Farming and the Holy Grail: Blood and Water

The following is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, Sophia in Exile.

Biodynamic farming reinforces the very Christian, very Catholic notion of the sacredness of the year. The agricultural cycle and the liturgical cycle are (or used to be) beautifully intertwined. Much like Celtic knotwork, to remove one of these strands from life is to destroy life’s integral unity and beauty. Unfortunately, that is precisely what happened over the course of the centuries until now we find Christianity and agriculture estranged from each other, to the detriment of both. What we have instead are utilitarian liturgical and agricultural models that have even succeeded in making human being strangers to the food they eat, the foundations of religion, the cosmos, and each other.

This has not always been the case, and a belief in the sacred coalescence of religion and agriculture it is not even particular to Christianity. In Virgil’s Georgics, for example, the great Augustan poet reminds the reader of the proper disposition to the land and the gods:

“Mark the months and signs of heaven; whither Saturn’s cold star withdraws itself into what circles of the sky strays the Cyllenian fire. Above all, worship the gods, and pay great Ceres her yearly rites, sacrificing on the glad sward, with the setting of winter’s last days, when clear springtime is now come. Then are lambs fat and wine is most mellow; then sweet is sleep, and thick are the shadows on the hills. Then let all your country folk worship Ceres; for her wash the honeycomb with milk and soft wine, and three times let the luck-bringing victim pass round the young crops, while the whole crowd of your comrades follow exulting, and loudly call Ceres into their homes; nor let any put his sickle to the ripe corn, ere for Ceres he crown his brows with oaken wreath, dance artless measures, and chant her hymns.” [1]

Examples of how Christianity was once entwined with agricultural are often dismissed with charges of “paganism,” the go-to libel for lazy Puritans, whether Protestant, Catholic, or secularist. But even a cursory knowledge of how the liturgical cycle when imbued with folk customs enriched human life clearly indicates how impoverished we are. A world without the blessing of the fields, St. John’s fires, and Lammas bread is a shadow world, indeed. H. J. Massingham describes this tragedy as one demarcated by “the dividing line when Christendom began to depart from Christianity.” Can it be described any other way? His diagnosis is irrefutable: “Nor can the Christian Faith (seeing that there is no alternative to it) itself be rejuvenated unless it be equally shown that its own division from nature has pauperized it as an all-sufficient gospel for modern, grown-up, Western man, wrecked in the bitter sea of his own self-will.” [2]

What is easy to miss in (re)connecting the liturgical with the agricultural is that what we are really talking about is a regeneration of Creation. Liturgical acts, sacramental acts, and agricultural acts should be (and rarely are, unfortunately) deeds reconsecrating Creation. So much the less when they are estranged from each other. The marriage of folk and liturgical customs found in the practices of the medieval peasantry maintained this understanding in the agricultural setting, but even earlier practices maintained it with Creation in its wilder forms. 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, Brigit, and Columba for example—are rich with a natural world barely touched by agriculture. Indeed, it is 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. [3]

It is no accident, I think, that the alternate title for St. Patrick’s extraordinary Breastplate is “The Deer’s Cry.”

My own path into farming—and deeper into Christianity—was accompanied by the intuition (that is the only word for it) of the inner (and real) meaning of the Creation. In my twenties I had heard from a friend that Rudolf Steiner once said that there were three meetings people have with the Trinity over their lives. In the daily rhythm of sleeping and waking, he said, we meet the Holy Spirit via our guardian angel in the deepest part of sleep. Over the course of our lives, he continued, we meet “the Father Principle” but not before the twenty-ninth year (the cycle of Saturn). But over the course of a year, by paying attention to the subtle changes in Nature day by day and as mirroring the liturgical year, we meet the Son. For Steiner, Christ united himself with the earth through his incarnation, baptism, and, especially, crucifixion and resurrection, so it would make sense that we could learn to know Christ through attending to the rhythms of the year, both liturgical and cosmic. “When the year’s course is again felt by humanity as an inner connection with the Mystery of Golgotha, then, by attuning the feelings of the soul with both the course of the year and the secret of the Mystery of Golgotha, a true social feeling will be the true solution, or at any rate the true continuation of what is today so foolishly called...the social question.” [4] I didn’t know whether or not this was true, but I figured it was at least worth exploring. Over thirty years later, I still haven’t stopped this exploration. If we can meet Christ through Nature, he is available to anyone paying attention to the Creation. This is the real takeover from inside.

Farming, then, working with the earth and its rhythms, is in its ideal form to also work with Christ, a truly sacred vocation. Unfortunately, so much of what goes by the name of farming these days, even, alas, in much allegedly “organic” farming, is oblivious if not antithetical to such an ethos. But the reality of the Crucifixion enlivened a dying earth with spiritual forces: it’s as simple as that. Sergei Bulgakov explains the phenomenon with luminous power:

“The spear wound, not the breaking of His bones, is the conclusion of Christ’s salvific sacrifice for the redemption of humankind. This blood and water wash human sin and create the New Testament Church, with its grace-bestowing mysterious gifts: baptismal water and eucharistic blood. Out of the side of the old Adam was created woman, who tempted him to fall. But the wound delivered to humankind from Adam’s side is healed by the spear wound in Jesus’s side. The blood and water that flowed into the world abide in the world. They sanctify this world as the pledge of its future transfiguration. Through the precious streams of Christ’s blood and water that flowed out of His side, all creation was sanctified—heaven and earth, our earthly world, and all the stellar worlds. The image of the Holy Grail, in which the holy blood of Christ is kept, expresses precisely the idea that, even though the Lord ascended in His honorable flesh to heaven, the world received His holy relic in the blood and water that flowed out of His side; and the chalice of the Grail is the ciborium and repository of this relic. And the whole world is the chalice of the Holy Grail.”[5]

Given this reality, the methods of conventional farming, with its reliance on chemical fertilizers, insecticides, and herbicides—a true culture of death—and its promotion of GMOs and the spreading prohibitions against saving seed amount to sacrilege. To engage in it is to trample on the image of Christ.

Michael’s latest books are an edition of The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutzand 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. Virgil, Georgics 1.335-50. In Virgil, Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I-IV, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, 1956), 105.

2. H. J. Massingham, The Tree of Life (London: Chapman & Hall, 1943), 17.

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

4. Rudolf Steiner, Cosmic and Human Metamorphoses, translated (Blauvelt, NY: Garber Communications, 1989), 67.

5. Sergius Bulgakov, The Holy Grail and the Eucharist, trans. and ed. Boris Jakim (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Books, 1997), 33. My emphasis.

iHuman: Transhumanism is Bullshit

an image from 'Blade Runner' (1982)

Twenty years ago, I began my career as a college English professor, teaching an evening composition course at the Catholic liberal arts college I had attended as an undergraduate. The theme of my course was “Being Human,” and I used a reader by that same title and edited by Leon Kass, M.D. I loved the book, as it included selections from philosophy, mythology, the hard and social sciences, literature, and even science fiction. One of the science fiction selections was a chapter from Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? which was later made into the now classic 1982 movie Blade Runner. I remembered being an unemployed nineteen-year-old when the film came out and seeing it for $1.50 in an afternoon matinee with my buddy and how the film had struck me then. But I hadn’t seen the film in almost twenty years, so I decided to hit the video rental store (remember those?) and rent a copy.

What struck me on that second viewing was that director Ridley Scott does a masterful job of manipulating the audience into sympathizing with the wrong guy. The wrong guy in question is the replicant (the film’s term for “android”) Roy Batty (played by Rutger Hauer), who is a ruthless murderer but possesses a completely cool postpunk vibe and dashing good looks. The film’s fictional Tyrell Corporation, the makers of the replicants, has as its advertising slogan the phrase “More Human Than Human.” And it is this marker that both Scott’s film (and Dick’s novel, but to a lesser degree) and my course explored.

When Roy first appears on film, he speaks a line of exquisite poetry. “Fiery the angels fell,” he says, “deep thunder rolled around their shores, burning with the fires of Orc.” Game on, right? The line, in fact, is a misquote (or misappropriation) from William Blake’s America: A Prophecy, but Blake’s language says “Fiery the angels rose.” At least we know what we’re dealing with here—but by the end of the film the audience is typically all in for the anti-hero Roy, as he busts out some more poetry in his death scene:

Eventually, I wrote an article on the topic, “Meditations on Blade Runner,” that was published in 2005 and then republished in 2015 (you can find a pdf here).

During about ten years or so of teaching that course, I expanded its focus to be on various aspects of what was being called transhumanism. The students usually thought it was a crazy idea and one that would never catch on. I also used the notorious academic paper “After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?” by Francesca Minerva and Alberto Giubilini which argues on behalf of the ghastly practice of “aborting” [sic] a child even after birth, “until it can have preferences,” perhaps even to the age of eighteen months or more. I’m so not kidding: it’s in the article.

In many of my courses over the years, particularly in philosophy, I have often raised the problem of transhumanism and asked my students to deeply consider what it means to be human. I’m not sure I was very successful. But I gave it a shot. Nevertheless, as we have seen in recent years, Minerva and Giubilini’s proposal is fast becoming accepted—and now even the world Archons, such as Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum (and, is it just me, or does he look just like Dr. Evil?) and Bill Gates, are endorsing and promoting transhumanism—not in some amorphous future, but as a way to get out of the pandemic. This is fucked up.

My interest in transhumanism (philosophically and theologically) has everything to do with my profession of Sophiology. Transhumanism is the Anti-Sophiology and it’s anti-human, anti-nature, anti-spirit, anti-Sophia, anti-God. Just notice how these demons (or the demons working through them) have capitalized (note the metaphor) on the pandemic as a way to implement the “Great Reset.” It’s not a conspiracy theory if they tell you this is what they’re doing. Their masks have come off, while they force masks on everyone else.

Propaganda is a powerful tool and social media and the internet have made it even more powerful—and we know the guys and dolls over at Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and so forth have been playing all of us like a game of Yatzee. How could anyone trust them? Yet how many times have you heard friends say “They’re privately-owned companies.” And let me say one thing: if Waldorf teachers and Anthroposophists (who have admirably gone against the grain on the “vaccine issue” for decades) overwhelmingly voted for Biden—who promised a mandatory vaccine—we can see just how powerful this manipulation is. There is still time to repent. At least I hope there is.

I imagine this will come to a head, hopefully not in a violent way, though I wouldn’t rule it out. As I heard Catherine Austin Fitts say in a podcast recently, “There are worse things than dying; and slavery is worse than dying.” People need to have sovereignty over their lives and—why do I even need to say it?—their biology. To pretend these powers know what’s best for you is to be a fool. And I know a lot of fools.

Yes, transhumanism is bullshit, evil, and inhuman. But we still have the power to stop it. As St. Paul told the Ephesians:

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness. And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;

Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:

Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints;

And for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel,

For which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak. (6:12-20)

Don’t let yourself be fooled: this is a spiritual battle.

The French connection.

You may find this prayer of help in these trying times.

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.

Prosopon: The Dream of the Face of God

The dream:

I am at church, waiting for a service to begin (but it’s not the Divine Liturgy). Fr. John is at the altar preparing something like a monstrance (which is odd, since we don’t use a monstrance in the Byzantine Rite). There is no iconostasis and almost all of the icons are covered in green duct tape; the only one not covered is a small icon of Christ. I don’t really want to sit anywhere (I feel estranged from everything) but find a seat to the side facing away. Fr. John comes over to speak, but I have no words.

In the morning yesterday, as my wife and I were getting ready to head out to the barn and milk our cow, Fiona, I told her about dream and how strange the green duct tape was. “It wasn’t tape,” she said. “Those were masks. With everyone wearing all these masks, we can no longer see each other. And then we can’t see the face of God. We’re the image and likeness of God. Without faces, we can’t experience that.”

She’s right. And I was wrong. It wasn’t duct tape. It was, quite literally, masking tape. And Christ’s face (in the dream) was almost too small to see. Truly, the sudden coldness of the world has reduced our experience of Christ. And by design, I fear.

In Greek, the word for face is prosopon, a term used in theology to describe the phenomenon of the countenance of the divinity being turned toward Man. But in the New Testament, this term is also used to describe the encounter of each of us, prosopon pros prosopon, face to face: a desire for which even imprisonment can’t eradicate.

In fact, what we are experiencing is a kind of imprisonment, though cheaper than an electronic tether (we actually pay for that by a monthly service fee). But an imprisonment, all the same. St. Paul knew what this was like as he was held awaiting trial in Rome, but his captivity did not erase his desire for communion (of every kind). As he writes in 1 Thessalonians, “But we, brethren, being taken from you for a short time in presence, not in heart, endeavored the more abundantly to see your face [prosopon] with great desire” (2:17). Interestingly, even the word here translated as “presence” is prosopo.

This same desire for communion characterizes Paul’s (and his community’s) frustration at not being to experience God fully. “For now we see through a glass, darkly,” he writes in 1 Corinthians, “but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (13:12). We all desire to know even as we are known by God; and we also desire to be known by each other. I’m coming to the end of a semester at the college where I’ve been teaching. Usually, I know every student’s name and face by the third week. That didn’t completely happen this semester. I have “known” these students for almost twelve weeks. And I still don’t know what most of them look like. We are hidden from each other.

The eschaton, always/already happening, is upon us. It is a moment when “they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads” (Rev 22:4). But the countenance before you is the place it begins.

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.