Against Interpreting Chromatograms
Over the past one hundred years, under the broader banner of anthroposophical endeavors, various “picture-forming methods” have been developed to see the “forces” at work behind appearances.
Articles
The art of cultivation.
Soil, plants, perception, and the life of the farm. Essays to read attentively and carry into practice.
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Three ways into the journal: the foundations, the compost pile, and the practice of observation.
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The Language of Birds
When I think about the elemental world, its closest representatives are undeniably pollinators and birds, and of these, there is a special class of wild animals that choose to live near human beings and reveal a special kinship with us.
Biodynamics: Pseudoscience or Prescience?
A peculiar modern phenomenon is that people do not suspend belief until something is “proven” but positively disbelieve anything in advance that lacks sufficient evidence, particularly if it is deemed “strange” enough or threatens inherited categories of thought.
Biodynamics and the Internalized Solar System
If we take any common fruit, such as a plum, the pit is hard and often unpalatable — but the seed we don’t eat contains the power for a plant to maintain itself, grow, and reproduce.
The ABCs of Biodynamic Agriculture
In this piece, we explore the simple polarity of what Steiner puts before us: what is earthly and what is cosmic? This is like asking: what a vowel is and what is a consonant?
The Biodynamic Agricultural Organism and the Other Me
Dedicating our appreciation to that greater organism in which we have appeared – on this Earth – through that gaze of wonder and reverence that enables us to resituate ourselves on the geological time scale, reminds us of our natural ability to relate to our spaces as integral parts of an intelligent organism.
Astral Light, Shine Forth
The universe awaits you, O Cosmic Explorer. Its secrets veiled behind a sheath of hardened materialism. This veil of Nature is not to hide her secrets, but is a revealing form of concealment.
Working in the Realm of the Living
One of the hardest things these days is thinking differently about something. Steiner warns us that materialistic thinking – really a form of hardened imagination – can only think what it already believes.
Biodynamics as Art
You know when you see a beautiful fruit. There’s nothing superfluous to it, everything is in its right place just by it being itself. It’s a beauty with substance, not just empty appearances.
Illuminating the Biodynamic Way
Being creative with our use of the biodynamic preparations is a great way to gain new insights. Something I personally like to do this time of year, as autumn approaches, is to add horn silica to my biodynamic horn manure applications in the evenings.
Reflections on Working With the Preparations
Understanding preparations requires an outlook of the kind that is able to know a living plant. In fact, my understanding of the preparations actually grows and dies in plant-like fashion.
Contemplative Chromatography
Picture-forming methods are not just for analysis, but contain within the practice an approach to developing dormant capacities of the entire human being.
Just a Drop: Chromatography and the Tiniest Entities
For this experiment, we selected a sample of soil from a garden bed that had not been tilled recently and only took the sample from the uppermost topsoil.
The Dynamics of Creation in Mexico
Our seminar was a spiritual retreat. Each morning, the wake-up bell sounded at 6 a.m. We all gathered at 7 a.m. in relative silence, and each morning, we watched the sun rise over the active volcano Popocatepetl.
On Building the Alchemical Vessel
IKÚ is a biodynamic farm in Nayarít, Mexico, which was born seven years ago from a vision, a dream and an impulse of will to deepen in the mysteries and beauty of the natural world, and the need to be direct participants of the process we call foods and how they nourish us.
Horsetail Herb–Equisetum Arvense–BD 508
I must admit that my belief in the efficacy of BD 508 rested on faith until I began fermenting it and extending it homeopathically. At that point, I experienced BD 508.
Confessions of a Modern Farmer
Farming can look deceptively idyllic. There are scores of gardeners who fancy themselves as farmers, and even more who tell me that they'd do anything to live my life, to be out in nature frolicking amongst the lambs and calves.
Upside Down Biodynamics
In his medical lectures, Steiner describes the gut as a “root” and the head as a “flower,” which is the exact opposite of what is offered in the Agriculture Course.
The Dynamics of Becoming Like a Plant
The plant is coaxed up and out of the soil by the Sun, and its unfolding seems so effortless. But, alas, we human beings do not experience any automatic spiritual development.
How-To: Balancing Biodynamic Soils
In my experience, more than a few biodynamic practitioners almost completely ignore the mineral realm. Perhaps this is because they want to take care to “remain within the realms of life” as Steiner urges us.
Biodynamics in the Dry Tropics
It is curious what comes to my mind when I try to describe the biodynamic activities here in the dry tropics of the peninsula of Baja California Sur in Mexico.
Fanning the Flame of Life with Biodynamics
Plants emerge from what once was inside the sun and return the same energy back to the cosmos. Their leaves unfold like etheric flames and culminate in seeds, which fly off like sparks and have the power to spread their green flames out of the hidden life within the soil.
The Embroidery of the Spirit
If we imagine a great circumference of an early stage of our solar system, it might have extended like an enormous egg-like shape, beyond the orbit of any of our current planets–an enormous cloud.
Harvesting Earth and Sky
The air is crisp, the light changing fast. Mornings are darker now and a bit slower. Yes, cows still need to be fed and crops tended, but we each of us are animals between Earth and sky, shifting ever so subtly with her evolving rhythms.
Even Better Compost
Compost is at the heart of fertility in the garden. Debris from the entire farm is brought together and allowed to age, especially ruminant manures.