18 August 2016 – Astro-Weather: So did you see the Moon last night! Did you feel the almost eclipse this morning?
Alex Grey
Have you been following the Summer Triangle? Although Saturn reached its peak in early June, it remains conspicuous on August evenings. You can find the planet in the south-southwest around 9pm CDT when it forms the vertex of a another sweet triangle that includes Mars & Antares
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“The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.” ~Winston S. Churchill
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
According to Rudolf Steiner’s Original Calendar of the Soul:
Birthday of Joachim, Father of Mary
274 – Feast Day of Saint Agapitus a martyr saint. According to his legend, 15-year-old Agapitus, was thrown to wild animals in the local arena at Palestrina. The beasts refused to harm him, & he was beheaded
326 – Feast day of St. Helena, the consort of the Roman Emperor Constantius Chlorus & the mother of Emperor Constantine the Great. She is an important figure in the history of Christianity & the world due to her major influence on her son & her own contribution in placing Christianity at the heart of Western Civilization. She is traditionally credited with a pilgrimage to Syria Palaestina, particularly to Jerusalem, during which she is claimed to have discovered the True Cross
670 – Feast day of Saint Fiacre of Breuil, who built a hospice for travelers in what is now Saint-Fiacre, Seine-et-Marne in France. Fiachra is an ancient pre-Christian name from Ireland. The meaning has been interpreted to mean “battle king”, a derivative of the word fiach “raven”, found in ancient Irish folklore, such as the Children of Lir.
849 – Deathday of Walafrid Strabo, an Alemannic monk – historical, poetical & theological writer
1227 – Deathday of Genghis Khan
1587 – Birthday of Virginia Dare, granddaughter of Governor John White of the Colony of Roanoke – the first English child born in the Americas
1590 – John White, the governor of the Roanoke Colony, returns from a supply trip to England & finds his settlement deserted
1612 – The trial of the Pendle witches, one of England’s most famous witch trials, begins at Lancaster Assizes.
1634 – Urbain Grandier, accused & convicted of sorcery, is burned alive in Loudun, France
1735 – The “Evening Post” of Boston, MA, was published for the first time
1774 – Deathday of Meriwether Lewis, co-leader of the Lewis & Clark Expedition. There is still doubt as to whether he committed suicide or was murdered?
1783 – A huge fireball meteor is seen across Great Britain as it passes over the east coast
1868 – French astronomer Pierre Janssen discovers helium
1891 – Major hurricane strikes Martinique, leaving 700 dead
1892 – Secret military convention to Franco-Russian alliance
1894 – The Bureau of Immigration was established by the U.S. Congress
1903 – German engineer Karl Jatho flies his self-made, motored gliding airplane four months before the first flight of the Wright brothers
1917 – A Great Fire in Thessaloniki, Greece destroys 32% of the city leaving 70,000 individuals homeless
1920 – Women gain the right to vote
1939 – Deathday of Karl Heise a German writer, of esoteric & conspiratorial works. He became known as the author of the book The Entente Freemasonry and the World War II (1919), in which he revealed a Germany conspiracy of Freemasons who were responsible for the outbreak of the First World War. Rudolf Steiner wrote the forward to this book!
1940 – World War II: The Hardest Day air battle, part of the Battle of Britain. The largest aerial engagement in history with heavy losses sustained on both sides
1983 – Hurricane Alicia hits the Texas coast, killing 22 people & causing over US$1 billion in damage
1990 – The first shots were fired by the U.S. in the Persian Gulf Crisis when a U.S. frigate fired rounds across the bow of an Iraqi oil tanker.
1991 – An unsuccessful coup was attempted in against President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. The Soviet hard-liners were responsible. Gorbechev & his family were effectively imprisoned for three days while vacationing in Crimea
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My POD (Poem Of the Day)
~Fuddling in the muddy puddle
I grab onto a Rolly-Polly curled up tight
She carries me like precarious egg light
Silent with the pregnant pause of possibility
I grow within
The ball of silence
Waiting to unfurl in her release…
~hag
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Edward Burne Jones
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves,” said Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl.
His advice might be just what we need to hear right now. I ask you: Have you struggled to change a stagnant situation that has resisted your best efforts? Is there a locked door you’ve been banging on, to no avail? If so, I invite you to redirect your attention. Reclaim the energy you have been expending on closed-down people & moldering systems. Instead, work on the unfinished beauty of what lies closest at hand: YOURSELF.
What do you typically do just before you fall asleep & right after you wake up?
These rituals are important for our mental/spiritual health. Without exaggeration, we could say they are sacred times when we’re poised in the threshold between the two great dimensions of life.
What would it be like to give special care & attention to those transitions in the coming week?
Perhaps, as much as possible, to avoid watching TV or surfing the Internet right up to the moment you turn off the light, & what about not leaping out of bed the instant an alarm clock detonates. How about not using the alarm clock?
Become primed to receive special revelations, even ringing epiphanies, while in those in-between states.
Can you manage to be both highly alert & deeply relaxed? Could you be wildly curious & yet also serenely reflective? Can you imagine yourself being extra hungry to crack life’s secrets, but also at peace with your destiny exactly the way it is?
If you can honestly answer YES to those questions, you’ll get a lot of help in the coming week. The universe may even seem to be conspiring to educate & heal you. You will receive a steady flow of clues about how to get closer to living your dreams.
“Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen, & thinking what nobody has thought.” Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Hungarian biochemist
The best way to prepare for a Big Shift, is to cultivate mental & emotional states that ripen us to be ready for anything:
* a commitment to not getting lost inside our own heads;
* a strategy to avoid being enthralled with the hypnotic lure of painful emotions, past events, & worries about the future;
* a trust in “the ever present help of the spiritual world” over our time-worn beliefs & old habits;
* a talent for turning up our curiosity full blast & tuning in to the raw truth of every moment with our beginner’s mind fully engaged;
* and an eagerness to dwell gracefully in the midst of all the interesting questions that tease & teach us.
Together, in our own individual way, we can become prime for an enduring, simmering & steady brand of mindfulness — a state of being more-or-less perpetually in the Tao, in the groove, in the zone…
See you there
XOX
Blessings & Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg
