News 3-24

Anthroposophy in Hawkes Bay

Sunday 21 January

Week 3-24

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Coming Events

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Calendar of Coming Events 
(in the Rudolf Steiner Centre, 401 Whitehead Road, Hastings
unless stated otherwise)

• Friday 26 January 7 pm. Friday Group. Leading Thought # 62 to 65.
• Weekend 24-5 February. 2-day Workshop (9am to 4:15 pm) on Threefold Social Order.
• Wednesday 28 February. 7 pm Van James of Hawaii will speak on the occasion of Rudolf Steiner’s 163^rd birthday on Madonnas in Art.
• Saturday 16 March 2 pm.  Annual General Meeting.
  
  

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Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy

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SPORT

Religion has lost the power of strengthening the human physical constitution.  Therefore, an instinctive urge has arisen in people to gain access to a source of strength through outward, physical means only.
As life tends toward polarity, we find that people instinctively want to substitute the loss of invigoration, previously drawn from his religious experiences, by cultivating sports.  I have no wish to harangue against sports.  Neither do I wish to belittle their positive aspects.  In fact, I feel confident that these activities will eventually develop in a healthy way.  Nevertheless, it must be said that sports will assume a completely different position in human life in the future, whereas today it is a substitute for religious experience.  Such a statement may well seem paradoxical, but truth, today, is paradoxical, because modern civilization has drifted into so many crosscurrents.

 Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 303 – SOUL ECONOMY – III. Education Based on Knowledge of the Human Being II – 25 December 1921, Stuttgart.

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Reader Contributions, Reviews, Reflections, Comments

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John Allison reflects on participating in the Christmas Conference celebration in Melbourne.

From the 27^th to the 31^st December I was part of the Christmas Conference Celebration at the Michael Centre in the outskirts of Melbourne.  This is an artistically designed complex of buildings housing a spacious hall, library, dining room office and various smaller rooms set in beautiful trees with a biodynamic garden.

Each day started with a class lesson from number 14 to 19.  About 70 people attended these from all over Australia.  Marilyn Lewis, who used to be in Hawkes Bay, gave one lesson.  We saw the rhythms of the Foundation Stone performed in Eurythmy each day and there was a full performance on the first night. 

I attended a Eurythmy workshop with Birgith Lugosi which was very uplifting.  Birgith has been the director of the Aurora Australis Eurythmy training over the last 32 years.

There was a speech performance of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner on the second night and conversation on the other evenings.

There were lectures each day on varied themes and conversation groups in the afternoon after the workshops.

I was part of a conversation on Community without Hierarchy led by Rod Tomlinson who stressed how Steiner had wanted the schools to work collegially without a principal.

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Further to the Community Project

Dear members and friends of the Anthroposophical Society,

The idea of spiritual community based on a threefold social order, where spiritual ideals can still be realised in a world

of increasing materialism, was enthusiastically taken up and developed soon after Steiner’s lectures, by the founders of

Threefold Farm in Spring Valley New York. Here is a link to its history –

https://threefold.org/our-foundation/history/   

It is fascinating to see how this well-known anthroposophical community started and developed.

If they could do it at the time, perhaps we can too?

Once the year has started up, it will be good to hold a meeting for all those interested, to get a picture of what this could look like and how it could function, including fundraising, organisation and what it would take to become a member and resident, and or a co-worker, to become part of its establishment and development.

Please contact me, if you are interested in supporting, establishing and carrying, living, working in this community...

With warm greetings,

                       Astrid 

Contact:         starguide@xtra.co.nz       021 215 4019

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Threefolding

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From Adam Bittleston’s Edtorial Introduction to the ‘Golden Blade’ 1977

–  inspiring thoughts and pictures concerning personal development and the Threefold Social Order –

In this introduction Adam gives a picture of the great Mercurial potential that the individuality of Caspar Hauser brought into his incarnation, for the healing and spiritual future of Europe.

For this healing of the centre – Europe – ‘it must seek for the Mercurial powers needed by man in an age of technology. These begin with compassion. And they continue in the profound self-education of the soul described by Rudolf Steiner in “Knowledge of th Higher Worlds”.

‘This is not only a path by which individuals can develop spiritual organs of perception; it contains the priciples of what Rudolf Steiner calls “hygenic occultism” in general. Social life can be healthy only if there are enough men and women who humbly and freely walk this path...’

 He continues by describing  the two realms of ‘revelation’ and ‘experience’... They, in Goethe’s Fairy tale, are united by a ‘bridge’ – the Green Snake of the natural realm who, by assimilating the ‘spirit gold’, is able to transform herself and become the bridge over the ‘River’.

Through assimilating and recognising our own karma, we can build this bridge:

 ‘The herald of this recognition is the true voice of conscience.’

He ends by shedding light on the mystery of I in the world, the world in the I:

‘Rudolf Steiner’s teachings about history, culminatig in his descriptions of individual karma and the work of the Archangels, given during the last two years of his life, are the essential nourishment for the social order ---if a sufficient number of human beings can assimilate them. True social development is possible only where we begin to overcome the tragic illusion, bred in us by the decadent influence of Mars, that there is an outer world on the one hand and a Self within the skin on the other. In our time, when the great streams of Buddhism and Christianity could flow together into one, we have to find the self in the world, the world in the self.

‘The great individualities who have shaped history are not only in the past, or somewhere outside of us---they, and all other members of the great starry host of human individualities, are to be found if we look deeply enough into our own souls. But for this we need to understand something of their reality, not how they appear in outer Maya. Towards this reality the Karma lectures lead us; and they can help us to look at every human being we encounter with an open heart, aware that behind all that meets us as visible qualities the eternal, creative individuality is to be sought.

‘Through all the phenomena of Nature we can seek our way, as Rudolf Steiner has shown, towards the Christmas Mystery, where the Mother of Jesus lays her child in the manger among the animals at midwinter. Through all the phenomena of history we can seek our way to the Easter Mystery, to the Last Supper, to the Cross, to the grave, and to the Resurrection. In these events the destinies of all human beings and of all spirits, through the course of time, meet and are woven together.’

The greatest Mercurial gift to us is the Foundation Stone Meditation of 1923/24, for practicing to become true human beings, with hightened awareness in past, present and future – for truly living, truly feeling and truly thinking, developing the threefold soul, with the help of Christ.

Astrid Pook, January 2024.

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Community Notices

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