“There is not only one health, but there are as many healths as there are human beings. We must incorporate that in our attitude if we want to see the issues of health and illness in the right light. We must incorporate in our attitude that the human being is an individual being that every human being is different from the other, and that that which is salutary to the one is noxious and disease causing to the other, that it completely depends on his individual state“.
~Rudolf Steiner – GA 57 – Where and How Does One Find the Spirit?: Lecture VIII: Issues of Health in the Light of Spiritual Science – Berlin, 14th January, 1909
“…And how did you manage to bring so many souls to hell back then?
Because of fear.
Oh, yeah. Excellent strategy; old and always current. But what were they afraid of? Fear of being tortured? Fear of war? Hunger?
No. Afraid of getting sick.
But then, no one else got sick back then?
Yes, they got sick.
No one else died?
Yes, they died.
But there was no cure for the disease?
There was.
Then I don’t understand.
As no one else believed and taught about eternal life and eternal death, they thought they only had one life, and they clung to it with all their might, even if it cost them their affection (they did not embrace or greet, they had no human contact for days and days); their money (they lost their jobs, spent all their savings, and still thought it lucky being prevented from earning bread! ); their intelligence (one day the press said one thing and the next day contradicted themselves, and yet they believed it all! ); their freedom (they didn’t leave their house, they didn’t walk, they didn’t visit their dying relatives… It was a great concentration camp for volunteer prisoners!!!). They accepted everything, everything, as long as they could grasp their miserable lives one more day. They no longer had the slightest idea that He, and only Him, is the one who gives life and ends it. It was like this, as easy as it had ever been “.
“My Dear Wormwood, Plagues are a most effective weapon given to us by our father below. Normally, Christians are quite comfortable in receiving the dreaded sacraments and gathering in their prayers and other heinous Arts. But if you can stir up a hysteria by means of a plague so that they cut themselves off from our enemy’s gifts to them, the torment of isolation will drive them to despair and season them quite deliciously much to our delight.
Get them to forget about their usual practices of prayer, fasting and alms giving and encourage them to become gluttons, slanderers, and lose all regard for their neighbor thinking only about themselves and their immediate needs. Storing up treasures which we can send moth and rust to destroy further sweetening their torment.
If you can, help them to redefine their usual words like “church” and “fellowship” and “ministry” so that they feel comfortable cutting themselves off from our enemy’s care and they can be tempted all the more.
Yes, Wormwood, a plague is a tried and true method of taking their eyes off our enemy and getting them to worship their own bodies. A most desirable position for we tempters. Never let a good crisis go to waste!
~John Keeney
***
POD (Poem Of the Day)
~In the wind I hear what I see –
A low hum of vitality
The bell of flowers singing…
With the bright blade of spirit I turned new ground,
Planted seed & watched,
Beneath my hand things happened –
Grain & fruit
In time I will rise & ripen…
~hag
***
25 May 2020 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Look west for the crescent Moon after dusk. About a fist at arm’s length above it are Pollux & Castor, the Gemini “twins.” They’re not identical twins. Pollux, on the left, is slightly brighter & tinted pale orange.
Vega is the brightest star in the northeast after dark. Look upper left of it for Eltanin, the nose of Draco the Dragon. Closer above & upper left of Eltanin are the 3 fainter stars of Draco’s stick-figure head, also called the Lozenge. Draco always points his nose to Vega, no matter the season or how they’re oriented. He seems curious about it. Dragons are supposed to have a thing for jewels. . . .
The faintest star of Draco’s head, opposite Eltanin, is Nu Draconis. They await your attention higher & higher overhead as the night progresses.
Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
240 BC – First recorded perihelion passage of Halley’s Comet.
1085 – Death-day of Gregor VII – One of the great reforming popes, best known for the ‘Investiture Controversy’, attacking the practice of simony (trafficking for money in “spiritual things”- named after Simon Magus, who is described in Acts 8:9–24 as offering Peter & John, payment in exchange for their empowering him to impart the Holy Spirit to anyone he laid hands on) & his dispute with Henry IV. In Rudolf Steiner’s Karma Lectures Vol. I/12 he was revealed as Haeckel in a previous life.
1803 – Birthday of Ralph Waldo Emerson an American essayist, lecturer, & poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism.
1803- Birthday of Edward Bulwer-Lytton an English novelist, poet, playwright, & politician. Theosophists Annie Besant & especially Helena Blavatsky incorporated his thoughts & ideas, from: ‘The Last Days of Pompeii’, ‘Vril’, ‘The Power of the Coming Race’ & my fav. ‘Zanoni’, in her own books.
He coined the phrases “the great unwashed”,”pursuit of the almighty dollar”, “the pen is mightier than the sword”, “dweller on the threshold”, as well as the well-known opening line “It was a dark and stormy night”.
1904 – Birthday of Wilhelm Jordan a German writer & politician, seen as “a precursor of Nietzsche and pioneer of Darwin in Germany”; Known for his books ‘mysterium’ Demiurgos & his translation of the Edda.
***
“…Like an evening vapor after the sunset…”
Ascension Festival with the Central Regional Council
Links to the video recording & resources offered on Thursday, May 21, 2020
‘Ascension comes as the blossoming world is reaching fullness. Trees and plants, stirring upward in growth, touched by the warmth and light from above embody heaven’s blessing in color and fragrance. The whole of nature reaches upward towards the heights.
The longing of the human soul strives also, upward, in unison with nature, seeking the touch of world-warmth from the sun. This mood of Ascension attunes all of life to the cosmic expanses’.
Thank you for joining us, on this artistic exploration of Ascension.
Special THANK YOU to Geoff Norris, Nancy Melvin and Mary Ruud for their contributions!
The Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America invites you to view the videos and materials used throughout this conference.
Ascension Festival
The link to the video is here
The link to the script is here
The link to the images is here
For more info. contact Alberto Loya aloyavaca@peoplepc.com
May Hope Spring Eternal –
The CRC – Marianne Fieber, Alberto Loya, Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Lisa Dalton
***
~Vitae Sophia~ A Whitsun Festival of United Soul Endeavor with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg
Online Whitsunday, 31 May 2020 from 10 am–11:15 am EDT Zoom Call*
Through leading thoughts and conversation we are called to redeem the ether spheres to create an Ecclesia, a chalice for The Sophia. Then the spirit flame can spread out to become what Steiner called a “World Whitsun”, which began in earnest at the Christmas Conference. The Whitsun Festival highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts, in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is especially strong now during this ‘pandemic’. Our groups striving to know Spiritual Science must work together as a community, to have the possibility to create a new culture where a sacrament is possible in every encounter. Our individual strength is enhanced by weaving our gifts together, kindling our social world in conscious community.
*Join Zoom Meeting on computer https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85927907854
Meeting ID: 859 2790 7854
or Dial in by phone: Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kbEIk8kgk1 Meeting ID: 859 2790 7854
Hazel Archer-Ginsberg – Founder of Reverse Ritual Understanding Anthroposophy through the Rhythms of the Year. Essayist, Lecturer, Poet, Trans-denominational Minister, ‘Anthroposopher’, working as the Festivals Coordinator of the Chicago Rudolf Steiner Branch, The Traveling Speakers Program, & the Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society.
Sponsored by the Anthroposophical Society in New Hampshire
For more info. contact deb@anthroposophy.org
Hi Hazel,
I appreciate so much your direct invitation to the Ascension presentation of May 21st. I will listen and watch carefully. I like very much how participants participate in these virtual times in which zoom video works. Last year, you were doing the “villes” in real time, and wasn’t that glorious. No threat on the horizon to perceive.
Here is something I have been reading, and I think it deserves being posted to another site in which the corona virus epidemic is of major concern:
“In regard to our future growth, the Holy Spirit is for us humans the Spirit of development into free humanity, into the free human soul. The Spirit of freedom holds sway in that Spirit which poured itself out over the first understanders of Christianity in the first Christian Pentecostal festival, the Spirit whose most significant characteristic was indicated by Christ Himself: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free!” Humanity can become free only in the spirit. So long as it is dependent on that bodily nature in which its spirit dwells, so long does it remain its slave. Humanity can become free, only when it finds itself again in spirit, and from out of the spirit becomes lord over that which is in it. “To become free” presupposes the discovery of oneself as a spirit within oneself. The true spirit in which we can make this discovery is the universal human spirit, which we recognise as the Pentecostal power of the Holy Spirit entering into us, and which we must bring to birth in ourselves and allow to come to manifestation.
https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/AscenPent/19100515p01.html
Yes, & i was scheduled to do Whitsun in NH, but now that has moved to Zoom as well. I feel it is important to redeem this ether space thru our intention to bring light into sub nature. I do hope to get back on the road at some point!
Thank you for the reminder of this lecture, very powerful, as you say especially for our times!
Can we bring social solidarity to life thru the healing spirit? YES! this is our work…