Michaelmas

 

The Feast of Saint Michaël is the symbol for the human being to be aware in consciousness to recognize evil in the world and to fight it.

According to John's Book of Revelation this fight takes place in the heavens. Michaël and his angels fought against the dragon and his helpers. "And the great dragon, the old snake, ...was conquered and thrown out of heaven into the deep." Hereby Michaël emerged as victor of the battle against the powers of darkness.

The celebration time of Saint Michaël is a calling to us to recognize and acknowledge these powers and call them to a halt.

There are countless legends from earlier ages which tell about Saint Michaël's deeds. And in art many images can be found of Michaël with his sword, personified as an angel or a knight.

Since medieval times, when knights occupied themselves with spreading Christianity, the legend of George and the dragon started to become known. Without fear he set off to fight the dragon. He overwon the monster with his lance and by doing so he freed the king's daughter, who would otherwise have been sacrificed to the dragon. With this deed George accomplished on earth, what Michaël accomplished in the heavens.

The Tales of the Sands

A stream, from its source in far-off mountains, passing through every kind and description of countryside, at last reached the sands of the desert. Just as it had crossed every other barrier, the stream tried to cross this one, but it found that as fast as it ran into the sand, its waters disappeared.

It was convinced, however, that its destiny was to cross this desert, and yet there was no way. Now a hidden voice, coming from the desert itself, whispered: "The Wind crosses the desert, and so can the stream."

The stream objected that it was dashing itself against the sand, and only getting absorbed: that the wind could fly, and this was why it could cross a desert.

"By hurtling in your own accustomed way you cannot get across. You will either disappear or become a marsh. You must allow the wind to carry you over, to your destination."

"But how could this happen?"

"By allowing yourself to be absorbed in the wind."

This idea was not acceptable to the stream. After all, it had never been absorbed before. It did not want to lose its individuality. And, once having lost it, how was one to know that it could ever be regained?

"The wind," said the sand, "performs this function. It takes up water, carries it over the desert, and then lets it fall again. Falling as rain, the water again becomes a river."

"How can I know that this is true?"

"It is so, and if you do not believe it, you cannot become more than a quagmire, and even that could take many, many years; and it certainly is not the same as a stream."

"But can I not remain the same stream that I am today?"

"You cannot in either case remain so," the whisper said. "Your essential part is carried away and forms a stream again. You are called what you are even today because you do not know which part of you is the essential one."

A Sufi Story by Idries Shah

SWAN GRACE

Little Swan flew through the Dreamtime, looking for the future. She rested for a moment in the coolness of the pond, looking for a way to find the entry point to the future. This was a moment of confusion for Swan, as she knew that she had happened into the Dreamtime by accident. This was her first flight alone and she was a bit concerned by the Dreamtime landscape. 🦢 As Swan looked high above Sacred Mountain, she saw the biggest swirling black hole she had ever seen. Dragonfly came flying by, and Swan stopped him to ask about the black hole. Dragonfly said, "Swan, that is the doorway to the other planes of imagination. I have been guardian of the illusion for many, many moons. If you want to enter there, you would have to ask permission and earn the right." 🦢 Swan was not so sure that she wanted to enter the black hole. She asked Dragonfly what was necessary for her to earn entry. Dragonfly replied, "You must be willing to accept whatever the future holds as it is presented, without trying to change Great Spirit's plan." Swan looked at her ugly little duckling body and then answered, "I will be happy to abide by Great Spirit's plan. I won't fight the currents of the black hole. I will surrender to the flow of the spiral and trust what I am shown." Dragonfly was very happy with Swan's answer and began to spin the magic to break the pond's illusion. Suddenly Swan was engulfed by a whirlpool in the center of the pond. 🦢 Swan reappeared many days later, but now she was graceful and white and long-necked. Dragonfly was stunned! "Swan, what happened to you!" he exclaimed. Swan smiled and said, "Dragonfly, I learned to surrender my body to the power of Great Spirit and was taken to where the future lives. I saw many wonders high on Sacred Mountain and because of my faith and my acceptance I have been changed. I have learned to accept the state of grace."

                                                                         

Drawn from "Medicine Cards" by Jamie Sams

WIND-CHILD

WIND-CHILD

I believed that you always would be there -

a faery child, awaiting the storm.

I watched over you as best I could

to allay my fears, as well as your own.

Then one day

I heard the rush and whistling

of the approaching wind.

But even though he was strong

when he came, he did not roar like a beast

but instead blew slowly, so very slowly

and piece by hurtful piece,

like an evil wizard

with a magic wand

he stole your youth

and your beauty

and finally your life

secretly, before I knew it.

Art by Terri Windling 

I Never Saw Another Butterfly

May 4 
Commemoration Day in the Netherlands

🦋

I  Never Saw Another Butterfly

The last, the very last,

So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow

Perhaps if the sun’s tears would sing 

against a white stone....

 

Such, such a yellow

Is carried lightly ’way up high.

It went away I’m sure 

because it wished 

to kiss the world good-bye.

For seven weeks I’ve lived in here

Penned up inside this ghetto.

But I have found what I love here.

The dandelions call to me

And the white chestnut branches in the court.

Only I never saw another butterfly. 

That butterfly was the last one.

Butterflies don’t live in here, in the ghetto. 

🦋

Written  by Pavel Friedman, June 4, 1942 

Born in Prague on Jan. 7, 1921.

Deported to the Terezin Concentration Camp on April 26, 1942. 

Died in Auschwitz on Sept. 29, 1944.

El Viaje Definitivo - The Definitive Journey

 

El Viaje Definitivo - The Definitive Journey

. . . and I will leave. But the birds will stay, singing,

and my garden will stay, with its green tree,

with its water well.

Many afternoons the skies will be blue and placid,

and the bells in the belfry will chime,

as they are chiming this very afternoon.

The people who have loved me will pass away,

and the town will burst anew every year.

But my spirit will always wander nostalgic

in the same recondite corner of my flowery garden.

- Juan Ramon Jimenez – translated by Carlos Casteneda in his book Journey to Ixtlan

The Flowing Tide

 

High and large and dark the sea rose from the horizon, against the white beach. Norderney..'Sei mir gegrüsst, du Ewiges Meer.'

Why is this so beautiful, so beautiful, that I have to think about it almost every day and it brings tears to my eyes almost every day? I try to fathom it by repeating it, but it doesn't want to be fathomed that way and it flees from me. Small and alone I stand before the sea, before the sky.. I surrender to them, they take me from myself. Sea and sky take over from me. Over the blue waves my eyes anchor deep to the horizon, I am as wide as I see, I reach as far as I meditate.. my indefinable musings are lost in my limitless being -, so compact, small clouds settle into thin mists ..

- Carry van Bruggen, Dutch Author, 1881-1932, excerpt from Eva © Querido publishers 

The Essence of Everything

In this present state of the world, the necessary component of life on the planet is awareness of wholeness with regard to Nature and ouselves, an awareness with which women are often more familiar and in tune. But women must learn to focus and give priority to what we find valid in our own experience without need to look to the past for justification. The close relationship of a poet or mystic to Nature can be everyone's ordinary relationship, and our culture can change from one of rapism to one of interchange with and appreciation of the beauty and value of the Earth and beyond. One way that men and women can cease splitting ourselves into various parts, even cease dichotomizing being and becoming, is to recognize our androgynous wholeness. The angels are an example. Androgynous, they use their masculine and feminine aspects as suits the situations.

It is from our wholeness, our divinity that we can then relate to anyone else and to our world. If I am out of tune with myself, I am out of tune with the universe. The core of relationship is to be at one with oneself and therefore at one with the essence of everything.

Drawn from: Dorothy Maclean: "To hear the angels sing" - an odyssey of co-creation with the Devic Kingdom 

When I Was the Forest

 

When I Was the Forest

When I was the stream, when I was the

forest, when I was still the field,

when I was every hoof, foot,

fin and wing, when I

was the sky

itself,

no one ever asked me did I have a purpose, no one ever

wondered was there anything I might need,

for there was nothing

I could not love.

It was when I left all we once were that

the agony began, the fear and questions came,

and I wept, I wept. And tears

I had never known

before.

So I returned to the river, I returned to

the mountains. I asked for their hand in marriage again,

I begged - I begged to wed every object

and creature,

and when they accepted,

God was ever present in my arms.

And He did not say,

“Where have you

been?”

For then I knew my soul - every soul -

has always held

Him.

*

– Meister Eckhart (1260 – 1328)

*

Art: "Sacred Heart" by Odilon Redon

*

The Music of Silence

It was the evening of the work’s premier performance. The symphony was very well received, but it was after the second movement had concluded that something remarkable happened. The audience burst into spontaneous cheering and applause, shouting for an immediate encore. But the conductor on his podium did not react.

An assistant walked onto the stage and carefully turned the conductor around so that he at last could see the ecstatic reaction of his audience. The concert was given on the 8th of December 1813 for an audience of Austro-Bavarian war veterans who had fought the retreating army of Napoleon just five weeks earlier, and Ludwig van Beethoven, who was both the composer of the symphony and its conductor at this special concert performance, was by this time almost totally deaf.

The wishes of the audience were made clear to him, and Beethoven immediately launched into the movement’s requested encore, with the orchestra dutifully and beamingly obliging. Even today, over two centuries after these events, the second movement of Beethoven’s 7th symphony, the allegretto, seems to have a special power to stir the souls of those who hear it, and Beethoven himself felt that it was one of his finest works.

What we are left to reflect upon is the vision of someone who, through his human will to create, overcame what must surely be the greatest setback for any composer: his loss of hearing. Others have done as much. The great Italian Renaissance artist Titian battled increasing blindness to continue painting, and the American author Helen Keller worked through her own dual handicaps of being both deaf and blind to continue her prolific and successful writing career, and so communicate to others what her creativity required of her.

We all are the children of divine spirits who move with us along our life’s path, even though that path might at first appear to be one which we would not have chosen for ourselves. But our spirits are always there, and all which they ask of us is to trust them, and to know, even in the face of what might seem to us to be ‘unfair’ odds, that we will be given the courage to do that which is required of us. And there always is the music of a blessed musical genius to give us both strength and solace. 

Portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven, created in 1820 by Joseph Karl Stieler, court artist to the Bavarian kings.

The Red Wolf

Children go missing all the time.

Sometimes it is faeries who steal them.

Other times, they trust a wolf.

Even in times of war, children are innocent to the true ways of the world. Their mothers are always wiser.

This is because mothers know that the softest people with the biggest hearts are the ones who held the truest magic of them all: purity of this kind could not be bought from the Gods themselves, and it was the greatest target of the devil-souled.

When Little Red Riding Hood went missing, a girl so beloved by her mother that she always told her she could be anything she wanted to be, her mother never ever left the place where she had grown up, hoping against hope that the trees, the woods, would one day return her child.

Every day, she stood at the end of the woods, looking into the dark, hoping to find a wisp of her forest-hearted child somewhere within the leave-strewn wild. Every day, she took a step closer to the darkness, hopelessness making her courage steadfast, stronger.

Grief makes unlikely warriors of us all.

So when she saw the two lamp-like eyes in the dark one day, she was not afraid. Instead she asked, 'Brother wolf, are you the one who has stolen my child from my arms and taken her away?'

'Not I' said the wolf before disappearing.

The next day, she took another step closer to the woods she had once searched every inch of and another pair of eyes glowed through the darkness, red like the colour of her child's cloak.

'Brother wolf, are you the one who pulled my child away from me with just a look?'

'Not I,' said the wolf before turning away.

A wolf began to visit her almost every day. And every day she would ask the same question a different way. She found herself getting closer and closer to the heart of the forest and the wolves never ever attacked her. She began to wonder if what the woodcutter had told her was true, that the wolf had eaten her child for supper.

On the day she reached the heart of the forest, she began to realise that although she had thought she had been here before, this lush, dense part of the wood was a place she had never been. There was something both familiar and unsettling about it, like a place not meant to be seen.

A lair where a thousand lamp-like eyes watched her from the fog and the dark, and even when the fog cleared away and the light came through, she found what she was looking at was enough to make her fall apart. On a throne amongst wolves of all sorts and sizes, a young girl sat. She wore a red wolf's skin on her body and two swords sheathed behind her back.

Slow recognition crept over her face. She ran to the older woman and, after hugging her, finally told her why she had never come home. 

'Dear Mother, I am sorry I never ever came home. The evil woodcutter and his friends were trying to destroy this forest world. When I came through the woods, I happened to hear all of their plans. They saw me listening, followed me to grandmother's, killed her and tried to burn her house down with me in it so they could continue their wicked plans. The wolves came to rescue me, and trained me to be one of them. I am now the Alpha and protect them from the woodcutter and his evil friends. 

Her mother promised her that she would never tell another soul where Red Riding Hood was. The secrecy was their only weapon against the woodcutter and his horde. Over and over again, Red Riding Hood and the wolves bravely defended the woods and woodland creatures from extinction. They bravely fought and her mother soon came to live with them and aid them in their battle.

So when you tell the story of Red Riding Hood, remember this too:

Her mother told her

she would grow up to be

anything she wanted to be,

so she grew up to become

the strongest of the strong,

the strangest of the strange,

the wildest of the wild,

the wolf leading the wolves.       

***

- Nikita Gill; from Fierce Fairy Tales & Other Stories to Stir the Soul. 

Artist: Marija Jevtic