29 September
Today is September 29th. This year, it bears two holidays: 1) Rosh Hashana and 2) Michaelmas. I want to say something towards both and I will: but I will begin with St. Michael & the Dragon.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with this holiday, (wikipedia tells us:) that “Michaelmas (also the Feast of Ss. Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael or the Feast of Michael and All Angels) is a day in the Christian calendar, but because it falls near the equinox, it is also associated with the beginning of autumn and the shortening of days. The Archangel Michael is one of the principal angelic warriors, seen as a protector against the dark of night, and the administrator of cosmic intelligence. Michaelmas has also delineated time and seasons for secular purposes as well, particularly in the United Kingdom and Ireland.”
It never caught on in 18th century America, unfortunately.
During the Middle Ages, Michaelmas was celebrated as a Holy Day of Obligation, but this tradition was abolished in the 18th century. Lutheran Christians consider it a principal feast of Christ and the Lutheran Confessor, Philip Melanchthon wrote a hymn for the day that is still sung in Lutheran Churches: “Lord God to Thee We Give.” It was also one of the English and Welsh and Irish quarter days when accounts had to be settled. On manors, it was the day when a reeve was elected from the peasants. Traditional meal for the day include goose (a “stubble-goose”, i.e. one prepared around harvest time) and a special cake called a St Michael’s bannock. On the Isle of Skye, Scotland, a procession was held.
But that’s pretty much it, for the outer coat understanding. Feast day. Go to Church if you can spare the time. Cook a Goose. Done.
Rudolf Steiner, founder of the Waldorf Schools, has made it an integral part of the school calendar, and is the first Psycho-Somatic-Spiritual-Seasonal occurrence once the academic year has begun. And there is meant to be much more in this Holiday than religious history may have you believe. Matthew Barton, in his book titled Michaelmas, gathers excerpts of Steiner’s lectures that focus specifically on the nature of this day. He writes that this is meant to be more than a day to “settle quarter rents” or just a day to “choose a magistrate” — but then he does quantify this word for his own uses. It comes from the Latin magister, (he says) or master: “it is clearly connected with authority — something, however, which we cannot properly exercise with out a degree of self-mastery. A magistrate enforces the law but must also weigh up the merits of each case by using his or her own power of judgment and intuition; and the Michaelic qualities Steiner returns to on several occassions include a conscious quality of inner judgment, resolve and decisive action by the forces of the heart.” Just an aside — to me, this also speaks in huge concurrence with Rosh Hashana, as it is the day that the Book of Life opens, and you are invited and commanded to step before G-d so that he may judge you, on the resolve of your heart.
The picture of St. Michael vanquishing the dragon (from the scene in the Book of Revelations) is one which Steiner instills in us to conjure up again and again in order that our awareness be brought to our innerspaces: to be witness to this battle waged continually between the different forces with us: “those which harness us to a spellbound enchantment in the material world” and “those which we ourselves must activate to penetrate {this} veil of illusion, to truly meet nature, ourselves, each other and greater realities.” Steiner emphasizes that this takes courage. Which, according to Barton, is a quality readily aligns with the beginning of Autumn-time.
“As trees grow bare of leaves, revealing, as it were, the skeleton of things, it is easy to sense layers of physical protection falling away from us as greater, lonelier spaces open up.”
Driving home from lunch on Saturday, heading back towards the mountains nearing six in the evening and I was amazed at the beautiful transformation the earth was making before my eyes. I am always enthralled with the change of seasons, and I never grow tired of their exchange. There is something about Autumn though; when the colors shift slowly at first. A splash of gold from a tree that grew cold too soon, a winding single vine of brilliant scarlet-hued ivy flashing from an oaken trunk… the fact that the mountains lose their green glamor, the fields become tawny and golden, shrunken and heather colored. And the sun beams through clouds in rays, illumination upon hidden row after row of purple-gray rock far in the distance. It makes you quiet somehow, when you really allow yourselves to be aware of it, it somehow draws you in…
“This season, at the fine transition between natural life and {seasonal} death, but equally between a sleepier nature consciousness and waking consciousness of self, feels like that sword blade in fairy tales…” Here we have Michael’s sword to do the job for us. In another lecture of Steiner’s, which I am forgetting the name of at the moment, he explains how with the Spring & Summer are attitude is at one with Nature: we are out! We are warm and sunny and we move our energy and intentions out into the word of form, we vacation and take holidays. It is meant to be time of relaxed work, of abundance. It’s hot, lazy, out-out-out, go-go-go. Steiner acknowledges that it is right for our soul and attentions be aligned with Nature’s exuberance, intertwined with her affection and cycle at this time… but as Autumn approaches and the light of the summer that surrounded us, wanes: we must not follow that light on its way out into darkness, but instead, turn our thoughts, to our own light within. Michael banishes the sulfurous dragon who will lay waste and rot to leaf and grass, and swallow the sun… he overcomes him with an iron sword; strangely or on purpose (wink) our blood becomes thicker during the winter. We are shielded from cold and the death of winter, the barrenness of season by Michael’s sword and a return to the inner light. Is this not what school creates for us, to some degree: a return to innerspaces, to learn and expand oneself form the inside out?
And Steiner goes on to qualify this in his book Michaelmas & the Soul Forces of Man: “Only a science that is spiritual can offer the human soul anything that can seem like a cosmic experience. Nowadays we really think only of earthly experiences. Cosmic experience leads us out to participation in the cosmos; and only by co-experiencing the cosmos in this way will we once more achieve a spiritualized instinct for the meaning of the seasons with which our organic life as well as our social life is interwoven — an instinct for the very different relation in which the earth stands to the cosmos while on its way from spring to summer, and again from summer through autumn into winter. We will learn to sense how differently life on earth flows along in the burgeoning spring than when the autumn brings the death of nature; we will feel the contrast between the awakening life in nature during spring and its sleeping state in the fall. In this way man will again be able to conform with the course of nature, celebrating festivals that have social significance, in the same way that the forces of nature, through his physical organization, make him one with his breathing and circulation. If we consider what is inside our skin we find that we live there in our breathing and in our circulation. What we are there we are as physical men; in respect of what goes on in use we belong to cosmic life. Outwardly we live as closely interwoven with outer nature as we do inwardly with our breathing and circulation.
And what is man really in respect of his consciousness? Well, he is really an earthworm — and worse: an earthworm for whom it never rains! In certain localities where there is a great deal of rain, it is so pleasant to see the worms coming out of the ground — we must careful not to tread on them, as will everyone be who loves animals. And then we reflect: Those poor little chaps are down there underground all the time and only come out when it rains; but it is does not rain, they have to stay below. Now, the materialist of today is just such an earthworm — but one for whom it never rains; for if we continue with the simile, the rain would consist of the radiant shining into him of spiritual enlightenment, otherwise he would always be crawling about down there where there is no light. Today humanity must overcome this earthworm nature; it must emerge, must get into the light, into the spiritual light of day.”
Happy Michaelmas everyone, and Happy Rosh Hashana!
