25 September 2016 – Astro-Weather: About a half hour after sunset time, look for Venus very low in the west-southwest through the twilight. It’s on its way to a grand apparition as the “Evening Star” high in the southwest this winter.

Titian

Saturn remains a gorgeous sight in the evening sky all week. It stands high in the southwest as twilight fades to darkness & doesn’t set until after 10 pm CDT. The ringed world resides among the background stars of southwestern Ophiuchus, north of Antares, the brightest star in neighboring Scorpius. The yellow-hued planet appears significantly brighter than the ruddy star.

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When we look up to the wonder of the starry world, when we contemplate the whole process of the universe with its glories and marvels, then we are led at last to the feeling that all the glory that lies open to our view in the whole universe that surrounds us only has meaning when it is reflected in an admiring human soul. -Goethe

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Rudolf Steiner’s lectures on this day

Birthday of Cleophas, disciple on the road to Emmaus Luke 24:13-32. This occurs three days after the crucifixion, on the day of Jesus’ resurrection. The two have heard the tomb of Jesus was found empty earlier that day. They are discussing the events of the past few days when a stranger asks them what they are discussing. “Their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” He soon rebukes them for their unbelief & gives them a Bible study on prophecies about the Messiah. They ask the stranger to join them for the evening meal. When he breaks the bread “their eyes were opened” &  they recognize him as the resurrected Christ, Who immediately vanishes.

Cleopas & his friend hasten back to Jerusalem to carry the news to the other disciples, & learn that The Christ has also appeared to them. The same event is recorded in Mark 16:12-16:13

810 – Birthday of John Scotus Eriugena, Christian mystic philosopher, translator, theologian & poet. John “of Ireland” (Eriugena means “Irish-born,” where the Scotti were an ancient & extensive tribe) is a major figure in the development of mystical spirituality in western European Christianity. He served as the primary translator-conduit for ideas from the great Greek Christian minds of the Middle-East & Near-East to come into Europe. ‘God is both immanently within and transcendentally beyond all beings’ Expanding richly on the idea of the apokatastasis or “universal salvation” of all souls in God’s all-saving Divine Love. Eriugena also wrote of the conscious Return (reditus) & merging of all beings into God. No souls (including the souls of animals & the demon-souls) would be left out of this grand return, no one would be damned to suffer forever in hell or wither away into oblivion. Eriugena’s enlightened view reveals an astonishingly positive scenario of a triumphantly compassionate, ever-loving God who is the Heart, Source & Substance of everyone.

“…we come across wonderful characters such as Scotus Erigena, a monk from Scotland called the Scottish St. John, who later lived at the court of Charles the Bald. He did not get on well with the Church, and it is told that the brothers of his order tortured him to death with pins. Of course, this is not to be taken literally, but it is true that he was tortured to death. A splendid book was written by him, On the Divisions in Nature which reveals a great profundity of thought… “. ~Rudolf Steiner, Occult Signs and Symbols, lecture 3, GA 101

1789 – The United States Congress passes the Bill of Rights

1849 – Deathday of Johann Strauss I, Austrian composer

1930 – Birthday of Shel Silverstein, American author, poet, illustrator, & songwriter

1970 – Erich Maria Remarque, a German novelist who created many works about the terror of war. His best known novel is All Quiet on the Western Front (1928). This made him an enemy of the Nazis, who burned many of his works

1978 – PSA Flight 182, a Boeing 727, collides in mid-air with a Cessna 172 & crashes in San Diego, killing 144 people

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“Once I spoke the language of the flowers,
Once I understood each word the caterpillar said,
Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,
And shared a conversation with the housefly
in my bed.
Once I heard and answered all the questions
of the crickets,
And joined the crying of each falling dying
flake of snow,
Once I spoke the language of the flowers. . . .
How did it go?
How did it go?”
~Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends

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Virtue of the month: Contentment Becomes Equanimity 

At this time, the flowers wither, fruit & nuts fall from the trees & decompose, leaving their empty husks on the ground; grains are sorted or stored before being sown, to ensure a new cycle of growth. This process of decomposition & sorting also concerns the human being. Just as the fruit is separated from the tree & the seed from the fruit, so is the soul separated from the body, in sleep, in meditation, in death…The body is the envelope -the wrapping – & the soul is the seed that is planted in the soil of the spiritual world.

The human being is a fruit…& when we are ripe, we must not fall to the ground like the fruits & seeds of the earth, we must journey with consciousness into the spiritual world.

Autumn is the season for that separation of which Hermes Trismegistus speaks: ‘You shall separate the subtle from the gross, gently and with great skill.’ To separate the subtle from the gross is to separate the spiritual from the material, & the whole of nature undergoes this process of alchemy at autumn-tide, in preparation for the coming of new life. And yet most people have no idea what to cut out or re-cycle: they swallow everything whole, & yet are rarely content.

And so this is what we have to learn from Michael: Discernment! – How to choose, & what to choose, how to separate the pure from the impure, the useful from the useless, the harmful from the beneficial. The absence of judgment in this respect is the cause of many misfortunes. Michaelmas is resplendently rich in meaning for those who understand that it can bring them the courage to cultivate true freedom & liberation. So put the sword of Michael to use, to bless & bestow, as well as to cut away what does not serve – To separate the wheat from the chaff -To sharpen the mind & protect the heart.

And Stand as a peaceful warrior for change

~Hazel Archer Ginsberg 

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Michaelmas Festival: 7pm –9pm Friday 30 September, 2016

Optional Community Potluck Dinner 5pm – 6:45pm at The Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 N. Lincoln Ave. Chicago

Heart-Thinking: Michael Beckoning

7pm – The Midwest Eurythmy Group will perform the Michaelmas Verse from Rudolf Steiner’s Calendar of the Soul

Activating Our ‘Gemut’: The mind warmed by a loving heart & stimulated by the soul’s imaginative power – Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Copper Rod Eurythmy: ALL

If I’m to be a valiant knight, Then there’s a battle I must fight , And I must choose right from the start, Not strength of arm But strength of heart, My sword shall of good steel be made, And love the keenness of the blade

Grimm’s Tale “The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs” by Laura Donkel

Verse for the Michaelic Age:  ALL

We must eradicate from the soul all fear and terror of what approaches us from the future. We must acquire serenity in all feelings and sensations about the future.

We must look forward with absolute equanimity to whatever may come.  And we must think only that whatever comes is given to us by a cosmic guidance full of wisdom.

It is part of what we must learn in this age, namely, to live without any security in material existence and to live with pure trust in the ever-present help of the spiritual world.

Truly, nothing else will do if our courage is not to fail us. For this let us seek awakening to the reality of the spirit from within ourselves, every morning and every evening. ~Rudolf Steiner

Piano & Voice – Kristen Wray & David Wray performing Nacht und Träume + Ganymed  – By Franz Schubert. Kristen Wray is a fiber and metal weaving artist, an energy healing practitioner, as well as a classically trained singer. David Wray is a classics professor at the University of Chicago specializing in ancient Roman poetry. Kristen and David regularly perform together in music student recitals on the university campus.

$10 Donation & Snacks to Share Encouraged

 For more info. Contact Festivals Coordinator Hazel Archer GinsbergHazel@ReverseRitual.com

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Saturday 15 October 2016 Opening (Closing event 12 November  2016)

Calaj.com Artists Matthew Schaefer and Janet Trierweiler Schaefer present:

“Silent Lecture” Art Exhibit & Discussion 

1pm – 4pm Paintings on view (in the un-rented space next to the Branch)

2:30 Artist Discussion – topics may include:

                         Setting limits to hold the limitless.      

                         Human systems at work.

                         The fallible element, how it works in art.

                         The steps or ritual.

                         The visible/invisible origin.

                         Finding the spiritual in art through a primitive gesture.

                         A cognitive transformation, instinct to intuition.

Snacks to Share Encouraged

For more info. Contact  Hazel Archer Ginsberg

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Van der Pals/ Kirchner-Bockholt  Tone Eurythmy Therapy Course with Jan Ranck – 

October 21 – 30, 2016

LOCATION:  2135 West Wilson Avenue, Chicago IL. 60625

The course is warmly recommended for: Trained Eurythmists, Eurythmy Therapists, Medical Doctors,  Music Therapists, and Students in these fields, as well as lay persons with interest.

Inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s indication that tone eurythmy therapy should be developed in addition to speech eurythmy therapy, the eurythmist Lea van der Pals and the medical doctor Margarete Kirchner-Bockholt worked together in the early 1970s to develop a sequence of exercises in connection with the diseases discussed in Rudolf Steiner and Ita Wegman’s book “Extending Practical Medicine”.

Some free accommodation available on a first-come, first serve basis. Information and Registration: abdalma (at) gmail.com

Lea van der Pals’ book “The Human Being as Music” (Robinswood Press 1992), published in German in 1969 as “Der Mensch Musik”, is highly recommended as background reading for the course.

Jan Ranck is currently the founding director of the Jerusalem Eurythmy Ensemble (1990) and the Jerusalem Academy of Eurythmy (1992).  She is also an instructor in the Jerusalem Waldorf Teacher Bachelor Program in David Yellin Academic College, and a guest teacher in various venues worldwide, including the Goetheanum and the MA Program in Eurythmy held in Emerson College and Spring Valley. She is the representative for Israel in the International Department of Eurythmy Therapy (“Eurythmy Therapy Forum”)