Healer/Priest
Modern Druid
As I contemplate the upcoming Cross-Quarter Festival Time* – I am living into a profound turning point for the ‘Spiritual Movement’ on Earth triggered in August 1923. During that potent Summer in the UK, around Penmaenmawr = “Head of the Great Stone”, & Ilkley = “Great Pasture” – a break-thru occurred for Dr. Ita Wegman, founder of the first anthroposophical medical clinic & Philosopher/ occultist/ social reformer, Rudolf Steiner - There on the North coast of Wales, dotted with 100’s of mysterious spirals, & an ancient swastika carved into the rocky outcroppings of the Neolithic pre-Druidic ritual sites, a veil lifted.
Connecting to the healing impulse radiating in that sacred place, where the ancient initiatory rites of the ‘Northern stream‘, described by Spiritual Science & in Germanic mythology – giving us glimpses into the Druidic, Trotten & Hibernian Mystery School traditions – were at that moment, between those two eternal initiate friends, standing open - calling to be renewed.
We have to remember that the Druid Priests were healers, & like Dr. Ita Wegman thru Dr. Steiner, they worked clairvoyantly with the Elemental realms to create remedies & medicines. This is captivatingly described by Steiner, like a ancient background to his agriculture lectures, in THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS, 26 August 1923, Penmaenmawr, & in other lectures including: MAN IN THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE: “The actions of the Sun on the plant kingdom was revealed to the Druid Priest; he could see that a particular kind of plant-life flourishes at a particular time when the Sun is active in a specfic way. He could trace the spiritual activity of the Sun and see how it pours and streams into flower, leaf and root; and it was the same with animals...We see it best of all in what the Druid priests possessed as a science of healing.”
There amidst the powerful elemental healing forces which still interweave in that etheric space today, Ita Wegman asks Steiner a question which turns the tide for modern healing – a question Ita had been mulling over for 10 years: Is it possible to renew the ancient practices of the Druids?
Standing together in the sacred ruins where these Healer/Priests practiced, visions broke forth full of indications - Prescriptions poured from the images - such as the veneration of the Druid Priests working with mistletoe, a parasitic plant sacred to the Druids, a plant that never touches the earth, intwining instead around the mighty oak tree – This mystic rite of the Druids became the inspiration for Dr. Ita Wegman to develop Mistletoe (Viscum album) as a healing remedy for cancer.
Making the connection with the Druids as Priest – as well as Healer, inspired Steiner to give the Pastoral Medicine lectures –just a few days after he had returned from Penmaenmawr…!
Should not Priests be Healers, & the Doctors Priests…? Should not we all be both?
Other significant fellows were at that Summer course.
In ‘Mysterien- und Geisteschichte der Menschheit’, Dr. Guenther Wachsmuth reports how Rudolf Steiner was transfigured at the stone circle now known as the ‘Twelve Apostles’, on Ilkley Moor, constructed over 9000 years ago – centuries before the pyramids.
And in “The Life and Work of Rudolf Steiner.” Wachsmuth writes: “During his trips to England, In Penmaenmawr, Steiner visited the Druid circles: In keeping with the spiritual atmosphere of the place, the conversation offered centered on the Mysteries of the Druids and their opposite pole in Europe, the cult of Mithras, by which the Southern Mysteries were contrasted to the Northern Mysteries seen here. Before Steiner’s spiritual eye the ancient Druid culture came to life upon the spot. Indeed he himself seemed to change into a Druid priest, speaking with intimate knowledge and understanding as he began to explain the arrangement and the function of the stones, a unique and strange picture, as now in the loneliness of this lofty plateau Rudolf Steiner entered into the midst of the Druid circle. He told me to lift my gaze above the stones towards the mountain peaks surrounding the plateau, and described to me, with an intensity in his retrospect as if the event were occurring at that moment, how once the Druid priests, through viewing the signs of the zodiac passing along the horizon in the course of the year, were able to experience the spiritual cosmos, the beings within it, and their mandates to humanity.”
From Rudolf Steiner himself, we have a letter written the week after to Sculpturess Edith Mayron decribing what he saw & experienced. And in September 1923, a month after being at the Druid sites, Steiner writes in MICHAELMAS AND THE SOUL-FORCES OF MAN: “…In the immediate vicinity of Penmaenmawr were to be found two sun-circles adjoining each other; and in this particular neighborhood, where even in the spiritual life of nature there is so much that has a different effect from that of nature elsewhere, what I have set forth in various anthroposophical lectures concerning the Druid Mysteries could be tested with the utmost clarity.
There is indeed a quite special spiritual atmosphere in this region where — on the island of Anglesea — the Society of King Arthur had a settlement…
…these sun-circles are arranged in the number twelve, like the twelve signs of the zodiac; and on the mountain we had climbed we found a large sun-circle and nearby a smaller one. If one had ascended, perhaps in a balloon, and looked down upon these two Druid circles, ignoring the insignificant distance between them, the same ground plan would have presented itself — there is something profoundly moving about this — seen once in that of the Goetheanum in Dornach which was destroyed by fire.”
Had Steiner been inspired into by the gods to design the distinctive 2-intertwining cupolas of 1st Goetheanum from this ancient power spot of the Druids?
Steiner’s “Druidenstein painting“, which he gifted to Dr. Ita Wegman after their experiences in Penmaenmawr, depicts the shimmering etheric & astral overlay powerfully resonate there, shown in dramatic stages.
I’m sure there are others better able than myself to share a Spiritual Scientific artistic study of the color details & what the images all represent - so I’ll just emphasize that for me, this imagination describes the Druid Priests being able to perceive The Mystery of Golgotha – written on the Sun-drenched tapestry of the Elemental world, & in the stellar script, at the Turning Point of Time. A fulfillment of the teachings foreseen for thousands of years in the ancient Mystery Schools. The Cosmic Christ had taken human incarnation, & thru the medicine of his blood permeating the body of the Earth, a healing seed was set into all realms which the Druid Priest/Healers perceived.
I picture them working deeply in a sort of ‘Biodynamic’ way with the Earth thru their healing rites, to prepare the way in the far distant future, when our Earth will become a New Sun…
“Wisdom in the Spirit - Love in the Soul - Power in the Will: They guide me - They hold me - I trust them - I offer myself to them”. ~Rudolf Steiner
Summer-Tide Blessings Dearly Beloved & Peace
~hag
25 July 2026 - “Speaking with the Stars”
To honor & foster the Christian Community of Southeast Wisconsin, we gather for ‘Devotional Services’ in-between Priest Visits. All are welcome to join
Sunday 26 July, 9 August 2026
Please arrive by 10:15 am so that we can be ready to begin promptly at
10:30 am– when the Consecration of the Human Being is being celebrated all over the country
Potluck social time after
At the ‘Spirit Lodge’ in Elkhorn WI. RSVP Hazel@CogRite.com
*Saturday 1 August 2026 – anytime between 4 & 9 pm
Come celebrate The Silver Anniversary of ~hag & CG - 25 years of Wedded Bliss ;)
4 pm – Prep-stir – a gifting to the Elementals of the Spirit Lodge land acknowledging the Cross-Quarter Festival of Lammas / Loaf mas -/ Lughnasad
6 pm – Potluck – Please bring food & drink to share
7 pm - Bonfire – Weather permitting
If you would like to gift our land, we invite you to bring a plant to add to our growing garden.
RSVP hazel@CogRite.com
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Really neat! I am working through GA228 as of right now which heavily is reflecting on things mentioned in this post. I am not far enough into these studies to give what I would call my true impressions... But theories where I slice the mold from the bread(or try to lol).
Regarding the painting, it strikes me of a myriad of possibilities. The polarity present in the colors of each side. Presumably of the same mineral-like material.. A few of the stones, I believe 3, casting shadows and a presumable mountain like peak making a fourth to the left.
The idea of things above my head regards zodiacal and cosmic purposes there;
But with irony, Then is what I believe to be an altar for the dead with the swirling 'cross' upon it. This representing something alive, along with the dead, or rather in symbiosis with it.
The man below meditating in the direction of the altar/stones, replicating for me the values held in such a culture in this drawing. As the observer becomes the encased; And the cycle continues on microcosmically, adjacent to the macrocosmic of the Henge-stones.
It captures in a way the separation of red and blue in the natural world. While representing a glimpse of the cosmic relation as well. I would go as far as the say the person in meditation down below, can represent time/patience as well.
A thought which I considered and still do, is of the significance of someone bringing to life... Our deaths.
Memorials and so on as examples. Something possibly so intertwined in Western society, that the significance evades like an obvious truth. Though, this takes time for the individual depending on a myriad of factors to come to terms with in life.
How for granted we can take something so seemingly simple.. Yet imo may be a corner-stone to the building of all civilization.
Really interesting. Thank you for posting this... I would have regrettingly passed by an art of this sort with no second thoughts if not given context for.
That makes me curious on the significance/art needed to enliven these archetypes of human history into current-day culture. Perhaps the cycle has turned in favor of these ancient truths to spark back to life
Edit; Seeing a different view of the picture, I notice two other men with halos of some sort.
Edges black and white; Inners blue, red, green, yellow, brown, orange
Thank you Hazel for including the Druidenstein painting in this post.
I had never seen this before and found it to be profound… and so alive….
You are truly incredible in how you access & share so much…
This painting for me has for me chalk line qualities. I hope to visit this place one day.
Always with much gratitude to what you bring forth