Seminar: Shakespeare, Religion, and Magic

I am happy to announce that I will be giving on online course—though in real time—entitled Shakespeare, Religion, and Magic. The seminar will begin on Friday, February 3rd and continue every Friday thereafter until March 24th, for a total of eight sessions. The seminars will run from 1:00-2:30 pm Easter Time, which should make it possible for participants from both the British Isles and the West Coast of the US to take part, and will be recorded for archival purposes but not rebroadcast at a later time.

What I’m doing with this course is getting my feet wet for a bigger project: a rogue invisible college (tentatively named “Sophia University”) which, I hope, will eventually include a number of other druids (not sure “professor” or “teacher” are the right words) and offer a range of seminars on mythology, Neoplatonism, Sophiology, poetics and poetry, sacred geometry, music, Goethean science, literature, philosophy, theology, and history (I’m sure other things will appear as well). In addition to these online seminars, I hope to add retreats or low-residency seminars at my farm in Michigan, so we cannot rule out seminars on farming, beekeeping, handcrafts, or the fine arts. So this is just a start.

I have a long-time engagement with Shakespeare reaching back over thirty years and have not only taught Shakespeare at the college-level but have directed productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, and The Tempest—and I wrote music for the Bard’s many songs and ditties that sprinkle those plays.

This eight-week seminar will examine a number of Shakespeare’s better- and lesser-known plays and the ways in which Shakespeare and his times thought of Divinity and the supernatural. Plays to be discussed include Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Macbeth, Pericles, and The Tempest, and we will take them in this order (the first week will be an introduction). The only real requirement is that participants commit to the full eight weeks and read the play in question prior to our discussion of it.

Just about any Collected Works of William Shakespeare will be adequate to the task at hand, though the individual Arden editions are also very good. I would recommend the Norton, Bevington, or the old Riverside editions (I still have the Riverside I used as an undergrad!). All are good, all have great notes (which are supremely helpful!), and are also useful when pressing cheese (I have actually done this).

Seminar fee: $100. Contact me at director@thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com to enroll or if you have any questions.

A couple of other things

If you haven’t seen The Regeneration Podcast’s recent interview with Dr. Ken Thorp, you absolutely must. He is bridging the gap between the medicine of the years prior to the “Scientific” Revolution and the medicine of the future.

In addition, please check out this beautiful article on my dear friend (she’s nearly a sister) Therese Schroeder-Sheker by music writer Ted Gioia. It, like Therese, is extraordinary.

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. Twitter: @Sophiologist_

Jesus the Imagination, Vol 5: The Divine Feminine

Cover art: "The Empress" by Catrin Welz-Stein

—and a Call for Submissions for Volume 6

One of the great maxims of Waldorf education is that the ideal lesson is one in which the students come to both tears and laughter, the idea being that the emotional panorama of human experience is essential for education to be a truly human endeavor. Editing volume five of Jesus the Imagination on the theme of “The Divine Feminine” was precisely such an experience for me.

Alison Milbank’s beautiful essay “Oiling the Wheels of the Heavenly Chariot: Female Priesthood and the Divine Feminine” brought tears to my eyes as I read through it the first time. I was astonished by its grace and how it (and Alison herself) is suffused with a genuine charism of the divine femininity. It brings a center of healing in the middle of a chaotic realm of gendered confusion.

On the polarity of laughter, I laughed often in my interview (“The Lady in the Temple”) with biblical scholar Margaret Barker—and I laughed all over again as I was editing and proofing it! Margaret offers much wisdom and insight in her words (and in her work), but it was an absolute delight to discover her warm and often puckish sense of humor in our conversation.

back cover art: "Erupting Space" by Stephane Gaulin-Brown

In addition, the essays by Therese Schroeder-Sheker and Michael J. Sauter straddle the line between rejoicing and correction as they interrogate institutional structures too long buried by the detritus of tradition and habit and seek to return us to wholeness in their invocation to a Sophiology both practical and mystical. Likewise, offerings by Sam Guzman, Andrew Kuiper, and Madonna Sophia Compton ask us to consider the sophiological from the perspectives of psychoanalysis, philosophy, and theology. Add to these Miguel Escobar Torres’s exquisite search into the Sophiology of Hildegard of Bingen and James Wetmore’s translation from Valentine Tomberg on the Fourth Commandment, “Honor thy father and mother,” and we have a rich landscape for meditation.

The poetry of John Milbank, Thomas Whittier, Tyler DeLong, Paul Hunter, William Trusiewicz, and Daniel Nicholas, a stunning work of experimental fiction by Max Leyf, a review by Kent Anhari, Lucinda M. Varney’s gentle prayer, “Divine Feminine Spirit” as coda, complete what may very well be the finest volume of Jesus the Imagination to date. You can get one here.

The theme of Jesus the Imagination, Volume 6 will be “Flesh and Spirit,” and we are now inviting submissions of poetry, essays, photography, and artwork. We are also interested in translations! Send no more than 3-5 poems, one essay, or 2-3 works of art (in a file, of course). The deadline is 1 January 2022.