“Selflessness Becomes Catharsis”

July 12, 2016Insight, Poetry, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote~hag

12 July 2016 – ASTRO-WEATHER – The moon is waxing. Morning stars are Neptune & Uranus. Evening stars are Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Mars & Saturn.

As soon as it’s dark, look just north (upper right) of Jupiter for Sigma Leonis, Leo’s hind foot. Tonight they’re the closest they will appear.

The constellation Sagittarius is found due south at midnight. It is shaped like a teapot, its spout to the right. The picture was imagined as an archer to the Greeks, aiming an arrow at Scorpio, seen to the right of the teapot

***

Mattia Preti

Feast day of Saint Veronica. The name “Veronica” itself is a Latinisation of Berenice a Macedonian name, meaning “bearer of victory”. The Latin word for “true” or “authentic” happens to be vera, the theory emerged that the name itself is derived from the Latin phrase “true image”, vera icon. In the 13th-century text & also in some later sources the term Veronica was used for the veil, not the person. The Encyclopædia Britannica says this about the legend:

Eusebius in his Historia Ecclesiastica tells how at Caesarea Philippi lived the woman whom Christ healed of an issue of blood (Matthew 9:20-22). In the West she was identified with Martha of Bethany; in the East she was called Berenike, or Beronike, the name appearing in as early a work as the “Acta Pilati”, the most ancient form of which goes back to the fourth century. The fanciful derivation of the name Veronica from the words Vera Icon (eikon) “true image” dates back to the “Otia Imperialia” that says: “Est ergo Veronica pictura Domini vera” (translated: “The Veronica is, therefore, a true picture of the Lord.”)

486 BC – Birthday of Darius I, the third king of the Persian Empire. Also called Darius the Great, he ruled the empire at its peak.

He organized a new monetary system, along with making Aramaic the official language of the empire. He also put the empire in better standing by building roads & introducing standard weights & measure.

Darius is mentioned in the Biblical books of Haggai, Zechariah, Daniel, & Ezra–Nehemiah.

100 B.C – Birthday of Julius Caesar

1493 – Hartmann Schedel’s Nuremberg Chronicle, one of the best-documented early printed books, is published. Latin scholars refer to it as Liber Chronicarum (Book of Chronicles). German speakers refer to it as Die Schedelsche Weltchronik (Schedel’s World History)

1562 – Fray Diego de Landa, acting Bishop of Yucatán, burns the sacred books of the Maya

1580 – The Ostrog Bible, one of the early printed Bibles in a Slavic language, is published

1804 –Alexander Hamilton dies a day after being shot in a duel with Aaron Burr, the VP of the US.

1806 – Sixteen German imperial states leave the Holy Roman Empire & form the Confederation of the Rhine.

1817 – Birthday of Henry David Thoreau

1849 – Deathday of Dolley Madison, wife of James Madison, 4th First Lady of the United States

1854 – Birthday of George Eastman, founded Eastman Kodak

1864 – Birthday of scientist George Washington Carver

1884 – Birthday of Louis B. Mayer

Modigliani

1884 – Birthday of Amedeo Modigliani, Italian painter &sculptor

1895 – Birthday of Buckminster Fuller, architect & engineer, designed the Montreal Biosphère

1895 – Birthday of Oscar Hammerstein II, director, producer, &songwriter

1904 – Birthday of Chilean writer Pablo Neruda

1917 – The Bisbee Deportation occurs as vigilantes kidnap & deport nearly 1,300 striking miners from Bisbee, Arizona

1918 – The Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Kawachi blows up at Shunan, western Honshu, Japan, killing at least 621

1920 – The Soviet–Lithuanian Peace Treaty is signed, by which Soviet Russia recognizes the independence of Lithuania.

1933 – A minimum wage of 40 cents an hour was established in the U.S

1941 – Moscow was bombed by the German Luftwaffe for the first time

1943 – German & Soviet forces engage in one of the largest armored engagements of all time

1948 – Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion orders the expulsion of Palestinians from the towns of Lod & Ramla

1962 – The Rolling Stones perform their first concert, at the Marquee Club in London.

1967 – The Newark riots begin in Newark, New Jersey

1973 – A fire destroys the entire sixth floor of the National Personnel Records Center of the United States

1984, Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale named U.S. Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, D-N.Y., as his running mate.

1990, Boris Yeltsin quit the Soviet Communist Party, saying he wanted to concentrate on his duties as president of the Russian republic

2000 – Russia launched the Zvezda after two years of delays. The module was built to be the living quarters for the International Space Station

***

James Christensen

~Feeling One with the Ancient Sojourner…Destined

To walk a 1000 years

Until I arrive…

@mySelf…

Let the red sash that cradles the hips of Isis

Knot the ends of life & dream divine

For I am

Water & dust walking –

Crimson magic courses thru me…

‎Yes I am

An oar made ready…

Like water, adaptable

I follow mySelf

Flowing on…

Come friend, let’s dance along the way .:.

~hag

***

Sulamith-Wulfing

July = “Selflessness Becomes Catharsis”

The fullness of the resplendent Summer with its lush, colorful gardens & flowering meadows, undulating like heat waves in a dream over the earth, embraced in a mantle of warmth. I give myself up to the motherly sun, in order to become, a sun myself. My soul a flaming glow blazing full of yearning for the open stillness of the wide starry sky.

“Lose yourself to find yourself”

Today too on my natal return, these words sound out to me from those heavenly heights. But how, after the ‘I’ has made its way into us, can we lose ourselves in order to find ourselves again in the ‘I’ of the World?

Perhaps it’s by sacrificing our intellectual knowledge to the spirit of the world! This is the secret of the Summer mysteries: the transformation of the intellectual knowledge of the head, into the warmth-bearing substance of the will!

Seen from the aspect of biography, this turning point, is mirrored after the middle of life, where the downward curve of life sets in – understood in July’s glyph of the crab, symbol of the constellation Cancer.

We are called to give up the armoring of materialism, which is a danger that lucks in the summer feeling. Only when the crab reveals its spiritual secret can it bestow its wisdom to us.

This secret is transformation. The old & worn out reaches its completion, which is expressed in the involving spiral of the shell. – This narrowing passage of the spiral leads to an end, from which there is no escape – And then we see that the new beginning of the evolving spiral is separated from the involving spiral by an abyss.

How can we cross this abyss? Only by a courageous leap over the void! This archetypal motif always appears when what is old & exhausted reaches its end, & the new approaches, which can only be achieved thru new soul forces.

Today too this turning point, not only in the wheel of the year, but of world events before us -This stream of the past, that carries the seed of death within it – This stream of materialistic understanding & formation of time, armored within a rigid structure, can only be overcome by a courageous leap. For from that rigid structure no new seeds of the future can emerge. These seeds must be developed by a completely new set of soul forces, into which streams the light of true spiritual knowledge.

The time of summer is especially appropriate for cultivating within us, with warmth, these new concept-seeds of thought, in order to shape new imaginations with which we can approach the metamorphic processes of nature. Thinking in pictures means following intuitively this cosmic transformation processes of nature, for She Herself, the great World Mother, is woven out of cosmic imaginations. Thru this we form in our souls what we see in nature right now: the ripening of fruits, the fruitification of involution, in order to bear the seeds of summer thru the winter.

This turning point of the year can stand before us a guiding motif:

“Take into your soul, in Selfless-Devotion, the rich pictorial language of outer nature, & through it, try to solve the riddle of the world pictures of cosmic happenings. Through this you walk the path of alchemical transformation which leads to catharsis (purification). For catharsis means to be ready to humbly lay aside the proud thinking which has hardened & encrusted itself in modern intellectuality, in order to sacrifice it on the altar of the world spirit, so that it can transform itself into warming forces of will & imaginative world pictures. In doing this, we accomplish the demand of our age, which requires this sacrifice of us. And at the same time we accomplish the inner purification of our souls, which only in breaking through the rigid armour of intellectual thought can experience resurrection in the realm of creative world thoughts!”

“We cultivate thinking & make it mature through developing qualities which seem not to be related at all to thinking – through devotion & insight – not so much through logical exercises, but when we observe this & that, & use processes in nature to penetrate into hidden mysteries. It is through devotion to questions of nature & humanity, through the attempt to understand complicated people, through an intensification of attention, that we make our thinking astute.

Little cultivation of insight & devotion makes us grumpy hypochondriacs. What is so very necessary for thinking does not at all depend on thinking. All self-will, all self-seeking, has a destructive effect on thinking…Devotion, willingness for sacrifice with respect to the most insignificant objects & occurrences, has a favorable effect on one’s thinking & one’s mood.” ~Rudolf Steiner GA 130, lecture 2

& tomorrow’s another day…

Until soon

Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Today I am…a goatherd in lions clothing

July 11, 2016Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote~hag

11 July 2016 – ASTRO-WEATHER – You can find the First Quarter Moon in the southwest as darkness falls, then watch as it sinks toward the western horizon, where it sets shortly before 1am. The half-lit Moon spends the night among the background stars of Virgo the Maiden, some 5° north of that constellation’s brightest star, Spica.

Venus reaches perihelion- its closest point to the Sun at 1pm.

Saturn lies nearly due south as darkness falls this week. It is easily the brightest planet in its host constellation, Ophiuchus the Serpent-bearer.

***

472 – After being besieged in Rome by his own generals, Western Roman Emperor Anthemius is captured in St. Peter’s Basilica & put to death

1405 – Ming admiral Zheng He sets sail to explore the world for the first time

1742 – A papal decree was issued condemning the disciplining actions of the Jesuits in China

1750 – Halifax, Nova Scotia is almost completely destroyed by fire

1767 – Birthday of John Quincy Adams, 6th President of the United States

1786 – Morocco agreed to stop attacking American ships in the Mediterranean for a payment of $10,000

1801 – French astronomer Jean-Louis Pons makes his first comet discovery. In the next 27 years he discovers another 36 comets, more than any other person in history

1804 – A duel occurs in which the Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr mortally wounds former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton

1895 – Brothers Auguste & Louis Lumière demonstrate movie film technology to scientists

1921 – Former President of the United States William Howard Taft is sworn in as 10th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the only person ever to hold both offices

1937 – Deathday of George Gershwin

1947 – The Exodus 1947 was a ship that carried Jewish holocaust survivors from France to Palestine. The British Royal Navy seized the ship & deported all its passengers back to Europe

1962 – First transatlantic satellite television transmission

1962 – Project Apollo: NASA announces lunar orbit rendezvous as the means to land astronauts on the Moon, & return them to Earth

1973 – Varig Flight 820 crashes near Paris, killing 123 of the 134 on board. In response, the FAA bans smoking on flights

1977 – Martin Luther King, Jr. is posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom

1979 – America’s first space station, Skylab, is destroyed as it re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere over the Indian Ocean

1995 – The Srebrenica genocide – killing more than 8,000 Muslim Bosniaks during the Bosnian War

2012 – Astronomers announce the discovery of Styx, the fifth moon of Pluto

“…Pluto is a controversial planet as it is a newcomer, an outsider to the classic solar system. Willi Sucher describes the outer planets in this way: They are something like bystanders and try to speak to human beings about the invisible worlds, of the spiritual worlds of the divine hierarchies, of all that which is of an absolutely nonmaterial, even non-spatial, nature. If these messages are not received by human beings consciously, they can easily wreak “destruction” and thereby bring home the messages of the temporary nature of all Earth-material existence. Thus they would hope to bring humanity to a realization of the spiritual origin of all beings. (The Changing Countenance of Cosmology p.48)

Elsewhere he discusses Pluto as connected to the deepest realm of will forces, those forces with elemental power behind earthquakes, violent revolutions in humanity and even nuclear destruction.

This sphere he also relates to the third adversary spoken of by Steiner, the Asuras, fallen Spirits of Personality/Archai, who are now becoming active in humanity. Steiner states, “For these Asuric Spirits will prompt what has been seized hold of by them, namely the very core of man’s being, the consciousness soul together with the ‘I’, to unite with earthly materiality. Fragment after fragment will be torn out of the ‘I’, … What thus becomes the prey of the Asuric powers will be irretrievably lost”.

Elsewhere Steiner describes how their ability to work on the materialization and destruction of the human I, is due to the long term consequences of materialism in humanity and our failure to recognize our true spiritual nature.

However Pluto is also connected with the highest spiritual transformation of the will, which can be realized in the distant future as Spirit Man; the transmutation of matter as Christ transmuted matter in the resurrection. Christ-will, working in the human being, will lead to the higher realization of Pluto in humanity.

In these times, this process begins with bringing into the will the force of Christ, permeating it with moral deeds done out of love and service to others…” ~Jonathan Hilton

***

Today I am…

A goatherd

In lions clothing

Polishing the Foundation Stone…

~hag

***

So yesterday’s Biography work was a bit esoteric with all that business from our dear Dr. Steiner on the workings of the Hierarchies etc…I think what he is saying in the quote from Karmic Relationships, can best be expressed by an example.

One of my 1^st memories as a child, was when I was about 3 years old. My family used to go on little vacations in Wisconsin to a place called Druse Lake with other beloved family friends to cool off in the Summer. We’d stay in one big cabin. The children would splash around in the calm sweet water all day trying not to get too sunburned, & at night the adults would play cards while the children slept in a puppy pile in the next room. That year, it was right before my 4^th birthday, I remember falling asleep listening to the laughter of the parents, the smell of cigarettes & clinking glasses during their card game. Suddenly I was awakened by a bright beam of moonlight shining in thru the sliding glass doors, straight into my sleeping eyes. I felt sure that Bella Luna was calling me. I got up giggling & followed the trail of the full Moon out the door onto the beach. With my arms stretched out in front of me I walked in the sand toward the silvery path illuminating a wide patch on the water. One of the ‘uncles’ saw me out there, just as I was about to step into the water, he flew out the door with his fat cigar on the side of his mouth & swooped me up in his arms. He playfully tossed me up in the air asking ‘Where do you think you’re going little miss’? ‘To the man in the moon’ I said. Boy did he get a kick out of that! He carried me back into the room where the adults were & made me repeat what I had said while they all tittered & patted my hands & head. I was plopped on my mother’s lap who said, “Are you the rabbit that lives on the moon’. I was confused & said ‘No. I was just listening.’ That got them laughing all the more. I was passed around the room, hugged by everyone & laid back in the room with the other sleeping children.

So when doing ‘biography work’ we can take a memory, such as this, calling it to mind vividly, sensing every detail, (the smells of the suntan lotion, the alcohol on my uncles breath, the cigars, the feel of my slightly sunburned skin, the sand in my pants, the faces of my ‘cousins’…etc…) bringing it all back with enthusiasm.

And then we must let the picture, the sensations, every sense bound image, GO – erase it – Let everything drop away.

Then just sit with the feeling.

Then let that go.

After a lot of practice of simply living into that opened space, there comes the possibility to encounter the spiritual beings that were behind the biographical event. We move from ‘imagination’, where we see inner images, to ‘inspiration’, where we begin to sense the forces of spiritual beings behind the images, communicating our true origins, including our personal karma & destiny. (when we learn to ‘read the cosmic script’)

This can bring us to ‘intuition’ revealing the Beings themselves.

Go ahead try it for yourself. Take a memory, from any phase of life, make it vivid. Then take it away…& see what comes up…?

***

Until soon

Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Human self-knowledge is world-knowledge

July 10, 2016Poetry, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote~hag

19 July 2016 – ASTRO-WEATHER -Magnificent Saturn reached its peak just a week ago, when it appeared opposite the Sun in the sky, & our view of the ringed planet remains spectacular. It is on display nearly all night among the background stars of southern Ophiuchus, hanging in the southeastern sky as darkness falls & climbing high in the south by midnight.

After nightfall, Altair shines in the east-southeast. It’s the second-brightest star on the eastern side of the sky, after Vega very high to its upper left.

Look above Altair by a finger-width at arm’s length for little orange Tarazed. A bit more than a fist-width to Altair’s lower left is Delphinus, the Dolphin, leaping leftward below the Milky Way.

Today is: Nikola Tesla Day

138 – Deathday of Emperor Hadrian, Roman emperor from 117 to 138. Hadrian is known for building Hadrian’s Wall, which marked the northern limit of Britannia. He also rebuilt the Pantheon & constructed the Temple of Venus & Roma. An admirer of the Greeks, he is considered to have been a humanist, & he is regarded as one of the Five Good Emperors.

165 – Deathday of Felicitas of Rome. A legend presents her as the mother of the seven martyrs: Alexander, Vitalis, Martialis, Januarius, Felix, Philip, Sylvanus. In Rudolf Steiner’s original Calendar of the Soul we see listed with her today the Fairy Tale The Seven Ravens (Sieben Bruder) by Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm

1212 –London burns to the ground

1509 – Birthday of John Calvin, an influential French theologian & pastor during the Protestant Reformation

1778 – American Revolution: Louis XVI of France declares war on the Kingdom of Great Britain

1832 – U.S. President Andrew Jackson vetoes a bill that would re-charter the Second Bank of the United States

1856 – Birthday of Nikola Tesla, a Serbian American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, & futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system

1871 – Birthday of Marcel Proust, French novelist, critic, & essayist

1921 –‘Bloody Sunday’: 160 people are killed & 161 houses destroyed during rioting & gun battles in Belfast, Northern Ireland

1925 – Scopes Trial: the so-called “Monkey Trial” – a young high school science teacher accused of teaching evolution in violation of the Butler Act.

1938 – Howard Hughes sets a new record by completing a 91-hour airplane flight around the world

1962 – Telstar, the world’s first communications satellite, is launched into orbit.

1966 – The Chicago Freedom Movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., holds a rally at Soldier Field in Chicago, Illinois. As many as 60,000 people come to hear Dr. King as well as Mahalia Jackson, Stevie Wonder, & Peter, Paul and Mary.

1985 – An Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-154 stalls & crashes near Uchkuduk, Uzbekistan (then part of the Soviet Union), killing all 200 people on board in the USSR’s worst-ever airline disaster

1991 – Boris Yeltsin takes office as the first elected President of Russia.

2005 – Hurricane Dennis slams into the Florida Panhandle, causing billions of dollars in damage

***

~my heart. my mother.

my heart. my Mother.

my heart is

the living heart of earth.

my heart is my becoming.

my heart dreams

in the house of hearts.

my heart is a jug of cool water…

the unblinking eye of night –

red & blue flames shooting

from the corners of my mouth…

beneath the lilies,

amid the stars

all flesh & teeth & hunger

i am rising up

like the stirring of bees…

beat beat beat

i rise up & dance upon the altar

~hag

***

Arild Rosenkrantz

I can’t seem to pull myself in from the overview on this BIOGRAPHY thing, so I must continue with broad strokes:

Yesterday we had a Survey of Life: aspects of body, soul & spirit, cresting around the age 27-35 & what lies beyond…so that got me thinking that there are really 2 halves to our life between birth & death: the descent into incarnation & an ascent toward the spiritual world.

Then I started to think about the original plan of the Elohim, who sacrificed themselves to create the human being – & the idea that when doing ‘biography work’, one of the goals is to see beyond the events of our lives, to reveal the workings of the hierarchies behind them. In Karmic Relationships, VII: Lecture Two, Steiner tells us:

“…Everything is present simultaneously, in a mighty panorama of the whole of life since the birth of the ‘I’; but the several epochs are in a certain respect distinct from each other. We survey our experiences from birth until the change of teeth…when the consciousness has been emptied of all pictorial impressions and we have achieved Inspiration, we behold the living, weaving activity of the Moon sphere in place of the tableau of early childhood from birth until the seventh year. We behold this living, weaving activity…which brings us knowledge of the secrets of the Moon sphere, when the pictures of our own life up to the seventh year are obliterated in the consciousness of Inspiration, and we perceive what now flashes up in their place.

Then, if we observe the tableau of life between the seventh and fourteenth years and again obliterate the pictures in the consciousness of Inspiration, we gaze into the Mercury sphere.

Everything has to do with the being of man, for man is an integral part of the whole Universe. If he learns to know himself as he really is, in the innermost core of his being, he learns to know the whole Universe. And now I would ask you to pay attention to the following. — Deepest respect arises in us for the old, instinctive Initiation Science which gave things that have remained in existence to this day, their true and proper names… Ancient Initiation Science knew by instinct something that is confirmed to-day by statistics, namely, that the illnesses of childhood occur most frequently in the first period of life; it is then that the human being is most prone to illness, and even to death; after puberty this tendency abates, but the healthiest period of all, the period when mortality is at its lowest, is between the ages of seven and fourteen. The wise men of old knew that this is due to the influences of the Mercury sphere…

By looking back into our experiences from the fourteenth to the twenty-first years and obliterating the pictures in the consciousness of Inspiration, we are led to the secrets of the Venus sphere. Here again the wonderful wisdom of ancient Initiation Science comes into evidence. The human being reaches puberty; love is born. When the pictures of this period of life are illumined by Initiation Science, the secrets of the Venus sphere are disclosed.

When the pictures of experiences occurring between the twenty-first and forty-second years of life are eliminated in the consciousness of Inspiration, we are led to the Sun sphere. Through deepened self-knowledge the secrets of the Sun sphere can be experienced in this retrospective contemplation of the events of our life between the twenty-first and forty-second years. To acquire knowledge of the Sun existence our vision must cover a period three times longer than that of the periods connected with the other planetary bodies.

Now if the elaboration of karma has taken place mainly in the Mars sphere, investigation is more difficult. For if a man attains Initiation before the age of 49, it is not possible for him to look back into the period of life which here comes into question, namely, the period between the forty-second and forty-ninth years. He must have passed his forty-ninth year if he is to be able to eliminate the pictures of this particular set of experiences and penetrate the secrets of the Mars sphere.

If Initiation is attained after the age of fifty-six it is possible to look back into the period between the forty-ninth and fifty-sixth years of life, when karma that is connected with the Jupiter sphere takes shape. And now we are at the point where the various sets of events come together in one connected whole.

It is not until the period between the fifty-sixth and sixty-third years that we are able to survey the whole range of experiences and to speak out of our own inner knowledge. For then we can gaze into the profoundly significant secrets of the Saturn sphere. Karmas that were wrought out mainly in the Saturn sphere operate in mysterious ways to bring men together again in the world. But in order to perceive with independent vision and be able to judge them, we must ourselves have reached the age of sixty-three.

When we look up to the Sun, to the planetary system — and the same applies to the rest of the starry heavens for they are connected in a very real way with the being of man — we can witness how human karma takes shape in the Cosmos. The Moon, the planets Venus, Jupiter — verily these heavenly bodies are not as physical astronomy describes them. In their constellations, in their mutual relationships, in their radiance, in their whole existence, they are the builders and shapers of human destinies, they are the cosmic timepiece according to which we live out our karma. As they shine downwards from the heavens their influences have real power.

From this point of view let us think of the human being and his karma. Those who with the help of Anthroposophy evolve a healthy conception of the world as against the unsound views prevailing to-day, will unfold not only quite different concepts and ideas but also quite different feelings and perceptions. For you see, if we really understand the destiny of a man, we also learn to understand the secrets of the world of stars, the secrets of the Cosmos. In times when knowledge was held to be sacred because it issued from the Mysteries, nobody would have written biographies in the way that is customary to-day. Every ancient ‘biography’ contained indications of the influences and secrets of the world of stars.

In human destiny we can perceive, firstly, the working of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai; then of still loftier Sun Beings, Exousiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes; then of the Thrones who are concerned mainly with the elaboration of karma in the Mars sphere; then of the Cherubim who elaborate the karma belonging to the Jupiter sphere; and then of the Seraphim who work together with man at the elaboration of karma in the Saturn sphere — Saturn karma.

In a man’s destiny, in his karma, we behold the working of the higher Hierarchies. This karma, at first, is like a veil, a curtain. If we look behind this veil we gaze at the weaving deeds and influences of Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, Exousiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim. Every human destiny is like script on a sheet of paper. Just imagine that someone looking at the writing on the paper were to say that he can see signs – K – E – I, and so forth, but he is quite unable to combine these letters into words!..Similarly, when we observe the karma of a human being in the ordinary way, we see letters only; but the moment we begin to read this karma we behold the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai and their mutual, interrelated deeds. The destiny of an individual human life becomes the richer, the more we get beyond the thirty-four letters and find in them — a life!

And the picture of a human destiny is enriched beyond measure when earthly ignorance is transformed into knowledge of the Cosmic Alphabet, when we realise that the letters of that script are the signs and tokens of the deeds of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies.

To a man who beholds it, the vista of karma as the shape taken by destiny in life is so overwhelming, so sublime and majestic that simply by understanding how karma is related to the spiritual Cosmos he will unfold quite different qualities of feeling and discernment…Verily, we are citizens not of the Earth alone but of the land of Spirits. The whole existence we have spent between death and a new birth converges in that which, on Earth, is enclosed within our skin. The secrets of worlds are contained in a particular form within this encircling skin.

Human self-knowledge is world-knowledge. And so when friends have given me an opportunity, I have often written down for them the following lines:

If you would know your Self,

Look out into the Cosmic Spaces.

To know the Cosmic Spaces,

Look into your own Self.”

Plenty to chew on for today

Until soon

Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

“I carry Peace within me; I bear within myself forces giving me strength…”

July 9, 2016Insight, Meditation, Quote, Remembering~hag

9 July 2016 – ASTRO-WEATHER – The Big Dipper’s familiar shape lies high in the northwest as darkness falls these July evenings. One of the summer sky’s finest double stars marks the bend of the Dipper’s handle. Mizar shines some six times brighter than its companion, Alcor.

In the West, Jupiter now shines to the Moon’s lower right during & after dusk.

491 AD – Deathday of Cyrillus, a Greek jurist of the 5th century; professor & founder in the ancient Law School of Berytus (present-day Beirut), which preceded the succession of Anastasius to the Eastern empire & paved the way for Justinian’s legislation

869 – A magnitude 8.6 earthquake & subsequent tsunami strikes the area around Sendai in the northern part of Honshu, Japan. Death toll unknown

1793 – The Act Against Slavery in Upper Canada bans the importation of slaves & frees those who are born into slavery

1807 – The Treaties of Tilsit are signed, on a raft in the middle of the Neman River, by Napoleon I of France & Alexander I of Russia.

1815 – Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord becomes the first Prime Minister of France. The name “Talleyrand” has become a byword for crafty, cynical diplomacy; some believe that he was a traitor, betraying in turn the Ancien Régime, the French Revolution, Napoleon, & the Restoration.

1816 – Argentina declares independence from Spain. July 9 Avenue, located in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, is the widest avenue in the world

1848 – Deathday of Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege, He is considered the father of analytic philosophy, where he concentrated on the philosophy of language & mathematics; responsible for the development of modern logic. Though largely ignored during his lifetime, Giuseppe Peano & Bertrand Russell introduced his work to later generations of logicians & philosophers

1850 – U.S. President Zachary Taylor dies after eating raw fruit & iced milk, to be succeeded by Millard Fillmore

1868 – The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing African Americans full citizenship

1877 – Alexander Graham Bell, Gardiner Greene Hubbard, Thomas Sanders & Thomas Watson form the Bell Telephone Company

1896 – William Jennings Bryan delivers his Cross of Gold speech at the 1896 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. In the address, Bryan supported bimetallism or “free silver”, which he believed would bring the nation prosperity. He decried the gold standard, concluding the speech, “you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold”. Bryan’s address helped catapult him to the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination; it is considered one of the greatest political speeches in American history.

For twenty years, Americans had been bitterly divided over the nation’s monetary standard. The gold standard, which the United States had effectively been on since 1873, limited the money supply but eased trade with other nations, such as the UK, whose currency was also based on gold. Many Americans, however, believed that bimetallism (making both gold & silver legal tender) was necessary for the nation’s economic health. The financial Panic of 1893 intensified the debates, & when Democratic President Grover Cleveland continued to support the gold standard against the will of much of his party, activists became determined to take over the Democratic Party organization & nominate a silver-supporting candidate in 1896.

Bryan had been a dark horse candidate with little support in the convention. His speech, delivered at the close of the debate on the party platform, electrified the convention & is generally credited with getting him the nomination for president. However, he lost the general election to William McKinley & the United States formally adopted the gold standard in 1900

1903 – Future Soviet leader Joseph Stalin is exiled to Siberia for three years

1918 – In Nashville, Tennessee, an inbound local train collides with an outbound express, killing 101 & injuring 171 people, making it the deadliest rail accident in United States history

1937 – The silent film archives of Fox Film Corporation are destroyed by the 1937 Fox vault fire.

1943 – The Allied invasion of Sicily soon causes the downfall of Mussolini & forces Hitler to break off the Battle of Kursk

1956 – The 7.7 Amorgos earthquake triggers a destructive tsunami that affects the Aegean Sea. The mainshock was followed minutes later by a damaging 7.2 aftershock. 555 people were killed & 100 were injured.

1958 – A 7.8 strike-slip earthquake in Alaska causes a landslide that produces a megatsunami. The runup from the waves reached 1,722 ft .Due to the remote location, only 5 people were killed

1962 – Starfish Prime tests the effects of a nuclear test at orbital altitudes, it produces an artificial radiation belt in space

1972 –In Belfast, British Army snipers shoot 5 civilians dead in the Springhill Massacre

1982 – Pan Am Flight 759 crashes in Kenner, Louisiana killing all 145 people on board & eight others on the ground.

1986 – The New Zealand Parliament passes the Homosexual Law Reform Act legalizing homosexuality in New Zealand

***

One of my daily meditations:

“I carry Peace within me; I bear within myself forces giving me strength. Full will I fill myself with the warmth of these forces; I will drench myself with the power of my will; and I will feel how peace outpours itself thru all my being, as I strengthen myself to come upon peace as a force within me thru this my striving power.” ~Rudolf Steiner, Guidance in Esoteric Training

***

I always get a little squirrely around the time of my natal return. And this year I enter my 3^rd moon-node, which carries a wallop, so I am striving to move thru this time as consciously as possible, opening to insight & grace. Perhaps today I’ll just start with some basics on The Phases of Human Life sourced from ‘The Human Life’ by George & Gisela O’Neil.

The life of the human being fundamentally unfolds in 3 main phases of development (bear in mind that the ages can vary for each individual, but the phases remain, so don’t get stuck on the numbers):

Body: maturing until age 21
Soul: emotional/psychological stability building up until around age 42
Spirit: potential spiritual maturity after age 42

These 3 groups can be divided into 7 year growth phases – (the ending or transition of each can be especially intense & challenging, as I am currently discovering):

Bodily Development – 0-21yrs – The ultimate goal is to Awaken to Ego or ‘I’ awareness

0-7yrs – Unfolding the physical body. Learning: TRUST ‘The world is good’
7-14yrs – Unfolding the etheric body. Learning: FELLOWSHIP ‘The world is beautiful’
14-21yrs – Unfolding the astral body. Learning: INDEPENDENCE ‘The world is true’

Soul Development – 21-42yrs – Awakening the Eyes of the Soul – The Transformative Years (the fight years)

21-28yrs – Birth of the ‘I’ within the sentient soul. Learning: Experience becomes the primary urge
28-35yrs – Birth of the ‘I’ within the intellectual soul, also called the rational/feeling soul. Learning: Confronted by the realities of the world here we are struggling with ideals & necessities (31-33 are called ‘The Christ Years’ when we really ‘carry our own cross’ & take ourselves on)
35-42yrs – Birth of the ‘I’ within the consciousness soul. Learning: How to activate the will; sensing our own identity; ‘nothing happens anymore unless I make it happen.’

Spiritual Development – 42-63yrs – Awakening Our Spiritual Eyes – Gaining Wisdom (Notice I use the word potential alot, as I believe not every human being strives for these)

42-49yrs – Potential awakening of spiritual-self. Learning: New possibilities & potentials appear – Personal Authority – Striving -finding our direction ‘The world turns upside down’
49-56yrs – Potential life-spirit unfolding. Learning: Change of life; promoting new causes; gaining strength to bring ideas into life. Expertise – ‘The world becomes harmonious’
56-63yrs – Potential spirit-man unfolding. Learning: That we must awaken to love & commitment to others; working as a healing force in communities. Role Modeling – ‘The world is filled with Wisdom’
63-until death – ‘Years of Grace’. Freedom to Be- To serve humanity – Sharing the fruits of our life’s work – ‘The world is creative, AND, this is not all there is’

Of course the earlier phases continue to work into the later phases, building on them, filling them out with experience & the wisdom gained.

Along with the O’Neil’s amazing work, I have dipped into Bernard Lievegoed’s book ‘Phases: The Spiritual Rhythms of Adult Life’ & a compilation of lectures on Biography from Rudolf Steiner put out by Steiner Press as ‘Biography: Freedom & Destiny, Enlightening the Path of Human Life.

It’s interesting to look at the connection between illness & biography. And also to see how not just human beings, but all the phases of human evolution, seen throughout the epochs, are reflected in the birth, maturation & death of civilizations & nations.

I am struck by the fact, that some human beings don’t have the inner strength to develop their true potential. They never really leave adolescence, so they aren’t able to truly bring in their ego or ‘I’ forces. Perhaps this is what we are seeing reflected in society today in the form of impulsiveness & a propensity toward violence.

Let’s dig in more tomorrow

Until soon

Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Capable of the Future?

July 8, 2016Insight, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote~hag

July 8, 2016 – ASTRO-WEATHER – Look west toward the sun set, for the waxing crescent moon in evening twilight. As night falls, a bright planet – Jupiter – will pop into view, close to the moon, a beautiful sight as dusk gives way to darkness. There are three other planets in the evening sky right now, two of which are easy to spot – and one that is not.

The two easy ones are Mars & Saturn. They form a noticeable triangle with the bright star Antares. Look southward as darkness falls.

Mars is the brightest of the three. Antares twinkles the most. Mars & Antares are reddish, while Saturn exhibits a golden hue. If you have difficulty discerning these objects’ colors, try using binoculars. The fourth evening planet – Venus – is very low in the west after sunset now & soon follows the sun below the horizon.

Notice that the bright portion of the crescent moon points toward Venus. Night by night, Venus – the brightest planet – will climb away from the sunset glare, while Jupiter – the second-brightest planet – will be sinking towards it. These dazzling two worlds will pass each other, on our sky’s dome.

Their rendezvous will be on August 27, 2016. It’ll be the closest conjunction of two planets for all of 2016.

Feast day of Aquila & Priscilla, Companions of the Apostle Paul

When Paul came to Corinth (probably in the year 50), he met them as tentmakers who had just arrived from Rome, because the Emperor Claudius had recently expelled the Jewish community. They all went together to Ephesus.

Aquila & Priscilla are mentioned six times in the New Testament (Acts 18:2,18,26; Romans 16:3; 1 Corinthians 16:19; 2 Timothy 4:19), & the reader will note that in the odd-numbered mentions, Aquila’s name comes first, while in the even-numbered mentions, Priscilla’s comes first, as if to emphasize that they are being mentioned on equal terms.

Feast day of Saint Kilian an Irish missionary bishop & the Apostle of Bavaria. He was beheaded with 2 of his companions. Their skulls, inlaid with precious stones, have been preserved to this day. On St Kilian’s day, a glass case containing the three skulls is removed from a crypt, paraded through the streets before large crowds, & put on display in Würzburg Cathedral (dedicated to Kilian).

1099 – Some 15,000 starving Christian soldiers begin the siege of Jerusalem which took place from June 7 to July 15, 1099 during the First Crusade

1579 – Our Lady of Kazan, a holy icon of the Russian Orthodox Church, is discovered underground in the city of Kazan, Tatarstan

1730 – A magnitude 8.7 earthquake causes a tsunami that damages more than 1,000 of Chile’s coastline, death toll unknown

1831 – Birthday of John Pemberton, chemist & pharmacist, invented Coca-Cola

1838 – Birthday of Eli Lilly, chemist, & businessman, founded Eli Lilly a global pharmaceutical company

1838 – Birthday of Ferdinand von Zeppelin German general & businessman, founded the Zeppelin Airship Company

1839 – Birthday of John D. Rockefeller, founded the Standard Oil Company

1876 – White supremacists kill five Black Republicans in Hamburg, South Carolina

1908 – Birthday of Nelson Rockefeller, 41st Vice President of the United States

1926 – Birthday of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross a Swiss-American psychiatrist, pioneer in near-death studies & the author of the groundbreaking book ‘On Death & Dying’ where she first discussed her theory of the five stages of grief

1932 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches its lowest level of the Great Depression, closing at 41.22

1968 – The Chrysler wildcat strike begins in Detroit, Michigan.

2010 – The Solar Impulse completed the first 24-hour flight by a solar powered plane

2014 – Israel launches an offensive on Gaza

***

Kari Olson

~I stand before the mirror looking back in time

Gazing into unbornness – the other side of eternity

I am roused

To walk the circuitous path of the unseen

From no-thing – I come to thought

To birth

A-become

~hag

***

Agostino-Arrivabene

A few last thought from The “School of the Sounds”:

Remembrance, Memory, Commemoration, Thought, Reflection, Recollection…

I am a feeling type, so I can say from experience that a strong feeling life is the humus for the development of memory. To active the will we must imbue ourselves with feeling. Then the soul is more easily impressed, like wax warmed & ready to receive a seal. Even experiences that come toward us in various ways from the assorted happenings in the world -pictures & symbols that the eye takes in, tones, noises, & words that impress themselves upon the ear -what we take into our soul life thru the gate of the senses continues to have its effect within us, imprints itself in us, building memory.

Yet the past does not want to be merely preserved; it also wants to be recalled & communicated. The strength of memory & enlivened speech forces requires an activity of will. Conscious speaking is an artistic achievement, demanding conscious presence of mind, skill & patience.

A practice of artistic speech, whatever that is for us, develops a stronger ‘I’-presence, which allows a differentiated activity to take place in deeper layers of our soul life. In speech practice we can learn to free language from being tethered to the world of dead concepts, we can lift it to the spiritual-artistic spaces.

For the human being to be ‘capable of the future’ – even for the possibility of our continued existence – broadened consciousness, strength of memory & LOVE will be of decisive importance. These forces need to be strengthened in order to reach greater insight into our own biography, & this gives us the ability to understand the meaning of life as a whole.

Tomorrow, in anticipation of my upcoming natal return, I will begin a short series on Biography Work

Until soon

Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Cognitive Ritual

~Confessions of a Modern Rosicrucian

“Selflessness Becomes Catharsis”

Today I am…a goatherd in lions clothing

Human self-knowledge is world-knowledge

“I carry Peace within me; I bear within myself forces giving me strength…”

Capable of the Future?

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