12 August 2019, ‘Speaking with the Stars’: Perseid meteor showers

This annual celestial event, gifting us with the cosmic iron of Michael, peaks tonight!

The Perseids begin as tiny specks of extra-terrestrial dust that hit Earth’s atmosphere at high speeds vaporizing from the friction with our atmosphere, leaving behind the streaks of light we call meteors. These dust particles were born in the comet known as 109P/Swift-Tuttle, which recently returned to the inner solar system in 1992. The giant planet Jupiter has nudged Swift-Tuttle’s debris stream closer to Earth’s orbit.

The best views will come in the predawn hours of 13 August 2019, after the waxing gibbous Moon sets around 3 am CDT. The spectacle will continue to improve as dawn approaches because the shower’s radiant — the spot on the border between the constellations Perseus & Cassiopeia where the meteors appear to emanate from — climbs higher.

As always, you’ll see more meteors at a viewing site far from any artificial lights. Look about two-thirds of the way from the horizon to the zenith, but don’t get tunnel vision gazing at one location. Let your eyes wander so your peripheral vision can pick up meteors you otherwise might not see.

This dose of cosmic iron is our perfect spiritual medicine, as these shooting stars awaken us; but we must take this medicine in consciously to strengthen our Michaelic impulse for the spiritual battle ahead.

Perseus is the cosmic starry imagination of Michael.  He stands with sword of iron raised in one hand & in the other the decapitated head of Medusa with her serpent hair & eyes that turn all who gaze upon her to stone.  He has rescued Andromeda, the chained princess, from the approaching sea monster Cetus. From the forehead of Andromeda springs the constellation Pegasus, the winged intelligence.  This entire narrative contains deep imaginations of the work of Michael in the human being rescuing the threatened human soul from the destructive forces rising from the unconscious & the past in the sea monster, & the deadening forces of Ahriman’s cold intellect in the gaze of Medusa.

A study of The Michael Mystery by Rudolf Steiner can be a helping guide during this season.  In it he states: “Hearts begin to have thoughts, that is the new way of thinking, with the heart.”  It is Michael’s intention that in the future, intelligence will flow through human hearts & be connected to the same divine spiritual forces that created the human in the beginning of time.

If we use our imaginative cognition to inwardly picture this cosmic offering, we can carry the thought of Michael/Perseus in our heart-thinking, to consciously align with our Time-Spirit.

Let us make the intention to be awake to the power of the Christ-Sun in the Earth, & the enlivening impulse of Anthroposophia within, which thru our thinking hearts becomes enlightened by Wisdom, helping us overcome the darkness with love.

***

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

“To truly know the world, look deeply within your own being; to truly know yourself, take real interest in the world.” ~Rudolf Steiner

30 BC– Deathday of Egyptian Queen Cleopatra

1827 – Deathday of 1827 – William Blake, poet, painter, mystic

1831 – Birthday of Helena Blavatsky

1848 – Deathday of George Stephenson, Renowned as the “Father of Railways”, he was an English civil & mechanical engineer who built the first public inter-city railway line in the world to use steam locomotives- considered a great example of diligent application & thirst for improvement

1851 – Isaac Singer is granted a patent for his sewing machine

1875 – Helena Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society in NY

1877 – Thomas Edison invented the phonograph & made the first sound recording

1883 – The last quagga dies at the Artis Magistra zoo in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

1914 – The United Kingdom declares war on Austria-Hungary; the countries of the British Empire follow suit

1944 – Nazi German troops end the week-long Wola massacre, during which time at least 40,000 people were killed indiscriminately or in mass executions

1950 – Korean War: Bloody Gulch massacre—American POWs are massacred by North Korean Army.

1952 – The Night of the Murdered Poets: Thirteen prominent Jewish intellectuals are murdered in Moscow, Russia, Soviet Union.

1953 – The Soviet Union secretly tested its first hydrogen bomb

1953 – A 7.2 Ms earthquake shakes the southern Ionian Islands. 800 people were killed

1955 – Deathday of Thomas Mann, a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, & the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic & ironic epic novels are noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist & the intellectual. His analysis & critique of the European & German soul used modernized German & Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche & Schopenhauer

1960 – Echo 1A, NASA’s first successful communications satellite, is launched.

1964 – South Africa is banned from the Olympic Games due to the country’s racist policies

1976 –3,500 Palestinians are killed in the Tel al-Zaatar massacre, one of the bloodiest events of the Lebanese Civil War

1981 – The IBM Personal Computer is released

1992 – Deathday of John Cage

1998 – Swiss banks agreed to pay $1.25 billion as restitution to World War II Holocaust victims

2010 – Deathday of Isaac Bonewits, founder of Ár nDraíocht Féin

***

My POD (Poem Of the Day)

~I come with the comet
A priestess in the thought-skin of the lion
Spreading the roaring depth of myself out
Before friends & gods
To let them study me…
My ripened body is a rolled papyrus
Tied with red string that holds no pretense
Glow worms hide in the folds of my scroll
I am washed & ready for the new turning
Flashing with the hygienic iron-dust of shooting stars
Reborn in the cradle of my blood
~hag

***

“…And when in high summer, from a particular constellation, meteors fall in great showers of cosmic iron, then this cosmic iron, which carries an enormously powerful healing force, is the weapon which the gods bring to bear against Ahriman, as dragon-like he tries to coil round the shining forms of men. The force which falls on the earth in the meteoric iron is indeed a cosmic force whereby the higher gods endeavour to gain a victory over the Ahrimanic powers, when autumn comes on. And this majestic display in cosmic space, when the August meteor showers stream down into the human shining in the astral light, has its counterpart — so gentle and apparently so small — in a change that occurs in the human blood. This human blood, which is in truth not such a material thing as present-day science imagines, but is permeated throughout by impulses from soul and spirit, is rayed through by the force which is carried as iron into the blood and wages war there on anxiety, fear and hate. The processes which are set going in every blood-corpuscle when the force of iron shoots into it are the same, on a minute human scale, as those which take place when meteors fall in a shining stream through the air. This permeation of human blood by the anxiety-dispelling force of iron is a meteoric activity. The effect of the raying in of the iron is to drive fear and anxiety out of the blood.

And so, as the gods with their meteors wage war on the spirit who would like to radiate fear over all the earth through his coiling serpent-form, and while they cause iron to stream radiantly into this fear-tainted atmosphere, which reaches its peak when autumn approaches or when summer wanes — so the same process occurs inwardly in man, when his blood is permeated with iron. We can understand these things only if we understand their inner spiritual significance on the one hand, and if on the other we recognise how the sulphur-process and the iron-process in man are connected with corresponding events in the cosmos.

A man who looks out into space and sees a shooting-star should say to himself, with reverence for the gods: “That occurrence in the great expanse of space has its minute counterpart continuously in myself. There are the shooting-stars, while in every one of my blood-corpuscles iron is taking form: my life is full of shooting-stars, miniature shooting-stars.” And this inner fall of shooting-stars, pointing to the life of the blood, is especially important when autumn approaches, when the sulphur-process is at its peak. For when men are shining like glow-worms in the way I have described, then the counter-force is present also, for millions of tiny meteors are scintillating inwardly in their blood.

This is the connection between the inner man and the universe. And then we can see how, especially when autumn is approaching, there is a great raying-out of sulphur from the nerve-system towards the brain. The whole man can then be seen as a sulphur-illuminated phantom, so to speak.

But raying into this bluish-yellow sulphur atmosphere come the meteor swarms from the blood. That is the other phantom. While the sulphur-phantom rises in clouds from the lower part of man towards his head, the iron-forming process rays out from his head and pours itself like a stream of meteors into the life of the blood.

Such is man, when Michaelmas draws near. And he must learn to make conscious use of the meteoric-force in his blood. He must learn to keep the Michael Festival by making it a festival for the conquest of anxiety and fear; a festival of inner strength and initiative; a festival for the commemoration of selfless self-consciousness…”

~ Rudolf Steiner, The Four Seasons and the Archangels Lecture I: The Michael Imagination http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA229/English/RSP1968/19231005p01.html

May we stand upright with Michael in awakened consciousness, to let the iron sing in our heart-fired blood.

Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

***

14-15 Sept. Gino Ver Eecke workshops

The Meditative Path: An Exploration of Self and Community withGino Ver Eecke*

Join us for a weekend of lectures, discussion and artistic work to explore The Meditative Path of Knowledge through the lens of Anthroposophy.

Sat. 14 Sept. 7-9pm: The Meditative Path of Knowledge in Anthroposophy

 Sunday 15 Sept. 2-4pm: The Call for Self-Knowledge. How to Meet the Demands of Life?

Participants will benefit most from attending both sessions, as Gino intends to guide us in an imaginative picture over the weekend. However, if you cannot attend both sessions, you may still attend as your schedule allows.

There is no set fee to attend; suggested donation for the weekend is $50.

To reserve your spot, or for more information and the suggested reading list contact Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

*Gino Ver Eecke met Anthroposophy in his birth town of Roeselare, Belgium, at the young age of 16. After spending a year on a BioDynamic farm in Switzerland, he moved to Chestnut Ridge, NY, to complete his Eurythmy training. He has been active as an amateur actor, most notably in the role of Benedictus in the 10 day festival and performance of the Rudolf Steiner’s four Mystery Dramas in 2014. Currently he guides the work of the Threefold Branch of the Anthroposophical Society in Chestnut Ridge. He can be reached at gfbver@gmail.com