11 September 2016 –
Astro-Weather: Although Neptune appeared at its best at opposition seven days ago, its visibility hardly suffers this week. The outermost major planet lies low in the southeast as darkness falls & climbs highest in the south around midnight.
Tomorrow morning the 12th, the last-quarter Moon approaches Aldebaran and then occults it for much of North America: before or during dawn in the West, and after sunrise in a (hopefully) blue sky farther east. The star disappears on the Moon’s bright limb (as shown here) and reappears from behind the dark limb
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The Three Sisters: Corn, Beans and Squash (an ancient imagination inspired by Angela Foster to apply to the Elderberries 3-Fold Initiative)
The Iroquois creation myth tells that the earth began when “Sky Woman”, who lived in the upper world, peered through a hole in the sky and fell through to an endless sea. The animals saw her coming, so they took the soil from the bottom of the sea and spread it onto the back of a giant turtle to provide a safe place for her to land. This “Turtle Island” is now what we call North America.
Sky woman had become pregnant before she fell. When she landed, she gave birth to twin daughters. Sky Woman planted her daughters next to her in the “new earth.” From this place grew three sacred plants—corn, beans, and squash. These plants provide food for all of humanity.
Many Native American People traditionally plant corn, beans & squash together. The Corn grows tall to provide the Beans a stalk to reach toward the Sun. Beans bring nitrogen to the soil which becomes fertilizer to feed the land. The Squash covers the ground to prevent erosion and is shaded some by the Corn & Beans. This is known as “Companion Planting”
This ancient Native American technique of growing Corn, Beans, and Squash together in an arrangement called the Three Sisters is the ultimate in companion planting and helps increase harvests, naturally!
After cooperating beautifully in the garden, corn and beans form a complete protein when eaten together! How’s that for a mutually beneficial relationship?
Dear friends this is what is needed now in the world. Elderberries Chicago the Michael Grailroad Begins. The spiritual world needs our head & hands & hearts. Elderberries holds the seeds of Brother & Sisterhood in the Economic Realm. The Rudolf Steiner Branch of the Anthroposophical Society in America – Chicago stands in Freedom in the Cultural Realm. Then on to our sister city Atlanta. No matter where you are on the planet, this 3-Fold work benefits everyone. Please help support the future NOW https://igg.me/at/michaelgrailroad/x/17233652
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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day
“It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.”~Benjamin Franklin
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Birthday of Abraham, ancestor of the Semitic Hebrews & Arabs
354 – Deathday of Saints Protus & Hyacinth mentioned in “Depositio Martyrum”
1826 – Captain William Morgan, an ex-freemason is arrested in Batavia, New York for ‘debt’ after declaring that he would publish The Mysteries of Free Masonry. This sets into motion the events that led to his mysterious disappearance
1830 – Anti-Masonic Party convention; one of the first American political party conventions
1851 – Christiana Resistance: Escaped slaves stand against their former owner in armed resistance in Christiana, Pennsylvania, creating a rallying cry for the abolitionist movement
1893 – Parliament of the World’s Religions opens in Chicago, where Swami Vivekananda delivers his speech on fanaticism, tolerance & the truth inherent in all religions
1897 –Menelik II of Ethiopia captures Gaki Sherocho, the last king of Kaffa, bringing an end to that ancient kingdom
1919 – U.S. Marines invade Honduras
1921 – Nahalal, the first Jewish settlement in Palestine, as part of a Zionist plan to colonize Palestine creating a Jewish state, later to be called Israel
1932 – Deathday of Fritz Lemmermayer an Austrian writer, journalist & closest childhood friend of Rudolf Steiner in Vienna. Fritz was a passionate anti-materialist, he wanted to devote his life to the creation & maintenance of spiritual values.
In 1883 he completed his novel “The Alchemist”. Rudolf Steiner met Lemmermayer again in 1886 in the circle of the poet Marie Eugenie delle Grazie. An extensive correspondence attests to the close friendship between the two (see GA 38 ).
In ” My Life ” Steiner says: Fritz Lemmermayer, with whom I was later on terms of intimate friendship, I came to know at one of delle Grazie’s afternoons. A highly noteworthy man. Whatever interested him he expressed with inwardly measured dignity. In his outward appearance he resembled equally the musician Rubinstein and the actor Lewinsky. With Hebbel he developed almost a cult. He had definite views on art and life born out of the sagacious understanding of the heart, and these were unusually fixed. He had written the interesting and profound romance, Der Alchemist(3), and much besides that was characterized by beauty and depth. He knew how to consider the least things in life from the view-point of the most vital. I recall how I once saw him in his charming little room in a side-street in Vienna together with other friends. He had planned his meal: two soft-boiled eggs, to be cooked in an instantaneous boiler, together with bread. He remarked with much emphasis while the water was heating to boil the eggs for us: “This will be delicious!” In a later phase of my life I shall again have occasion to speak of him (see GA 028, p 141f )
Lemmermayer & Steiner joined the ranks of the Viennese artist circle in the house of the protestant priest Alfred Formey. In 1891 Lemmermayer was vice president of Schrifstellerbundes Iduna , named after Iduna , the Norse goddess of youth & immortality a counterweight against the currents of naturalism.
Lemmermayer became a member of the Anthroposophical Society in 1920. He Steiner on many trips through Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, Holland & England. This led to his 1929 published memories, where he spoke about Rudolf Steiner, Robert Hamerling & other personalities of the Austrian intellectual life of the 80s. In addition, Lemmermayer published in the weekly ” Das Goetheanum “.
1940 – George Stibitz performs the first remote operation of a computer
1941 – Ground is broken for the construction of The Pentagon
1941 – Charles Lindbergh’s Des Moines Speech accusing the British, & the Roosevelt administration of pressing for war with Germany
1943 – World War II: Start of the liquidation of the Ghettos in Minsk & Lida by the Nazis
1950 – Korean War: President Harry S. Truman approved military operations north of the 38th parallel
1954 – Hurricane Edna hits New England as a Category 1 hurricane, causing significant damage & 129 deaths
1961 – Hurricane Carla strikes the Texas coast as a Category 4 hurricane, the second strongest storm ever to hit the state, 129 people die
1968 – Air France Flight 1611 crashes off Nice, France, killing 89 passengers &six crew
1973 – Deathday of Salvador Guillermo a Chilean physician & politician, known as the first Marxist to become president of a Latin American country through open elections. Allende’s involvement in Chilean political life spanned a period of nearly forty years. As a member of the Socialist Party, he was a senator, deputy & cabinet minister. In 1970, he won the presidency. Allende adopted a policy of nationalization of industries & collectivisation; due to these & other factors, increasingly strained relations lead to his death. On 11 September 1973, the military moved to oust Allende in a coup d’état sponsored by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). As troops surrounded La Moneda Palace, he gave his last speech vowing not to resign. He was assassinated by the CIA assault rifle attack.
Following Allende’s death, General Augusto Pinochet declined to return authority to the civilian government, & Chile was later ruled by a military junta that was in power up until 1990, ending almost four decades of Chilean democratic rule. The military junta that took over dissolved the Congress of Chile & began a persecution of alleged dissidents, in which thousands of Allende’s supporters were kidnapped, tortured, and murdered.
1974 – Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 crashes in Charlotte, North Carolina, killing 69 passengers & two crew.
1976 – A bomb planted by Zvonko Bušić is found at New York’s Grand Central Terminal
1978 – Janet Parker is the last person to die of smallpox, in a laboratory-associated outbreak
1982 – The international forces that were guaranteeing the safety of Palestinian refugees following Israel’s 1982 Invasion of Lebanon leave Beirut. Five days later, several thousand refugees are massacred in the Sabra & Shatila refugee camps
1988 – The St. Jean Bosco massacre takes place in Port-au-Prince, Haiti
1992 – Hurricane Iniki, one of the most damaging hurricanes in United States history, devastates the Hawaiian islands of Kauai & Oahu
9/11 – 2001 – Two hijacked aircraft crash into the World Trade Center in New York City, while a third smashes into The Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, & a fourth into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, in a series of coordinated suicide attacks by ??? Over 2,996 people are killed, many suffer illness associated with the clean up
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POD (Poem Of the Day)
~Bloom upright skeleton
With soft flowers of bitter dust
Fetid in Autumn’s withering
Bloom, heart-head dreaming
My Crone womb carries you forward
Willing the grave to sprout from within
Bloom, soul-forces purified & ready
Let tears embrace the wind
To wipe blank eyes screen fixed & unfocused
Bloom now in freedom won
~hag
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Sir Edward Coley
Spiritual epiphany alert!
Yes, my dear bundles of rumbling DNA
Uncanny revelations are imminent!
Hope you don’t mind being shaken awake
in the middle of your regularly scheduled life…
It doesn’t matter if you’re a true believer
or a work-a-day TV viewer — YOU
will soon be invited
to have one of your logical certainties torn out
by the roots & replaced with a throbbing vision
of cosmic hoopla…
Brace yourself for the most pungent enlightenment you’ve had since your last mudwrestle
with an angel…
…for Long-standing versions of reality
are mutating…Stories that have remained fixed
are about to acquire unexpected wrinkles…
& from the crack in the godhead
new possibilities are pouring forth…
&…there’s something You can do
to ensure that the new versions of the old vision
are more empowering than the overlay:
1. Escape the cramped quarters of your own mind…
2. Slip away from the corners you’ve been backed into…
3. Stop telling the convoluted stories ‘they’ concocted
to rationalize why you should be afraid…
4. Get out of the loop & escape into the big,
fresh places that will rejuvenate
your eyes and heart…& for the foreseeable future,
5. take on the demeanor & spirit of a noble warrior
with high integrity & a fluid sense
of humor…
What I pray is that we won’t be satisfied with mediocre
half-truths; that it is ok to be focused
on cutting out waste, fraud, & delusion; that
it’s ok to be itchy to know more about the unacknowledged
games that are being played…Frustration, I hope,
will be our holy fuel…Unsweetened lemonade,
I trust, will be our rejuvenating drink…
These are blessings, my friend, not curses..!
I pray that you’ll pick one of those itchy scabs
until it bleeds
so the healing process can start over —
the right way this time…See…there goes that misplaced acceptance of
warped chunks of complications…Here comes
an opportunity to make a break for bubbly responsibility
True Human Freedom…
To take advantage, we’ll need to travel much lighter –
So please peel off your heart-armor – polish your sun-shield
Power the rust off your sword
Wipe that forty-pound sneer of doubt off your face –
Bury your broken-down theories by the wayside,
& donate all your unnecessary props
to the birds & the bees – Strip down –
for where we’re going, all you’ll need are
your good looks & a big fresh attitude…
I end this 9/11 epiphany with:
THE “AMERICAN” or “THREEFOLD” VERSE sent by Rudolf Steiner to Ralph Courtney, a pioneer of Anthroposophy in North America for the Threefold Group in New York City, which later established the Threefold Community in Spring Valley (now Chestnut Ridge). This verse for the American spirit speaks of the inner unity of human beings and of support from the spiritual world for our efforts:
May our feeling penetrate
To the center of our hearts –
And seek, in love, to unite with those who share our goals
And with the spirits who look down benevolently
on our hearts earnest strivings Sending us strength from realms of light
to illuminate our love.
In Peace & Good Will
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Dear Friends – Please join us for : An Open Conversation with John Bloom, our new General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America
Sunday September 24th, 1 pm – 2:30 pm at the Rudolf Steiner Branch
All are Welcome to discuss the fate of the Branch Building, the Elderberries Initiative; the state of the Anthroposophical Society today; as well as explore how we can best serve the ‘Being of Chicago.’
John Bloom was appointed General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America in October 2016. He is Vice President, Organizational Culture at RSF Social Finance. As part of his work at RSF he has been developing and facilitating conversations and programs that address the intersection of money and spirit in personal and social transformation. He writes frequently for RSF’s Reimagine Money blog and has fostered collaborative dialogues on the challenging social aspects money. As part of his work he has helped develop awareness of issues of land and biodynamic agriculture across the US. John has written two books, The Genius of Money, and Inhabiting Interdependence, both published by SteinerBooks. He lives in San Francisco.
Dear Friends – The Elderberries Three-Fold Café has been on Sunset Blvd. in the heart of Hollywood for over 9 years. They provide not only good healthy food, but nutrition for the soul – Rudolf Steiner’s Weekday Exercises are even on the back of the menu! The café is a hub for youth, hosting anthroposophical study groups, music, alternative film screenings etc – providing support for inner practices, meaningful work to those in need, & platforms for individual creative expression -imbuing all they do with a love for the future of our world.
Our 3-fold friends, Dottie Zold, Daniel Evaeus & Frank Agrama, came in from Los Angeles in March to speak with the Branch Council & have an open conversation with members & friends, about the possibility of opening a second Elderberries 3-fold Café in the unrented space at the branch*. It has long been the vision of Elderberries to create a “Michael Grail-Road” establishing 3-fold Café’s around the world where youth can come to find themselves thru anthroposophy.
Here are a few words about the Initiative from Dottie, Hazel Daniel & Frank Here are a few ‘testimonies’
Please help us pave the way for a 3-fold Cafe in the heartland!
Go to this link to find out more & donate if you will https://igg.me/at/michaelgrailroad/x/17233652
Thanks for supporting the future!
If you prefer to give a donation by check, or would like a receipt for tax purposes contact Chuck@ChuckGinsberg.com
*The good will of the Branch council & the membership at large shall determine whether this initiative will reside at the Branch. (Stay tuned for a ‘Special Members Meeting’ TBA) If it is not wanted here, Elderberries may take up root near a Waldorf School or other Chicago location.
You can get your donation back upon request if it doesn’t come thru, or you can choose to support the mission in LA, or other future hubs in the Michael-Grail Road around the country.
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Michaelmas & the Horn of Plenty – Fall Festivals Ancient and New
Saturday September 23rd, 2017 – 4 pm – 6 pm at the Rudolf Steiner Branch,4249 N. Lincoln Ave. Chicago, IL.
Saturday September 30th 10:30 am – 4:30pm at the Theosophical Society 1926 N Main St, Wheaton, IL. 60187 – Pre-registration (630) 668-1571
Come join our Experiential Workshop celebrating the Autumnal Equinox to prepare us for the journey into the dark of the year. We will look back to the fruits of the past, and prepare for what is coming toward us from the future. Our ancestors called this Sabbath – Harvest Home or Mabon. The Hebrew folk count this as part of the High Holy Days. In Greece and Rome it is dedicated to Dionysus, or Persephone and Demeter. Today, we are invited to stand with the powerful Archangel Micha-el, in balance, between the light and the dark, as we create the ‘festival of the future’, which we call ‘Michaelmas’. Forging confidence thru Heart-Thinking, Michael strengthens our Will & reinforces our higher “I” so that we have the Courage to find the Spirit behind the living cosmos.
Hazel Archer-Ginsberg – is a Spiritual Midwife, and Trans-denominational Minister, working in an eclectic style that inspires connections – initiating us into the magic, waiting to be revealed, in the cycle of the seasons. Festivals Coordinator & Council Member of the Chicago Rudolf Steiner Branch, and the Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society. Founder of Reverse Ritual – Understanding Anthroposophy Through the Rhythms of the Year
Eurythmy with Mary Ruud
Singing with Elisabeth Swisher
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ON-GOING:
Community Study – Wednesdays at 8:00 am- 9:40 am in the Library at the Chicago Waldorf School 1300 W. Loyola, Chicago
‘Anthroposophy’, which means Wisdom of the Human Being is a ‘Spiritual Science’ built on the research of Rudolf Steiner. Our current conversation explores: the riddles of existence, the truth of karma, the mystery of evil, historic connections, life after death and more. We incorporate ‘The Calendar of the Soul’, eurythmy, focused discussion and seasonal artistic explorations in our study. We are working with Karmic Relationships Vol. 2 currently. ALL are welcome.
Contact Hazel Archer Ginsberg (773-549-3026) Hazel@ReverseRitual.com
