Michaelmas and the Battle Against Evil

"The Vision and Inspiration" by Louis Maurice Boutet de Monvel

“Michael is interpreted as meaning ‘Who is like God?’ and it is said that when something requiring wondrous powers is to be done, Michael is sent, so that from his name and by his action it is given to be understood that no one can do what God alone can do: for that reason many works of wondrous power are attributed to Michael. Thus, as Daniel testifies, in the time of the Antichrist Michael will rise up and stand forth as defender and protector of the elect. He it was who fought with the dragon and his angels and expelled them from heaven, winning a great victory. He fought with the devil over the body of Moses, because the devil wanted to keep the body hidden so that the Jewish people might adore Moses in the place of the true God. Michael receives the souls of the saints and leads them into the paradise of joy. In the past he was prince of the synagogue but has now been established by the Lord as prince of the Church. It is said that it was he who inflicted the plagues on the Egyptians, divided the Red Sea, led the people through the desert, and ushered them into the Promised Land. He is held to be Christ’s standard-bearer among the battalions of holy angels. At the Lord’s command he will kill the Antichrist with great power on Mount Olivet. At the sound of the voice of the archangel Michael the dead will rise, and it is he who will present the cross, the nails, the spear, and the crown of thorns at the Day of Judgment.” ~ from Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend [1]

Ever since my days as a Waldorf teacher, the festival of Michaelmas has held a special place in my heart as well as in my family’s celebration of the Christian Year. At the Waldorf school where I once taught, the children form the “body” of the dragon, partially hidden under various interpretations of “dragon skin” made from bed-sheets and, led by a student wearing the dragon’s “head” (some sort of headdress) process around the precincts of the schoolyard until they meet St. Michael (usually a community member in angelic swag) who then transforms the beast. I’m not sure if all Waldorf schools still do this, as they have become increasingly allergic to anything remotely Christian (and, I am sad to report, most Waldorf teachers these days only have a superficial familiarity with the work of Rudolf Steiner), but my family has carried on the tradition at Stella Matutina Farm, the place where we reside, for the last six years. A wonderful community of people join us, and our celebration gets bigger every year.

Our celebrations have a very medieval folk-Christian/pagan vibe to them, as not only do we have St. Michael and the Dragon but we also feast and make merry, often with mead or metheglin I have made—with the help of my bees!—on the menu. My younger children look forward to it for weeks.

Michaelmas at Stella Matutina Farm, 2019

But conviviality is not the only thing we celebrate at Michaelmas; we also celebrate the intersection of the Church year with cosmic realities.

Rudolf Steiner paints a beautiful imagination of this reality. For Steiner, the cosmos (the Creation, that is) speaks to us, but only if we have ears to listen and eyes to see. As he points out, Michaelmas—as well as the harvests that accompany it in the northern hemisphere—is anticipated in the Perseid meteor showers (Perseus another great fighter of monsters) that occur in late July and August. For Steiner, this symbolizes St. Michael’s victory over Satan and his angels as well as the introduction of meteoric iron into the atmosphere that can steel the resolve of perceptive individuals attentive to what happens on both heaven and earth. “If,” Steiner says,

“a man enters thus into the enjoyment of nature, the consciousness of nature, but then also awakens in himself an autumnal self-consciousness, then the picture of Michael with the dragon will stand majestically before him, revealing in picture-form the overcoming of nature-consciousness by self-consciousness when autumn draws near. This will come about if man can experience not only an inner spring and summer, but also a dying, death-bringing autumn and winter. Then it will be possible for the picture of Michael with the dragon to appear again as a powerful Imagination, summoning man to inner activity.” [2]

This Michaelic strength can be seen politically as well. St. Joan of Arc, to cite a famous example, was directed by St. Michael to save France from the corruption of the Burgundian machinations with England that oppressed French sovereignty. At her trial, her interrogators asked whether God hated the English. “She said that as to love or hate that God had for the English, or what He would do for their souls, she knows nothing; but she is well assured that they will be driven out of France, except those who die there; and that God will send the French victory over the English.” [3]

Joan was an illiterate peasant girl (only nineteen at her death), a “useless eater” as some would say. That she fearlessly confronted the amassed power of the medieval Catholic Church without so much as quaking is evidence of Michaelic iron in action, echoed recently by an army of construction workers in Australia.

Michael’s battle with the Dragon is always already happening. Again Steiner:

“Then men will come to understand these things, to reflect on them with understanding, and they will bring mind and feeling and will to meet the autumn in the course of the year. Then at the beginning of autumn, at the Michael Festival, the picture of Michael with the Dragon will confront man as a stark challenge, a strong spur to action, which must work on men in the midst of the events of our times. And then we shall understand how it points symbolically to something in which the whole destiny—perhaps indeed the tragedy—or our epoch is being played out.” [4]

As I’ve mentioned before, the Celtic churches had a deep reverence for St. Michael, and invoked his protection with startling regularity:

“I beseech you by the tenth order on the compact earth; I beseech praiseworthy Michael to help me against demons.

“I beseech the people of heaven with bright-armed Michael; I beseech you by the triad of wind, sun, and moon.” [5]

The “tenth order” mentioned above has another name: mankind.

It is my profound hope that the Feast of St. Michael will become more and more richly and enthusiastically observed in this post-Christian epoch. For his moment, as always, is now. Invoke his aid, and fear not.

Michael’s latest books are an edition of The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz and Transfiguration: Notes toward a Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything. He can be reached at director@thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com See also The Center for Sophiological Studies' available courses. Also check out the latest volume of Jesus the Imagination: The Divine Feminine. Watch for his Sophia in Exile, due momently from Angelico Press.

1. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, trans. William Granger Ryan (Princeton, 1993), 2 volumes.

2. Rudolf Steiner, The Four Seasons and the Archangels (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1984), 15.

3. The Trial of Joan of Arc, trans. W. S. Scott (Associated Booksellers, 1956), 123.

4. Rudolf Steiner, The Four Seasons and the Archangels, 21.

5. From “The Litany of Creation” in Celtic Spirituality, ed. Davies and O’Loughlin (Paulist Press, 1999), 298.

Celtic Christianity and Sophiology

John Duncan, St. Bride (1913)

Celtic Christianity has haunted my soul since my early youth, from at least the time when at the age of eighteen I bought a Celtic cross from the gift shop of The Detroit Institute of Arts and which has hung about my neck for most of the intervening forty years. That cross was the seed. Over a decade later, my wife and I chose Claddagh rings as wedding bands—for one, because they were relatively inexpensive and we were poor, and, more importantly, because Celtic spirituality spoke to our souls in a profound way. In addition, my five eldest children all have Celtic names—Brendan, Dylan, Thomas Gwynn, Mae, and Aidan—and Brendan was baptized with water from the Chalice Well in Glastonbury.

Inspired by the lives of the Celtic saints, in my first or second year as a Waldorf teacher I wrote a play, The Journey of St. Brendan the Navigator, for my students to perform. Our school’s eurythmy teacher, Brigitta (Bridget to us Celts) helped me turn it into a kind of Miracle Play, with my class performing the parts of Brendan and his monks, another class as the whale upon whose back Brendan and his companions celebrated Easter Mass, another class as the island of birds, and so on. The teachers even participated, and my dear friend Mary Jo played the role of the wise hermit Brendan met on the Isle of the Blessed. I still recall her face and gestures as her character told Brendan and his crew the time had not yet come to settle upon those shores. I wrote the play out in long hand, and I’m not even sure if I still have a copy, alas. Nevertheless, the entire thing was one of the most beautiful moments in my thirty years of teaching. It felt as if light filled the room. No one was untouched.

Certainly, among other things, what really appealed to me then (and continues to) is the synergy between the angelic and natural orders in Celtic spirituality. The Celtic churches, so difficult to perceive clearly through the mists of history, moved in such an awareness. The legends of the Celtic saints—Patrick, Brendan, Brigid, and Columba for example—are rich with a natural world barely touched by agriculture. It is also interesting to note that Celtic monasticism with its extraordinary emphasis on asceticism and learning arose in a geographical area almost complete devoid of urban centers. It may be precisely because of this that Celtic monks participated in the wildness of Creation in a manner almost entirely unknown in other contexts. The exquisite Welsh “Litany of the Creation” (c. 7th century) voices this beautifully:

I beseech the people of heaven with bright-armed Michael; I beseech you by the triad of wind, sun, and moon.

I beseech you by water and the cruel air; I beseech you by fire, I beseech you by earth.[1]

This sensibility inhabits so much of the liturgical, devotional, and mythic language of Celtic Christianity that it is hard to miss, as in this excerpt from one of the more powerful prayers in the Christian tradition, St. Patrick’s Breastplate, also known as The Deer’s Cry:

I arise today Through the strength of heaven; Light of sun, Radiance of moon, Splendour of fire, Speed of lightning, Swiftness of wind, Depth of sea, Stability of earth, Firmness of rock.

In Celtic spirituality, all of Creation participates in Divinity. As Christopher Bamford writes in the introduction to his outstanding collection (edited with William Parker Marsh), Celtic Christianity: Ecology and Holiness, what we find in Celtic spirituality is “a continuity in cosmic process, that extended from its inception, Creation, to its conclusion, Deification.” [2]

When St. Patrick was asked by the Irish pagan royalty who this God he spoke of was, he had this to say:

“Our God is the God of all men, the God of heaven and earth, of sea and river, of sun and moon and stars, of the lofty mountain and the lowly valleys, the God above heaven and in heaven and under heaven; he has his dwelling round heaven and earth and sea and all that in them is. He inspires all, he quickens all, he dominates all, he sustains all. He lights the light of the sun; he furnishes the light of the light; he has made springs in the dry land and has set stars to minister to the greater lights. [3]

The Celtic Church was its own unique individuality, not Roman and not Byzantine, and not encumbered by the bureaucratic complications of hierarchical administration and the annoyances and interferences of ecclesial busybodies. (Those interested in this topic may want to check out F. E. Warren’s The Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church, first published in 1881). The Irish Church, in particular, had no martyrs to speak of and was characterized by “its pastoral way, its uncomplicated fervour, the dislike of its representatives for all manner of officialdom and organization [which] was precisely what the men of Rome so disliked.” [4] The Celtic ethos took seriously Christ’s admonishment to “Preach the Gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). That sounds like my kind of church.

This all sounds a lot like Sophiology, too, of course, and for good reason (and I haven’t even mentioned the important place of women in Celtic religion and culture). And Sophiology, I claim, is the default position for Judeo-Christian ways of being—ways of being long since compromised by the designs of religious politicians and ecclesial people of power to the point of almost absolute disfigurement. As Margaret Barker argues, in the context of First Temple Judaism, “Those with the ‘biblical’ way of thinking saw the creation as the work of God, and felt that people who saw it in any other way were not liberated but deprived.” [5] Furthermore, “the covenant of creation bound everything in one system: the material world, living beings, human society, and the invisible forces they called angels or powers.” [6] I was right: this is Sophiology.

This is also, I claim, the Kingdom Christ proclaimed.

Michael’s latest books are an edition of The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz and Transfiguration: Notes toward a Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything. He can be reached at director@thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com See also The Center for Sophiological Studies' available courses. Also check out the latest volume of Jesus the Imagination: The Garden.

1. Oliver Davies, trans. with Thomas O’Loughlin, Celtic Spirituality New York: Paulist Press, 1999), 298.

2. Christopher Bamford and William Parker Marsh, Celtic Christianity: Ecology and Holiness (Lindisfarne, 1982), 12.

3. In H. J. Massingham, The Tree of Life (London, 1943), 37-38.

4. Gerhard Herm, The Celts: The People Who Came out of the Darkness (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977), 268.

5. Margaret Barker, Creation: A Biblical Vision for the Environment (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 26.

6. Ibid., 111.

The Sophianic Reset

Edward Robert Hughes, Night with her Train of Stars (1912)

So it seems we are in the middle of The Great Reset. Don’t call me a conspiracy theorist. This plan has been out of the closet for some time, and the guys and dolls over at The World Economic Forum see the pandemic as the opportune time for its implementation. I’ve read their plan (you should, too), and though its rhetoric is equal parts alarmism and idealism, what lurks behind is a technocrat’s wet dream. The tragicomedy of NGO’s simultaneously lamenting and capitalizing on a pandemic with such a relatively low mortality rate is hard to take seriously—but take it seriously. The Great Reset isn’t about care for humanity; it’s about who retains power.

Not to be that guy, but I predicted this in my book Transfiguration. Now, I didn’t predict the coming of the pandemic (though others did), but I did predict the coming collapse and the attendant machinations of those in power (and I don’t necessarily mean politicians) to not only hold on to their power but to increase it. In discussing forms of distributism in light of our current economic environments, I had this to say:

“The challenge for any attempt at distributism, however noble and good, is that it (at this point in history) can transpire only within the contexts of monetary systems already corrupted: and this is as true for the communist and socialist contexts as it is for the capitalist. And none of these systems will ever give distributism room to breathe and grow. Not ever.” [1]

And one would have to say that, in general, the planetary Archons—BigTech, BigPharma, and other initiates into the Temple of the Corporate-Pharmaceutical-Military Complex—have more power eight months into the pandemic than they ever did before. If you don’t believe me, just think about how fear has turned so many of us into willing accomplices for The Great Reset. We wouldn’t be afraid without the constant messaging provided and promulgated by these postmodern demigods. But we are.

My message and hope, both as I was writing Transfiguration and now, is that, instead of The Great Technocratic Reset we could affect a Sophianic Reset: a reset grounded in sophiological reality, the of reality Man, Nature, and Divinity in harmony. The Real.

Of course, that preached by The World Economic Forum and its clergy is not the first reset ever to appear. The Scientific Revolution of the 17th century is certainly a great example of an earlier reset, as are the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution, not to mention the Digital Revolution. And while those things may have brought some benefits, they also wrought untold damage: to the environment and thereby to our relationship to Nature; to communitas; and even to the soul.

The way the WEF, the WHO, and other agencies and polities look at this virus is as if it were an attack perpetrated by hostile aliens and not as the kind normal viral phenomenon we experience regularly and perpetually as part of a naturally occurring reset to the environment. But you’d never know that from the hysteria constantly inundating us.

But I think this pandemic is a fitting metaphor for our fear of and hostility toward Nature. We want to (and hubristically think we can) kill the virus. We can’t. We also think the god Science will save us. It can’t. If the story about this virus as one engineered and escaping from the laboratory in Wuhan is true (and I doubt we will ever know for sure), then science is killing at least some of us—just as environmental pollution, chemically-enhanced “food,” and opioids are killing some of us. But “trust the science,” right? Right. And even if it isn’t true in the case of Wuhan, laboratories all over the world routinely monkey with the genetic makeup of viruses—as is the case in Wuhan—so one escaping and wreaking havoc on populations is not outside the realm of possibility. But it’s a risk scientists, governments, and NGOs are willing to take. Risk is implicit to human life, though some risks are avoidable. Mishaps due to genetic editing and splicing are avoidable; seasonal viruses, for example, and the inevitability of death are not.

One way I think of activating a Sophianic Reset is to live our lives as if the sophianic were already the Reality (because it is). I say we live in communitas with other human beings and stop treating them as possible agents of infection (I mean, how psychologically damaging is that gesture going to prove in the long run?). I say we return to Nature and engage practices that treat her in reverence (Goethe, represent!) as a Co-Creatrix with us and Divinity in a project of sustainable life and not as matter (mater) to be abused and exploited. I say we awaken to the sophianic splendor that shines through the universe, “Born of the One Light Eden saw play,” in Eleanor Farjeon’s glorious phrase. This as if, the way I picture it, would awaken us to a kind of holistic version of the alternate-parallel societies Philip K. Dick writes about in his science fiction, or even in the way Amish communities operate. I deal with a lot of Amish people through my farm—and they are not as “other” as you might think. They use the same currency the rest of us are forced to use, they engage with “the world” as much as necessary but as little as possible—yet still maintain their vision of what a Christian life should be. [2]

I know this seems challenging—and the pandemic and its technocratic agents are challenging enough. But fear not, little flock. In ending, allow me to share the closing words of the chapter entitled “Oikonomia: The Household of Things” from Transfiguration:

“Nevertheless, the daunting prospect of such a magnitude of change might cause even the stoutest heart to quail. This is especially the case considering the massive resistance respectively opposed by our societies’ academes, public habits and vested interests.’ [3] (Can we imagine an NPR segment on perishable currency?) Such a project does not need to be realized all at once, but could be implemented gradually as people more and more respond to an as if approach to our circumstances. If we were to live as if a sophianic oikonomia were a reality, even while we live in a world and are surrounded by a culture oblivious if not hostile to such an idea, the sophianic oikonomia would nevertheless come into being, as it already has being. Only by our attention to it, we would awaken it from slumber. Indeed, the call to economic activity, when considered in this light, is not the call to domination and exploitation, but the call ‘to return to life in Sophia.’ [4] And all of us privileged to have been baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity are thus called; there is simply no other way. The responsibility terrifies, as an angel terrifies, but we are summoned nonetheless.” [5]

Michael’s latest books are an edition of The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz and Transfiguration: Notes toward a Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything. He can be reached at director@thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com See also The Center for Sophiological Studies' available courses. Also check out the latest volume of Jesus the Imagination: The Garden.

1. Transfiguration: Notes toward a Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything (Angelico Press, 2018), 99.

2. I discuss all these things at length in Transfiguration and throughout this blog.

3. Guido Giacomo Preparata, “Of Money, Heresy, and Surrender, Part II: A Plea for Regional and Perishable Currency,” Anarchist Studies 18, no. 1 (2010): 8-39, at 35.

4. Segius Bulgakov, Philosophy of Economy (Yale University Press, 2000), 153.

5. Transfiguration, 101.