24 October 2019 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Every Autumn, & especially this evening, check out one of the flashiest stars in the sky – bright Capella twinkling with red & green flashes low in the northeastern sky at nightfall. Capella climbs upward through the night, & this month, soars high overhead in the wee hours before dawn. Capella is in the constellation Auriga the Charioteer, but since antiquity it has carried the name Goat Star.

If you could travel to it in space, you’d find that Capella is really two golden stars, both with roughly the same surface temperature as our local star, the sun … but both larger & brighter than our sun. So here is a golden point of light that flashes red & green when it’s low in the sky. Why does it do that?

The reality is that every star in the sky undergoes the same process as to produce its colorful twinkling, for every star’s light must shine through Earth’s atmosphere before reaching our eyes. But not every star flashes as noticeably as Capella. The atmosphere splits or “refracts” the star’s light, just as a prism splits sunlight. When you see Capella higher in the sky, you’ll find that these glints of red & green will disappear.

Keep looking up my friends!

***

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Feast day of Archangel Raphael, Healing symbol of Mercury. Time Spirit from 850-1190

1260 – Chartres Cathedral is dedicated in the presence of King Louis IX of France

1601 – Death day of Tycho Brahe, Danish astronomer & alchemist. Rudolf Steiner speaks about him here in Karmic Relationships, Volume IV: Lecture VI: “We were tracing the thread of evolution which enters into the spiritual life of the present time, and we left off with the individuality of Julian the Apostate. I told you that this individuality was next incarnated in one who is only known by legendary accounts, whose secret is contained in the Parsifal legend, in the name of Herzeleide. In this life as Herzeleide, the soul of Julian the Apostate entered into a far deeper inner life. The soul-life of the individuality was deepened, as was indeed necessary after the many storms and inner moods of opposition which he had undergone in his life as Julian the Apostate.

But this later life of which I told you — this life as Herzeleide — spread itself out over the former life as Julian the Apostate like a warm embalming cloud. Thus the soul grew more intense and deep and inward, and grew richer, too, in manifold impulses of the inner life.

Now this soul was among those who had carried over something of the ancient Mysteries. Julian had lived within the substance of the ancient Mysteries at a time when their light was still radiant in many ways. Thus he had received into himself much spirituality of the cosmos. All this had been as it were pressed back during the incarnation as Herzeleide; but it was none the less pressing forth in the soul, and thus we find the same individuality again in the 16th century; we find arising in him once more, in a Christianised form, what he had undergone as Julian the Apostate. For the same individuality reappears in the 16th century as Tycho de Brahe, and stands face to face with the Copernican world-conception which emerges within Western civilisation at that time.”

1648 – The Peace of Westphalia is signed, marking the end of the Thirty Years’ War

1911 – Orville Wright remains in the air nine minutes & 45 seconds in a Wright Glider at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.

1926 – Harry Houdini’s last performance takes place at the Garrick Theatre in Detroit. Harry Houdini was born Ehrich Weisz on 24 March 1874 in Budapest, Hungary. The son of a Rabbi, he relocated with his family to America in 1876.  By the age of 17 he was known as Harry Houdini & left his family to pursue his career in magic. Booked for a two-week engagement in Detroit at The Garrick Theatre, he arrived in pain, but decided to perform the opening show on October 24th.  With much difficulty he performed, but cut the show short & was admitted to Grace Hospital.  It had been determined that he had a ruptured appendix. Surgery was not enough to spare Houdini’s life & he died on 31 October 1926 from peritonitis.

1929 – “Black Thursday” stock market crash on the New York Stock Exchange.

1945 – Founding of the United Nations.

1946 – Deathday of Emil Grosheintz – a dentist who had a practice in Basel, was an early anthroposopher, when the society was still connected to the theosophical movement. Rudolf Steiner loved him because of his sacrificial & conscientious work. His professional career as a dentist allowed him to accompany Steiner on many of his lectures. Like a leitmotiv, his life runs through the fact that he was always present as a witness in important moments of anthroposophy.

In 1906, Emil Grosheintz co-founded the Paracelsus branch in Basel. In 1907 he took part in the Munich Congress & became a member of the German section of the Theosophical Society in 1908.

In 1912, during a visit of Rudolf Steiner to his estate in Dornach, Grosheintz decided to make his land on the Dornach hill available for the construction of the first Goetheanum, & organized the purchase & donation of some further eastern plots.

In 1913 he became chairman of the Johannesbauverein. Because of his excellent organizational abilities & his experience, Emil Grosheintz became co-founder of the anthroposophical branch at the Goetheanum on September 12, 1920, & until May 9, 1943, he served as its first chairman &remained honorary chairman until his death

On 24 December 1914, Emil & Nelly Grosheintz-Laval were witnesses at the wedding ceremony of Marie & Rudolf Steiner.

On September 20, 1913, Emil Grosheintz & his wife Nelly Grosheintz-Laval took part in the laying of the foundation stone for the first Goetheanum. In the same year he moved with his wife & the two sons Hansi & Pierre into the Duldeck house designed for him by Rudolf Steiner on the Dornach hill near the Goetheanum.

1975 – In Iceland, 90% of women take part in a national strike, refusing to work in protest of gaps in gender equality.

1980 – The government of Poland legalizes the Solidarity trade union

2008 – “Bloody Friday” saw many of the world’s stock exchanges experience the worst declines in their history

***

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~Today I AM:
Light behind mist
From the dark vortex of primal fire
Where the 1st light was born
which made the maker of gods & human-kind
Pressing the black world like a blinking eye
Into wakefulness…
Today: What are YOU?
~hag

 ***

From Occult History: Lecture 4 by Rudolf Steiner

“During the 16th century, in the year 1546, a remarkable man was born of a noble house of Northern Europe, and in his very cradle, so to speak, everything was laid — including family wealth — that could have led him to positions of great honour in the traditional life of that time. Because, in line with his family traditions, it was intended that he should occupy some eminent political or other high position, he was marked out for the legal profession and sent with a tutor to the University of Leipzig to study jurisprudence. The tutor tormented the boy — for he was still a boy when he was forced to study law — all day long. But at night, while the tutor was sleeping the sleep of the just and dreaming of legal theories, the boy stole out of bed and observed the stars with the very simple instruments he had himself devised. And very soon he knew not only more than any of the teachers about the secrets of the stars but more than was to be found at that time in any book. For example, he very soon noticed a definite position of Saturn and Jupiter in the constellation of Leo, turned to the books and found that they recorded it quite erroneously. The longing then arose in him to acquire as exact a knowledge as possible of this star-script, to record as accurately as possible the course of the stars. No wonder that in spite of all his family’s resistance he soon extracted the permission to become a natural philosopher and astronomer, instead of dreaming his life away over legal books and doctrines. And having considerable means at his disposal, he was able to set up a whole establishment.

This was arranged in a remarkable way. In the upper storeys were instruments designed for observing the secrets of the stars; in the cellars there was equipment for bringing about different combinations and dissolutions of substances. And there he worked, dividing his time between observations carried out on the upper floors of the building and the boiling, fermenting, mixing and weighing which went on in the cellars below. There he worked, in Order to show, little by little, how the laws that are written in the stars, the laws of the planets and fixed stars, the macrocosmic laws, are to be found again microcosmically in the mathematical numbers underlying the combinations and dissolutions of substances. And what he discovered as a living connection between the heavenly and the earthly he applied to the art of medicine, producing medicaments which were the cause of bitter animosity around him because he gave them freely to those he wanted to help. The doctors at that time, intent upon extorting high fees, raged against this man who was accused of perpetrating all sorts of “horrors” with what he endeavoured to bring down from the heavens to the earth.

Fortunately, as the result of a certain happening, he found favour with the Danish King, Frederick the Second, and as long as he retained this favour, all went well: tremendous insight was gained into the spiritual working of cosmic laws in the sense I have just described. This man did indeed know something about the spiritual course of cosmic laws. He dumbfounded the world with things which admittedly would no longer find the same credence to-day. On one Occasion, when he was at Rostock, he prophesied, from the constellation of the stars, the death of the Sultan Soliman, which came true within a few days of the date he had foretold. The news of this made the name of Tycho Brahe famous in Europe. To-day the world at large knows hardly anything more of Tycho Brahe, whose life lies such a short time behind us, than that he was somewhat of a crank and never quite reached the lofty standpoint of modern materialism. He recorded a thousand stars for the first time in the maps of the heavens and also made the epoch-making discovery of a type of star, the “Nova,” which flares up and vanishes again, and described it. But these things are mostly passed over in silence. The world really knows nothing about him except that he was still “stupid” enough to devise a plan of the cosmos in which the earth stands still and the sun together with the planets revolve around it. That is what the world in general knows to-day. The fact that we have to do here with a significant personality of the 16th century, with one who accomplished an infinite amount that even to-day is still useful to astronomy, that untold depths of wisdom are contained in what he gave — none of this is usually recorded, for the simple reason that in presenting the system in detail, out of his own deep knowledge, Tycho Brahe saw difficulties which Copernicus did not see. If such a thing dare be said — for it does indeed seem paradoxical — even with the Copernican cosmic system the last word has not yet been uttered. And the conflict between the two Systems will still occupy the minds of a later humanity. — That, however, only by the way; it is too paradoxical for the present age.

It was only under the successor of the King who had been well-disposed towards him that the enemies of Tycho Brahe arose an all sides. They were doctors and professors at the University of Copenhagen, and they succeeded in inciting the successor of his patron against him. Tycho Brahe was driven from his fatherland and was obliged to go south again. It was in Augsburg that he had originally set up his first great planisphere and the gilded globe on which he always marked the new stars he discovered — finally amounting to a thousand. This man was destined to die in exile in Prague. To this very day, if we turn, not to the usual textbooks, but to the actual sources, and study Kepler, let us say, we can still see that Kepler was able to arrive at his laws because of the meticulous astronomical observations made by Tycho Brahe before him. Here indeed was a personality who again bore the stamp, in a grand style, of what had been great and significant wisdom before his time; one who could not reconcile himself to the kind of knowledge that became popular immediately afterwards in the shape of the materialistic view of the world. Truly it is a strange destiny, this destiny of Tycho Brahe!

And now, placing both personal destinies side by side, think how endlessly instructive it is when we learn from the Akasha Chronicle that the individuality of Julian the Apostate appears again in Tycho Brahe, that Tycho Brahe is, so to say, a reincarnation of Julian the Apostate. Thus strangely and paradoxically does the law of reincarnation take effect when the karmic connection of the single individual are modified by world-historic karma; when the cosmic Powers themselves use the human individuality as their instrument.”

***

Dear Friends – There are many opportunities to Celebrate ‘All Souls’ from various Anthroposophical angles in the Chicagoland area & beyond: Wednesday, 30 October 6:30-7:30 pm Free webinar on the Festival of All Souls  with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg.    We will explore the Journey of the Soul Between Death and Rebirth with indications from Rudolf Steiner   In the realities that Spiritual Science brings us,  we glean the importance of working with the ‘so called dead’ and the angelic worlds, for both our own and their development, as well as for the future evolution of the Earth.   CLICK HERE for your log-in link to join us live. Just one simple step!   Can’t join us live? No problem.  A recording of the webinar will be emailed to you within 24 hours of the live session.    Warmly, Laura Scappaticci, Program Director for the Anthroposophical Society in America   *** Thursday 31 October 2019 – 7 pm – 9 pm Halloween at the Theosophical Society in America 1926 North Main Street, Wheaton, IL 60187   “The Descent of the Goddess’ with Hazel Archer Ginsberg Together, we will explore the origins and purpose of “Halloween,” honor our beloved dead, and experience a ritual performance where we will journey Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, and her sister Ereshkigal, Goddess of the Underworld.   $10 nonmembers, $5 members Live Webcast   For more info. or to carpool contact Hazel@ReverseRitual.com   *** Our Annual All Souls Festival: Meeting our Ancestors at the Threshold   7 PM – 9 PM Friday 1 November 2019 at the Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 N. Lincoln Ave. Chicago   *What can we learn from Spiritual Science about working with the ‘so called dead’ and the ‘unborn’?  with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg *Eurythmy   *Artistic Explorations   *Circle of Remembrance $10 Donation & Snacks to Share Encouraged   For more info. contact Hazel@ReverseRitual.com  *** How about a Road-Trip? Take the Journey of the Soul in the Life Between Death & Rebirth in the warm hospitality of our Branch Buddies in the South:   5 pm – 9 pm – Friday 16 November 2019, in Atlanta GA Community Potluck Dinner  5 pm – Please Bring a dish to Share Program begins promptly at 6 pm  Suggested Donation $15-25 or pay what you will –  For more info. contact Angela Foster   ***   10 am – 2 pm, Saturday 16 November 2019 in Nashville TN Community Potluck lunch – Please Bring a dish to Share –  Suggested Donation $20-$50 or pay what you will –  For more info. contact Cathy Green  Or Barbara Bittles  *** 1 pm – 5 pm, Sunday 17 November 2019 Knoxville TN Community Potluck Dinner – Please Bring a dish to Share –  Suggested Donation $20-$50 or pay what you will –  For more info. contact Bill Rogers