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Blessings friends on the Feast Day of St. John the Baptist 2021. Last night in the Schreinerei at the Rudolf Steiner Branch in Chicago we gathered in community to break bread & celebrate the Festival of St. John’s. Thru song, a few leading thoughts, art, movement & the most precious of all: conversation, we explored the expansiveness of this season. Here are some of the indications we worked with from the Four Seasons and the Archangels, Lecture IV: The St. John Imagination by Rudolf Steiner
“The Sun-gold, formed in the heights, in the dominion of Uriel, during high summer, passes down to weave and flow through the depths of the Earth, where it animates the elements.
Then you will come to feel that all this is a kind of background for the cosmic, light-filled deeds of Uriel, and a clear impression of the countenance and gaze of Uriel will come before you.
We feel a deep longing to understand this remarkable gaze, directed downwards, and we have the impression that we must look around to find out what it signifies. Its meaning first dawns upon the mind when as human beings we learn to look with spiritual eyes still more deeply into the blue, silver-gleaming depths of the Earth in summer. And we see that weaving around these silver-gleaming crystalline rays are shapes — disturbing shapes, I might almost call them — which continually gather and dissolve, gather and dissolve again. Here the moral world-order does not exist only in ourselves as abstract impulses.
On the other hand, all that is in human virtue and human excellence rises up with the silver-gleaming lines and is seen as the clouds that envelop Uriel (red). It enters into the radiant Intelligence, transmuted into cloud-shaped works of art.
It is impossible to look towards the increasingly earnest gaze of Uriel, directed towards the depths of the Earth, without also seeing there something like wing-like arms, or arm-like wings, raised in earnest admonition, and this gesture by Uriel has the effect of imparting to mankind what I might call the historic conscience. Here at high summer appears the historic conscience, which at the present time has become uncommonly feeble. It appears, as it were, in Uriel’s warning gesture.
And now if we have gained the impression of the connection of human morality with the crystalline element below and of human virtues with the shining beauty above, and if we take these connections into our inward experience, the real St. John Imagination will come to meet us.
So to spiritual observation there appears, as a kind of culmination, this picture: Above, illuminated as it were by the power of Uriel’s eyes, the Dove (white). The silver-sparkling blue below, arising from the depths of the Earth and bound up with human weaknesses and error, is gathered into a picture of the Earth-Mother (blue). Whether she is called Demeter or Mary, the picture is of the Earth-Mother. So it is that in directing our gaze downwards, we cannot do otherwise than bring together in Imagination all those secrets of the depths which go to make up the material Mother of all existence; while in all that is concentrated in the flowing form above we feel and experience the Spirit-Father of everything around us. And now we behold the outcome of the working together of Spirit-Father with Earth-Mother, bearing so beautifully within itself the harmony of the earthly silver and the gold of the heights. Between the Father and the Mother we behold the Son (see Plate V). Thus arises this Imagination of the Trinity, which is really the St. John Imagination. The background of it is Uriel, the creative, admonishing Uriel.
All this, too, would have to sound forth in musical tones — tones which carry these motifs on their wings and make them part of human experience. Here it is that Imagination passes over into Inspiration.
The human being lives in a certain sense as an embodied Inspiration, as a being brought into existence by Inspiration, in the Mysteries of the heights and depths and in the Mysteries of their conjunction. He lives in the Mysteries to which the Spirit-Father points upward; the Mysteries to which the Spirit-Mother points downwards, the Mysteries which are united by the fact that the Christ, though the working together of the Spirit-Father and the Spirit-Mother, stands directly before the human soul as the sustaining Cosmic Spirit.
Here in these nine lines are the Mysteries of the Heights, the Mysteries of the Depths, and the Mysteries of the Midst, which are also those of the inner being of man. And then we have the whole gathered up as a cosmic statement of these Mysteries of the Heights, the Depths and the Midst, sounding out as though with organ and trumpet tones:
| Es werden Stoffe verdichtet Es werden Fehler gerichtet Es werden Herzen gesichtet. |
Here you have that which can permeate the human being at midsummer, supporting him, exalting him, confirming him — the St. John Imagination filled with Inspiration, the St. John Inspiration filled with Imagination — in these words:
| Schaue unser Weben Das leuchtende Erregen Das warmende Leben | } | The Heights |
| Lebe irdisch Erhaltendes Und atmend Gestaltetes — Als wesenhaft Waltendes | } | The Depths |
| Fühle dein Menschengebeine Mit himmlischen Scheine Im waltenden Weltenvereine | } | The Midst The inner being of Man. |
| Es werden Stoffe verdichtet Es werden Fehler gerichtet Es werden Herzen gesichtet. Behold our weaving, The kindling radiance, The warming life. Live in the earth’s sustaining, And in the form-giving breathing, With the power of true being. Feel your very bones suffused With heavenly glory In the presiding yoga of the worlds. Substances are densified, Errors judged and rectified, Hearts are sifted” |
24 June 2021 “Speaking with the Stars”: Full Honey or Strawberry Moon occurs at 1:40 P.M. CDT today. Best seen rising in the southeast about half an hour after sunset. Tonight, the Moon floats near the lid of Sagittarius’ Teapot asterism.
St. John the Baptist and Uriel the Archangel of Summer –
An Experiential online Festival with Geoff Norris, Elizabeth Carlson, Lisa Dalton, Lucien Dante Lazar, Hazel Archer
Sunday 27 June 2021 on Zoom:
Noon – 1:30 pm PT / 1 – 2:30 pm MT / 2 pm – 3:30 pm CT / 3 – 4:30 pm ET /
8 – 9:30 pm London Time / 9 – 10:30 pm CET
Metanoia – Can you hear the voice of conscience? – Make straight the path, for at the fullness of Summer, the light is so bright that it leaves no room for the shadow, a time to remember what St. John said “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Musicial Performance by Lucien Dante Lazar
Speech – Geoffrey Norris
Eurythmy- Elizabeth Carlson
Living into St. John’s-Tide – Lisa Dalton
Leading Thoughts – Hazel Archer
Hazel Archer is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: St. John’s
Time: Jun 27, 2021 02:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/7052931041?pwd=TkMwcGVVdk5GTVJmVzVJS2s5YVFtQT09
Meeting ID: 705 293 1041
Passcode: Uriel
Find your local number: https://zoom.us/u/a961qZZhF
For more info. contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator Hazel Archer Hazel@reverseritual.com
The New Sonship
But standing by the cross of Jesus were His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus then saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” 27 Then He said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” From that hour the disciple took her into his own household. John 19
The Patmos Vision
9 I, John, your brother and fellow partaker in the tribulation and kingdom and perseverance which are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. 10 I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like the sound of a trumpet, 11 saying, “Write in a book what you see, and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.” Revelation I
“The human being lives in a certain sense as an embodied Inspiration, as a being brought into existence by Inspiration, in the Mysteries of the heights and depths and in the Mysteries of their conjunction. He lives in the Mysteries to which the Spirit-Father points upward; the Mysteries to which the Spirit-Mother points downwards, the Mysteries which are united by the fact that the Christ, through the working together of the Spirit-Father and the Spirit-Mother, stands directly before the human soul as the sustaining Cosmic Spirit.
Here [in these nine lines] are the Mysteries of the Heights, the Mysteries of the Depths, and the Mysteries of the Midst, which are also those of the inner being of man. And then we have the whole gathered up as a cosmic statement of these Mysteries of the Heights, the Depths and the Midst, sounding out as though with organ and trumpet tones .
Saint John Imagination, lecture IV
This year’s St. John Imagination arises again as a vision of the power that streams from the depths of the earth to the surface plane:
“So it is that if we follow Nature in high summer with deepened spiritual insight and with perceptive eyes, we find our gaze directed to the depths of the Earth itself. We find that the minerals down there send their inner crystal-forming process towards us more vividly than at any other time of the year. If we look with Imaginative perception into the depths of the Earth at St. John’s-tide, we really have the impression that down there are the crystalline forms in which the hard earth consolidates itself — the very crystalline forms which gain their full beauty at the height of summer. At midsummer everything down below the earth shapes itself into lines, angles and surfaces. If we are to have an impression of it as a whole, we must picture this crystallising process as an interweaving activity, coloured throughout with deep blue.” Lecture IV
What can be found throughout the Book of Revelation are these concrete crystal formations in expressive detail, e.g., the Seven Letters, Seven Seals, Seven Occult Seal Pictures, Seven Trumpets, Seven Vials of Wrath. The details provide a foreboding; a warning of apocalyptic events. For example:
“A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; 2 and she was with child; and she cried out, being in labor and in pain to give birth. 3 Then another sign appeared in heaven: and behold, a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads were seven diadems. 4 And his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth he might devour her child.
5 And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron; and her child was caught up to God and to His throne. 6 Then the woman fled into the wilderness where she had a place prepared by God, so that there she would be nourished for one thousand two hundred and sixty days.
7 And there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon. The dragon and his angels waged war, 8 and they were not strong enough, and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven. 9 And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. 10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying,
“Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our God day and night. 11 And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death. 12 For this reason, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them. Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, knowing that he has only a short time.”
13 And when the dragon saw that he was thrown down to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male child. 14 But the two wings of the great eagle were given to the woman, so that she could fly into the wilderness to her place, where she was nourished for a time and times and half a time, from the presence of the serpent. 15 And the serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, so that he might cause her to be swept away with the flood. 16 But the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and drank up the river which the dragon poured out of his mouth. 17 So the dragon was enraged with the woman, and went off to make war with the rest of her children, who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. Revelation 12
Do not the crystalline affinities abound here with such fearsome detail and force? Yet, the signs are an encouragement to persevere, and endure to the end. These descriptions flow throughout the entirety of the Apocalypse of St. John.