Greetings Friends – In preparing for our ‘Building the Temple of the Heart’ I offer you these quotes:
“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men`s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever- growing insistency. Remember that our sons and granddaughters are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty.” ~Daniel Burnham City planner for Chicago
“If ever your soul is weak, if ever you believe that the goals of earth-existence are beyond your reach, think of man’s divine origin and become aware of those forces within you which are also the forces of supreme Love. Become inwardly conscious of the forces which give you confidence and certainty in all your works, through all your life, now and in all ages of time to come”. ~Rudolf Steiner, The Birth of the Sun-Spirit as the Spirit of the Earth 12-26-1911
“…We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us…” ~Winston Churchill
Today is the last day to sign up for the meal plan for the in-person conference at the Rudolf Steiner Branch in Chicago.
Strap on your tool belt friends & get ready to work & play & commune.
- Register with the Chicago Branch using PayPal.
- For more info. contact Jenny Doty jenny.meyer17@gmail.com
(Meal plan consists of 3 lunches, 3 dinners, coffee, tea, & snacks will include some veggies from Angelic Organics – Sign up now so we know how much food we need!!!)
For those who are longing for a deep dive: The Applied Anthroposophy Course (AAC) brings transformative online content into the alchemy of individual and group inner work. The mission is to explore the urgent issues of our time through the lens of spiritual philosophy, awakening meaning, inner reflection, and outer action.
I will be facilitating one of the Chrysalis Groups: ‘The Cycle of the Year as a Path of Initiation into the New Mysteries’ – on 10 am CT Thursday mornings starting Oct. 21, 2021
The Royal Art of community awaits your participation.
See you there ~hag
4 October 2021 – “Speaking with the Stars:” Over in Aquarius the Water-bearer, asteroid 2 Pallas is slowly sliding southwest, diving south through the ecliptic, the plane of our solar system.
“To truly know the world, look deeply within your own being; to truly know yourself, take real interest in the world.” Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day
Feast Day of Crispus & Gaius, Martyrs baptized by St. Paul at Corinth, Greece. Crispin headed the local Jewish synagogue. Gaius served as St. Paul’s host & was praised by St. John. Before being martyred, Crispin served as the bishop of the Aegean Islands, & Gaius served as bishop of Thessalonica, Greece.
1 Corinthians 1:14 – I thank God that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius
Acts 10:48 – So he ordered that Crispus and Gaius be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked him to stay for a few days.
Acts 18:8 – Crispus, the synagogue leader, and his whole household believed in the Lord. And many of the Corinthians who heard the message believed and were baptized.
Romans 16:23 – Gaius, who has hosted me and all the church, sends you greetings. Erastus, the city treasurer, sends you greetings, as does our brother Quartus.
3 John 1:1 – The elder, To the beloved Gaius, whom I love in the truth
1515 Birthday of Lucas Cranach the Younger, He is known for portraits & mythical scenes
1582 – Deathday of Saint Teresa of Ávila, a prominent Spanish mystic, saint, Carmelite nun, theologian of contemplative life through mental prayer & author during the Counter Reformation.
Her books, which include her autobiography (The Life of Teresa of Jesus) & her seminal work El Castillo Interior (The Interior Castle), are an integral part of Spanish Renaissance literature as well as Christian mysticism & Christian meditation practices. She also wrote Camino de Perfección (The Way of Perfection).
Teresa of Avila was born in 1515. Her paternal grandfather, was a marrano (Jewish convert to Christianity) & was condemned by the Spanish Inquisition for allegedly returning to the Jewish faith. Her father, bought a knighthood & successfully assimilated into Christian society. Teresa’s mother, was especially keen to raise her daughter as a pious Christian. Teresa was fascinated by accounts of the lives of the saints, & ran away from home at age seven with her brother Rodrigo to find martyrdom among the Moors.
When Teresa was 14 her mother died; this resulted in Teresa becoming grief-stricken. This prompted her to embrace a deeper devotion to the Virgin Mary as her spiritual mother. Along with this good resolution, however, she also developed immoderate interests in reading popular fiction (consisting, at that time, mostly of medieval tales of knighthood) & caring for her own appearance. Teresa was sent for her education to the Augustinian nuns at Ávila.
In the monastery she suffered greatly from illness. Early in her sickness, she experienced periods of religious ecstasy through the use of the devotional book the Third Spiritual Alphabet. This work, consisted of directions for examinations of conscience & for spiritual self-concentration (known in mystical nomenclature as oratio recollectionis). She also employed other mystical ascetic works.
She claimed that during her illness she rose from the lowest stage, “recollection”, to the “devotions of silence” or even to the “devotions of ecstasy”, which was one of perfect union with God. During this final stage, she said she frequently experienced a rich “blessing of tears.”
The kernel of Teresa’s mystical thought throughout all her writings is the ascent of the soul in four stages (The Autobiography Chs. 10-22):
The 1st Devotion of Heart, is mental prayer of devout concentration or contemplation. It is the withdrawal of the soul from without & especially the devout observance of the passion of Christ & penitence
The 2nd Devotion of Peace, is where human will is surrendered to God. This is by virtue of a charismatic, supernatural state given by God, while the other faculties, such as memory, reason, & imagination, are not yet secure from worldly distraction. While a partial distraction is due to outer performances such as repetition of prayers & writing down spiritual things, yet the prevailing state is one of quietude
The 3rd Devotion of Union, is absorption in God. It is not only a supernatural but an essentially ecstatic state. Here there is also an absorption of the reason in God, & only the memory & imagination are left to roam. This state is characterized by a blissful peace, a sweet slumber of at least the higher soul faculties, or a conscious rapture in the love of God
The 4th Devotion of Ecstasy, is where the consciousness of being in the body disappears. Sense activity ceases; memory & imagination are also absorbed in God or intoxicated. Body & spirit are in the throes of a sweet, happy pain, alternating between a fearful fiery glow, a complete impotence & unconsciousness, & a spell of strangulation, sometimes by such an ecstatic flight that the body is literally lifted into space. This after half an hour is followed by a reactionary relaxation of a few hours in a swoon-like weakness, attended by a negation of all the faculties in the union with God. The subject awakens from this in tears; it is the climax of mystical experience, producing a trance. Indeed, she was said to have been observed levitating during Mass on more than one occasion.
Teresa is one of the foremost writers on mental prayer, & her position among writers on mystical theology is unique. In all her writings on this subject she deals with her personal experiences. Her deep insight & analytical gifts helped her to explain them clearly. Her definition was used in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Contemplative prayer in my opinion is nothing else than a close sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with him who we know loves us.” She used a metaphor of mystic prayer as watering a garden throughout her writings.
Around 1556, various friends suggested that her newfound knowledge was diabolical, not divine. She began to inflict various tortures & mortifications of the flesh upon herself. But her confessor, the Jesuit Saint Francis Borgia, reassured her of the divine inspiration of her thoughts. On St. Peter’s Day in 1559, Teresa became firmly convinced that Jesus Christ presented himself to her in bodily form, though invisible. These visions lasted almost uninterrupted for more than two years. In another vision, a seraph drove the fiery point of a golden lance repeatedly through her heart, causing an ineffable spiritual-bodily pain.
I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it…
This vision was the inspiration for one of Bernini’s most famous works, the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa at Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome.
The memory of this episode served as an inspiration throughout the rest of her life, & motivated her lifelong imitation of the life & suffering of Jesus, epitomized in the motto usually associated with her: Lord, either let me suffer or let me die.
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
~Teresa of Ávila
1582 – Pope Gregory XIII implements the Gregorian calendar. In Italy, Poland, Portugal, & Spain, October 4 of this year is followed directly by October 15
1970 – Deathday of Janis Joplin
2006 – Wikileaks is launched by Julian Assange
Hi Hazel,
I was at the cemetery today and gave my due respects to Saint Theresa, who has a whole Cloister to Herself, as well as the Lady of Guadalupe, whose attendees are much smaller. These were both 16th century Saints. Now, the date of October 4th in relation to Saint Theresa’s death in 1582 caused a stir in my soul when I came home and read this latest installment of the Reverse Ritual blog. You see, for many years now Rudolf Steiner has wanted to indicate a relationship between Saint Theresa of Avila and Friedrich Nietzsche in a former incarnation. As you will see here, the integer is to be found in the figure of Richard Wagner. If you go down to the last third in this lecture, which begins with the following words, Rudolf Steiner explains something very significant.
” I was also intensely interested in the connections of destiny of a man with whom my own life brought me into contact, namely Friedrich Nietzsche. I have studied the problem of Nietzsche in all its aspects and, as you know, have written and spoken a great deal about him.”
https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA235/English/RSP1972/19240315p01.html
Thanks Hazel for all the info on Teresa of Avila. Especially liked her image of prayer as “watering the garden”, which enhances the concept of communion I’ve adopted recently, that we all can invite the God within to “walk and talk” with us in the garden of our hearts.
There’s another image of prayer which I’m still trying to understand. It’s from the Revelation (8:4). The smoke of the incense there is combined with the prayers of the saints to rise to God. What I’m trying to understand and appreciate, is that the altar from which the incense is ignited has, underneath it and (I’m assuming) supporting it, the souls of those who had been slain (6:9). Somehow all of this image contributes to the tremendous privilege we have of participating in this act of prayer.
Thank you for enhancing this image of the garden & how we must tend it –
The bible verse reminds me of a Class Lesson in the School of Spiritual Science that gives the image of the angels taking up our materialistic thoughts & spiritualizing them in order to hand them up the ladder to the higher hierarchies. We can work with these administrating Angels by doing our part to purify our thoughts so that they water the garden with love – opening the way for that conversation of the heart. We are also called to become a willing sacrifice to the Word.
Oh, I like those thoughts. Thank you Hazel. I’m also rediscovering Steiner’s teachings on the Twelve Senses, and I’m sure that, combined with what you’ve given here, the Angels will surely enhance our feeble attempts at prayer.
I say “rediscovering” because I had an opportunity to study, with a group, Albert Soesman’s book expounding on Steiner’s teachings on the subject, but it didn’t work out. Now, my Angels have led me to reexamine their significance. Discovering there’s a reason why Sorat wants us to believe we only have five senses – those five contribute to Materialism, whereas the full twelve can be our aids to knowing the higher worlds. Thankful to Steiner for bringing this to our attention.
12 = the Zodiac
1 + 2 = 3 – The trinity
It doesn’t get any better than this – thanks again Hazel. I’m so enamored with this number 12.
I am left wondering why Maverick assumes our attempts at prayer are feeble? With practice, prayers can even be heard by the dead. They move, and welcome your presence.
Here are three graphic depictions of the 12 senses, and by a steady contemplation on the magnitude of these, divided 7 and 5, we can come to realize the more occult ones, like balance and movement.
https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA170/English/RSP1990/images/19160812p010.png
https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA199/English/AP1986/images/199-05.gif
https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA206/English/APC1958/images/manbeing01s.gif
Using the word “feeble” is a perspective on the prayers that begin in my heart, and not meant to be taken as a judgment of others prayers – my error was in using the expression “our prayers”. I know myself, how dull I can be, when relying on my own resources, and I also know my history – very similar to Israel with their 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. Called out of bondage, and not the quickest of learners.
If my prayers are a type of sacrifice offered by the altar, then I’m faced with this advice from Psalm 51 (17): “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise…” However, the very act of combining my prayers with the incense provided by the ministers of God, gives my “feeble” prayers much-needed strength, especially considering that under and supporting that altar are the souls of those slain for the Word of God and for their testimony they have held. So the end result is quite effective – it’s just that they begin from what I consider a “feeble” place.
Now that I’m pondering that word “feeble”, I’m wondering if it doesn’t contain a cry from my heart for more strength from above. I’ve learned that strength from below doesn’t cut it with God. Numerous references come to mind that speak of this. “Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief” is one. “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord” another. Then there’s Paul’s admission, “When I am weak, then I am strong”. So thanks Steve for wondering what I meant by that word; now if I could only give this much thought to all the words that proceed from my lips!