The Reality of the Zodiac
some observations from experience
On our farm, we raise sheep, hogs, cattle, geese, and a variety of other animals. One thing you’ll notice is that even if you feed the same food to each animal, every animal only becomes itself. Paracelsus calls the inner metabolic wisdom of the living organism the “inner alchemist.”
Eating grass, a sheep becomes a sheep, a cow becomes a cow, and a horse becomes a horse. In each case, their manure has a different character. Whatever a horse doesn’t use; it leaves behind in its manure. Consider a pig: a pig can’t sweat. A pig gets fat. It is such a “warm” animal that its manure is very cold. When a horse and rider are in sync, working in unison together, a horse will froth at the mouth — its entire movement is watery dynamics, so a horse’s manure is very warm. The manure of each animal is a sort of “photonegative” of the animal’s character.
When sheep eat grass, they leave behind an opposite image in their manure: whatever nutrients they didn’t need, they eject as manure. You could almost say that sheep manure has an “anti-sheep” quality. This is part of why the manure of an animal carries parasites: it’s already what the animal has rejected, and what an animal doesn’t need is a potential poison.
Over my years of farming here, I noticed a concrete connection existing between the planetary rulers of specific plants and animals on the farm. Forget the planets as you know them altogether for a moment. The dynamics of the planets are also at work down here, in microcosm, and relatively independent from the universe. Let me explain:
When our sheep grazed our wild rosa rugosa roses, they would erupt in beautiful new growth and abundant flowers. This happened consistently every year — until we introduced cows. Once the cows grazed there, in one brief season, all the roses vanished. What happened? The sheep provided something roses love. The cows consumed something roses needed.
Considered in terms of the cosmos, sheep are obviously ruled by the Ram, which is ruled by Mars. This means that when sheep eat grass, they use up all the (so-called) “Martial” qualities in the grass — they’re always butting heads! — and leave behind the opposite of Mars: Venus. Cows, by contrast, are ruled by the Bull, which is ruled by Venus, which means cattle use up more of the “Venusian” qualities in the grass and leave behind the opposite of Venus: Mars. In biodynamics, we talk about cows leaving behind I-forces as herd animals, but this is also true of different planetary qualities in the manure of different animals.
If you think of it metaphorically as colors, it’s as if sheep consume all the “red” and leave behind greening energy, whereas cows consume all the greening impulse while leaving behind only a martial quality. If aged long enough, the Mars-dominant manure of cows would assimilate itself to its opposite (Venus), but the effects of raw manure from an animal are something more immediate. Cow manure near roses, permeating the ground, works like an astral “magnet” (as Paracelsus would call it), drawing to itself what’s missing — naturally returning to equilibrium. If you have a cold day and a nice warm house, and you open the door long enough, the two atmospheres mingle and equalize. It is the differential that provides the unique power of each manure, as well as the potential to bind the opposite forces, preventing their fullest expression.
What are roses? They are flowers governed by Venus, surrounded by martial thorns, which means that roses require Venusian energy in the soil. Every plant requires the inner planetary forces to be abundant in the soil for growth, maintenance, and reproduction, but this is especially so for plants governed by those inner planets. As Mars-governed animals, sheep excrete Venus-rich manure. As Venus-governed animals, however, cows use up all the Venus energy in the grass, leaving behind nothing for the roses.
Rudolf Steiner has this to say about a similar wild rose:
“Fertility cannot be promoted entirely by artificial means; there must be knowledge of things that are directly connected with Nature herself
The rose is the best illustration of this. If you go out into the countryside you will see the wild rose, the dog rose, as it is called, Rosa canina. You know it, I'm sure. This wild rose has five rather pale petals. Why is it that it has this form, produces only five petals, remains so small and at once produces this tiny fruit? These reddish rose hips — you know them — develop from the wild rose. Well, this is due to the fact that the soil where the rose grows wild contains a certain kind of oil — just as the soil of the earth in general contains different oils in its minerals. We get oils out of the earth or out of the plants which have themselves absorbed them from the earth. Now the rose, when it is growing wild out there in the country, must work far and wide with its roots in order to collect from the minerals the tiny amount of oil it needs in order to become a rose. Why is it that the rose must stretch out so far, must extend the drawing power contained in its root to such a distance? The reason is that there is very little humus in the country soil where the rose grows wild. Humus is more oily than the soil of the countryside. Now the rose has a tremendous power for drawing oil to itself.”1
The Paracelsian alchemist and founder of modern agricultural chemistry, Wallerius, would distill manures to measure their oily (“fatty”) fraction and by this determine their essential value for agriculture. Cows extract very different forces from grass than do sheep — if thy didn’t, cows would become sheep when they ate grass! What a sheep leaves behind is beneficial for aromatic oils in roses, as well as other plants.
By the same token, Maria Thun found fermented nettles to be an ideal fertilizer for roses. There are many ways to see how this would work, but essentially what rises in nettles is what roses desire for their fullest expression.2 Similarly, nettles grown around rosemary significantly increase the concentration of essential oils.3 As a discharge of Mars forces, nettles leaves behind the mind of Venus forces for which aromatic roses wish.
For example, across the west, there used to be large mint farms that brought in sheep to graze down the weeds and tall mint. This was sustainable for decades—even generations. But when farmers removed sheep and started using synthetic fertilizers, they were only providing NPK and not the kind of “forces” (energy) that the mint plants really needed. I only looked it up now in Culpepper, and I’m not surprised to find that, like roses, mint is governed by Venus.
Our sheep will gladly eat nettles — but our cows won’t touch it. In light of Culpepper suggesting that stinging nettles are ruled by Mars, we could see that Mars-hungry sheep would be attracted to eating the plant while Venus-hungry cows might shun the same — even though they are both ruminants.4
Paracelsus writes about the power of making an “astral magnetic” by drying manure.5 As a dried sponge easily absorbs water, the dried manure will spontaneously absorb to itself all sorts of astral influences. In particular, I would add that Mars-depleted manure, like sheep manure, is “hungry” for what it lacks. Likewise, Venus-poor manure, like cow manure, “attracts” Venusian qualities from the surrounding soil. In the case of my rosa rugosa observation, the cow manure deprived (albeit temporarily) the roses of their much-needed patron Venus.
This is why, in biodynamics, we focus so much on odorless manure compost. Paracelsus rightly describes the power of manure as being in its scent, but we want a temperate effect than the one-sided power of raw manure. We want these aromatic elements to “settle down” in compost and be available when needed but not force-fed to plants. Aged long enough, each manure attracts to itself its own opposite and becomes a new kind of fertile chaos. The demonstrable effect of one animal on specific plants versus another suggests an inner kinship between animals and the stars.
Have you noticed specific plants thrive under the influence of a specific animal? Have you seen any plants fade away after encountering another animal?
R. Steiner, The Evolution of the Earth and Man and The Influence of the Stars, Lecture X, GA354, 9 September 1924, Dornach
While nettles is often associated with Mars, it's physical form is a “dying” or discharge of Martial forces. And as Steiner says about burning or decomposing, when something is rotted, it becomes its opposite. Thus, fermented nettles as a tea turns a Mars plant into a Venus remedy. In Steiner's medical lectures, he suggests making biochar out of the flaky bark of (Venus governed) river birch. This birch bark charcoal becomes the exact opposite impulse of flaky skin and this is prescribed as a possible remedy for eczema.
See: Spagyrics by Manfred Junius
Though I have not tried this, one might even imagine that fresh sheep manure might “starve” nettle patches of the necessary Mars forces required for their flourishing, as the cows did to my roses. Manure must be kept separate from wool (or any other keratin of the animal - horns, hooves, hair) to make such a hypothetical remedy. Done rightly, this could be used judiciously to remove undesired plants from our gardens without herbicides.
See: The Life of Paracelsus by Dr. Franz Hartmann
Thank you for such a fantastic distillation and explanation ~ truly remarkable and incredibly valuable!
Thank you for this article. It made me think that other than the Venus-Mars (Aries-Libra and Taurus- Scorpion) polarity there must be a Mercury-Jupiter (Gemini-Sagitarius and Virgo-Pisces) polarity as well as a Sun- Saturn (leo-Aquarius) and a Moon- Saturn (Cancer-Capricorn) polarity. If so, which would be the animals associated with these planetary polarities?