The Hedge School: New Courses

I am now three weeks into my two courses on Shakespeare: one online for adults and another in-person—and in my yurt!—for homeschool kids. I could not be having more fun! I’ll be starting another one online next week for a homeschool co-op in Chicago. Shakespeare, who was born on 23 April 1564—May 3rd, my birthday, according to the Gregorian calendar. Not a coincidence! So let’s have nice a round of applause for Taurus poets!

But I have two more courses that will be held in the coming months at Stella Matutina Farm, home of The Center for Sophiological Studies.

The fee for the courses is $120 per individual or $150 per couple (assuming some people would like to bring a spouse). The farm is situated in the middle of Michigan’s Waterloo State Recreation Area which has plenty of camping spaces available as well as cabins to rent (though of more limited availability) and there are also other B&B accommodations in the area. Grass Lake is approximately 30 miles west of Ann Arbor and 15 miles east of Jackson, Michigan. Contact director@thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com to enroll.

The Heart of Sophiology

Friday, April 21, 2023, 7:00 pm & Saturday, April 22, 9:30-5:00

This will be a combination seminar and workshop, since Sophiology is more experiential than it is theoretical. Therefore, we will combine both lecture, phenomenological inquiry, and artistic work.

Recommended reading: The Heavenly Country: An Anthology of Primary Essays, Poetry, and Critical Essays on Sophiology

Biodynamic Farming and Gardening

Friday, May 19,2023, 7:00 pm & Saturday, May 20, 9:30-5:00

Biodynamics, while it has a solid theoretical framework underpinning it, is more than anything a hands on enterprise, so I intend to combine theoretical, practical, and, yes, artistic and festive aspects into the course. The idea is to have a lived experience of the implications of biodynamic farming and gardening and how such a way of being connects to the traditional year and the astronomical and mystical elements that inform it.

I am also planning online courses on The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz and Love and Romanticism in the near future—so keep in touch.

Come all ye!

Michael’s latest book is Sophia in Exile. He can be reached at director@thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com Also check out the latest volume of Jesus the Imagination: Flesh & Spirit and The Regeneration Podcast. Twitter: @Sophiologist_

Protein Farmer

Stella Matutina Farm

As I go about my days of farming, I often pore over ideas, images, or lyrics from my experience as I execute my various tasks, whether I’m moving an electric fence, seeding daikon (as I did this week), weeding, or what have you. It’s more reverie than anything: not completely deliberate, and not completely random. Somewhere in between. Lately, besides the English ballad “Tam Lin” (which you can check out here in a rendition by the very talented Anais Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer) and the Anglican hymn “All Things Bright and Beautiful” (which hear in this jangly version by the delightful Rain for Roots), I’ve been ruminating on the scene in Blade Runner 2049 in which the replicant Detective K (played by Ryan Gosling) confronts and arrests the replicant Sapper Morton (Dave Bautista). Morton, a former military grade replicant, is at that point a “protein farmer,” that is, a farmer raising insects for their highly nutritious larvae. Yum.

There is no accident why this image has invaded my pastoral meditations. The Corporate-Governmental Archons have been in full publicity mode, enlisting celebrities from Nicole Kidman to Angelina Jolie to promote the wonderful possibilities of introducing insects into the Western diet as a replacement for those environment-destroying cattle, pigs, and chickens. The New York Times, ever at the vanguard of the bequests of the Archons, even ran a story recently arguing that the taboo against cannibalism may have been an overreaction. My God.

Apparently, this move is supposed to be “environmentally friendly.” Well, I call “bullshit.” Jettisoning husbandry in favor of an animal-free agriculture is the way of death. As any biodynamic farmer could tell you, animals belong on a farm and contribute to the fecundity of everything—the plants and soil as well as the wild creatures (including insects) in the meadows, woods, and waters, not to mention people. Certainly, factory farming is antithetical to this fecundity, but the agricultural project of Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, and their minions (talk about a “basket of deplorables”!) is just as toxic and even more demonic. The Netherlands’ Mark Rutte and Cananda’s Justin Trudeau (and what the hell, pray tell, is really going on behind the Maple Curtain?) are all in on the globalist agro-scam, hiding behind a nitrogen emissions reduction fig leaf. Sustainable farming is not what they are promoting: they are promoting a continued power grab that went into high gear in early 2020 when the greatest wealth transfer in history began in earnest and corporations capitalized (the exact word) on societal anxieties and destroyed and plundered millions of small businesses with the help of their bureaucratic henchmen in governments around the world (but particularly in the West). Again, as any decent organic or biodynamic farmer knows, transitioning to these sustainable methods from conventional ways of working takes time, 7-10 years according to Vandana Shiva, so going cold turkey, as happened recently (and tragically) in Sri Lanka, can have very predictably disastrous results. Guess what: the Archons know this. Also guess what: it’s what they want. In theology we call such entities demons.

Besides vegetables, we raise a decent amount of protein on our farm. Though veggies are part of our CSA, we mostly raise meat for ourselves—including beef, lamb, pork, chicken, duck, and goose. To that we supplement our diet in winter with venison and rabbit. Humans, some might be surprised to learn, are also part of the circle of life. We do, however, offer eggs for sale and the possibility for a share in our dairy production. Our little Jersey cow, Fiona, gives about 3 gallons of milk a day on average (more when she freshens) and even when all nine kids were at home this would have been more than we could handle. Now with only four still at home... you get it. We make various cheeses (I made some queso blanco and ricotta this morning), butter, yogurt, ice cream, kefir and so forth, and milk proteins are a great staple of the diet. We also have insects on our farm, foremost among them our honeybees. But we don’t eat them.

Interesting that this all occurred to me the week of Lammas and the Transfiguration, two feasts that mark the beginning of the first fruits and harvest cycle. Today, for example, just before the blessing of fruits (in our case, grapes, cucumber, zucchini, peppers, onions, and tomatoes) in observance of Transfiguration during house church, we read these lines from “The blessing of the straun” found in the Carmina Gadelica:

Each meal beneath my roof,

They will all be mixed together,

In name of God the Son,

Who gave them growth.

Milk, and eggs, and butter,

The good produce of our own flock,

There shall be no dearth in our land,

Nor in our dwelling.

In name of Michael of my love,

Who bequeathed to us the power,

With the blessing of the Lamb,

And of His Mother.

Please don’t be fooled. Nature is not a realm of scarcity. Rather, nature is superabundant. There is an excess of life on a farm and on this planet. Those who say otherwise in the rhetoric of scarcity are trying to sell you something: a kind of slavery.

Protein farmer? How about protean farmer.

Michael’s latest book is Sophia in Exile. 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. Twitter: @Sophiologist_

Biodynamic Farming and Gardening as Christian Path: A Course

a flyer I made 30 (!) years ago

I am happy to announce that I will be giving a weekend course, Biodynamic Farming and Gardening as Christian Path, this spring. Although I originally toyed with the idea of doing such a course online, on second thought I have decided it would be best to do this the old fashioned way: in person and on my own land, Stella Matutina Farm in Grass Lake, Michigan.

Biodynamics, while it has a solid theoretical framework underpinning it, is more than anything a hands on enterprise, so I intend to combine theoretical, practical, and, yes, artistic and festive aspects into the course. The idea is to have a lived experience of the sophiological implications of biodynamic farming and gardening and how such a way of being connects to the traditional Christian year and the astronomical and mystical elements that inform it.

The course will take place from Friday evening, April 29th, to late Saturday afternoon on the 30th. The next day, of course, is May Day and participants are invited to attend our farm’s yearly May Day Festival on Sunday the 1st of May at 3:00 p.m.

The fee for the course is $120 per family (assuming some people would like to bring spouses or children) and a lunch will be provided on Saturday. The farm is situated in the middle of Michigan’s Waterloo State Recreation Area which has plenty of camping spaces available as well as cabins to rent (though of more limited availability) and there are also other B&B accommodations in the area. Grass Lake is approximately 30 miles west of Ann Arbor and 15 miles east of Jackson, Michigan.

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and send it in via snailmail with a check or money order or email director@thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com and pay via Venmo @Michael-Martin-295