Everything on Earth is made possible by the constant influx of energy from the cosmos. When we fertilize our fields with compost, we bring living potential energy to the soil so that it can be discharged as kinetic energy in the growth forms of plants. But not all energy is the same. The heat of a gas stove is not the same as the warmth of a mother hen incubating her egg. Likewise, not all compost is created equal. The resulting organic matter from the process of decomposition still bears many inner similarities to the parent materials from which it formed.
It’s not enough to eat a lot of one kind of food. We need diversity in our diet. Similarly, we need a suitable range of “foods” for the soul to be healthy in the fullest sense. We need specific kinds of forces to be replenished to provide the soil with everything needed for healthy plant growth. In Steiner’s words, we depend on the “proper living quality of forces.”1 This is not one homogenous kind of life force, but a spectrum of forces. If we do it correctly, we need only apply these remedies to the compost pile and distribute the treated compost. Each preparation encapsulates a specific radiating floral process, which offers an expedited restoration of what naturally had accumulated in the soil incrementally over eons. What we experience as organs within the human body are not fully internalized in plants yet nonetheless govern their development and expression. We must restore these influences to the soil so that plants have everything they need at each stage of growth in order to generate spiritual food for human nutrition. These subtle vital processes accumulate slowly by nature, but we can restore them much faster through alchemy. Though each biodynamic preparation takes half a year to a full year to create, this is no time within the earth’s evolutionary history.
It is impractical to spread compost in certain cases, such as large farms. When compost cannot efficiently be spread, Ehenfried Pfeiffer’s Field and Garden Spray may be employed to bring all these forces into play directly because it contains the horn manure as well as the spectrum of “compost preparations” based on specially treated yarrow, chamomile, nettles, oak, dandelion, and valerian.
If we take a step back, we must consider how all energy flows from high concentration to low concentration. How could it not? A master instructs a student, the sun illuminates the earth, and the divine world enlivens the soul. Someone cannot teach me how to farm unless they first know what they’re doing. This principle applies on many levels.
For example, if we imagine ancient Egypt, where seeds were stored in tombs alongside decomposing mummies, these seeds remained viable for centuries and were even germinated. Steiner attributes the viability of these ancient seeds to the slow radiation of forces from the incremental decay of the mummies present in the same chambers. In other words, the radiation streams from a concentrated source to a less concentrated receptacle. “The cereal grains in the tombs of the Egyptian Pharaohs were really buried together with those powers of destruction. Whereas everything that is body at the moment when the human being takes his body towards the powers of destruction is destroyed, the situation is the opposite for the principle that lies in the seed, for its vitality is strengthened. It may happen, therefore—not with all seeds but with many—that the process occurs which normally occurs in winter. The plant seeds come together with the powers of destruction that exist in the dead body and their powers are actually preserved. They will then be as active as fresh grain, even after a very long time.”2 As the sun radiates to the earth, according to Steiner, the mummies also slowly radiate vitality to seeds.3
Whether it’s a mummy or a compost pile or the organic matter in the soil, it is the process of ongoing decomposition that is significant. Steiner says, “soil containing plenty of humus, i.e. substances in the course of decomposition, bears etheric life within it.”4 Some biodynamic practitioners practice burying seeds over the Holy Nights in winter. Burying seeds during winter, in particular in the presence of ongoing decomposition charges them with increased vitality. In addition, seeds buried in the presence of more decomposition would presumably improve even more. Farmers who interred seeds within a compost pile over winter would likely see a remarkable improvement.5
As Alex Podolinsky puts it, “There is no ‘permanent’ humus. Humus only exists at the height of a PROCESS of continuous becoming. That is, in statu nascendi. ‘Permanent’ humus would be dead material.”6 We must remember that humus is not reducible to a single molecular substance but an ongoing dynamic life process. It is precisely this ongoing decomposition of humus that is its life potential (or ethericity) which it can impart to plants. As the substantiality of humus disintegrates, it radiates the forces that went into composing it. The same process is at work in the types of humus we strive to create in the biodynamic preparations: we concentrate particular forces and let them decompose to a certain point, without allowing them to die into mineralized dust.
This sort of accumulation of forces doesn’t simply radiate from decomposition in the soil to a seed, but also from the greater cosmos to plant, most deliciously in sweet fruit. When we watch fruit ripening, we see a specialized atmosphere in which the forces of warmth, air, and light are condensed. The fruit itself is a breathing thing. It does not merely swell up like a balloon, the fruit also exhales moisture every day in much the same way that the flower before it breathed out to the cosmos. This is much like how sweat works in mammals: water and salt emerge, but much of the salt is reabsorbed into the organism.7 In the case of fruit, we are dealing with a different soluble substance, namely sugar, but the process remains similar. A key difference between the expanding fruit and the flower is that the flower is open to the cosmos, whereas the fruit encloses that evaporative process within itself.
The flower gives nectar to the bee, which the bee refines by dehydrating the nectar into concentrated honey.8 Honey is an intersection of eternity and time, a nearly imperishable food. Honey exhumed from ancient Egyptian tombs had remained sweet after thousands of years. There is a nearly universal notion in the great world religions of the “incorruptibility” of the mortal remains of the saints.9 Holiness cannot be faked, and the mortal remains of saints, by tradition, do not rot -- they tend to spontaneously mummify and emit an “odor of sanctity” compared to the aroma of flowers, even roses.
Paramahansa Yogananda, who places the Christ as a central and unique incarnation of the soul of the world, speaks of India as a land filled with the remains of the holy dead. Cremation, by contrast, is for those who had not attained such a state. The spontaneous preservation of the saints is in stark contrast to the artificial methods employed by the ancient Egyptians (or other modern preservation methods) which emulated only materially what holy men undergo. It is not without significance that the death of Judas speaks of his intestines bursting and Herod being consumed by worms -- these were not holy men, and if there was any doubt in the minds of the intended audiences of the gospels, these concrete examples were given to dispel all doubt. There are accounts in the east of those who starved themselves and drank poisons to turn themselves into mummies, but that is a form of spiritual bypassing. Only those who have spiritualized not only their astral bodies and etheric bodies but also their physical bodies can leave remains that do not know corruption. The visionary agriculturalist Carey Reams also champions a similar notion within gardening. He says that healthy produce does not rot, it dehydrates.10
The alchemists spoke of the dew (Ros) as a key source of fertility for the earth, in a more direct way even than rainfall. In Steiner’s handwritten notes, which can be seen at the end of the Creeger-Gardner translation of the Agriculture Course, he indicates that most of the preparations are to be hanged over summer before burial in winter. There are several considerations: “hang it in a sunny place, leaving it there throughout the summer.”11 Why are we to hang it in the summer? To ripen this floral impulse into esoteric fruits.12
As Steiner puts it elsewhere, “But cast an eye up to the plums and apples, at the fruits growing on the trees—ah! Those we don’t have to bother to cook much, for they’ve been cooked by the sun itself during the whole summer! There an inner ripening has already been happening, so that they are something quite different from the roots, or from stalks and stems (which are not ripened but actually dried up by the sun).”13
In fruit we have a special relationship to astrality, where what is cosmic light can be condensed. In Steiner’s words, “[T]he plant enters into a special relation with the astral element, as in the case or the formation of edible fruits.”14 The sweet water rising as nectar in flowers is captured within the semi-permeable skin of the fruit which exhales moisture but retains this nectar-like substance.
Suppose I take the liberty to reinterpret a passage concerning yarrow in the Agriculture Course. In that case, one might translate “tending already towards the fruit”15 not so much as referring to yarrow going to seed but rather as a reference to the yarrow-filled bladders themselves undergoing a ripening tendency towards fruit. Regardless, when we hang the yarrow bladder in a sunny spot, it undergoes a daily inhalation and exhalation, much like the earth. Ideally, the preparations also become covered in fertilizing dew. As a fig is a flower that does not fully open, these preparations have their mammalian sheath which allows certain forces to be absorbed from the cosmos while it allows others to evaporate. One can almost imagine that the little flowers within these sheaths are quickened to life by the morning dew and generate a sort of nectar within these sheaths. We are reminded of Rilke’s paean to the fig:
O fig tree, how I’ve pondered you—
the way you almost skip flowering completely
and release, unheralded, your pure secret
into the sprigs of fruit already poised to ripen.
Like a fountain’s pipe, your bent boughs drive the sap
downward and up: and it leaps from sleep, almost
without waking, into the joy of its sweetest achievement.16
Day by day, the preparations “ripen” like fruits in the sun as little specialized atmospheres. What remains behind in the preparation is much like what remains behind in a particular fruit: the fruit exhales moisture but what remains behind is concentrated sweetness. We should see the sweetening process at work in a fig, fruits, honey (and even cooking) as much the same thing. When we remember that the entire flowering process in the eyes of Goethe is “male” oriented towards producing the seed, what we have here is a ripening process of an alchemical “seed” of the germinal force contained within each specific herb.
As many of you are undoubtedly aware, we get sweet fruits above ground in summer and autumn, but we tend to get sweeter roots in winter. Carrots grown in winter become sweeter than summer carrots. Steiner speaks of the power of the “summer sun” that is active above ground in summer, but that same activity moves, with the sun in winter, mostly below ground during the winter. The following passage from Man as Symphony of the Creative Word merits quoting in full:
“The sun’s influence upon the earth is in fact not only present when the sun is shining directly on to the earth. I have often drawn attention to the fact that in winter peasants put their potatoes into the earth, cover them with earth, because what comes towards the earth during summer as the sun's warmth and the power of the sunlight, is, just during winter, within the earth. On the surface of the earth potatoes become frosted; they do not become frosted but remain really good potatoes if they are buried in a pit and covered with a layer of earth, because throughout the winter the activity of the sun is inside the earth. Throughout the whole winter we must look for the sun-activity of summer under the earth. In December, for example, at a certain depth within the earth, we have the July-activity of the sun. In July the sun radiates its light and warmth on to the surface. The warmth and light gradually penetrate deeper. And if in December we wish to look for what we experience in July on the surface of the earth, we must dig a pit, and then what was on the surface of the earth in July will be found in December at a certain depth within it. There the potato is buried in the July sun. Thus the sun is not only where crude materialistic understanding looks for it; the sun is actually present in many spheres.”17
When we bury the preparations over winter, we take the concentrated summer energy and allow it to continue to ripen over winter within the womb of the earth. As Steiner says, “For plants the earth is the mother, the heavens the father. And all that takes place outside the domain of the earth is not the mother-womb for the plant. It is a colossal error to believe that the mother-principle of the plant is in the seed-bud.”18 In a way, it is as if we are concentrating a kind of libidinous vital energy in these preparations, distinct to each herb’s innate tendency. As another esoteric author writes, "[I]n alchemical literature we find recurrent mention of the 'seed of minerals.'The Great Magical Agent is active in the generative organs of men and animals. It also governs the functions of flowers, the generative organs of plants, and here is another clue to the symbolism of the rose. The same force is active too in the processes by which cells reproduce themselves in our bodies."19
If the preparations were left to hang over winter, they would simply freeze solid and the process would largely be arrested. We must follow the dynamics of life above the soil into life below the soil. By burying the preparations, we take what has ripened under the influence of the father sky and take it into the womb of mother earth to fructify. What develops here is a divine marriage of heaven and earth. “Fertility,” as Alan Chadwick says, “is a marriage.”20
One can imagine the yarrow preparation as an alchemical unfolding of a sweet fruit out of the yarrow process, a sort of concentration of yarrow nectar. This father sky quality is then buried within the womb of the earth to fructify, much like how a seed germinates. But we unearth the preparation before plants can assimilate it. What we have created is something that is born out of “ripening” the sweet nectar of the herb and then gestating that germinal impulse within the earth itself.
When I have found preparations imperfectly transformed, I move them into a dark, cool place like a root cellar, where the humidity and temperature are auspicious. In root cellar conditions, preparations transform easily. If you ever have imperfect preparations, try moving them into a root cellar for a few weeks and see what happens yourself. Preparations can then dwell in a root cellar indefinitely.
As aphids draw sap from a tree and produce a sort of “milk” that ants harvest, it is as if we are concentrating the nectar of these herbs by prolonging their life as manmade fruits ripening in the sun. As we all know, there is no sweet “yarrow fruit” we can eat, but that is exactly what we are making with the yarrow bladders: a sort of concentrated sweetened “fruit” of yarrow essence, something Nature herself does not produce spontaneously.
Even though we go beyond what Nature does herself, this isn’t to say we are working against Nature at all, but rather that we are teasing out what is latent potential within Nature already. As the alchemist Paracelsus writes, “Nature is so careful and exact in her creations that they cannot be used without great skill; for she does not produce anything that is perfect in itself. Man must bring everything to perfection. This work of bringing things to their perfection is called ‘alchemy.’”21
When you make manure into compost you are making base materials more valuable -- you are improving “lead” materials and making them into black gold. Whenever you make better out of worse, you are involved in the Great Work. You are an alchemist whenever you participate in bringing what is imperfect by nature closer to its perfection.
Rudolf Steiner, Agriculture Course, Lecture IV, https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA327/English/BDA1958/19240612p01.html
Steiner, Rudolf, From Beetroot to Buddhism, pg. 139.
By this image, an “ideal” storage facility for seeds would be in a facility that hosted very slowly decomposing organic materials to “recharge” seeds and keep them viable long beyond their normal life. Conversely, if one were to store seeds with a “sheath” of compost around them, they would remain viable much longer.
R. Steiner, Agriculture Course, Lecture IV
Based on this constellation of images, I contacted a soil scientist at a university in the USA with the notion of “charging” seeds in an active thermophilic compost pile. He ran a small trial and, to his astonishment, found statistically significant results in favor of the compost-irradiated seeds.
Alex Podolinsky, Living Agriculture, pg. 8.
“A study published this year [2017] found that tattoos may interfere with the way your skin sweats. Compared to non-tattooed skin, inked skin excretes about 50% less sweat, says study coauthor Maurie Luetkemeier, a professor of physiology at Alma College in Michigan. ‘We also found the sodium in sweat was more concentrated when released from tattooed skin,’ he says. When your glands produce sweat, the skin tends to reabsorb sodium and other electrolytes from that perspiration before it breaks free. His findings indicate that tattoos may partially block this reabsorption.’” Source: https://time.com/4725634/tattoo-ink-dangerous/
A Rosicrucian maxim is Dat Rosa Mel Apibus (“The Rose gives Hone to the Bees”) is reference to the rosy cross and the aspiration to take only the sweet nectar of life.
Muslims affirm that if the bones of Jesus of Nazareth were ever claimed to be, it is a lie, for the bodies of the prophets are incorruptible and he has already ascended.
Carey Reams, Choose Life or Death
R. Steiner, Agriculture Course
Specifically in the light of spring, dawn, and the East: “The Virgin, the Force of our Arcanum, is the principle of springtime, i.e. that of creative spiritual élan and spiritual flourishing.” - Anonymous, Meditations on the Tarot
R. Steiner, From Sunspots to Strawberries, 31 July 1924, pg. 93.
R. Steiner, Agriculture Course, Lecture 8
R. Steiner, Agriculture Course, Lecture 5
Rainer Maria Rilke, Sixth Elegy, Duino Elegies
R. Steiner, Man as Symphony of the Creative Word
Steiner, Man as Symphony of the Creative Word, pp. 128-129.
Paul Foster Case, The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order, pg. 223.
Lecture by Alan Chadwick in New Market, Virginia, 1979 http://www.alan-chadwick.org/html%20pages/lectures/virginia_lectures/chadwick-virginia-fertility-8-1.html
Paracelsus: Selected Writings, Second Edition, “Preparation of Remedies", Bollingen Seires XXVIII, 1/9, 78, pp. 92-93.