15 September 2016 – Astro-Weather:
A winter preview: Step out before the first light of dawn this week, & the sky displays the same starry panorama as it will at dusk next February. Orion stands high in the south, Sirius & Canis Major sparkle to its lower left, & Gemini occupies the high east
Uranus reaches opposition one month from today, but it already has become a tempting sight, rising before 9pm CDT & climbing up to the eastern horizon by 11 pm
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Peter Murphy
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
The feast of Our Lady of Sorrows (Latin: Mater Dolorosa) The Seven Sorrows (or Dolors) are events in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary:
- The Prophecy of Simeon. (Luke2:34–35)
- The escape and Flight into Egypt. (Matthew2:13)
- The Loss of the Child Jesusin the Temple of Jerusalem. (Luke 2:43–45)
- The Meeting of Mary and Jesus on the Via Dolorosa.
- The Crucifixion of Jesuson Mount Calvary. (John 19:25)
- The Piercing of the Side of Jesus, and His Descent from the Cross. (Matthew 27:57–59)
- The Burial of Jesusby Joseph of Arimathea. (John 19:40–42)
668 – Eastern Roman Emperor Constans II is assassinated in his bath at Syracuse, Italy.
921 – At Tetin, Saint Ludmila, a Czech saint, the grandmother of Saint Wenceslaus, widely referred to as Good King Wenceslaus, is murdered at the command of her daughter-in-law, Drahomíra, who was jealous of Ludmila’s influence over Wenceslaus. Antonín Dvořák composed his oratorio Svatá Ludmila for her
1254 – Birthday of Marco Polo, Italian merchant & explorer
1616 – The first non-aristocratic, free public school in Europe is opened in Frascati, Italy
1821 – Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, &Costa Rica jointly declare independence from Spain
1916 –Tanks are used for the first time in battle, at the Battle of the Somme World War I
1935 – The Nuremberg Laws deprive German Jews of citizenship
1935 – Nazi Germany adopts a new national flag bearing the swastika
1944 – Franklin D. Roosevelt & Winston Churchill meet in Quebec as part of the World War II Octagon Conference to discuss strategy.
1945 – A hurricane strikes southern Florida & the Bahamas, destroying 366 airplanes & 25 blimps at Naval Air Station Richmond, 230 die
1947 – Typhoon Kathleen hit the Kanto Region in Japan killing 1,077
1961 – Hurricane Carla strikes Texas with winds of 175 miles per hour, kills 23
1963 – 16th Street Baptist Church bombing , an act of white supremacist terrorism, in Birmingham, Alabama, occurred when four members of the Ku Klux Klan planted at least 15 sticks of dynamite attached to a timing device beneath the front steps of the church.Described by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as “one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity”. The explosion killed four girls & injured 22 others.
No prosecutions ensued of the Klan members involved until 1977, when Robert Chambliss was tried & convicted of the first degree murder of one of the victims, 11-year-old Carol Denise McNair. Thomas Blanton & Bobby Cherry were each convicted of four counts of murder & sentenced to life imprisonment in 2001 & 2002, but Herman Cash, was never charged .
The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing marked a turning point in the United States during the Civil Rights Movement & contributed to support for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
1966 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, responding to a sniper attack at the University of Texas at Austin, writes a letter to Congress urging the enactment of gun control legislation
1968 – The Soviet Zond 5 spaceship is launched, becoming the first spacecraft to fly around the Moon and re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere
1971 – The first Greenpeace ship sets sail to protest against nuclear testing on Amchitka Island
1972 – A Scandinavian Airlines System domestic flight is hijacked
1974 – Air Vietnam Flight 706 is hijacked, then crashes while attempting to land with 75 on board
2008 – Lehman Brothers files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history
Free Money Day is an annual, global event held since 2011 as a social experiment to promote sharing & alternative economic ideas. The day is held annually on September 15, the anniversary of the Lehman Brothers’ 2008 filing for bankruptcy. Participants offer their own money to passing strangers at public places, two coins or notes at a time. Recipients are asked to pass on one of the notes or coins to someone else
International Day of Democracy …’democracy is a universal value based on the freely-expressed will of people to determine their own political, economic, social and cultural systems, and their full participation in all aspects of life’
Lectures by Rudolf Steiner on this date
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Mark Ryden
My POD (Poem Of the Day)
~In today’s Heart-Math lesson,
I bring the Tree of knowledge
Together with the Tree of Life…
This is the Mystery of Redemption…
~hag
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From the Contents of Esoteric Classes, Stuttgart, given by Rudolf Steiner on this day in 1917
It’s very important for moderns to get a strong dose of esoteric life. Plagues, epidemics and wars would rage among men in a terrible way if the wise masters hadn’t decided to give mankind a deepening in the spiritual realm….
Our egotistical age can’t make proper use of such high capacities…Even people who have reached a certain stage in esoteric training can’t stand certain truths. And yet these are the very highest truths, and your training will eventually enable to you to receive them….
You all know that the heart is just at the beginning of its development and that it will later be a very important organ. One doesn’t have to accept this on faith for simple observation and reflection lets one see this. It’s the greatest riddle for modern scientists that the involuntary heart muscle is transversely striped just like the voluntary muscles this tells us that the heart will be a voluntary muscle in the future.
We speak of reincarnation and the law of karma. One can tell oneself: I don’t believe in reincarnation, but I can assume that it exists. I’ll act as if my assumption is true and wait to see what comes of it. A man who thinks and acts like this will make amazing discoveries. In everything that happens to him he’ll think: I caused this in a past life and now bear the consequences of my own deeds. If such a man unconsciously did something foolish and he’s punished for it, he’ll think: I’ll make myself aware of this foolishness, so that I can see that I was the one who brought on these ugly consequences. This is the real meaning of: Whoever hits you on the right cheek, turn the other one to him also.
Anyone who succeeds in looking for the cause of everything that hits him in himself has accomplished a great deal. One who does this will soon notice that it brings him forward, that he begins to loosen karmic chains and increasingly gets control of his life. Such a man treads his life’s path freely and surely. One can verify all anthroposophical teachings in the same way. So let’s all try to bring ever more spirituality into life and make the light and life that the great masters stream into us alive. You should all realize that the battles anthroposphy and especially esotericism will have to fight with the outer world will get ever bigger. There it’s a matter of standing fast, my sisters and brothers, stand fast, as you look at your goal and at the great masters who stand by us.
Together with you
