16 January 2017 – Astro-Weather:
New Moon – exact at 8:17 p.m. CST. After dinnertime, the enormous Andromeda-Pegasus complex runs from near the zenith down toward the western horizon.
Just west of the zenith, spot Andromeda standing on her head. About halfway down from the zenith to the west horizon is the Great Square of Pegasus, balancing on one corner. Down from its bottom corner run the stars outlining Pegasus’s neck & head, ending at his nose: Enif, slightly orange, due west.
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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
1412 – The Medici family is appointed official banker of the Papacy
1477 – Birthday & Deathday (1547 ) of Johannes Schöner, a renowned German polymath. He was a priest, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, cosmographer, cartographer, mathematician, globe &scientific instrument maker & editor/ publisher of scientific tests. He published of Copernicus’ “De revolutionibus” in Nürnberg in 1543. He enjoyed a European wide reputation as an innovative & influential globe maker & cosmographer- as one of the continent’s leading & most authoritative astrologers.
1547 – Ivan IV of Russia a.k.a. Ivan the Terrible becomes Czar of Russia
1556 – Philip II becomes King of Spain
1838 – Birthday of Franz Brentano an influential German philosopher, psychologist, & priest whose work strongly influenced not only students Edmund Husserl, Sigmund Freud, Kazimierz Twardowski, Alexius Meinong, Carl Stumpf, Anton Marty, Christian von Ehrenfels, and Tomáš Masaryk, but many others whose work would follow &make use of his original ideas & concepts. Rudolf Steiner recalls the obituary he gave of Brentano as part of his lecture The Case for Anthroposophy where he also speaks about the Separation of the ‘Psychological from the Non-Psychological’ in Franz Brentano.
1901 – Deathday of Arnold Böcklin a Swiss symbolist painter. Rudolf Steiner speaks about him in an incarnation as an Arthurian Knight
1909 – Ernest Shackleton‘s expedition finds the magnetic South Pole.
1919 – Temperance movement: The United States ratifies the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, requiring Prohibition
1942 – Crash of TWA Flight 3, killing all 22 aboard, including film star Carole Lombard
1945 – Adolf Hitler moves into his underground bunker, the Führerbunker
1954 – Birthday of Russian anthroposophist Sergei Olegovitch Prokofieff Dear Friends – Today would have been his 64th birthday (16 January 1954 – 26 July 2014) He was the grandson of the composer Sergei Prokofiev. Born in Moscow, he studied fine arts & painting at the Moscow School of Art. He encountered anthroposophy in his youth, & soon made the decision to devote his life to it. Prokofieff, wrote his first book, Rudolf Steiner and the Founding of the New Mysteries, while living in Soviet Russia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he was a co-founder of the Anthroposophical Society in Russia. At Easter 2001, he became a member of the Executive Council of the General Anthroposophical Society in Dornach, Switzerland. Prokofieff was a prolific author; at the core of his work is an attempt to develop a deepened understanding for Christianity on the basis of Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual-scientific research. Prokofieff left us a treasure trove of Works
http://www.anthroposophy.org/uploads/media/AWE2014_09.pdf
https://steiner.presswarehouse.com/books/AuthorDetail.aspx…
1957 – Deathday of Arturo Toscanini an Italian conductor, renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail & sonority, & his photographic memory.] He was at various times the music director of La Scala Milan, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, & the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Later in his career he was appointed the first music director of the NBC Symphony Orchestra (1937–54), & this led to his becoming a household name through his radio & television broadcasts & many recordings.
1969 – Soviet spacecraft perform the first-ever docking of manned spacecraft in orbit, the first-ever transfer of crew from one space vehicle to another, & the only time such a transfer was accomplished with a space walk
1970 – Buckminster Fuller receives the Gold Medal award from the American Institute of Architects
2003 – The Space Shuttle Columbia takes off for mission STS-107 which would be its final one. Columbia disintegrated 16 days later on re-entry
2006 – Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is sworn in as Liberia’s new president. She becomes Africa’s first female elected head of state
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POD (Poem Of theDay)
~The truth
Of what we call our knowing
Is both light & dark…
Humans are always dying & waking…
The rhythm between – We call life…
Wake-up!
Some miracle is about
To happen…
~hag
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May the echo of these words, spoken by Martin Luther King Jr. reverberate in our hearts, stimulate our minds & inspire our hands to action:
“Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.”
“Courage is an inner resolution to go forward despite obstacles; Cowardice is submissive surrender to circumstances. Courage breeds creativity; Cowardice represses fear and is mastered by it. Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience ask the question, is it right? And there comes a time when we must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.”
“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”
“A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.”
“Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”
“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”
“Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.”
“I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits.”
“Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That’s the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.”
“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.”
“People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other.”
“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”
“By opening our lives to God in Christ, we become new creatures. This experience, which Jesus spoke of as the new birth, is essential if we are to be transformed nonconformists … Only through an inner spiritual transformation do we gain the strength to fight vigorously the evils of the world in a humble and loving spirit.”
“Now there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, ‘Love your enemies.’ It is this: that love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. Just keep being friendly to that person. Just keep loving them, and they can’t stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they’ll hate you a little more at that transition period, but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That’s love, you see. It is redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love. There’s something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies.”
“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”
‘We shall overcome someday’
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SAVE THE DATE: Lazure Workshop with Nancy Melvin – January 20-21 9am-5pm
$100 for the weekend (1/2 the proceeds go toward the ‘Furnace Fund’ for the Branch)
Lazure is a technique for applying several layers of transparent color washes on walls, enlivening interior spaces with breathing, light filled color. We will Lazure the Branch’s newly renovated areas in anticipation of the Elderberries Cafe moving into the space. We will look to Steiner’s indications for public spaces in Urban areas for color schemes. The two day workshop will begin Saturday morning January 20th with color samples and participants can learn the brush technique which is radically different from painting with flat opaque paints. Then right away on the first day we will test color layers and apply the first several washes on the walls. There will be down time in between layers for participants to break for morning tea, for lunch and afternoon tea. The next day will add layers and depth to the colors as needed. By the end of the workshop you will learn all you need to know to go home and do this work in your home or office.
Nancy Melvin will lead the workshop, a former Waldorf Grades Teacher and teacher of wet on wet painting to children. She has lazured many Waldorf classrooms, most recently the EC extension of CWS in Lincoln Square and the foyer of CWS’s EC area.
for more info. Contact Nancy Melvin melvinstudiochicago@gmail.com
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Spinning Destiny with the Fates
An Experiential Workshop with Hazel Archer Ginsberg
Saturday, 10 February 2018 – 10:30 AM – 4:30 PM
At the Theosophical Society 1926 N Main St, Wheaton, IL 60187
Come face the Fates & meet the Sibyls in the Light of Anthroposophy & ask: Does Fortune smile? Is Justice blind? How can I Co-Create with Destiny, to spin the thread of my life with integrity, to heal and clear the collective karma, & achieve my True Becoming?
Through the insights of Rudolf Steiner, the power of Myth-Telling, & Ritual-Tasks, such as interactive drumming, & Socratic questioning; we will journey into our soul-depths to stand before the “Daughters of Necessity” that we will transform to meet our true calling; asking: ‘What is my Highest Purpose?’
Please bring your own vegetarian lunch
$60 nonmembers $50 members $70 at the door
Hazel Archer-Ginsberg –Spiritual Midwife, Trans-denominational Minister, Essayist, Lecturer, Blogger – Anthroposopher, working as the Festivals Coordinator for the Rudolf Steiner Branch of Chicago.
Founder of www.reverseritual.com