TheMartinus' comments in Joel's journal, coming at this time of year, put Uriel to mind as Steiner presented that Archangel of Summer:

"...Then you will come to feel that all this is a kind of background for the cosmic, light-filled deeds of Uriel, and a clear impression of the countenance and gaze of Uriel will come before you.

"We feel a deep longing to understand this remarkable gaze, directed downwards, and we have the impression that we must look around to find out what it signifies. Its meaning first dawns upon the mind when as human beings we learn to look with spiritual eyes still more deeply into the blue, silver-gleaming depths of the Earth in summer. And we see that weaving around these silver-gleaming crystalline rays are shapes -- disturbing shapes, I might almost call them -- which continually gather and dissolve, gather and dissolve again.

"Then we come to perceive -- the vision will be different for everyone -- that these shapes are human errors which stand out against the natural order of regular crystals here below. And it is on this contrast that Uriel directs his earnest gaze. Here during the height of summer the imperfections of manking, in contrast to the regularity of the growing crystal forms, are searchingly surveyed. Here it is that from the earnest gaze of Uriel we gain the impression of how the moral is interwoven with the natural.....

"It is impossible to look towards the increasingly earnest gaze of Uriel, directed towards the depths of the Earth, without also seeing there something like wing-like arms, or arm-like wings, raised in earnest admonition, and this gesture by Uriel has the effect of imparting to mankind what I might call the historic conscience. Here at high summer appears the historic conscience, which at the present time has become uncommonly feeble...."

This is from Lecture IV of The Four Seasons and the Archangels given in Dornach in October 1923, translated by C.D. and D.S.O. Copying them over now I realize for the first time that this feeling of staring at the irregular forms of human error, specifically one's own errors and shortcomings, is one of the things that makes farming so fraught with anxiety at this time of year. One simply can't live up to even the physical demands of farming, let alone the spiritual/moral. There's usually some kind of crisis at our farm around the Solstice, brought on by the sheer nervous exhaustion of too much sun and frantic outward activity, and then suddenly a slight shift in perspective makes everything seem not so hard. The sun pauses and starts heading back again, at first imperceptibly. Only then does one feel able to take small steps to rise to the occasion. At least that's my experience. Then Uriel stops looking like such an awful judge and task-master and becomes our guide.