Biodynamic Digest #25
FORTY-THIRD WEEK OF THE YEAR Max Leyf
In winterlichen Tiefen
Erwarmt des Geistes wahres Sein;
Es gibt dem Weltenscheine
Durch Herzenskräfte Daseinsmächte;
Der Weltenkälte trotzt erstarkend
Das Seelenfeuer im Menscheninnern.
∇∆
IN wintry depths
the warmth of truth abides;
from threads of outer semblance,
inner truth is spun
my heart, a ceaseless weaver—
as cold of outer worlds waxes,
a fire kindles inwardly again
to light the hearth of human souls
February Astro Forecast
February begins with the Moon Full in front of the zodiacal constellation of Cancer the Crab.
The Sun shines in front of the Earth/Root constellation of Capricorn for the first two weeks of the month.
Our Sun will enter Air/Flower sign Aquarius on February 15, followed by a series of eclipses. The eclipse series offer unique challenges that can be somewhat mitigated through conscious use of the Biodynamic preparations.
February 16, the Moon will Eclipse Mars about midday.
February 17th the Solar eclipse of Aquarius will occur in the morning. The next day, on the evening of February 18th, moon will eclipse Mercury. Best to avoid Biodynamic work during the planetary and solar eclipses. One could spray Chamomile prep (BD #503) for enhancing the planet Mercury, together with Stinging Nettle (BD #504) for boosting healthy Mars energy before the eclipses occur. A simple application of Biodynamic Barrel Compound would also serve well to lay down a pattern of beneficial energies (and microbes!) before the series of eclipses. The 15th of February would be a good Root/Earth day to apply Biodynamic preps ahead of time. Similar to preparing for a forecasted storm that will affect the “weather” in your area, it is better to be prepared!
Together We are More
“And he said to them, ‘Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?’”1
However easy it is to forget that the universe is a unified whole composed of little wholenesses, the meaning that emerges in relationships – or rather is revealed in relating to each other – is greater than the sum of its parts.
Without your “You”
My “I” would mean nothing…
There will always be the courageous individual, the rare few who seek spiritual independence and creative freedom, unhindered, a crystalline lack of ordinary dependence on others. Rudolf Steiner talks about such a morally upright person as an independent aristocrat – in the Platonic sense of the best – who acts in a crystalline manner, giving away all except what must be taken from those who take too much.
Greedy Lime, Gentlemanly Silica
“Limestone is the fellow who would like to snatch at everything for himself. Silica, on the other hand, we should feel as the very superior gentleman who wrests away all that can be wrested from the clutches of the limestone, carries it into the atmosphere, and so unfolds the forms of plants. This aristocratic gentleman, silica, lives either in the ramparts of his castle—as in the equisetum plant—or else distributed in very fine degree, sometimes indeed in highly homeopathic doses. And he contrives to tear away what must be torn away from the limestone.”2
Having become independent, even godlike, it is not enough to stay there. “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.”3 Having received all the gifts of the higher hierarchives, having “swallowed up” the entire solar system and Milky Way, we find ourselves alone in ourselves. This was the trial of the Kali Yuga and materialism, but having received all these great gifts there is nothing left to gain from the world except by giving it all away again. This is our challenge: to become so separate that we have a nearly divine independence, and then, willfully, putting ourselves in service of others. As one author writes, “Generosity is the vice of kings” – having become little kings, masters of our own little world, the only thing lacking is spiritual poverty: the only new experience left for us is giving away everything we have gained in loving service. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”4 We must become as “poor” as little children, like naked newborns arriving in the world with nothing at all but in that poverty surrounded entirely by heaven. Stripped of Earthly passions and lower desires, heaven’s doorway may be approached.
“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy.
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended.” - Wordsworth
There are often solitary figures that constellate around a formative idea. As Rilke describes, the union of one individual with another is not the dissolution of each’s individuality, but rather being “the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility…” In the western esoteric tradition, individuality – even personality – is not surrendered, but remains fully integrated.
Such individuals give their own resources for the sake of a cause, their own soul mood for the sake of a group, their own vitality for the life of another: “like sympathetic people in human society, who have a favourable influence by their mere presence and not by anything they say …. by [their] mere presence.”5
Two or More
Where two or more are gathered in this spirit, there Christ is, and such a group is more than any individual alone – the mutual giving of friend to friend is that of radical service of the Other, the only scalable way of life. “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”6
How do we pass the spark from one soul to another? We have to give it away. Enthusiasm (literally “en theos” – divinity working in us) means we must give our divinity away, counting it as nothing for the sake of the countenance of the sacred Other. The warmth we generate together is more than what will be done alone, the mutual begetting of a new kind of soul. The old mode of initiation was to experience oneself as an isolated “point” among other alienated dots. But our current challenge is to leave that behind, recognizing our truer self as the field “in between” all those points. Not I, but Christ in me.
St. Francis tells us that it is in giving that we receive. Karmically, we know this to be an inviolable truth: as we give (or take), so we shall receive.
Grow Biodynamic!
Biodynamics grows wherever it is implemented, just as seeds proliferate where they are planted. It doesn’t matter how much we talk about seeds if we don’t go out and plant them! Without the actual utilization of the biodynamic preparations, we cannot expect to see any growth, nor development in the Biodynamic movement as a whole. Biodynamics is not simply about making life easier – in many ways it asks something very different: it asks for an ongoing sacrifice of attention and energy in reverent service for the Earth. Yet when giving is selfless, it is never exhausting. We only grow tired of something when we are conflicted, wishing to be doing something else. The wellsprings of the Spirit are infinitely deep.
A Simple Step
The beginning of biodynamics is simple: “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”7 Biodynamics only asks that you begin with small gestures of service for the Life that the Seraphim support by sustaining the soil. But as with any true loving act, it is never enough because you will want to do ever more for the beloved.
Maria Thun, with the help of Pfeiffer, developed the Barrel Compost, also known as CPP Cow Pat Pit or Barrel Compound. This was a joint effort, where collaboration led to a superior, beneficial new way to use the Biodynamic compost preparations. This has proven to be the easiest way to get the benefits of the Biodynamic compost preparations over an area of land, and worldwide, probably has the most use of any of the BD preps. This development gave a springboard for activating the desirable qualities of BD, without adding much extra strain on the practitioner. We cannot expect people to take a quantum leap from complacency to the devotional intensity of being a priesthood of the Earth when Steiner warns Pfeiffer that we are dealing with a “problem of nutrition.” Step one is getting the preparations out over as much land as possible in an easy manner, not to cut corners, but to lower the barrier for entering into biodynamics. Innovations, time and practice will lead to even more economical advances and developments in applying Biodynamics. Giving to the spiritual world is like a syphon; if you begin giving, you begin giving more, and you start storing up “treasures in heaven” – but the biggest challenge is starting. We want as many people to use the preparations easily, infuse their food with new forces, and from that new reserve of energy, serve the world with renewed fervor.
I would not be here without you
I could not do it without you
Individual effort is vitally important to the whole, though it may never be recognized. We may not even want to be recognized but may just want to do the good work of quietly healing the Earth, one little garden at a time.
The spark of the Other invites a flame that cannot be sustained in isolation – unless, of course, you are a high-level initiate who can provide for many in an attempt to uplift all in hopes of a fertile future. Rudolf Steiner was such an individual whose creative gifts continue to benefit humanity in the service of the spiritual world. His cup overflowth with the fountain of the font of the Spiritual World, quenching the proverbial thirst of many who need a strong sense of hope, even in the darkest of times.
Hugh Courtney once told us “that even reading and taking to heart one sentence from Steiner can lead an individual to an entire life’s work.” This means wrestling with angels. As Steiner himself says, “This book cannot be read the way people ordinarily read books in this day and age. In some respects, its readers will have to work their way through each page and even each single sentence the hard way. This was done deliberately; it is the only way this book can become what it is intended to be for the reader. Simply reading it through is as good as not reading it at all. The spiritual scientific truths it contains must be experienced; that is the only way they can be of value.”8
Courtney’s own life encapsulated this experience when he first picked up a random book, on a random shelf, in the book section of a health food store in College Park, Maryland. It just happened to be Steiner’s Agriculture Course, and he just happened to open to a “random page” where he read a sentence that lead to the rest of his life’s work: “The benefit of these agricultural preparations need to be applied to the largest areas of the Earth, so that the Earth may be healed…” Is there a sentence, a paragraph, a quote that has inspired you?
Reading one sentence of Steiner’s, led to an entire life chapter of work: developing practical biodynamics. That sentence is still bearing fruit: many others have taken up this work because of an inspired teacher who passed along the benefits of biodynamics and the potent flame of action and motivation. “a major task facing humanity as it moves into the new millennium is that of uniting spiritual and practical life.”9
Hugh Lovel once said, to the materialist more is more. However, the homeopath will tell you less is more! The greater you dilute and potentize, the less of the actual material you will use and the more of the energetic impulse of forces will be activated. Steiner, never doctrinaire, explains in his medical lectures that allopathic medicine works well on the limb-metabolic system, but to influence the nervous system often requires subtler homeopathic remedies. Invariably with Steiner, it is both/and! We can still apply lime to our fields and manure as usual and to this add the biodynamic preparations. Biodynamics replaces nothing, just as anthroposophy does not oppose anything except what is directly antithetical to LIFE. This is why biodynamics can be incorporated into any organic, regenerative, permaculture, agroforestry system – or even conventional! Results still happen, just like adding proper seasoning to a well cooked meal to make it even better. It might taste best if it’s a free-range organic chicken, but the biodynamic herbal seasonings will help any farm! In the helping of any individual farm is uplifting the whole. One Earth we all inhabit.
For Steiner, it was never a one-sided approach to healing; healing is always an integrated approach addressing physical, etheric, astral, and spiritual components that comprise the whole. For animals, this is more complex, but for plants, this is simpler because they are so contingent on their environment – we merely need to balance their environment to have healthy plants.
Steiner does tell us that “you will find the larger area you have to treat, the fewer and fewer cow horns you will need.” Has this been thoroughly tested? How dilute can we really get? Some of the work at Sustainable Settings involves using 1/1000 of the “recommended” dose of biodynamic preparations, yet still producing extraordinary results. In decimal form, that is .001, or one tenth of one percent. The energetic qualities transferred through homeopathic dilution and potentization open the doorway to a new kind of “spiritual fertilization.”
New spiritual impulses, developed for progress, rooted in wisdom is the pathway of developing the future of agriculture. “In our Movement, development of this insight must be a conscious aspiration, for it is a necessity in the evolution and culture of the old experiences, the old knowledge. I have emphasized often enough all that it means for the minds of men to enrich and make fruitful the heritage of ancient times by means of the new knowledge now available.”10
The physical and spiritual have to be considered in moving evolution forward.
“Like seeds growing into a forest, life is something that starts tiny and grows large. When we use the biodynamic preparations to sow the seeds of life into a field or a compost pile we should not be surprised that these organizational activities grow thereafter in that field or anywhere the compost is spread. The biodynamic preparations are an essential part of quantum agriculture because they impart life, and life grows.”11
What we have in biodynamics is a potent germ of life, which, like the loaves and the fishes, can be divided again and again and provide life everywhere it is taken, even in minuscule doses. This same effect works out into the world when we share with enthusiasm our commitment to our ideals worked out into action. It is not enough to like an idea or to have “head knowledge,” we must love what we know with enough devotion to put it into action – only such knowledge is infectious and contagious. We can only inspire people with action motivated by deep feeling for ideals, and we hope the work of so many people around the world inspires you in your own work.
Remember that nothing done in isolation is really alone: though we may be separated by many miles, we are working in the same spiritual space. Thank you for working with all of us FOR LIFE!
Luke 14:5
R. Steiner, Agriculture Course, Lecture III
Philippians 2:5
Matthew 10:25
R. Steiner, Agriculture Course, Lecture V
Matthew 18:20
Matthew 11:30
R. Steiner, introduction to Theosophy
Christopher Branford, Anthroposophy in Everyday Life
Burning Bush, pg 236
Hugh Lovel, Quantum Agriculture, pg 40
Finally reading your reflections! Was a rich and nourishing time together. Still integrating and much more grateful for the selfless mineral kingdom 💎