Brian Masters and Kathleen Galloway
Brien's talk on last Thursday was on the Music of the Spheres. We were given a very brief introduction to the influence that spheres played in our lives - a phrase that still lives on today in 'the sphere of influence'. (Spheres being the celestial bodies that we could see in the solar system from earth.) There were three ways in which this occured. Through the divine beings - or their spiritual influence that has its imprint on the many, many myths and archytypes that are continued in our stories, the physical influences such as the gravitational pull of the moon, etc and then there is the music, or the sound which is made. Those of us who are able to hear this music, then go on to become composers - and then convey the music of the spheres through their work. what i found really fascinating was the the pre-Copernican view of the universe - or the geocentric view - was the one that was applied in this concept. That it was what the eye saw, not a mental or abstract sense of the solar system and how it worked. Also because Jupiter was the last planet that could be seen, it was the last sphere of influence. There is something magical, even miraculous, when we enter this space. Things slow down, and as a person, i certainly begin to feel brave enough to feel my humanity, to go with instinct, to acknowledge, as Brian so eloquently put it, the knowledge of thousands of years which lie sleeping in us and are still remembered by our children. In other words to become a child again. He said that you could hear sometimes in the early years especially, when you listened to children who are deeply engrossed in activity, that they made a sound which was quite elemental. It was like standing under a lime tree in height of summer and that soft, musical but intense buzzing that bees made, that was the sound that children who were still at the stage of the pentatonic scale made. It was the very sound of life.
Snowdrops miraculously appear in the January picture in the class.
A most wonderful surprise awaited the children in Class One as well this week. Brian who had spent sometime with them last week, had played the wise man and gifted them with five verses which had the angel letters highlighted in each poster. They were the verses spoken by the kings about their experience/essence - and they were for the children to read. He told me that he had sometime to spare and the people in Glencraig were able to supply him with the necessary paper and crayons. It was so beautiful, like a magic spell, or a secret incantation from a deep past when i read the verses together. It made me think that the wisemen in the form of angel letters and these words were looking after and guiding our little class one as they made their way through their main lessons.
Beside it were the words from "We Three Kings" chorus - O Star of Wonder, Star of Light...Tracy had been singing this with them for the past three weeks and now they were ready to sing them off the board. She said, you should have seen their faces when they realised they were reading, she said. It was the first time they faced the idea of a discrete word. And so they sang the verse.
When i think that the first thing most people read is the Fat Cat Sat on the Mat, it brings home the message that education isn't just about facts or techniques or skills, but ensuring that beauty, spirituality and divinity nourishes the child's soul as well.
Tracy and Casimir her son inspect the finger knitting. Tracy is the Class One teacher.
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