Celebrating the Spring Equinox!

Dear Members, Alumni, & Friends of the James Scholar Advisory & Leadership Team (JSALT):

The peoples of the ancient world looked forward to the arrival of springtime just as much as we do in our technomagical age. The Vernal Equinox, which marks the official beginning of springtime in the Northern Hemisphere, will arrive @ 5:45 PM (CDT) today! :) Here are some poems (with commentary) to help you celebrate the changing of the seasons.

Celebrating Springtime with Orphic Poetry

By Rob Chappell (Reprinted from Cursus Honorum’s March 2007 Issue)

        The annual cycle of the seasons and its effects on our natural surroundings are recurring themes throughout world literature. The Orphic poets – a guild of ancient Greek philosopher-bards named after their legendary founder, Orpheus – celebrated the changing of the seasons, the wonders of the natural world, and their lofty ideals in poetic chants, several dozen of which were preserved in written form after centuries of oral transmission. In the poetic forms of their prescientific age (ca. 1000-500 BCE), the Orphic poets chose to personify the forces of Nature, the celestial orbs, and abstract ideals in order to explain how and why the natural world and the human social order function in the ways that they do.

Here is an example of Orphic poetry to welcome in the springtime – a poem to the seasons (here personified as the daughters of Zeus/Jupiter):

Orphic Hymn #42: “To the Seasons”

(Translated by Thomas Taylor, 1792)

Daughters of Jove and Themis, Seasons bright,

Justice, and blessed peace, and lawful right,

Vernal and grassy, vivid, holy powers,

Whose balmy breath exhales in lovely flowers;

All-colored Seasons, rich increase your care,

Circling forever, flourishing and fair:

Invested with a veil of shining dew,

A flowery veil delightful to the view:

Attending Proserpine, when back from night,

The Fates and Graces lead her up to light;

When in a band harmonious they advance,

And joyful round her form the solemn dance:

With Ceres triumphing, and Jove divine,

Propitious come, and on our incense shine;

Give Earth a blameless store of fruits to bear,

And make a novel mystic’s life your care.

“Orpheus” by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Orpheus with his lute made trees

And the mountain tops that freeze

Bow themselves when he did sing:

To his music plants and flowers

Ever sprung; as Sun and showers

There had made a lasting spring.

Everything that heard him play,

Even the billows of the sea,

Hung their heads and then lay by.

In sweet music is such art,

Killing care and grief of heart

Fall asleep, or hearing, die.

Further Reading on the Orphic Tradition

•       The extant collection of 86 Orphic Hymns is archived @ http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hoo/index.htm.

•       The Middle English poem Sir Orfeo – a Keltified retelling of the Greek legend of Orpheus – is available (with annotations) @ http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/orfeo.htm.

•       The Derveni Papyrus (composed in Greek during the 4th century BCE and discovered in 1962) contains an Orphic poem and an esoteric commentary based on Orphic philosophy (see http://www.crystalinks.com/derveni_papyrus.html).

“O Nobilissima Viriditas” (“O Very Noble Greenness”)

Latin Text from Hildegard of Bingen’s Symphonia, Translated by Rob Chappell

        Note: Magistra Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) was a natural philosopher, pharmacologist, musician, and artist who disseminated her teachings about viriditas (the vivifying “greenness” in Nature) through her extensive Latin writings, which included scientific texts, medical treatises, and polyphonic musical compositions. In “O Nobilissima Viriditas,” Hildegard identifies the source of viriditas as something “rooted in the Sun” – that is, in the life-giving energies radiating from our parent star that make life possible on Earth. In modern scientific terms, we would say that solar radiation is the catalyst for photosynthesis in green plants, which form the base of the food chain.

O nobilissima Viriditas, quae radicas in Sole,

Et quae in candida serenitate luces in rota,

Quam nulla terrena excellentia comprehendis!

Tu circumdata es amplexibus divinorum mysteriorum.

Tu rubes ut Aurora et ardes ut Solis flamma.

O very noble greenness, you are rooted in the Sun,

And you shine in bright serenity in a circle

That no terrestrial excellence comprehends!

You are enclosed by the embrace of divine mysteries.

You blush like the Dawn and burn like a flame of the Sun.

“Welcome to the Sun”

Anonymous – Collected in Scotland (19th Century)

        Note: In the Germanic, Keltik, and Slavic languages – as well as in Japanese – the Sun is feminine and the Moon is masculine.

Welcome to you, Sun of the seasons’ turning,

In your circuit of the high heavens;

Strong are your steps on the unfurled heights,

Glad Mother are you to the constellations.

You sink down into the ocean of want,

Without defeat, without scathe;

You rise up on the peaceful wave

Like a Queen in her maidenhood's flower.

Happy Vernal Equinox & Spring Break to all our subscribers! :)

Rob

March 2015 Leadership Reflection

March Leadership Reflection

Women’s History Month: Mothering Sunday

        March is Women’s History Month, and in honor of this occasion, I’d like to share with you some reflections about all the unsung heroines who have shaped and molded the leaders of each rising generation: mothers! March 15^th is Mothering Sunday – a holiday that originated in England as a “family reunion day.” Mothering Sunday, which is celebrated on the fourth Sunday in Lent, began as a day when domestic servants and children enrolled in boarding schools were allowed to return to their families for a day. It became customary for people to bring gifts of food and flowers to their mothers as tokens of appreciation on this day, which served as a precursor to the modern American Mother’s Day (on the second Sunday in May). A simnel cake (pictured below, and baked with white flour, sugar, butter, eggs, fragrant spices, dried fruits, zest and candied peel) is a traditional gift brought to mothers by their children on Mothering Sunday.

        Here’s a heartfelt, poetical tribute to all those intrepid heroines who have mothered us and taught us the first principles of leadership: fair play, courtesy, sharing, and caring.

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle Is the Hand That Rules the World (Published in 1865)

By William Ross Wallace (1819-1881)

1. Blessings on the hand of women!

Angels guard its strength and grace,

In the palace, cottage, hovel,

Oh, no matter where the place;

Would that never storms assailed it,

Rainbows ever gently curled;

For the hand that rocks the cradle

Is the hand that rules the world.

2. Infancy’s the tender fountain,

Power may with beauty flow,

Mother’s first to guide the streamlets,

From them souls unresting grow –

Grow on for the good or evil,

Sunshine streamed or evil hurled;

For the hand that rocks the cradle

Is the hand that rules the world.

3. Woman, how divine your mission

Here upon our natal sod!

Keep, oh, keep the young heart open

Always to the breath of God!

All true trophies of the ages

Are from mother-love impearled;

For the hand that rocks the cradle

Is the hand that rules the world.

4. Blessings on the hand of women!

Fathers, sons, and daughters cry,

And the sacred song is mingled

With the worship in the sky –

Mingles where no tempest darkens,

Rainbows evermore are hurled;

For the hand that rocks the cradle

Is the hand that rules the world.

Remembering Lincoln's 2nd Inaugural Address 150 Years Ago

Dear JSALT Members, Alumni, & Friends:

150 years ago this week, on March 4, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address outside the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, DC. Although it was much shorter than his first inaugural address in 1861, it is much better remembered because of its singular content and remarkable eloquence. Here it is, in its entirety – one of the greatest documents ever penned by an American President.

President Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address

Fellow-Countrymen:

        At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

        On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war -- seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

        One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

        With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Ann Rutledge’s Epitaph

Echoes of Lincoln’s second inaugural address can be found on the epitaph for Ann Rutledge, Abraham Lincoln’s first love. The two of them were close friends -- and possibly romantically involved -- while they studied under the tutelage of Mentor Graham, the local schoolmaster in New Salem, Illinois. Her untimely death in 1835 devastated the young Lincoln, and he was never afterward entirely free of melancholy.

Edgar Lee Masters commemorated Ann Rutledge in this epitaph. His words are engraved on her tombstone at Oakland Cemetery:

“Out of me, unworthy and unknown,
The vibrations of deathless music!
‘With malice toward none, with charity for all.’
Out of me, the forgiveness of millions toward millions,
And the beneficent face of a nation
Shining with justice and truth.
I am Ann Rutledge, who sleep beneath these weeds,
Beloved [in life] of Abraham Lincoln,
Wedded to him, not through union,
But through separation.
Bloom forever, O Republic,
From the dust of my bosom!”

Watch for more Lincoln items in upcoming issues of Quotemail as we approach the 150^th anniversary of the end of the Civil War and Lincoln’s untimely death just a few days after peace was declared.

Until next time –

Rob