By Sherry Wildfeuer
Good morning!
Just a month after the agriculture lectures, Rudolf Steiner wrote a sentence I really identified with:
So that’s what I’m going to try to do - because I’m a would-be active member. And because I am also a questioning human soul.“The would-be active members (of the Anthroposophical Society) should consciously make themselves mediators between what the questioning human soul feels as a problem of humanity and the universe, and what the knowledge of the Initiates has to recount.”
I had a deep feeling as I was growing up in the suburbs of NYC that something was missing. – There seemed to be no real meaning. I didn’t have a specific question, but rather I was generally searching for meaning and sense in life.
Then, in my first year of college, someone told me about Anthroposophy, and I felt I was hearing the truth for the first time. The same person introduced me to the stars and to birds and plants (remember, I was raised in the suburbs).
I’m going to assume that you are also questioning human souls.
There are only two ways to get answers to our questions: Observation and Thinking. We are continually observing, taking in impressions from the world, and then we search for concepts to illuminate our impressions with meaning.
To illustrate this, I will tell you about something that happened as I woke up one summer morning to what sounded like a fire-breathing monster through the open window. Reason told me that there probably wasn’t a dragon hovering over my house. But what was making that sound? I searched through all the concepts in my mind, and suddenly I knew – it was a hot air balloon! My question was answered and I felt satisfied. I had observed hot air balloons before. If I hadn’t, I would have had no mental picture and no concept. I got out of bed and looked out the window to confirm my knowledge, but really, it wasn’t necessary.
Through education, and I include the ideas derived from spiritual science in this, we expand our world of concepts. Then, as we have more outer and inner experiences, and more questions, we have more concepts to connect with them and feel satisfied.
If the concepts we learn don’t connect with our actual life experiences, we feel that they are abstract, and we may doubt their validity.
Now let’s see how this relates to the question of the cosmic sources in Agriculture.
We have all observed the stars, but how carefully? Have we learned to recognize the constellations and follow the movements of the planets?
I thought I received a decent education, but I was an adult before I learned that not only do the sun and moon and stars rise in the east and set in the west every day, which everybody knows, but that the sun and moon and planets all steadily move from west to east against the backdrop of the fixed stars on the ecliptic.
I was also an adult when I first realized what should have been obvious, namely, that the bright side of the sickle moon must face the setting sun in the evening and the rising sun in the morning. I am amazed at how many illustrators of children’s books haven’t made this basic observation.
Our concepts of the stars from school can be quite abstract – we think of them as balls of gas scattered at vast distances in outer space. The origins of the universe are presumed to be from an explosion.
However, the questioning human soul has been observing and recording the movements of the planets over long periods of time and seen that these movements create rhythmic patterns that can be drawn as geometric forms – each planet has its own ‘signature’ numeric pattern. They show that, far from being random, the universe is filled with beauty and wisdom which cannot be explained by material substance and forces.
In his first lecture on Agriculture, Rudolf Steiner made a sweeping statement: “Everything on Earth is only a reflection of what is taking place in the Cosmos.” That means there is a meaningful relationship between the stars in the sky and what we are familiar with here on earth.
He goes on to say that the rhythms, for example of the moon, are replicated in human life cycles but are not concurrent with their beginning and ending. In other words, we have become emancipated from the exact timing of these rhythms in the sky by internalizing them.
Then he talks about the Moon, Mercury and Venus. These are the planets that move faster and are closer to us than the Sun from a geocentric point of view, which is of course the perspective of the plants. They are connected with the plants’ ability to reproduce themselves, and with the mineral limestone.
Mars, Jupiter and Saturn (the slower planets, farther away than the Sun) are connected with the ability of plants .
Nature as we know it is dependent on the balance between these inner and outer groups of planets, with the Sun in the middle.
Then Rudolf Steiner goes on to say that the timing of planting makes a difference in the flavor and nutritive value of food crops. And he posed a challenge to his listeners, and I quote: “These things will have to be looked for again in ways that I could only begin to point out today. I wanted to indicate where the questions lie, questions that go far beyond our customary frame of reference.”
Maria Thun is one of those who took up this challenge. As I understand it, her method of discovery was to sow radishes every day and observe and record their development. She saw changes in growth patterns every few days, but had no concept of a cosmic rhythm that might account for these changes.
Then her attention was drawn to the connection of the four elements to the zodiac constellations, and the rhythm of the moon’s passage around the Earth in front of these 12 constellations. She checked her data and found that in fact, the sowing times coincided with four distinct growth patterns. When the moon was in an Earth constellation, the emphasis was on well-formed, larger roots. Sowing when the moon was in Water constellations produced especially well-developed leaf and stem growth. Air constellations produced longer lasting flowers, and Fire, a stronger emphasis on fruit and seed development.
Further research on her farm showed that when seeds are sown during certain events, such as eclipses, even if they are only visible in another part of the world, there is a lasting unfavorable effect on the plants.
These discoveries have enormous implications for growers.
When I was 23, in 1971, I came to the Goetheanum to work in the garden and learn biodynamics. Herr Goebel was the gardener then. He gave me the job of replicating a Maria Thun experiment. I spoke hardly any German, and he didn’t speak English, but somehow he got across what I was supposed to do, and I did it. By the end of the season, what I observed of the plants in the experiment convinced me that her ideas were true.
At one point I heard that only about 50% of biodynamic farmers use a planting calendar, and the other 50% prefer to sow according to the synodic rhythm of the moon’s phases. That is, of course, fine. Each person has to find their own relation to such things. But I hope that no one will speak in a harmful way about others who work differently with other rhythms, and that we will trust that each of us is seeking the truth, and that this truth itself will guide us to refine our understanding, and discover our errors, and that new truths will be revealed to us over time.
Although the wisdom of the stars is ancient, the new science that Rudolf Steiner was calling for is still only in its infancy. My motive in producing the Stella Natura biodynamic planting calendar for the last 46 years has been to help keep research in this field alive, and also, through the articles, to introduce new concepts to the readers.
In lecture 6 of the Agriculture Course, Rudolf Steiner speaks clearly about how the moon not only reflects the sunlight but it also reflects and organizes forces from the whole cosmos.
He also suggests that to deter animal pests we must burn their skins when Venus is in Scorpio and spread the ashes, and to deter insect pests we should burn them when the Sun is in Taurus. He goes so far as to say that the Sun is a totally different being when it is in the Bull or Ram or Twins. Of course, astrologers have known this for thousands of years, but it can be confusing that there are several different ways of seeing and dividing the constellations of the zodiac.
However you divide the circle of the ecliptic, all of us who had a conventional education have probably asked ourselves: How can there be a real connection between the plants on Earth, the Moon orbiting the Earth, planets orbiting the Sun, and the constellations of stars, which are not actually grouped near one another in the sky but are at very different distances in outer space and only appear as pictures from our vantage point on Earth? One could only make sense of a real influence if there were some kind of sensitive connecting medium that spanned these enormous distances and was also active in plant growth.
Well, through anthroposophy we learn that there is in fact just such a connecting medium! Rudolf Steiner calls it the “etheric,” and it is the bearer of life. In addition to endowing obvious living beings with life, the etheric permeates the Earth and its atmosphere and is present throughout the whole universe.
In agriculture, we are, of course, especially interested in enhancing the vitality of our crops and livestock so their life forces can become available to people when they eat. In the digestive process, when the food is broken down, the life forces are released to provide the energy needed to maintain people’s life and activity.
In biodynamics, we pay especial attention to the life within the soil – because there is an intimate connection between the living, active roots of the plants and the life within the mineral earth. Rudolf Steiner spoke of this long before we knew anything about the very fine processes between root exudates and the mycorrhizal fungi and other micro-organisms that mediate this connection with the soil.
One can rightly imagine the plants as children of the Mother Earth. Yet when the life has been driven out of the soil through chemical fertilizer, fungicides and pesticides, the plants that are force-fed through the water in the soil have become like motherless children, lying on the bosom of the Earth, but less and less able to draw from her vitality. Their roots are reduced to sipping straws for the nutrient-laden water, while their active intelligence has become atrophied.
How do we, as biodynamic farmers and gardeners, support the soil’s vitality to compensate for the continual removal of the life forces inherent in our harvested crops?
With compost. We make piles of animal manure and plant material that still carry some life forces – but in these piles there is chaos, because the forces are no longer bound to the forms of those living plants and animals. So before the life forces separate from the matter and disperse, we capture them by engaging them in a newly created organism in the compost pile! With the compost preparations, we insert actual organs and surround the pile with a skin.
I was fortunate in the early years of my study of biodynamics to be introduced to the Study Material by Dr. Bernard Lievegoed, issued by the Experimental Circle of Anthroposophical Farmers and Gardeners in Britain in 1951. In this, he, as an anthroposophical doctor, showed how each of the Preparation plants, together with their sheaths, creates an organ related to one of the planets. For me, this is an essential way of understanding the Preparations. They draw into the compost piles, and later into the soil and plants the next level of spirituality beyond the etheric. This is what we call the “astral forming forces.”
Rudolf Steiner said that the Sun is regularly changing, according to the stars of the zodiac before which it is passing. And the same is clearly the case for the planets, as when we must burn the skins of animal pests when Venus is in Scorpio. Something powerful must be raying out from these constellations!
Even with the concept of the etheric as a connecting medium, and the planetary astral forming forces, the questioning human soul may feel the need to know more about the source of these influences from the fixed stars.
Rudolf Steiner did not speak directly about spiritual beings in the agriculture lectures. But he gave the course in the last months of his lecturing career to a select group of people who had been asked to be familiar with his books Knowledge of Higher Worlds and Occult Science.
A question for many people now is: Is it necessary to be interested in the fullness of Anthroposophy to take up biodynamics effectively? My answer would be: Only as far as one’s questioning soul longs for answers. If you have been guided to biodynamics by your sense for truth and health, and the practices and their positive results answer your questions sufficiently, then no one should force the fullness of Anthroposophy on you. But it is essential that there be mutual respect among those who are fulfilled by working with the practices and those whose souls need the ideas of spiritual science to answer their questions, questions such as, What are the sources of the influences that radiate from the stars to the Earth?
This brings us to the story of the origin of the Universe. A materialistic view points to physical reactions, devoid of meaningful qualities. Spiritual science reveals a different story of evolution. In this story, very exalted, powerful spiritual beings preceded material manifestation and brought it about. They worked from the periphery towards a common center, over vast aeons of time, in giant stages of development. Rudolf Steiner names these beings according to their qualities – this is one of the great gifts he gave us. In a talk like this, one can give only a tiny sketch of the process of evolution, but here it is:
The Spirits of Will, inspired by the Spirits of Love and Spirits of Harmony, poured out their own substance as an offering for the creation of what we now experience as our solar system along with Earth and all of nature and humanity.
The Spirits of Wisdom endowed this primal substance with self-sustaining life.
The Spirits of Movement brought the gift of conscious awareness.
And the Spirits of Form endowed human beings with individuality.
Many other beings also contributed to the formation of this amazing world we live in.
And just as a potter or sculptor develops skills and capacities while working with clay, so did these spiritual beings evolve as they participated in this evolutionary process.
The aim was to create beings who were endowed with the qualities of their creators and would, in addition, be capable of love.
I don’t know if any of you have ever tried to make somebody love you. I have, and I can report that it doesn’t work! Love can only be given freely. So freedom has to be the precondition for love. And the basis of freedom has to be independent thinking with the capacity to reflect on one’s own being.
This is the reason why these great creator beings have emancipated us, withdrawn from their creation into the periphery – the world of the stars – and become silent. The rest of nature still hears the music and responds to its rhythms. Only we are “deaf”to it – so that we may learn to listen to the inner voice of thought within our soul.
The great drama of the Universe is centered now on whether human beings will be satisfied by the material world, or whether we will add the results of spiritual science to the content of our concepts in order to make sense of what we perceive. Then we will have a sense that we belong to an immensely meaningful universe, full of moral, sacrificing beings. For in the same measure as the creator beings have given us our freedom, they have diminished their own power. We really need to take this in.
What can arise in us then is a profound sense of gratitude to those creator beings, and a heartfelt longing to be faithful to them in their trust of us.
But as we heard last night from Vandana Shiva, there are powerful beings working hard to dull our thinking, deny our freedom, lame our wills, and cut us off, not only from the beings who created us but from the core of our own being. They would deny all meaning in life and attach pride and egotism to our freedom. I hope you all take the opportunity to go upstairs and visit the great statue that Rudolf Steiner carved, showing the Christ, or we could also say the representative of the human being, at the moment of the Temptation.
There is a battle for the human soul, and we could become afraid for the outcome of this great creative process. But we don’t have to be afraid if we use our freedom to fill our spirit with what was called “cosmic content” in the Michael Letter we heard this morning. Or we could also say that we can fill our thinking with the cosmic intelligence. Then not only our thoughts but also our feelings and what we do will be in harmony with the created world, and we can safely become co-creators.
Indeed, in the agriculture course, we are encouraged to create farms as new living organisms that incorporate the mineral, plant, animal and human realms.
There is a verse that Rudolf Steiner gave to Marie Steiner as a Christmas gift one hundred years ago, which I would like to read for you:
Stars spoke once to human beings.
It is world destiny that they are silent now.
To be aware of the silence can be pain for us on earth.
But in the deepening silence, there grows and ripens what we speak to the stars.
To be aware of the speaking can become strength for the human spirit.
I would like to take this thought a step farther, because of course speaking is most satisfying if it’s met with the speech from someone else in conversation. This is also possible with the stars, once we realize that they are filled with being.
We are told by Rudolf Steiner that we can enter into a kind of conversation with our farm by walking the fields in a meditative mood, that suddenly we will know all kinds of things because in that mood our breathing changes and becomes more subtly in tune with the nitrogen in the air -- the nitrogen which carries astrality, the soul element in the universe. He says that this nitrogen ”can teach us what Mercury and Venus and the rest of them are doing, because it knows these things and is sensitive to them.”
So in summing up, let’s look at some of the ways we can enter into a more conscious relationship with the cosmic sources in agriculture:
1) We can learn to see the cosmic influences reflected in nature, as we are shown how to do all through the agriculture lectures.
2) We can more consciously time our planting and seed sowing to be in harmony with the cosmic rhythms.
3) We can make the biodynamic compost preparations to actively connect the planetary forces with our land. And we can use the two field sprays to support the Sun’s working in the soil and in plant development.
4) We can create farms in such a way that they become vessels for a higher “Individuality” to be active within them, as microcosmic living beings reflecting the great macrocosm.
5) We can learn to meditate in such a way that we can receive insights as we go through life.
This kind of striving isn’t merely a job, not even a profession – it’s a calling, and it can fill our lives with meaning.
But farms are also dependent on the health of our human relationships, which often require even more effort than the practical work. And here I would suggest, whether we take up the fullness of anthroposophy or not, that the inner path of development that Rudolf Steiner outlines very accessibly at the end of his book Theosophy will help us to develop the moral qualities we need to work harmoniously with one another.
I don’t think that any of us is consciously trying to be motivated by personal pride or egotism, but in fact these impulses work actively in every one of us. A heightened level of meaning can radiate through our lives when we learn to shine the light of consciousness into the darker areas of our soul and transform them so they can serve our striving to create farms that radiate healing.