18 March 2019 – “Speaking with the Stars”: The bright waxing gibbous Moon traverses the sky in company with Regulus tonight. They’re only a couple of degrees apart in early evening. Watch them pull farther apart hour by hour.
***
Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
1068 – An earthquake in the Arabian Peninsula, leaves up to 20,000 dead.
1229 – Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, declares himself King of Jerusalem in the Sixth Crusade.
1314 – Jacques de Molay, the 23rd & final Grand Master of the Knights Templar, is burned at the stake.
1944 – Mount Vesuvius in Naples, Italy erupts killing 2,600 people & causing thousands to flee their homes.
1953 – An earthquake hits western Turkey, killing 2,600 people.
1968 – Gold standard: The U.S. Congress repeals the requirement for a gold reserve to back US currency.
An Easter-Tide Exploration of Kaspar Hauser:
In Rudolf Steiner’s lecture: ‘The Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric’, he says that because of dark powers working against human evolution, Kasper Hauser was unable to fulfill his true mission: which was to prepare the way for a new cultural, political & economic world view, a new 3-fold social organism that could have redeemed the destiny of Central Europe, & changed our evolutionary trajectory. This did not happen because of the adversarial powers, but amazingly, thru Kasper Hauser’s imprisonment, he was able to attain a capacity for pure sense perception untainted by an education stuffed with materialistic concepts. He was able to unite his pure innocence, much like the Nathan soul, with the power of thinking purified by the deepest suffering, enabling him to see the etheric light in the form of the ‘after-image’. So even though he was not able to achieve his highest destiny, he was able to set the stage for the rest of us to begin to see the Christ in the etheric realm.
***
Contemplations for Holy Week: (excerpts from “The Three Years” by Emil Bock)
Palm SundayMatthew 21: 1-11
«Christ enters the Holy City on the first day of Holy Week. It is at first an unpretentious sight. He rides through the gate of the city upon an ass, followed by His faithful believers. But suddenly, as though he were the God of Spring himself, His entry creates frenzy in the souls of the people. It is as though the crowd were seized with the ecstasy of a pagan Spring Festival. Primitive rites are revived when the people cast down palm branches from the trees. The palm has always ranked as the tree-symbol of the sun which shines in the Spring sky with renewed strength. The crowd spread His path with the symbol of the sun.
Is He in fact perhaps the Friend and Lord of the Sun who has been promised to man as the great King of the Light? Is the original spiritual significance of the city of Jerusalem to be released from enchantment, the city which sheltered on Mount Zion one of the oldest sun-sanctuaries of mankind, before it was overshadowed by Mount Moriah, the Mount of the Moon, with the Temple of Solomon? Has the time of Melchisededek, the great Sun-Initiate, come back?
It would appear as though the Christ had now really found entrance into humanity. The high Sun- Spirit has already lived for three years in a human body and undergone earthly destiny. He held back and kept silence; and whenever He stepped forward He was met with hostility and lack of understanding. Is all this now to take a new direction? Is destiny to find a solution in an ecstatic jubilation?
No, this is the beginning of the most solemn week in human history. The same men who strew palms and break forth into fervid Hosannas will shriek with fanatical hatred a few days later: “Crucify him! Crucify him!” The Cross on Golgotha, the symbol of death, will companion the palm branch, the symbol of life. It is the Christ Himself who brings about the sudden reversal of feeling. He passes through the ecstatic crowd in silence, with grave countenance. He sees through the acclamations; they are merely superficial, and He aims at deeper levels. His will is directed to something very different.»
Holy MondayMark 11: 12-25
«Christ approaches the fig tree at Bethphage and wishes to show the disciples how little value should be attached to the “Hosanna” of the previous day. All that it represented was the last fruits of the old visionary clairvoyance, given by nature, and bound to the body. The words He addresses to the fig tree are, as it were, a challenge to the whole realm of ancient ecstatic vision. Here a momentous decision is made in the history of mankind. Jesus rejects the Hosannas of the people, and Himself brings about the transition to their cry, “Crucify Him”. He has the courage Himself to summon the spiritual blindness through which the people will fanatically demand His death. Humanity must act out of a consciousness that leads to freedom, even if it means tragedy; even if men in their spiritual blindness nail Him on the cross.
On that Monday in Holy Week Christ rejects a temptation. Had He allied Himself with the ancient clairvoyant forces, He might have found public recognition. Not only people would have cried “Hosanna”; they would have crowned Him King. But a final pronouncement is made: Christ will find no link with the ancient forces. His sole aim is that mankind should find the way to awakening and freedom. It is no unloving curse that He utters on the fig trees of those who had lent him the ass and its colt. He acts purely from the nature of his own being. He is the Sun and when the Sun rises, the Moon perforce goes pale. So the moon-forces of the old vision fade away.
The Christ appears before the Temple. Many hundreds of pilgrims have assembled, and around the Temple buying and selling, trading and bargaining are being carried on. In the Temple itself a feverish activity prevails; sacrificial beasts are needed for the Festival, the Passover lamb must be slaughtered. This is a source of business; for the animals have to be brought before they are sacrificed. Old Annas, the notorious miser of world history, knows how to make a profit. He has already made a vast fortune from this market. He has been the wire-puller in the political compromise with the Romans which is the basis of the Temple business. The pilgrims must change their local currency into the official currency which is valid in the Temple. This is Roman currency. Thus the Temple comprises also a Roman Exchange market. The Roman fiscal officers have been admitted to the Temple, although they were representatives of the Cult of Caesar, because it was hoped by this compromise to keep them at least out of the Holy of Holies.
Now Christ comes on the scene. He is coming to fulfil the custom of the feast. But the fire of His burning will has its effect. There is no need for Him to say much. The people are immediately seized with panic. Terror-stricken, they realize into what decadence they have fallen. Something similar had taken place at the feast of the Passover, three years before. At that time the terrifying effect came from the divine nature of the Christ, despite the conscious restraint which was still exercised by Jesus.
But now the divinity is entirely transformed into humanity; it has become intensity of will. He has the right to tear down the mask of decadence of the Temple.
The sun of Christ shines, and the glimmer of the Moon must fade away on the moon-hill of Mount Moriah. The spectres of the night flee from the sun. In place of a magnificent Temple appears a simple room on Mount Zion. There, in the Last Supper, the seed of a new ritual and worship, a Sun-like Sacrament, will be sown. The moon-religion of antiquity will be superseded on the evening of Maundy Thursday, when on the sun-hill of Mount Zion, Christ gives Bread and Wine to His disciples.»
***
POD (Poem Of the Day)
~I move thru my back space
In a Lemniscate full of flare…
That which is, follows
In stride…
& that which is not yet
Flows in a current
Under my wings, a song
shifting at high tide…
~hag
***
HOLY WEEK 2019
A Cosmic Wake Up Call: The True Date of Easter 2019
Begins 17 March Palm Sunday 2 pm – 4 pm
Then every evening 7 pm – 9 pm
& 24 March – the TRUE Easter Sunday 2 pm – 4 pm
For our study this year, we will take up the Mystery of Kaspar Hauser
In the New Mysteries we follow the path of the Christian initiation thru the Holy Week before Easter – With every step, from the recognition of the old Sun on Palm Sunday, thru to the meeting of the Saturn-Spirit and The Harrowing of Hell, which sparks the rising of the New Sun of Easter.
For our study we will take up: ‘Kaspar Hauser: The Struggle for the Spirit’ byAnthroposophical researcher Peter Tradowsky
I have ordered 5 copies to be given out on a 1st come basis at cost: $23
Come to any or all of the gatherings:
17 March Palm Sunday, 2pm – 4pm
18-23 March 2019 Holy Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Good Friday & Holy Saturday, 7pm – 9pm
The TRUE Easter Sunday 24 March 2019, 2 pm – 4 pm
A Cosmic Wake Up Call: The True Date of Easter 2019
The Golden Legend – The Rose Cross Meditation Leading Thoughts, Social Art & Discourse with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg
Using our head, hands & heart we will enact this powerful Rosicrucian tool given to us by Rudolf Steiner, as a soul path of initiation, using imaginative cognition to build spiritual etheric forces; a Metamorphoses of Self & of World evolution.
$10 for Art Supplies & Snacks to Share Encouraged
***
