General Secretary's Letter
From the World Society
On A Michaelic Attitude
Dear Members and Friends of the Anthroposophical Society in Canada,
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As nature, as Natura, goes through her ‘great breath’ all of humanity accompanies her. Across the northern hemisphere she breathes out life into spring. Across the south she breathes life into its autumn rest. Our own soul life accompanies her; quickening with life’s awakening, turning toward its inwardness with life’s waning.
In recent months this life process of the earth has been accompanied by another. Humanity has witnessed the advance of a mysterious, a secretive, presence. We have watched as it has extended itself, at first slowly, and then with ever increasing speed into every human community. In an effort to understand this sweeping shadow we have
become overwhelmed by the face it presents. On a daily basis we are given constant updates on its relentless expansion. We are told of the thousands of people infected; continuous revisions of its effects on humanity. It is as if, by overwhelming ourselves with its ever-changing footprints, we come closer to understanding it. Yet the more information we are confronted with the less we seem to know of its nature - the nature of this enigma that with unwavering insistence seeks us. How do we see it, beyond the surface of all the facts about it? How do we penetrate through the avalanche of information to what is secreted behind?
Pondering these questions, what confronts us ever and again is the doorway through which it has come. Images arise of wild animals - foxes torn from nature, held in small cages and sold for human consumption. The image demands attention. When given this attention, this attending to reveals our fractured relationship with nature. We are faced with the immeasurable suffering humanity inflicts on the animal kingdom. Our link with nature, our living connection with her, is shattered. We see her as a resource, as a commodity, whose sole purpose has become to meet our collective need to consume.
As we consider the wild animal, caged, sympathy for this specific animal awakens in us. But what is our connection with the being whose outer manifestation is this individual animal? A living relationship with those divine beings who reveal themselves through nature is lost for us.
Similarly, how can we come closer to understanding the advancing hidden presence that overwhelms us? What is it that, with such insistence, seeks to merge with humanity, using the caged fox to do so? To approach these questions we must consider something fundamental about this entity we call ‘virus’. This leads to the mystery of life itself for this presence is not yet fully alive. This not-yet-living entity is forever seeking what its own nature cannot provide. It exists at the threshold of life, unable to enter in. This is profoundly significant, an enigma whose evolution has not yet reached the kingdoms of life yet, having a fundamental need to become living. In this powerful unresolved tension this entity forever seeks to merge, to become one with living beings, specifically living beings who breathe. It seeks to unite itself with organs of respiration, disrupting breathing, even inhibiting it to the point that life stops. Its insatiable need destroys what it most seeks.
The foundations of life for all sentiment beings – for all animals, for human beings – is the gift of breath, a miraculous process wholly dependent upon the earth’s green mantle. Without this cosmos of plants and its transpiration of oxygen, we could not breathe. As with our voracious consumption of the animal kingdom we devour the plant kingdom, choosing to not see its essential place in life’s whole fabric.................
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The Corona-Virus and Our Human, Health-Giving Forces An Interview with Dr. Med. Michaela Glöckler
conducted by Yair Atala
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Campus A:
Greetings, on behalf of Campus A and the Freies Jugendseminar, Stuttgart.
I myself attended the Jugendseminar, and I am now working for Campus A, Stuttgart.
We are grateful that you always accept our invitations to visit or speak to us, such as at our previous "Bildungsart" conference.
Currently we find ourselves in times of much change, and it is taking place at a rapid pace. Which is why we find it important to be able to speak to you again now. Three weeks ago we conducted an interview. However, the situation is constantly changing and the circumstances are now quite different.
We are wondering what is currently happening with us. Why are we so taken by surprise by this virus, individually and as a society, and why are we reacting in such an unprecedented way?
Dr. Glöckler:
I can understand your question very well. Because, on one hand we are already familiar with the flu viruses, which recur each year. And we are apt to ask ourselves what makes the Corona pandemic so unique. We have known about viral strains since the 1960s. Their detection required extremely high-definition electron microscopes. But in the mean time the virus research has made enormous advances. And we know that the Corona viruses are a whole family or group of viruses. Up until now, the SARS virus has been become particularly well-known. And even back then (2003) everyone was fearful, given that it is also an acute respiratory infection, that it would take on similar forms to that which we are currently experiencing with the Corona Virus. This was what we feared during the SARS epidemic. However, this did not occur at that time. Which is also quite interesting.
In any case, the reason we are experiencing such a unique situation now (with Covid-19) is due to certain complications that arise. As was the case with SARS, most of the people who become infected are not even aware of it, while others have light flu-like symptoms. And then there is a certain number of people from the "high-risk-group", but also other individual cases, who develop a very dangerous lung infection. It is so dangerous because the fine connective tissue between the alveoli (in the lungs/bronchial tubes) becomes swollen and inflamed, and this restricts breathing capacity, so that a person feels as if they are suffocating due to lack of air.
Of course, this also creates panic. Even the conception that people now have - "I could fall into panic due to lack of air... I could suffocate" - frightens many people. Which is why I can very well understand why, worldwide, there is a somewhat panic-fueled reaction and all social interaction is being shut down.
On the other hand, it is known that we can only come to terms with a virus by means of so-called herd immunity, whereby a great majority of people have been infected by the virus without becoming ill and have thus acquired immunity - we humans as a herd, so to speak, would need to acquire immunity. And by means of a specific vaccine, which we, as of yet, do not have.
Insofar, I hope that as soon as the spread of the virus slows, we will rely on herd-immunity and power up the public social life and the economy, while, at the same time, making an attempt to financially prioritize -which we've started doing world-wide in the past few weeks - putting money into emergency medical care and everything that goes along with it, rather than subsidizing the economy.
Campus A:
Of course - I believe it is all about priorities.
This time around it is so unique because although we are certainly fearful and in panic, we are, above all, compelled to have a sense of solidarity with our fellow human beings, especially with the high-risk group.
Dr. Glöckler:
Yes, but we are capable of protecting the high-risk group in a targeted way.
Acquiring, herd immunity, does not mean infecting the high-risk group. On the contrary. The high-risk group should be unbelievably well-protected. However, the so-called healthy people who do not belong to the high-risk group, they should return to work, and meet each other, etc. and thereby, with light symptoms to no symptoms, immunize themselves against the virus. For if a certain percentage - 70 to 80% - of the population has been immunized, that protects the rest of the population. And if people who have acquired immunity then interact with the high-risk group it is no longer dangerous.
This is, so to speak, a different way of thinking, a different strategy..................
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Dear Friends,
This spring we find ourselves, like so many other people, occupied with COVID-19 — a pandemic that has profoundly and indefinitely impacted human life around the world. Living through the current situation, we of course grapple with all the concerns about the disease, the challenges of adequately caring for the sick, and all the short- and long-term ramifications of the governmental protective physical distancing measures.
In our work at The Nature Institute, we strive to move beyond limited ways of understanding phenomena in order to gain a more living comprehension. With this foundation, we have in the present situation also taken up the riddle of viruses. We have considered the history of their discovery, how they are conventionally viewed as disease-causing agents, and reviewed recent research that provides a more encompassing picture of viruses and their place within the larger web of life. We have gained insights and, importantly, many new questions have opened up. In our new article,
Viruses in the Dynamics of Life,
we invite you to join us in seeking an expansive view of our viral cohabitants and in pondering its implications.
With warm greetings and best wishes, Craig Holdrege
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Items from and concerning the Annual General Meeting will appear in the June eNews.
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In These Times.
I've received a number of requests for copies of Brenda Hammond's poem, "In These Times".
Here is a link to download and print a pdf version.
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Interview with Paul Hodgkins
with Geraldine Snowden and Robert McKay.
Part 2
December 2019.
PH:
So, we put our son in the school and Philip asked me to take a classroom because a teacher was sick. He was running an on-going training program for the teachers so I participated in that and the following year did what was a called an in-service training. The year after that I was offered the Grade 1 class. That was the only class that I took through eight year. So I became a teacher at the school and he became my mentor. When I asked him a question he would often say, “What would be the point of my telling you that? Go and find out for yourself. Go and strive for the answer for it is the striving that teaches not the answers.” One time he asked me how’s it going and I told him I was having some classroom management issues. He asked me, “Well how prepared are you?” It was a rhetorical question. He knew I wasn’t well prepared.
Then, 24 years ago, we moved to Richmond Hill and I taught part-time at the Toronto Waldorf School, then at the Halton Waldorf School and after that I was a supply teacher back at the Toronto Waldorf School. I think they would have liked me to take on a full-time position but Arlene Thorn was pressing on me more and more to teach some adult courses. We were struggling financially to keep our children in the school and Arlene said I will make it possible for you to earn enough to pay the school fees if you will give up your working with the school.
At some point while I was getting into primarily teaching adults, I was in a study group and we were studying the Philosophy of Freedom. I got a call from Timothy Cox who was working for the Steiner Centre at the time, asking if I would give a course on the Philosophy of Freedom. I don’t know how he knew our group was studying that book. Just the day before he called, I had decided on the one hand I was not free and on the other hand I was filled to overflowing with useless knowledge. I had put aside all my other belief systems – Plato, science, Catholicism, Buddhism – I had replaced all these with a huge anthroposophical belief system but I was still not really free in my thinking. In a sense, I had my leg over the balcony. When Timothy asked if I would provide three mornings on the Philosophy of Freedom I immediately said yes! I don’t know what I was thinking! I put the phone down and thought, “What have I done?” So then I had to study the book intensely. Through this work, I had an awakening. I became aware of myself as a spiritual being. To cut a long story short, I gave the course and became famous over night. Who would be so stupid to give a course on the Philosophy of Freedom. It was the book no one understood. So that was it.
Then I began teaching adults more and more. Wendy Brown who had just started Foundation Studies at the Steiner Centre, asked me if I would come in one morning and talk about the Philosophy of Freedom. So I did that. In the following year she asked me to join the steering committee for the Foundations Studies Program at the Steiner Centre. The committee met every week to form the course. I became a key figure in it over time. This would have been about 15 years ago.
I have done very little other study since then. I had a need to experience something that was spiritually real. Ideas had now become real for me and I experienced thinking as the essential spiritual activity. Goethe was the first modern phenomenologist. Goethe observed with an open mind. He didn’t come to any conclusions. When you observe with an open mind, you invite meaning to come from the spiritual .............................
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The Eulogy for John Kettle: July 22,1928- May 15,2020)
by Rev. Jonah Evans
John was born on 22 of July, 1928 in West Ham, Essex. His mother's name was Ruth. His father worked with the stock market. He had one dear sister, Anne. He grew up in London in the 30’s. At a certain point, his father could afford to send him to a very fine boarding school. Felsted School, in Essex. He loved school and it was an excellent education where he excelled in English, Math, Latin and Rugby. It was a classic education. And even though John never went to University, many who knew him would describe John as one of the most educated and informed humans that they knew.
He graduated from Felsted in 1946. He then served in the British military from 1947 to 1949. He worked in Counter intelligence and was stationed in Northern Germany. John loved his work in the military. He seemed to love everything he put his mind too. This was one of the qualities that was admired in him. An unending interest in the world, in possibilities, in the future.
So, while working as a 007-bond like spy, he met a lovely lady. Patricia A. Anderson. They quickly became a pair and were married later in 1950 in Chelsea, London. Pat played a big influence in his life. They grew up together. She is also the one who introduced John to Anthroposophy and Waldorf education both of which became fundamental to John’s spiritual and intellectual life.
They immigrated together in 1953, departing Southampton on October 30th, arriving first in New York aboard the ship ‘Liberte’, with the stated destination of Canada.
Early on in their new Canadian home, John got a job in journalism. He worked hard and quickly rose in the ranks. Already in 1955 he founded The Canadian Architect journal and in 1961 he helped found Canada Month magazine. As a forecaster and trends analyst he was consultant to many corporations, such as AT&T, IBM, the Royal Bank, as well as government departments and agencies, including house of commons, the prime minister’s office and the United Nations. After deciding to work for himself as a freelance writer in 1966, John would later become Canada’s first consulting Futurist. He wrote a series of articles about the future, and many books including his most famous, The Big Generation. This led to much public speaking and consulting, often 50 talks a year, all over Canada, the US, Algeria, and Japan. Later he would also start a magazine called ‘FutureLetter’ which was highly regarded by many and led to a deep friendship and partnership with his dear Marc Swelling.
If you look on wikipedia, A futurist is defined as “people whose specialty or interest is futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities about the future and how they can emerge from the present.” The future was John’s vocational passion. He was fueled and inspired by the possibility of the new- creating the new. He loved to ponder how change occurs, and spent much of his spiritual capacities with the mystery and nature of time itself. He also loved language and grammar and wrote memorable columns and articles defending the proper use of words like relativity and especially defending the correct use of hyphens. (You don’t know how intimidating it is to write a eulogy for someone like that!)
And his personality and character were perfect as a futurist. For a good futurist must be highly organized but flexible to adapt to unpredictable changes..............
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Madame Blavatsky and her Handlers by William Kocay
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Elena Petrovna Blavatsky is a colourful figure who is very famous for her books “Isis Unveiled” and the “Secret Doctrine”, and for founding the Theosophical Society in 1875 in New York. The spiritual and new age movements of the last century all seem to lead back to her. Rudolf Steiner gave a remarkable series of lectures about her in 1916. These notes are based on some of his lectures, on a book by Sergei Prokofieff, a book by C.G.Harrison, and on two biographies of Madame Blavatsky.
Some amazing events of her youth. She was born Elena Petrovna Hahn in Dniepropetrovsk, married to Nikifor Blavatsky in 1849 at the age of 17, and ran away three months later. She travelled in Europe as a concert pianist, giving recitals. She worked in a circus in Constantinople as a horseback rider. While travelling from Athens to Cairo on a steamer carrying munitions, the ship exploded, and she jumped overboard. She was one of the few passengers to be rescued.
She joined the armies of Garibaldi fighting for Italian independence, and was left for dead on the battlefield, later to recover. There is much, much more.
Madame Blavatsky was a truly exceptional medium, one of the greatest of all times. RS tells that the leaders of certain secret societies were aware of her and her powers, and planned to use her to advance their agendas. But it didn't turn out the way they wanted. Through her mediumistic abilities Mme Blavatsky had access to many secrets of the spiritual world, secrets that certain occult brotherhoods of the west had only traditional knowledge of. These brotherhoods also had certain political ambitions or agendas that they were pursuing. They could use her. For example, the British secret societies were pursuing an agenda of the superiority of the Anglo-Saxons, they were to be the “indispensible” people (is it coincidence that this concept has re-emerged in recent years?). They were working to make English the language of the world, as Latin was in ancient Rome. They wanted to subject the rest of the world to English domination. Especially Russia and the Slavic countries were to be reduced to vassalage [this appears to be still the agenda today]. These societies were aware of the high mediumistic abilities of Mme Blavatsky, and tried to use her to selectively produce spiritual knowledge that would support their agenda. She was to be an “independent psychic” announcing visions, prophecies, and predictions from the spiritual world, predictions that conveniently supported the agenda of the secret society. But she could not be tamed to their conditions. She left them and went to a high lodge in Paris, and demanded to be accepted into their order, because she knew very much, and had ambitions of her own. She was rejected there too, for they knew that the information she would release would destroy their agenda, and even their order. RS says that if they had accepted her, the course of history would have been different -- many prominent people about to become famous could not have played the roles they later did. [The societies are still using these methods. When we have psychics nowadays whose predictions eerily seem to come true, maybe, just maybe, they are working for these same secret societies.]
She now goes to America, where she becomes a member of an American secret society. She learned many more secrets there, much more than they can teach her, as she learns spontaneously, by intuition. Their teachings indirectly draw forth higher spontaneous knowledge in her. Again a situation arose where her headstrong nature interferes with the political plans of the order, and she was expelled. However, what to do about the secrets she knows? If she tells all, the secret brotherhoods will be exposed and destroyed. A meeting of leaders of American and British secret brotherhoods was held. What to do about Mme Blavatsky? They chose the unusual and rare method of “occult imprisonment”. By the use of ceremonial magic, a spell was cast on Mme Blavatsky......
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Society for Bio-Dynamic Farming and Gardening in Ontario
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As the changing of the season, and the folly that is the dance between humanity and nature takes a turn, that hopefully serves to remind you why you came to biodynamics in the first place, I on behalf of the board would like to wish you, your families and your farms and gardens well. With the constant chatter of how things have changed, are uncertain and will never be the same again, we as farmers and gardeners know that there are greater rhythms at play that transcend the temporary inconveniences and even hardships that many of us are being asked to shoulder.
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General Information and Upcoming Events
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Branches & Groups
Calgary Branch
Contact: Christine at
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Cantons de l'Est
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Confluence of Three Rivers (Ottawa)
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Duncan
Contact:
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Edmonton
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Huronia Branch (Barrie)
Contact Janine at
705-728-1443
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London
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Montréal (Français)
Institute Rudolf Steiner Quebec
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Montreal Branch (English)
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Nelson, BC
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Nova Scotia
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Polaris Branch (Thornhill)
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Saugeen Cedar Branch
(Durham)
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Sherbrooke (Français)
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Sunshine Coast (BC)
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Thornhill Group
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Toronto Branch
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Vancouver
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Val David (Français)
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Victoria
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Membership Update
New M
embe
rs
Welcome!
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Transferred Out
Patrice Keats to the Goetheanum
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Deceased
John Kettle (Richmond Hill)
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Editorial Notes
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BANCROFT, ONTARIO - July 30 - August1
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The geology of Bancroft region will be the general theme of this conference, including hands-on geological field activities, lectures and discussions about Goethean observation, spiritual-scientific insights into the earth’s geology and related topics observation exercises, plus a visit to the RockHound Gemboree.
An artistic activity will enhance the experience.For information and to register for the conference, please contact: Dr Sandy Musclow in Bancroft, ON at
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Anthroposophy Worldwide - 2020
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