“So we see how Powers work together in the world, how everything that appears to oppose the progress of mankind subsequently turns out to be a blessing…For everything in the great world Plan is good and the evil endures only for a season.  Therefore he alone believes in the eternity of the evil who confounds the temporal with the eternal; he who does not rise from the temporal to the eternal can never understand evil“. ~Rudolf Steiner, The Deed of Christ and the Opposing Spiritual Powers, March 22, 1909

“So one sees how the physical is a result of what preceded it spiritually and how in particular circumstances people have it in their power, through knowledge of certain relationships, to connect the physical with its spiritual origin. For example, if one knows how a particular illness is connected with particular feelings and emotions, he knows that by calling up these feelings he can also call up the illness. The black magician can make use of this knowledge to destroy the people. The deep occult truths can therefore not be taught to everyone without due consideration, for it would immediately bring about a sharp demarcation between good and evil. This is the danger inherent in the spreading of occult teachings, for no-one can be taught how to make people well, without at the same time learning how to make people ill. Where occult teachings have penetrated more into certain peoples such things have happened. There are districts in the East where one can hear true reports that there are sects who make it their task to produce definite illnesses. Thus we penetrate to an ever greater degree into the understanding of the ways in which the material arises out of the spiritual.

So what does it mean to call up feelings and emotions…it means to change the rhythm between breath and heart beat – Fear is the acceleration. Love brings a steady calm balance in the rhythm…“~Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, 15 December 1919

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25 April 2020 – “Speaking with the Stars”: The waxing crescent Moon stands with Aldebaran below Venus (Occult Mercury) this evening. The earthshine within its horns (“the old moon on the new moon’s arms”) will now be in much better view than yesterday.

“If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful flowers, what might not the heart become in the long journey towards the stars?“~ G K Chesterton

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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Feast of St. Mark the Evangelist, founded the Church of Alexandria. The oldest & the shortest of the four Gospels, the Gospel of Mark emphasizes the rejection of Christ by humanity while being God’s triumphant envoy.

A winged lion is Mark’s symbol. The lion derives from Mark’s description of John the Baptist as a “voice of one crying out in the desert” (Mark 1:3), which artists compared to a roaring lion. The wings come from the application of Ezekiel’s vision of four winged creatures (Ezekiel, chapter one) to the evangelists.

“…This is how it is with the kingdom of God; it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land and would sleep and rise night and day and the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how. Of its own accord the land yields fruit, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once, for the harvest has come” (Mark 4:26-29).

“Everything Christ Jesus did was connected with macrocosmic events. Think of how often in St. Mark’s Gospel it is said that Christ performed His acts of healing after the Sun had set or before it had risen. Thus we are told: In the evening, when the Sun had set, they brought to Him all manner of sick and possessed. (i, 32). Why were the sick and possessed brought to Him at just that time? Because the Sun had set and its forces were no longer working physically in Jesus, but spiritually; what He was to do was not connected with the physical forces of the Sun. The physical Sun had set, but the spiritual Sun-forces worked through His heart and body. And when He wanted to unfold His greatest and most powerful forces He had necessarily to exert them at a time when the physical Sun was not visible in the heavens. So also when we read: ‘Before the Sun had risen’ — the words have a definite meaning. Every word in St. Mark’s Gospel indicates great cosmic connections between processes in the universe and every step taken and every deed performed by Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth here on Earth. If you were to draw a map of the paths He trod and the deeds He performed and were then to study the corresponding processes in the heavens, the picture would be the same: processes in the heavens would seem to have been projected down to the Earth.” ~Rudolf Steiner, MYSTERY TEACHINGS IN ST. MARK’S GOSPEL

1599 – Birthday of Oliver Cromwell, political leader & Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, & Ireland. Nicknamed “Old Ironsides. Cromwell was born into the middle gentry. He was an intensely religious man, a self-styled Puritan Moses, & he fervently believed that God was guiding his victories.

Cromwell was one of the signatories of King Charles I’s death warrant in 1649

Cromwell is one of the most controversial figures in the history of the British Isles, considered a regicidal dictator by historians, a military dictator by Winston Churchill, but a hero of liberty by John Milton, Thomas Carlyle, & Samuel Rawson Gardiner, & a class revolutionary by Leon Trotsky.

1875 – Death-Day of the 12th Dalai Lama -Trinley Gyatso. His short life coincided with a time of major political unrest & wars in Tibet which particularly suffered from the weakening of the Qing Dynasty.

During his period of training as a child, Tibet banned Europeans from entering the country because of wars Britain was fighting against Sikkim & Bhutan, both of whom were controlled to a considerable degree by the lamas in Lhasa. These wars were seen as efforts to colonize Tibet—something seen as unacceptable by the lamas.

Trinley Gyatso was fully enthroned as Dalai Lama on 11 March 1873 but could not stamp his full authority on Tibet because he died of a mysterious illness.

1917 – Birthday of Ella Fitzgerald, American singer

2015 – Over 9,100 are killed after a massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake strikes Nepal.

2015 – Riots break out in Baltimore, Maryland following the death of Freddie Gray in police custody

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POD (Poem Of the Day)

~I drag the large stones to higher ground
I plant my seeds 
& carry the balance of the elements 
In my hands to bless them…
I linger with the moist black secret 
Smell of earth…

~hag