in the autumn of 1428 that spiritual Powers of the super-sensible worlds are speaking to her. True, she clothes these Powers in forms that are familiar to her, so that she is seeing them through the medium of her own mental images; but that does not do away with the reality of these Powers. Picture to yourselves that she knows that super-sensible Powers are guiding her will towards a definite point — I am speaking to begin with, not of what can be told about these facts from the Akasha Chronicle, but only of what is confirmed by documentary evidence.

We know that the Maid of Orleans confided her vision first of all to a relative who — one would almost say, by chance-happened to understand her; that after many vicissitudes and difficulties she was introduced to the Court of King Charles who, together with the whole French Army, had come to his wit’s end, as the saying goes. We know too, how after every conceivable obstacle had been put in her way, she finally recognised and went straight to the King, who was standing among such a crowd of people that no physical eye could have distinguished him. It is also known that at that moment she confided to him something— he wanted to test her by it — of which it can be said that it was known only to him and to the super-sensible worlds. You also know from ordinary history that it was she who, under the unceasing impulse and urge of her intense faith — it would be better to say, through her actual vision — and in face of the greatest difficulties, led the armies to victory and the King to his crowning.

Who intervened at that time in the course of history? — None other than Beings of higher Hierarchies! The Maid of Orleans was an outer Instrument of these Beings, and it was they who guided the deeds of history”.

~Rudolf Steiner, Occult History, Lecture 2, Stuttgart, 28th December 1910

Image result for 1862 –The Capture of New Orleans by Union forces

1862 –The Capture of New Orleans by Union forces in the American Civil War.

1899 – Birthday of Duke Ellington, American pianist, composer, & bandleader

1901 – Birthday of Hirohito, Japanese emperor

Image result for 1910 people budget

1910 – The Parliament of the United Kingdom passes the People’s Budget, the first budget in British history with the expressed intent of redistributing wealth among the British public

1945 –The German army in Italy unconditionally surrenders to the Allies.

Related image

1945 – Adolf Hitler marries his longtime partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker they both commit suicide the following day

Image result for 1945 – Dachau concentration camp is liberated

1945 – Dachau concentration camp is liberated by United States troops

1991 – A cyclone strikes the Chittagong district of southeastern Bangladesh with winds of around 155 miles per hour killing at least 238,000 people &leaving as many as 10 million homeless

1991 – The 7.0 Mw earthquake affects Georgia with a maximum intensity killing 370 people

Image result for 11992 –Riots in Los Angeles, following the acquittal of police officers charged with excessive force in the beating of Rodney King.

1992 –Riots in Los Angeles, following the acquittal of police officers charged with excessive force in the beating of Rodney King. Over the next three days 53 people are killed & hundreds of buildings are destroyed

***

Circle song:

~What mystery is unfolding
In the heart-fires we are holding
In our hand we our molding
A new destiny…
~hag

***

Thought of the day:

Michael supports us with the courage to die into Christ, while still living in the world. Can we come to understand & live into the principle of Resurrection that continues to grow within & around us, even if all we can see is the death process?

Just as the April showers swell the seed in a gradual surrender to life. I find I must continuously, & conscientiously choose to let go, & open to the greening, allowing my whole being to become a vessel for the fulfillment of the Resurrection, allowing The Risen Christ to teach me – thru Nature, thru other human beings, & thru my Higher-Self.

And always my question is: What does this look like as a lifestyle, as a right livelihood, as a Shared festival?…As a community experience, honoring & furthering the Resurrection, by aligning our will with the Divine Will – Learning to serve from a place of wholehearted listening…& a practice of, not I, but Christ in me…

***

Tuesday 7 May 2019 in Ann Arbor Michigan

& also

Sat. 25 May 2019 –  7 pm – 9 pm in Chicago

Climbing Jacobs Ladder: Celebrating the Feast of Ascension

Leading Thoughts & original art-collage projections with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Eurythmy with Mary Ruud

Social Art with Nancy Melvin

$10 Donation & Snacks to Share Encouraged

Read about this year’s interesting ‘Easter Paradox’ – A Cosmic Wake Up Call: The Easter Paradox of 2019

***

Sunday 19 May 2019, 2 pm – 4 pm- Social Sculpture Workshop around the ‘URPFLANZE’ with Victoria Martin. More details to follow

$20 for art supplies + Snacks to Share Encouraged 

for more info. contact Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

***

Whitsun: A Festival of United Soul Endeavor with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Sunday 2 June 2019 at the Branch 2 pm – 4 pm

also

10 am – 1 pm Saturday 8 June 2019 -4804 Sewanee Road, Nashville, TN 37220. for more info. contact Cathy Green cgreen@grasslandaquatics.com

also

12 Noon Potluck, Program 1 pm -4 pm Whitsunday 9 June 2019, In Knoxville, TN. for more info. contact William Rogers wmerogers@gmail.com

also

7 pm – 10 pm 11 June 2019, Ashville, TN. for more info. contact Marnie Muller 

Eurythmy: AUM = A – I stand for myself, U- I stand for humanity, M – I stand for Life

Social Sculpture: Steiner’s ‘Blue Dot Exercise’: Through Art, the bridge between science & spirit, we warm the ‘I’, to open the heart, in support of healthy community.

Leading Thoughts with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg*

What are my gifts-What are my tools? How can I place them in right relationship within the social realm? How can I hone them to strengthen and enhance the world?

Enter the Labyrinth of Vitae Sophia: Human hearts, once warmed, can rise up to meet the source of wisdom, like flowers turning toward the sun.

Living into the Foundation Stone of Love: How can we take our individual Inner Whitsun & expand it, into what Steiner calls the “World Festival of Knowledge” a path leading from ‘Sprit Recollection’, to ‘Sprit Sensing’, to ‘Sprit Beholding’?

*Hazel Archer-Ginsberg is the founder of the website and blog Reverse Ritual – Understanding Anthroposophy through the Rhythms of the Year (www.reverseritual.com). She is an Essayist, Lecturer, Poet, Trans-denominational Minister, and “Anthroposopher.” She works as the Festivals Coordinator & Council Member of the Chicago Rudolf Steiner Branch as well as with the Traveling Speakers Program, and she serves on the Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society.

Read about this year’s interesting ‘Easter Paradox’ – A Cosmic Wake Up Call: The Easter Paradox of 2019

***