Here in the Northern Hemisphere our Day-Star-Sun is rising about a minute earlier each morning & setting a minute later every evening. As a result, we can drink in about 15 minutes more sunlight every week. The psycho-physical effect of this steady influx is slowly rising, & in concert with a variety of astrological & evolutionary influences, will eventually reach critical mass. As a result, humanity will become Sun-like – a luminous beacon of warmth.

With this thought in mind, everything you shine upon will look brighter, & your own Sun-like beauty will be exceedingly visible, as well. So make each moment, the perfect time, to pursue your highest destiny.

But remember what Andrew Harvey, said: “If you’re really listening, if you’re awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly. In fact, your heart is made to break; its purpose is to burst open again and again so that it can hold ever-more wonders.”

So…Be the seed that breaks open to the light. Roots pushing into the dark. Stem reaching. Blossom answering to the stars. Fruit – feeding the world.

~hag

21 January 2022 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Jupiter still shines brightly in the southwest at dusk, though lower each week. It makes a perfectly nice “Evening Star” to replace brighter Venus, which departed the evening a few weeks ago. To Jupiter’s lower left, Fomalhaut still twinkles (about two fists at arm’s length).

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

259 – Deathday of St. Fructuosus, bishop of Tarragona arrested during the persecutions of Christians under the Roman Emperor Valerian. He was burned at the stake in the local amphitheater.

304 – Feast Day of St. Agnes of Rome a virgin martyr, 1 of 7 women, who along with the Blessed Virgin Mary, are commemorated by name in the Canon of the Mass. She is the patron saint of chastity, gardeners, girls, engaged couples, rape survivors, virgins, & the Children of Mary. Agnes is depicted in art with a lamb. The name “Agnes” is derived from the feminine Greek adjective meaning “chaste, pure, sacred”

1793 – After being found guilty of treason Louis XVI of France is executed by guillotine

1841 – Birthday of Édouard Schuré, a French philosopher, poet, playwright, novelist, music critic, & publicist of esoteric literature. Born in the old cathedral city of Strasbourg. As a young boy he experienced events that, “Ieft traces upon my thoughts, to which my memory returns ever and again.” The result of these events he called “inner vision, evoked by impressions of the external world.” The first of these experiences occurred shortly after the death of his mother, when he & his father visited a resort in Alsace.  On the walls of one of the buildings the ten-year-old boy saw a remarkable series of frescoes, depicting the world of undines, sylphs, gnomes & fire-spirits. Before these representations of the Elemental Beings, the boy was transported into another world, the world of creative fantasy. Like a talisman, the pictures awakened the magic forces of wonder in the child soul, & the result was a new perception.

Not long after the death of his father, which occurred when Schure was fourteen, he visited Paris, & saw for the first time the classical sculptures in the Louvre. The beauty of the Venus di Milo, of Dionysus, of the wounded Amazon, penetrated deeply into the boy, awakening in him a love & appreciation for the world of ancient Greece, which was to play so significant a role in his later work as a playwright. In these sculptures Schure became aware of the fact that a divine beauty can be made manifest in physical substance through the magic of art. At about this same time Schure read a description of the Eleusinian Mysteries of Ancient Greece, & the inner pictures this evoked were so vivid, so compelling, that he dedicated himself to the task of recreating the sacred drama of Eleusis for modern humanity. For Schure was convinced that through the experiencing of such a drama, people of modern times can acquire a totally new conception of the relationship between the spiritual striving of the ancient world & the religious conceptions of today.

Parallel with these experiences of soul & spirit, Schure’s early years were devoted to formal education. Eventually he received his degree in law at the University of Strasbourg, but he never entered into practice. He visited Germany, remaining there for a few years, during which time he wrote Histoire du lied published in 1868. In this book he expressed his love for music & poetry which had been enhanced by his personal acquaintance with Richard Wagner, then living in Munich.

Shortly after his return from his travels in Germany, Schure married the sister of his friend, the composer Nessler.  They moved to Paris, where Schure continued his writing & studies, making friends with some of the most important men & women in the cultural life of France of his time. With the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, Schure & his wife went to Italy.

In Florence Schure made the second great friendship of his life.  One day Malvida von Meysenbergs, the devoted admirer & helper of the philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, introduced Edouard Schure to a Greek lady, Margherita Albana Mignaty. The meeting made a profound impression upon Schure, an impression he was to recall clearly in the last year of his life: “When I saw those great sunny radiant eyes directed questioningly upon me, I felt my consciousness almost desert me, for my whole being seemed called upon to reveal itself.” In the presence of this beautiful woman, so reminiscent of the women of the classical Greece he so deeply loved, Schure once again found access to the spiritual world opening within him. In Margherita Albana Mignaty he discovered a soul to whom the unseen world was as immanent as the physical. This direct relationship with the spiritual world was the result of the death of her child, which had taken place some years before. Through their many conversations, Schure’s own spiritual perception broadened & deepened beyond anything he had previously imagined. He referred to her as his Muse, & saw in her a “spirit that moves mountains, a love which awakens and creates souls, and whose sublime inspiration burns like a radiant light.” on one occasion he asked her how she acquired such precise knowledge of the spiritual history of humankind, such intimate details concerning long-forgotten antiquity. Her reply was profoundly simple: “When I wish to penetrate to the very depths of a subject, I shut myself in my room and reveal myself to myself.” Through the inspiration of Margherita Albana Mignaty ‘as a testimony of a faith acquired and shared,’ Schure’s book The Great Initiates came into being.

Schuré now turned increasingly to the esoteric & the occult, his major influence being the famous French occultist-scholar Fabre d’Olivet.  In 1884, he met the founder of the Theosophical Society Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Although unwelcome in the Theosophical Society, he nevertheless entered.

In 1900, the actress Marie von Sivers came into contact with him because she intended to translate his works into German (The Great Initiates, The Sacred Drama of Eleusis & The Children of Lucifer). At the German Section of the Theosophical Society, he met the Austrian philosopher & later founder of Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner. In 1906, Sivers brought about a meeting between Schuré & Steiner. Schuré was deeply impressed & thought of Steiner as an authentic ‘initiate’ in line with his The Great Initiates. After hearing Steiner lecture in Paris for the first time in 1906, Schuré in an ecstatic state ran home & wrote down the entirety of the lecture from memory. This first lecture, & the other lectures in the series (which Schuré wrote down) were published as Esoteric Cosmology. Subsequently, Steiner & von Sivers staged Schuré’s esoteric dramas at the Theosophical Congresses in Berlin & Munich. Schuré’s The Children of Lucifer, served as a precursor of Rudolf Steiner’s own esoteric dramas.

In 1908 Schuré brought out Le Mystère Chrétien et les Mystères Antiques, a French translation of Steiner’s work Christianity as Mystical Fact & the Mysteries of Antiquity.

Édouard Schuré was often visited by Rudolf Steiner in Barr, Alsace. Steiner produced many of Schure’s plays. In speaking about his book The Great Initiates Steiner says: “Édouard Schuré speaks about the ‘Great Illuminated,’ the Great Initiates, who have looked deeply into the background of things, and from this background have given great impulses for the spiritual development of mankind. He traces the great spiritual deeds of Rama, Krishna, Hermes, Pythagoras and Plato, in order to show the unification of all these impulses in Christ…. The light streaming from Schuré’s book enlightens those who wish to be firmly rooted in the spiritual sources from which strength and certainty for modern life can be drawn.” ~Rudolf Steiner

Thoughts on Rudolf Steiner by Edouard Schuré”

“Rudolf Steiner is both a mystic and an occultist. These two natures appear in him in perfect harmony. One could not say which of the two predominates over the other. In intermingling and blending, they have become one homogeneous force. Hence a special development in which outward events play but a secondary part.

Dr. Steiner was born in Upper Austria in 1861. His earliest years were passed in a little town situated on the Leytha, on the borders of Styria, the Carpathians, and Hungary. From childhood his character was serious and concentrated. This was followed by: a youth inwardly illuminated by the most marvelous intuitions, a young manhood encountering terrible trials, and a ripe age crowned by a mission which he had dimly foreseen from his earliest years, but which was only gradually formulated in the struggle for truth and life.

This youth passed in a mountainous and secluded region, was happy in its way, thanks to the exceptional faculties that he discovered in himself. He was employed in a Catholic church as a choir boy. The poetry of the worship, the profundity of the symbolism, had a mysterious attraction for him; but, as he possessed the innate gift of seeing souls, one thing terrified him. This was the secret unbelief of the priests, entirely engrossed in the ritual and the material part of the service. There was another peculiarity: no one, either then or later, allowed himself to talk of any gross superstition in his presence, or to utter any blasphemy, as if those calm and penetrating eyes compelled the speaker to serious thought. In this child, almost always silent, there grew up a quiet and inflexible will, to master things through understanding.

That was easier for him than for others, for he possessed from the first that self-mastery, so rare even in the adult, which gives the mastery over others. To this firm will was added a warm, deep, and almost painful sympathy; a kind of pitiful tenderness to all beings and even to inanimate nature. It seemed to him that all souls had in them something divine. But in what a stony crust is, hidden the shining gold! In what hard rock, in what dark gloom lay dormant the precious essence! Vaguely as yet did this idea stir within him — he was to develop it later — that the divine soul is present in all men, but in a latent state. It is a sleeping captive that has to be awakened from enchantment”. ~Edouard Schuré.

1861 – Feast Day of St. Meinrad a hermit known as the “Martyr of Hospitality”

1908 – New York City passes the Sullivan Ordinance, making it illegal for women to smoke in public, only to have the measure vetoed by the mayor

1924 – Deathday of Vladimir Lenin

1950 – Deathday of George Orwell

1959 – Deathday of Cecil B. DeMille

1960 – Avianca Flight 671 crashes at Montego Bay, Jamaica killing 137

1961 – 435 workers are buried alive when a mine in Coalbrook, South Africa collapses

1968 – A B-52 bomber crashes near Thule Air Base, contaminating the area after its nuclear payload ruptures. 1 of the 4 bombs remains unaccounted for after the cleanup

2003 – A 7.6 magnitude earthquake strikes the Mexican state of Colima, killing 529 & leaving approximately 10,000 people homeless

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~I saw Her
Soul of the Universe
Lady of crossed Destinies
Queen of Honeyed Vibrations
She, Who is the name of Spirit
Pronounced into form
Cut into wax – tossed into flames
She, Who sets the secret paths
Plotting my life
Aligned with Divine Will…
Her Name is Holy Mine
~hag

The Holy Grail Study Group with the CRC Mysteries of the Holy Grail – from Arthur and Parzival to Modern Initiation February 2, 2021 – 7:15 pm Central (8:15 pm Eastern)

“Out of the substance of soul and spirit, human beings have to fashion the tools with which to plough a way, the soul-way leading to the castle of the Grail, to the mystery of the Grail, to the mystery of bread and blood, to the fulfilment of the words ‘This do in remembrance of me’. This is, truly, in remembrance of the mighty event of Golgotha, if the symbol of the bread — of what, in other words, develops from the earth through the synthesis of cosmic forces — is understood. It is done in full remembrance if we understand once again how to grasp the world through a spiritualized cosmology and astronomy, and if we learn to comprehend the human being in terms of his essence: the element where the spiritual directly enters him — the mystery of the blood. The path that leads to the Holy Grail must be found through inner work in human souls. This is the task of cognition and the social task.”~Rudolf Steiner,  The Mysteries of the Holy Grail, Chapter 8, “The Lapse into Matter”, and Chapter 9,  “Piercing the Thicket”, excerpts from Steiner’s lectures given at Dornach on 16 & 17 April 1921 …  focus of the February 2 meeting. Chapters 7, 8 & 9 in the book can be found online at the CRC’s website by clicking this link A transcript of the 16 April, 1921 lecture can be found on the RS Archive by clicking this link A transcript of the 17 April, 1921 lecture can be found on the RS Archive by clicking this link The Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America invites you to join our ongoing  study conversation.  The study has been divided among two volunteers who will summarize their section to rebuild it as a foundation for our conversation. Please familiarize yourself with the lecture if possible so you will feel comfortable sharing your reflections and thoughts with the group.This collection of lectures has been republished by Rudolf Steiner Press under the title: “The Mysteries of the Holy Grail — from Arthur and Parzival to Modern Initiation.”  The book was compiled and edited by Matthew Barton, published by Rudolf Steiner Press in 2010. This will be a “Zoom” conference call allowing us an opportunity to see one another while conversing (or audio only if you prefer).  To connect to the audio/video-conference: Video Conference Details: Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88210505106 Meeting ID: 882 1050 5106 One tap mobile +13017158592,,81116556762# US (Germantown) +13126266799,,81116556762# US (Chicago) Dial by your location         +1 301 715 8592 US (Germantown)         +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)         +1 646 558 8656 US (New York)         +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)         +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)         +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose) Meeting ID: 882 1050 5106 Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kcHr5EVwrv If you have questions, please contact Alberto Loya aloyavaca@utexas.edu

Agenda for this meeting (CST)   7:15  Welcome and Introductions         7:18  Verse 7:25  Study led by volunteers Note: CRC team will ID volunteers           Michael – Chapter 8           Camille – Chapter 9 7:50  Conversation 8:25   ID volunteers for next meeting 8:28  Close with verse There is a knighthood of the 21st century whose riders do not ride through the darkness of physical forests as of old, but through the forest of darkened minds. They are armed with a spiritual armor and an inner sun makes them radiant. Out of them shines healing, healing that flows from the knowledge of the human being as a spiritual being. They must create inner order, inner justice, peace and conviction in the darkness of our time. ~Karl Konig