Sunward-Striving

8 May 2018 – Astro-Weather: Jupiter is at opposition with the Sun as seen from Earth. The Benevolent King is also at its closest & brightest for the year.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Kelly Wright

Greek philosophy beautifully compared the human soul with a bee. The world of colour and light offers the soul honey which it brings with it into the higher world. The soul must spiritualize sense experience and carry it up into higher worlds.” ~Rudolf Steiner 1906

1429 – Joan of Arc lifts the Siege of Orléans, turning the tide of the Hundred Years’ War.

1902 – In Martinique, Mount Pelée erupts, destroying the town of Saint-Pierre and killing over 30,000 people. Only a handful of residents survive the blast.

1933 – Mohandas Gandhi begins a 21-day fast of self-purification and launched a one-year campaign to help the Harijan movement

1884 – Birthday of Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States, 33 degree Mason.

1922 – D. N. Dunlop resigns from the Theosophical Society

1891 – Death Day of Helena Blavatsky, Russian-English mystic & author, said to be the reincarnation of Cagliostro by Emil Bock. In her will, HPB suggested that her friends might gather together on the anniversary of her death & read from Sir Edwin Arnold’s The Light of Asia & from The Bhagavad Gita. Lotuses grew in unusual profusion one year later. Hence, May 8 became known as White Lotus Day.

1903 – Deathday of Paul Gauguin, French painter and sculptor. His work was influential to the French avant-garde & many modern artists, such as Pablo Picasso & Henri Matisse.

1929 – Death Day of Pauline von Kalckreuth, early anthroposophist

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POD (Poem Of the Day)

~The sparrows song cuts the twilight
Opening the colors to dawn
I carry this melody in my belly
Close to the egg of silence in my womb –
Thus I give birth to Easter with every sunrise…

~hag

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David Newbatt

Ascension part  4:

Christ remains in union with the earth, which rescues for the earth the sunward-striving etheric body. -But to be able to take effect in a human being’s spirit & soul nature, The Christ impulse must also be able to penetrate into the human soul during sleep. And this is only possible if a person consciously recognizes the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. The spiritual effect can only proceed from a true recognition of its content.

 Mankind must come to realize that on the one hand Christ holds back the etheric body in its urge towards the sun; but on the other hand, mankind’s ego & astral body, can receive the Christ impulse only in the time between falling asleep & waking – which is only possible when knowledge of this impulse has been acquired in waking life.

 The festival of Ascension is a mystery not only of the forces of the macro-cosmic kingdom of the Son, into Earth-existence, but also the connection that opens us to the forces proceeding from the sphere of the Father.

The gospel of mark tells us: ‘Then the Lord, after He had spoken to them, was taken up into the heavenly spheres & sat down at the right hand of the World-Father as the fulfiller of His deeds’. 

As a result of the conversations over the 40 days with the presence of The Risen Christ, the apostles were able to receive the primal sources of a new imaginative clairvoyance – removing the veil hiding the true image of death which is really a facet of the Father-God in the aspect of Creator – what is born must die, but thru Christ death becomes life.

The scene of the ascension brought to manifestation the inner content of death as a revelation of man’s higher, imaginative consciousness, which has its source in the kingdom of the divine Father.

 According to the 5th gospel, the Ascension was for Christ Himself an event which is comparable only with death in human life, where the human becomes a fully spiritual being again.  –  At that moment the true meaning of death was made manifest to the apostles, they beheld it with their own eyes to be a process of union with the world of the Divine.

From that ‘turning point of time’ onward, Rudolf Steiner tells us that, one of the 1st experiences of every human being after death, is a contemplation of Christ’s Ascension, which can reveal to the person’s soul, the true picture of death & its connection to the spiritual world that lies closest to the earth, & with the highest sphere of the Father. 

For the person who on earth worked to understand the mystery of Golgotha, this picture of the ascension after death becomes an affirmation, but for the soul that has not worked towards true spiritual knowledge, it is a picture of reproach.  Helping us seek in freedom to understand this mystery in our next life.

Rudolf Steiner tells us: ‘It is the Christ-impulse that works on after death; it is this impulse under whose influence man frees himself from the Moon-sphere, penetrates the starry Sun-sphere & from the impulses given to him by beings of the starry world, is there able to work upon the forming of the physical organism for his next earthly life’. Dornach 15 Sept. 1922

Christ takes our Moon-Karma upon Himself, enabling our soul to find the path of the true Ascension, which leads to the world of the fixed stars.

In the scene of the Ascension we have an indication of the all-encompassing influence of the Christ Being, as the Lord of Karma, upon the life of the human soul after death. 

To read the entire lecture:  Ascension: Climbing Jacobs Ladder

Blessings & Peace –

~hag = Hazel ArcherGinsberg 

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Dali

Thursday 10 May 2018 – 7 pm – 9 pm

Special Study for Ascension Thursday– “Easter, Ascension, Whitsun and the Essntial Nature of the Foundation Stone of the Christmas Conference” by Sergi O. Prokofieff from his book “The cycle of the Year as a Path of Initiation” read it here: Whitsun study_Prokofieff

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Stephen B Whatley

Friday 18 May 2018, 7 pm – 9 pm, 

Whitsun: A Festival of United Soul-Endeavor,

Art Projections & Lecture with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg.

Experiential Social Art with special guest TBA

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Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society, 4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618 (map) Check out our Web site! Chicago, IL (Anthroposophical Society in America)

The newly renovated (& lazured) Elderberries 3-Fold Space is currently available for rental on PEER SPACE for classes, events, meetings, retreats, art exhibits, family parties, etc…

 

 

 

 

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