Holy Week

"Make preparations for us there."

“Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: Thou anointest my head with oil.” - Psalm 23:5

“That which burns is sulphur, that which evaporates is mercurius, and that which remains in the ash is salt.”¹ - Paracelsus

“Since neither earths nor salts supply homogeneous nutrients to plants it follows that the benefit of manure consists in supplying land with a sufficient amount of fatness and humidity.”² - Wallerius

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During this particular week in the calendar of the soul’s experience of the cosmos, we approach a pivotal moment for biodynamics. This week, we approach the first Sun-day after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Day and night are in balance; sun and moon are in balance. Now, the year shall unfold.

This is a week wherein the passion of the Christ — which means anointed — is recounted, specifically the leadup to his betrayal by Judas. As a guest, Jesus is at a meal with his disciples. A woman interrupts, bringing a special perfume worth an entire year’s wages, and breaks it, anointing the head of Jesus with the entire contents:

“[T]here came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head.”³

Mary anointing the head of Jesus with precious nard

This scene conjures up a particular image ripe with meaning. The perfume mentioned is Spikenard, Nardostachys jatamansi, a close relative of Valeriana officinalis, both valued for their aromatic essential oils. Here, the woman (who is named Mary in the Gospel of St. John) anoints the head of Jesus with this aromatic oil. Anointing (or even Christening) is an essential image of what biodynamic remedies do. As Steiner says in the Agriculture Course, “If this highly diluted juice of valerian be added to manure, it can arouse in it a proper behaviour towards phosphorous substances.”⁴ One might ask: how so? What is special about Valerian?

Nardostachys jatamansi

Valeriana officinalis

In this scene, Judas is explicitly more concerned with the monetary value of the wasted perfume than the meaning of her sacrifice; he interjects that this precious oil could have been put to much more profitable use. Judas was a materialist who believed in a literal physical kingdom. Nonetheless, I think he was a sincere believer inasmuch as he could be. When a materialist reads a book, it can only be in a materialistic way because that’s simply where that person is. Someone lacking sight cannot see light. Someone blind to the spiritual world cannot see it or know it, but can only “believe” in a distorted way in the conjecture that such an inaccessible world exists. “Judas is concerned only with what has meaning in sense existence.”⁵ If he couldn’t weight it or count it, to him it might as well have not existed. Judas had no access to the supersensible world. Judas was blind and, therefore, was — at best — a false believer in what he himself could not know or experience. Living faith is never blind, but is inner sight of spiritual realities and confidence in their truth. Faith sees the wholeness that is not merely the sum of the parts. Someone who sees trees doesn’t need to “believe” anything hypothetical about them, but they exist to them. Likewise, the spiritual world is invisible without suitable organs of perception just as light is invisible if our physical eyes are closed. If Judas had been able to see, he would not have been a believer in his own prejudices but rather a knower of spiritual truths.

As Steiner says, Judas attached “prime importance to money, that is to say, to materialism. In Judas was incarnated the entire materialistic age. This materialistic age has obscured and darkened the spiritual. Through his death Christ becomes the Redeemer of materialism.”⁶ Judas falsely expressed concern about how this money could have helped the poor when it was really power he wanted for himself. Jesus chastises Judas, saying,

“Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish, but you will not always have me. She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.⁷

Immediately after this scene, Judas departs to get paid twenty silver pieces to betray Jesus — ill-gotten gains he will shortly disown.⁸ But let us return to the gift of Mary and this special aromatic gift.

Valerian is excellent for preparing composted manure for burial. If you are spreading compost and working it into the soil, that is the time for anointing what will soon be hidden within the earth. Ideally, Valerian is a soil spray applied together with manure or with horn manure when working it into the soil. Our use of Valerian on the soil mirrors Mary’s sacrificial anointing of Jesus because the root of the plant is its head. As Steiner says:

“The root corresponds to the head of the human being; he is an upside-down plant.”⁹

Image by Stewart Lundy © 2024 All Rights Reserved, Used by Permission.

When we apply Valerian as a foliar spray, it is as if we are anointing the “limbs” of the plant world. When we apply Valerian to the soil, we are anointing the “head” of the plant world. By taking aromatic oils, which, by right, would return to the cosmos and instead introducing them to the root of plants, we enhance the cosmic upward stream. While this is not clay (the vehicle for the cosmic upward stream), nonetheless, aromatic oils introduced below a plant increase its upward striving.

“The forces coming in from the Cosmos and being caught up underground must be able to flow upwards again, and the substance which brings this about is clay. Clay is the mediator through which the cosmic activity in the soil is enabled to work from below upwards.”¹⁰

Lest we forget, the alabaster jar in which this Valerianic cousin is contained is gypsum, which is also known as selenite. Gypsum is calcium sulfate, a beautiful marriage of opposites: the acidic and the alkaline, the terrestrial and the cosmic. The marriage is so beautiful in gypsum that it appears transparent, like glass.

Gypsum does not change the pH of your soil, but it nonetheless provides soluble calcium and sulfur for plants during a very sensitive time of growth. One might say that together with Valerian as a soil spray, Holy Week is also often the time to apply gypsum to our fields. As John Kempf writes, you can apply gypsum “30-45 days ahead of calcium demand peak…. the calcium release curve of gypsum begins peaking in this time frame and then begins dropping off about 90 days after application.”¹¹ In our case, we should remember that Ascension is 40 days after Easter. What is called Eastertide lasts 50 days, culminating in Whitsun — Pentecost. 90 days after Easter, gypsum’s calcium effect is wearing off, and we’re arriving at the festival of St. John’s Day just after the summer solstice. Many cosmo-agricultural principles are hidden in plain sight.

Would it surprise any of our readers that peasants used to call gypsum St. Mary’s Glass (Marienglas)?

Gypsum (selenite) block

In the crystal selenite (gypsum) we see a kind of solidity like lime, but also a transparency like silica.

Consider the entire process at work in Valerian: it produces essential oils in its flowers (as do many plants), but it also radiates its aroma throughout its entire body, even permeating its roots and the surrounding soil. What a rare thing happens in Valerian! Essential oils, which naturally want to rise up out and away, instead are able to go down in and toward the earth. Valerian demonstrates a special relationship between the sulfur pole and the calcareous salt pole. Not to say there is sulfur or calcium from the periodic table, but a dynamic between those two polarities. Remember also that the folk etymology of Valerian is Baldrian, the plant of Baldur, the god of light, who symbolizes “the Spiritual in man, the principle for which the soul is seeking and which is found in Initiation.”¹²

By bringing essential oils (which want to escape back to the cosmic All) down into the root, an energy differential is created: the upward cosmic stream is aided directly. What Alan Chadwick calls elevé (levity) can be enhanced by introducing forces into the earth that wish to return to heaven. Valerian is a plant of which we can say with the American poet Roethke: “Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.”¹³

One might even suggest that within Valerian is a phosphorescent process with a special affinity for the calcareous pole. The crystal selenite (gypsum) has a solidity like lime but also a transparency like silica. As St. Mary’s Glass, gypsum is a miraculous substance with a truly harmonious power. Gypsum is a conjunctio, a chemical wedding of opposites.¹⁴ If we were to extend this image, the most appropriate vessel for our Valerian preparation would be gypsum — selenite or alabaster.¹⁵ Whether or not this is practical for everyone is less important than the real application of Valerian to our soils during Holy Week, along with the shattering of Mary’s alabaster jar and the spreading of Gypsum to welcome the ascent of plants out of matter.

Jesus sends out his disciples and tells them something that will resonate especially with those of us who practice biodynamics: “Make preparations for us there.”¹⁶

Fanning the Flame of Life with Biodynamics

1. Von der Bergsucht; Sudhoff, Paracelsus Werke, I/9:476.

2. trans. John Mills, 1770, Chapter 15. The Manuring of Land (pp. 252-274) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YCX3gI11PV3PeV5Guj2P1YEF8Uqi6Ux_/view?usp=drive_link

3. Mark 14:3

4. R. Steiner, Agriculture Course, Lecture V (GA327, 13 June 1924, Koberwitz)

5. R. Steiner, Th Gospel of St. Mark, (GA139, 22 September 1912, Basel)

6. R. Steiner, The Foundations of Esotericism, Lecture VIII (GA93a, Berlin, 3rd October 1905)

7. Mark 14:8

8. In Paramahansa Yogananda’s account of it, it would take nearly twenty centuries for the karma of the betrayal of Jesus by Judas to be paid off.

9. R. Steiner, Illusory Illness and the Feverish Pursuit of Health, (GA56, 3 December 1907, Munich)

10. R. Steiner, Agriculture Course, Lecture II (GA327, 10 June 1924, Koberwitz)

11. https://johnkempf.com/nutrient-application-timing/

12. R. Steiner, The European Mysteries and Their Initiates, (GA 57, 6 May 1909, Berlin)

13. Roethke, Theodore. Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke, 1943-63. United States: Doubleday, 1972, pg. 50.

14. Of the biodynamic herbs, chamomile explicitly has a relationship between sulfur and calcium in particular. Steiner says: “It is not enough to say that camomile is distinguished by its strong potash and calcium contents. The facts are these: Yarrow mainly develops its sulphur-force in the potash-formative process. Hence it has sulphur in the precise proportions which are necessary to assimilate the potash. Camomile, however, assimilates calcium in addition. Therewith, it assimilates that which can chiefly help to exclude from the plant those harmful effects of fructification, thus keeping the plant in a healthy condition. It is a wonderful thing to see. Camomile too has a certain amount of sulphur in it, but in a different quantity, because it has calcium to assimilate as well.” Agriculture Course, Lecture V, (GA327, 13 June, 1924 Koberwitz)

15. Those seeking a further sacrifice would make the vessel themselves on a lathe, saving the shavings for next year, place the valerian juice inside, and let it age for a year. Waiting a full year corresponds to “one year’s wages” (the patience of waiting a year). Then one would destroy the vessel, grind it in a mortar and pestle, mix it with the valerian, and distribute it across the field as a soil spray. Such an act would be rich with symbolism, feeling, and sacrifice. But this cannot be considered a general recommendation. For most people, spreading gypsum together with valerian is more than they might normally do. A few might choose to store Valerian in a selenite vessel but abstain from destroying it annually. As all of these measures are unnecessary, they are free from any compulsion. Only if someone feels inspired to do so should one do so, and not out of any feeling of obligation.

16. Mark 14:15