The only fiery presence in the Vicarage garden
was this red admiral butterfly on our Michaelmas daisies

To keep on track with my seasonal musings, I had high hopes of writing an entry for Michaelmas Day last Wednesday, until a dragon of a stomach bug got the better of me. Then on Thursday the women of the Celtic Circle gathered and had many more interesting things to say than I did. Sue reminded us of the story that is told in the local Steiner school for Michaelmas, which I remember acting out with my children while making ‘dragon bread’.

The story begins in a happy valley aka a large mason cash bowl with smooth fields of flour. Life is beautifully sieved and fine and all terribly nice (and faintly dull and nauseating) Suddenly a fierce dragon attacks wielding a dalek like whisk and lashings of milk and egg. Everything and everyone within striking distance of the happy valley bowl gets in a terrible mess and there is much wailing and gnashing of parental teeth. After a valiant but ineffective struggle, in the true spirit of Western Esotericism, archangelic intervention is sought.

The archangel Michael then comes to a sort of rescue in the form of raisins (which actually represent shooting stars… really…) It’s a sort of rescue because all good esoteric stories involve the practitioner having to engage with ‘the Work’ themselves. So the people of the now unhappy valley (and the alchemical cooks) have to get busy digging up and smelting the meteoric iron (mixing in the raisins and kneading and baking the dough). As this is a pc post modern tale, all this raising of will power and transformative fire is then used in some slightly inexplicable way, not to kill the dragon, but to harness its energy for the greater good. At this point I became fairly depressed at the thought of the wild and rampant dragon circling the village treadmill and grinding the corn for next year’s bread.

There’s no doubt that the most exciting part of the story and the bread making is when terrible disaster befalls the happy valley, though eating the bread at the end is pretty good too. I really must try to bring a similar wild enjoyment to disasters in my own life…. and to remember that this mix of chaos and transformation does create something good in the end…