Take Stock

lugh2
kenny Kien

Lughnasadh is an ancient Celtic harvest festival honoring the sun god Lugh (whose name means ‘Shining one’ or “to bind by oath”) a warrior, a king, a master craftsman and a savior. He is associated with skill & mastery in multiple disciplines, including the arts. He is also associated with oaths, truth & the law, as his name implies, & therefore with rightful kingship.

Lugnasad: #Lugnasad ~ "Lugh," by Jim Fitzpatrick. | Irish ...
Jim Fitzpatrick

Lugh has several magical possessions. He wields an unstoppable fiery spear, a sling stone, & owns a hound named Failinis. He is said to have invented fidchell (a Gaelic equivalent of chess), ball games, & horse racing.

Words: English words from Celtic roots… | The Squirrelbasket
Jim Fitzpatrick

Prior to the famous Battle of Magh Tuireadh, Lugh asks each man & woman in his army what art he or she will bring to the fray. He also encourages them to face their unfulfilled wishes, to make amends & say farewell to the life they had known. Then he addresses his army in a valiant speech, which elevates each warrior’s spirit to that of a king or lord.

Lugh faces Balor: This is the famous scene where Lugh faces his ...
Jim Fitzpatrick

In battle Lugh faces Balor, his evil grandfather who opens his terrible, poisonous eye that kills all it looks upon, but Lugh shoots a sling-stone that drives his eye out the back of his head, killing Balor & wreaking havoc on his army.

Lughnasadh Meditation: Regrets, Farewells, Harvests, and Preserves ...

In remembrance of this battle, & because of the agricultural connection, this Cross-Quarter is traditionally a time to take stock of life & to give thanks for blessings.

Regrets: Think of the things you meant to do this summer or this year that are not coming to fruition. You can project your regrets onto natural objects like pine cones & throw them into the fire, releasing them. Or you can write them on dried corn husks or on a piece of paper.

Farewells: What is passing from your life? What is over? Say good-bye to it. As with regrets, you can find visual symbols and bury them in the ground, perhaps in the form of bulbs which will manifest in a new form in spring.

Harvest: What have you harvested this year? What seeds have your planted that have borne fruit? Find a visual way to represent these, perhaps creating a decoration for your house which represents this harvest for you. Or you could make a corn dolly or learn to weave wheat, which was used by early farmers as a resting place for the harvest spirits.

Preserves: This is also a good time for making preserves, either literally or symbolically.
As you turn the summer’s fruit into jams, jellies & chutneys for winter, think about the seeds you will keep to plant next year. How can you keep them sweet in the store of your memory?

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How We Will 2020: 3-Folding our Cultural Revolution is continuing its journey of transforming our ideals into action. The theme this year is Forming Curative Communities: actively uniting with one another in the emerging economic, political/rights and social/cultural/spiritual forms seeking to reshape the ills plaguing humanity into a healthy social organism for our time. Please join us if you’d like to hear from, and collaborate with those on the front lines inspired out of the fruits of Rudolf Steiner’s work: can your own hopes for the world find a way to connect with others striving to do the good as our friend Bernard Lievegoed was wont to say? Our own hero Ella Baker shares: ‘we must not stop until we can get people to recognize that they themselves have to make the struggle for freedom and human dignity everyday, in the year, every year, until they win it.’

Michaela Gloeckler of the Medical Section in Dornach and cofounder of Allianz ELIANT brings the Archetypal Picture of Ita Wegman and the Young Doctors and their courageous movement for a Michaelic renewal of civilization as a World War II raged all around them. 



Bart Eddy of Brightmoor Makers and Sunbridge will speak to what it takes to initiate our ideals into action that are inspired by the our higher natures and our wish to serve others in our time. His ‘brought down to earth visioning’, is serving the youth in one of the poorest parts in Detroit where entrepreneurs for the good are in training, not only learning to support their own livelihoods but also empowering change in their communities where devastating health and environmental issues abound: his inspired ideas for our time keep unfolding new forms for these youth! 



Kait Ziegler of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, and Repairers of the Breach, working with Reverends William Barber and Liz Theoharis, and a small beyond dedicated team, will share on this ‘turning inside out’ and what it takes to organize for social change along side of four pillars: Racism, Poverty, Ecological Devastation and the War/Prison Economy which requires a new narrative above all and a capacity to work with those who have very divergent views in the activist community. John Bloom of Rudolf Steiner Finance and General Secretary of the Anthropsophical Society will offer a conversation Toward Justice and Freedom and Capital, Money, Spirit and Matter.



Nicanor Perlas, a long time advocate for social change in the Philippines and youth mentor, will shape a conversation around ‘The Future will be what we Fight For’. His country continues to be on lockdown where they are not allowed to go outside their houses even for food and whose president recently said that he ‘would work with the military to distribute the vaccine’.



Laura Summer of Free Columbia, an art and education initiative in Philmont New York, will present on New Forms Around Art – Art Dispersal and Local Grants to increase diversity in diverse communities. Art Accessible to 100% of the People! 

Naim EdwardsSeneca GonzalezMelody BrinkKristin BuckbeeAkil BellMonika PudelkoJoan JaeckelPatrice MaynardHazel Archer-Ginsberg

Dottie Zold and Frank Agrama of the Elderberries community and newly formed Circles for a Renewal of Culture non profit, will invite an open conversation as to how it is that the Steiner students here in our country and around the world can be good advocates for emergent healing forms, where the essence of what is human is at the center of our concerns. This threefold social form has yet to be realized and yet we see all around us new forms coming into being. What do the Steiner students have to contribute to the conversation of human rights in these three realms and do we have the will to unite together for the common good of humanity? Can we organize for the future needs out of the fruits of Rudolf Steiner’s work in the world? Do we have the will for this? If so can we make a beginning at organizing and shaping our actions now?


 

Invitation and Registration are now open:

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Illustration to the calendar for the soul written by Rudolf ...
 Robin Eaton

Calendar of the Soul by Rudolf Steiner, verse 18:

Can I expand my soul
for her to bind with seed
of Cosmic Word conceived?
My foresight is commanding me
to find the strength my soul will need
to form her spirit garment worthily.

Its mirror is the 2nd Advent verse in early December,
the only other one with a question.

Rudolf Steiner – The Calendar of the Soul | Kateřina Machytková
Dalia B.

Verse 35:
Can I conceive of that which is,
that it may find itself anew
within my soul’s creative urge?
I feel a power trusting me
to make myself, with modesty,
a member of the cosmic self.

~Translated by Roy Sadler

***

2 August 2020 – “Speaking with the Stars”: At dusk, bright Bella Luna forms a gently curving line with Saturn and Jupiter to its upper right. Later in the evening the line shines higher & turns more level.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

As regards what we experience as pain and sorrow, it is seen on the spiritual plane that the pain and sorrow we have borne on the physical plane work on and permeate our soul with such force on the spiritual plane that this force becomes will-power. Our soul thereby becomes stronger, and we are able to transform this strength into moral power which we are able to bring back with us again to the physical plane, in order that we may not only have certain capacities, through which we are able to produce something of value to the world around us, but that we may also have the moral power to develop these capacities into character“. ~Rudolf Steiner – GA 153 – The Inner Nature of Man and Life Between Death and Rebirth: Lecture 6 – Vienna, 14th April 1914

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

216 BC – The Carthaginian army led by Hannibal defeats a numerically superior Roman army at the Battle of Cannae

Feast day of “The Virgen de los Angeles” (the Virgin of the Angels) is Costa Rica’s patron saint, also known as La Negrita. According to tradition, La Negrita, the Black Virgin, is a small (less than a meter tall), representation of the Virgin Mary found on this spot on August 2, 1635 by a native woman. As the story goes, when she tried to take the statuette with her, it miraculously reappeared twice back where she’d found it. The townspeople then built a shrine around her. In 1824, the Virgin was declared Costa Rica’s patron saint. La Negrita now resides on a gold, jewel-studded platform at the main altar in the Basílica de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles in Cartago. Each August 2, on the anniversary of the statuette’s miraculous discovery, pilgrims from every corner of the country (and beyond) walk the 22 km from San José to the basilica. Many of the penitent complete the last few hundred meters of the pilgrimage on their knees.

1832- Birthday of Henry Steel Olcott – an American military officer, journalist, lawyer & the co-founder & 1st President of the Theosophical Society. Olcott was the first well-known American of European ancestry to make a formal conversion to Buddhism. From 1874 on, Olcott’s spiritual growth & development with Helena Blavatsky & other spiritual leaders would lead to the founding of the Theosophical Society. In 1875, Olcott, Blavatsky, & others, notably William Quan Judge, formed the Theosophical Society in New York City. Olcott financially supported the earliest years of the Theosophical Society & was acting President while Blavatsky served as the Society’s Secretary. In December 1878, they left New York in order to move the headquarters of the Society to India.

1921 – Birthday of Enrico Caruso, Italian tenor & actor

1922 – Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish-Canadian engineer, one of the people who invented the telephone

1922 – A typhoon hits Shantou, Republic of China killing more than 50,000 people

1924 – The last of Rudolf Steiner’s “19 Class Lessons” was given in Dornach.

1934 – Gleichschaltung: Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of Germany following the death of President Paul von Hindenburg

1939 – Albert Einstein & Leo Szilard write a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging him to begin the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear weapon

1943 – Jewish prisoners stage a revolt at Treblinka, one of the deadliest of Nazi death camps where approximately 900,000 persons were murdered in less than 18 months

1968 – Deathday of Antonio d’Achille , Aquinas scholar

1969 – Deathday of Anna Samweber – an active co-worker in Berlin with Rudolf Steiner and Marie Steiner-von Sivers. Her anecdotes & recollections were recorded by Jacob Streit during an intensive two days shortly before Anna’s death. They contribute a warm & intimate picture of Rudolf Steiner, the man, & his work. “Frau Dr Steiner owned a lovely diamond watch with her initials inscribed on the lid. It was broken, and I had to take it to a well-known watchmaker who lived a long way from the Motzstrasse (the house at 17 Motzstrasse in Berlin was where Rudolf and Marie Steiner lived from 1903 – 1913, and where the work of the Anthroposophical Society was carried on). It was late on a cold and foggy November evening when I made my way in the direction of Nollendorfplatz, where the building site for a subway was situated. I was walking along a long, wooden blank wall when suddenly two human shapes appeared from the dark and attacked me. I remembered that once Rudolf Steiner had told me that if ever I was in need I could call on him. So when these two attackers went for me, the one holding me from behind so that the other could rob me, I called inwardly and spontaneously: ‘Doctor, help me!’ At the same moment both fellows fell back like lightning and were gone. When Rudolf Steiner came for breakfast the next morning he greeted me with the words ‘Good morning, Sam. What was the matter that you cried so loud last night?’ When I told him about my experience and he had listened quietly, he said simply: ‘But I did help you, didn’t I?’ “ ~Anna Samweber from her book Erinnerungen an Rudolf Steiner (Reminiscences of Rudolf Steiner)

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TODAY is the Feast of St. Peter’s Chains – In commemoration of the miraculous deliverance of St. Peter, the visible head of the church, from prison. The entire event is described in the Acts of the Apostles, by St. Luke. Herod Agrippa, ruled over Judaea, with the title of king. During his evil reign, he beheaded, James the Great, brother of St. John. Herod then seized St. Peter, intending to make away with him in the same manner. Peter was taken prisoner, chained & locked in a narrow dungeon.

On the eve of his execution, an Angel appeared. Although heavily laden with chains, the holy Apostle was sleeping peacefully, guarded by the Angel, whose brightness illumined the dank dungeon.  Just before dawn the Angel tapped Peter on the side to wake him, saying: “Arise quickly. Put on your sandals & cloak & follow me.” The Apostle, who thought it all a dream, obeyed & followed the Angel, the tight harsh chains falling from his hands. They passed the first & second watches without attracting attention, & reached the iron gate which led to the main street. The gate opened without the aid of human hands. After that the Angel vanished & was seen no more. Peter proceeded immediately to the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark, where the faithful were assembled in prayer.

When he knocked at the door, a servant, named Rhode, came, & asked who was there. Judging by the voice that it was Peter, she was so greatly startled with joy & astonishment, that, without opening the door, she ran back to announce the news. They believed that it must be his guardian Angel. Meanwhile, the Saint repeated knocking at the door. They opened it & saw, with amazement, their beloved shepherd safe & free from chains. Their joy on beholding him was as great as had been their grief when he was taken prisoner. Having given the sign for silence, St. Peter related all that had happened to him. They gave thanks to Divine Providence when he had ended, & learned to trust in future to the heavenly power & mercy.

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There are many ways to help us hold this form! You could help by connecting us to Midwestern friends or initiatives, lending or gifting food/supplies, contributing financially, spreading the word, or lacing up your hiking boots and walking with us!

To make a financial donation thru paypal go to urbanfirstaidla@gmail.com

Greetings! My name is Ultra-Violet Archer, a 2018 graduate of the Chicago Waldorf School.I am inviting you to be co-creators of a walking-learning journey taking place in the heartland this coming August.

For ten days, myself, a group of fellow journeyers, and maybe even you, will walk out our living questions across the Midwestern landscape, forging connection with each other, those we meet along the way, and the land itself. Our journey begins in Madison, Wisconsin on August 8th and ends at Elderberries Bio-dynamic Outpost and Threefold Cultural Hub in Chicago Illinois on the 18th.

Along the way we will share food, song, and story, while meeting and holding conversation with local food, farm, and community initiatives. Classroom Alive is the name of the game, and we’d love for you to become a fellow player.

For more information or to register, find Classroom Alive Chicago on Facebook or email circlesforarenewalofculture@gmail.com

Ready to walk? sign up here: https://form.jotform.com/202047534622145…

With love and light,
Ultra, Stefan, Robbie, Frank, Dottie, and the rest of the Classroom Alive sole-power team

August 20-23, 2020 Questions of Courage Youth Conference at Elderberries

Questions of Courage 2020 in Chicago – August 20-23 Elderberries Biodynamic Outpost and 3Fold Cultural Hub 4251 N. Lincolon Ave. Chicago, IL. 60618

August 20: Check-in, share conversation, build the ground for the journey together.

August 21-22: Travel to Wisconsin Move together towards the land, link up with Farmer John and Haidy Angelic Organics Biodynamic Farm, and also with Dana and Phil Burns at Healing Traditions and Alizur farm. Connect with the land, plants, animals, and one another, through creative explorations and “roughin’ it” type amendments. Sleep under the stars or indoors.

August 23: Return to Chicago Enter back into the metropolitan context, into the social questions of urban life, and close the gathering together at Elderberries, setting the ground for future work out of questions of courage that are present.

Other locations and collaborators are currently in dialogue, and will be updated here.

The gathering is essentially about stepping into the living natural element, step by step, making an integral connection, with one another, ourselves, and the elements that support us here on the Earth…”

registration: https://docs.google.com/…/1FAIpQLSdY7KXHkjUPV2h9UD…/viewform

Thank you Elderberries for giving us an anchor to build our heartland gathering around!

Elderberries Biodynamic Outpost + Threefold Cultural Hub, 4251 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618

Co-sponsored in part by The Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago, Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Festival & Program Coordinator

8 thoughts on “Take Stock

  1. Hi Hazel,

    I know that I must be a pain in your hind end by now, but this also strikes out as being important. You wrote of the death-day of Anna Samweber, who was close to Rudolf and Marie from the early days in Berlin. Her memoir was important as you say here:

    “1969 – Deathday of Anna Samweber – an active co-worker in Berlin with Rudolf Steiner and Marie Steiner-von Sivers. Her anecdotes & recollections were recorded by Jacob Streit during an intensive two days shortly before Anna’s death.”

    Now, here is what is also important about this memoir, and I have discussed it with Ottmar, who writes here also as a keen student of spiritual science. Anna notes in this memoir that she remembers about how Carl Unger, who was Rudolf Steiner’s main student during the pivotal years from 1907 to Steiner’s own death in 1925, told her how he intended to start public lectures again in 1929. She said that he should try to get the approval of the GAS in Dornach, which he agreed to do. So, he spoke to them at Christmas of 1928 about what he intended to do. Then, as she remembers it, she heard three shots as a kind of premonition of something. Well, as we know by now, Carl Unger was murdered when he went to Nuremberg on 4 January 1929 in order to begin again to give public lectures.

    The story goes that he was murdered by a deranged anthroposophist who must have had issues. And yet, Carl Unger was only trying to gently reintroduce Anthroposophy, and its fundamental three-folding theme with the lecture, “What Is Anthroposophy?”

    Nuremberg is where Kaspar Hauser also appeared in 1828. And we know what happened to him. So, I think that Unger went to Nuremberg at the outset of 1929 because he thought that he had been given a kind of tacit approval for what he wanted to do, which was to begin to reintroduce anthroposophy into the German culture. He saw this as a moral and ethical imperative. Instead, he was shot and killed, and the GAS has had very little to say about it to this very day. Only Anna Samweber’s memoir exists to tell us of the angst experienced in these fateful days. She saw it as much as she saw the aura around Rudolf Steiner when the Goetheanum was burning down.

    Carl Unger’s final lecture on “What Is Anthroposophy?” is readily available, and worth the consideration for its fundamental attempt to encourage threefolding. Now, you see, here in 1929 in Germany, Hitler’s National Socialist Party was on the verge. Thus, anthroposophy was anathema to it. The consequences are now history, and Carl Unger was subtracted as a family man with a wife and four children. But hey, why should the GAS concern itself about that? This man was still 50 years old when he died, and Steiner had implored Marie in his next to final letter that he needed to be taken care of by the GAS. She ignored it, and even furthermore when Steffen was made president on 29 December 1925. This would have normally opened a new Vorstand seat, but Steffen retained it. So, Unger was to be excluded by now, and left to the Stuttgart position. God save us.

    1. Yes, i have also pondered this. My understanding is that Unger for all his beauty & hard work – his powerful intellect & dedication to the GAS,
      still had the character flaw of egotism. His unconscious motivation came from a place of self aggrandizement – this was written in his karma & Rudolf as well as Marie Steiner, could see it.
      He was murdered to make a sacrifice as a healing for this. I also think perhaps he may be in the group who had the quick 80 year turn around in the spiritual world, so as to come in now, before the end of this Michael age to engage with the Society in this time of crisis.

      1. I think this will tell a different story concerning Carl Unger’s total dedication to the science of the spirit, as well as to Rudolf and Marie Steiner. Their high regard for him was only opposed by certain members of the so-called “younger generation”, which formed in October 1922. They wanted a more mystical-theosophical approach for results, while Unger advocated the path of rigorous and pure thinking. Even Steiner was perplexed about what to do, and finally gave Marie the mandate in a letter dated 20 March 1925. Carl Unger was to be brought into the Vorstand in Switzerland, after selling his successful business in Stuttgart. This, as we know, never happened, but it should have.

        http://biographien.kulturimpuls.org/detail.php?&id=724

  2. Hi Hazel,

    I promised earlier that I would be able to give some remarks concerning Lammas, the midsummer festival. As such, it draws attention to the Saint John Imagination which began at the outset of the summer solstice. This is where the crystalline affinities are noted in this fourth lecture of “The Four Seasons and the Archangels”. Uriel’s gaze conveys the compass of the vertical dimension, i.e., Height, Depth, Midst. We discussed this before, but I was waiting for this further containment in order to bring forth another element.

    By midsummer, we have another depiction, and it also concerns what is coming to fruition, or harvest. It concerns the Apostle Peter’s experience, which is also celebrated on August 1st, of his miraculous release from the chains of his imprisonment. This can only be adduced as a supersensible event in its entirety, as expressed here:

    https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=acts+12&version=NASB

    The article below conveys it as occurring on August 1st, which is uncanny for its accuracy because it truly does represent a midpoint event. In truth, Peter’s miraculous release from chains signifies a definite midpoint. As such, its relevance stands in relation to the Mystery of Golgotha, c. 33 AD, Peter’s release, c. 47 AD, and Paul’s death in Rome, c. 64 AD. So, it does indicate a midpoint, which is hardly understood.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_of_Peter

      1. You also wrote about it here today, The Feast of St. Peter’s Chains. I am so impressed. So, what do you think it means? Could Peter have actually been released in his physical body? If so, then the physical laws that govern the earth would have had to be circumvented, and we know that all miracles do not break the laws of the earth. You notice how the angel strikes him in the side, and says, “get up quickly”. Yet, he is wrist-bound between two guards on either side of him, and so how is this possible? Then, they leave the jail which has also two guards on the outside. The angel says to Peter to cloak himself and put his sandals on, and then after turning the corner, the angel disappears and Peter stands alone and wondering where he is.

        So, he goes to the only familiar place he knows, which is the home of Mary there in Jerusalem, who has a following of people who are dedicated to the apostleship, and where she represents a kind of focal point. She is also the mother of John Mark, who will eventually write the gospel that Peter gives to him. There is a lot to be considered here because it also involves Paul, who would be disappointed when Mark returns to Jerusalem suddenly for an unexplained reason. His mother called him home because Peter had shown up on her doorstep.

        I hope over the next few days that we can elaborate on this matter because it is very important. Paul needed all the help he could get in his first missionary journey, and this required Peter’s miraculous release from his imprisonment at the hands of Herod Agrippa I, who would have assuredly put him to death, just as he did with James the Great by sword.

        Yet, Acts chapter 12 says only that after telling those to go to James to tell them that he has been loosed, he goes to another place. What?!! There must be more to the story, and there is.

        1. Taking these Feast day tales to heart is always rewarding. And this one in particular is chock full of revelations as you say.
          I also love to take them in as a soul picture & let them speak to me without intellectualizing them too much –
          a good combo.
          xox

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