The preparation I indicated yesterday for the improvement
of manure was intended, of course, simply as an
improvement, as an enhancement. Needless to say, you will
go on manuring as before. To-day we shall have to
consider the manuring problem still further, in view of
our necessary standpoint that whatever is living must be
kept within the living sphere. Ethereal life, as we have
seen, should never depart from anything that is in the
sphere of living growth. Hence it was of great value for
us to recognise that the soil out of which the plant
grows and which surrounds the roots, is in itself a kind
of continuation of growth within the earth. There is a
vegetative plant-life in the earth itself.
In yesterday's lecture I even showed how we can imagine
the transition from a thrown-up hillock of earth —
with the inner vitality of its humus-content — to
the rind or even the bark that surrounds the tree,
enclosing the tree from the outside. Naturally enough, in
modern time, when all insight into the great connections
of Nature has been lost — as indeed it had to be —
this insight too has gone. Science no longer perceives
this common life — common to the Earth and all
plant-growth—nor how it is continued into the
excretion-products of life in the manure. Science no
longer knows the working of this all-embracing life.
Insight into these things had to be lost, increasingly as
time went on.
Now Spiritual Science, as I said in yesterday's
discussion, must not come in in a turbulent and
revolutionary spirit, interfering with all that our time
has achieved in the different domains of life. We must
begin by recognising what has really been achieved. We
must oppose or fight those things alone which rest on
completely false premises — which are a mere
outcome of the materialistic world conception. Meanwhile,
in all the different spheres of life, we must try to
supplement genuine modern achievement with that which can
flow from our own, living conception of the Universe.
Therefore I need not spend much time describing how you
should prepare manure — whether from stable manure,
liquid manure or compost. In this respect — for the
due preparation of manure and liquid manure — much
has already been done. Perhaps we can say more of these
things in this afternoon's discussion. I will only say
this to begin with: The idea that in farming we are
really exploiting the land is quite correct.
Indeed, we cannot help doing so. With all that we send
out into the world from our farms, we are taking forces
away from the earth — nay, even from the air. These
forces must somehow be restored. After a time, the manure
substance whose inner value is so deeply connected with
all that we need for the impoverished earth, must be
subjected to a proper treatment, so as to quicken and
vitalise it sufficiently.
Notably in the most recent times, many false judgments
have arisen from the materialistic outlook in this
respect. They are at pains to investigate the working of
bacteria — the smallest of living entities. They
ascribe to these minute creatures the virtue of preparing
the right conditions and relationships of substance in
the manure. They reckon first and foremost on all that
the bacteria do for the manure. Brilliant, highly logical
experiments have been made, inoculating the soil with
bacteria. Truly brilliant! but as a rule they have not
stood the test of time, for they have proved of little
use.
These things, in fact, are done from a point of view for
which the following is a just parallel: Here is a room;
we find an extraordinary number of flies in it. Because
there are so many flies, we say the room is dirty. But
the room is not dirty because of the flies. On the
contrary, the flies are there because the room is dirty.
Nor should we clean the room by thinking out devices to
increase the number of flies (imagining that they will
eat the dirt up more quickly) or even to diminish them,
or anything of that kind. We shall attain far more by
tackling the dirt itself, directly.
So it is when we use animal excretion-products as manure.
We must regard the minute living entities as occurring by
virtue of the processes that arise of themselves, here or
there in the dung substance. The presence of these
creatures may therefore be an extremely useful symptom of
the prevalence of such and such conditions in the
dung-substance itself. But there can be no great good in
planting them or breeding them. (Indeed, we might often
do more good by combating them). In effect, for the
living life which is so vital to agriculture, we should
always remain in larger spheres, and even to these
minutest of creatures we should apply as little as
possible of atomistic forms of thought.
It should go without saying that such a statement ought
never to be made unless we are able to show positive ways
and means at the same time. No doubt, what I have now
been saying is emphasized in many quarters. But it is not
only important to know what is abstractly correct. If our
correct knowledge is merely negative it generally helps
us little; we must have positive principles to set over
against it. That is the point in every case! If positive
proposals cannot be made, we had better refrain from
stressing the negative, for it will only tend to annoy.
A second thing is this: As a result of materialistic
tendencies, once more it has been thought well in modern
times to treat the manure in various ways with inorganic
substances — compounds or elements. Here too,
however, people are learning from experience. It has no
permanent value. We must in fact be clear on this: So
long as we try to ennoble or improve the manure by
mineralising methods, we shall only succeed in quickening
the liquid element — the water. Now for a firm and
sound plant-structure it is necessary not only to quicken
and organise the water — for from the water which
merely trickles through the earth, no further
vitalisation proceeds.
We must vitalise the earth directly, and this we
cannot do by merely mineral procedures. This we can only
do by working with organic matter, bringing it
into such a condition that it is able to organise and
vitalise the solid earthy element itself. To endow the
mass of manure, or the liquid manure, with this kind of
quickening or stimulus, is precisely the object of those
inspirations which we are able to give to agriculture out
of spiritual science. This quickening, this stimulation,
can be given to any mass that is available as manure,
provided always we remain within the sphere of life.
Spiritual Science always tries to look into the effects
of living things on a large scale. It does not pry
into the minute and microscopic, for that is not the most
important. It does not primarily concern itself with the
conclusions which are drawn from the minute — from
microscopic investigations. To observe the macrocosmic
— the wide circumference of Nature's workings —
that is the talk of Spiritual Science. But we must first
know how to penetrate into these wider workings of
Nature.
There is a saying you will often find repeated in
agricultural literature, in many variations. No doubt it
arises from the experiences which they believe they have
collected. It is to this effect: “Nitrogen,
phosphoric acid, calcium, potash, chlorine, etc., even
iron — all these are essential in the soil if
plant-growth is to prosper there. Silicic acid, on the
other hand, lead, arsenic, mercury” — and
they even include soda in this category — “have
for plant-life at most the value of stimulants or
irritants. One may stimulate the plants with them, but
that is all.” In this very statement, the men of
to-day betray the fact that they are really groping about
in the dark. It is a very good thing — as a result
of tradition, no doubt — that they do not treat the
plants as madly as they would do if they really followed
this proposition. It is, as a matter of fast, impossible
to do so.
What is the truth in this connection? Great Nature does
not leave us so mercilessly in the lurch if we fail to
take the silicic acid or the lead or mercury or arsenic
into account, as she does if we fail to take into account
her potash or limestone or phosphoric acid. Heaven
provides silicic acid, lead, mercury, and arsenic —
provides them freely with the rain. On the other hand, to
have the proper phosphoric acid, potash and
limestone-content in the Earth, we must till the soil and
manure it properly. Heaven does not give these things of
her own accord.
Nevertheless, by prolonged tillage we can gradually
impoverish the soil. We are, of course, constantly
impoverishing it, and that is why we have to manure it.
But the compensation through the manure may presently
become inadequate — and this is happening to-day on
many farms. Then we are ruthlessly exploiting the earth;
we let it become permanently impoverished. We must then
provide for the true Nature-process to take place once
more in the right way.
Those that are commonly called the stimulant
effects are indeed the most important of all.
Precisely the substances people think inessential are
present all around the Earth — actively working,
though in the finest and most tenuous dilution. Moreover,
the plants need them just as much as they need what comes
to them from the Earth. They draw them in from the
world-circumference — from the cosmic circle.
Mercury, arsenic, silicic acid — these substances
the plants suck upward from the soil of the Earth after
they have been rayed into the soil from the Cosmos.
However, we as human beings can utterly prevent the
soil's receiving from the world-circumference, and raying
outward in the proper way, what the plants need in this
respect. If we continue manuring at random from year to
year, we can gradually prevent the Earth from drawing
into itself what it needs by way of silicic acid, lead
and mercury, which are at work in the finest homoeopathic
doses, if I may put it so — coming inward from the
world circumference. These influences need to be absorbed
into the growth of the plant, if it is really to receive
all that it needs from the Earth. For which the help of
all that comes from the world-circumference in this fine
and delicate condition, the plant builds up its body in
the configuration of carbon.
Therefore we need to treat our manure not only as I
indicated yesterday; we should also subject it to a
further treatment. And the point is not merely to add
substances to it, with the idea that it needs such
and such substances so as to give them to the plants. No,
the point is that we should add living forces to
it. The living forces are far more important for the
plant than the mere substance-forces or substances.
Though we might gradually get our soil ever so rich in
this or that substance, it would still be of no use for
plant-growth, unless by a proper manuring process we
endowed the plant itself which the power to receive into
its body the influences which the soil contains. This is
the point.
The men of our time are altogether unaware how the
minutest quantities will often work with great intensity,
precisely where living things are concerned. Now,
however, we have the brilliant investigations of Frau Dr.
Kolisko on the effects of “smallest entities.”
What hitherto, in homeopathy, was a blind groping in the
dark, has here been placed on a sound scientific footing,
and as an outcome of her work I think we may take it as
proved that in the minute entities, in the minute
quantities, the radiant forces we need in the organic
world are really set free — provided only
that we use these entities in the proper way. And in
manuring it is not at all difficult for us to use the
minute quantities in the proper way.
You will remember how we prepare the forces in the cow's
horns, and how we add the preparations, as the case may
be, before or after manuring. These forces and influences
then assist the working of the manure itself. We add
these forces, so as to assist the working of the manure,
which, apart front these homoeopathic doses, is used in
the proper way, as heretofore. But in other ways, too, we
must still try to give the manure the right living
property. We must give it such a consistency that it will
retain of its own accord as much of nitrogen and other
substances as it requires. For we shall thereby impart to
the manure a tendency to that living vitality which will
enable it to bring the right vitality into the Earth
itself.
To-day therefore — more as a general indication —
I shall mention a few more things in the same direction:
preparations to add to the manure in minute doses, in
addition to the cow-horn stuff'. The preparations we add
to the manure vitalise it in such a way that it will then
be able to transmit its vitality to the soil from which
the plants are springing.
I shall mention various things, but let me say at the
outset: if they should be difficult to obtain in one
district or another, they can, if need be, be replaced by
certain other things. Only in one case a substitute
cannot be found, for it is so characteristic that the
effect is scarcely likely to be found in the same way in
any other plant.
From what I have said hitherto, we must provide for those
things of the Universe which are above all important —
namely, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulphur — to
come together in the right way with other substances in
the organic realm; notably with potash salts, for
instance. As to the mere quantity of potash salts which
the plant needs for its growth, no doubt a little of
these things is already known. It is well-known that
potash-salts (or potash, generally speaking) carry the
growth rather into those regions of the plant organism
which become rigid structure or framework in many
instances, i.e. which bring about the formation of
trunk or stem or the like. The potash-content will hold
back the growth in forming strong and sturdy stems, etc.
But it is very important — in all that takes place
as between the earth and the plant — so to
assimilate the potash content that it relates itself
rightly, within the organic process, to that which really
constitutes the body of the plant, i.e. to the
protein substance. Here we shall be successful if we
proceed as follows:
Take yarrow[1]—a
plant which is generally obtainable. If there is none of
it in the district, you can use the dried herb just as
well. Yarrow is indeed a miraculous creation. No doubt
every plant is so; but if you afterwards look at any
other plant, you will take it to heart all the more, what
a marvel this yarrow is. It contains that of which I told
you that the Spirit always moistens its fingers therewith
when it wants to carry the different constituents —
as carbon, nitrogen, etc. — to their several
organic places. Yarrow stands out in Nature as though
some creator of the plant-world had had it before him as
a model, to show him how to bring the sulphur into a
right relation to the remaining substances of the plant.
One would fain say, “In no other plant do the
Nature-spirits attain such perfection in the use of
sulphur as they do in yarrow.” And if you also know
of the working of yarrow in the animal or human organism
—if you know how well it can make good all that is
due to weaknesses of the astral body (provided it is
rightly carried into the biological sphere) — then
you will trace it still farther, in its yarrow-nature,
throughout the entire process of plant growth. Yarrow is
always the greatest boon, wherever it grows wild in the
country — at the edges of the fields or roads,
where cereals or potatoes or any other crops are growing.
It should on no account be weeded out. (Needless to say,
we should prevent it from settling where it becomes a
nuisance — it may become a nuisance, though it is
never actually harmful).
In a word, like sympathetic people in human society, who
have a favourable influence by their mere presence and
not by anything they say, so yarrow, in a district where
it is plentiful, works beneficially by its mere presence.
Now you can, do the following. Take the same part of the
yarrow which is medicinally used, namely, the upper part
— the umbrella-shaped inflorescence. If you have
yarrow ready to hand, so much the better. Pick the fresh
flowers and let them dry, only for a short time. Indeed,
you need not let them dry so very much. If fresh yarrow
is unobtainable — if you can only get the dried
herb — you will do well before using it to press
the juice out of the yarrow leaves. (Even from the dried
leaves, you can get the required juice by decoction).
Water the inflorescence a little with this juice.
Now you will see once more how we always remain within
the living sphere. Take one or two hollow handfuls of
this yarrow-stuff, pressed pretty strongly together, and
sew it up in the bladder of a stag. Enclose the yarrow
substance as best you can in the stag's bladder, and bind
it up again. There, then, you have a fairly compact mass
of yarrow in the stag's bladder. Now hang it up
throughout the summer in a place exposed as far as
possible to the sunshine. When autumn comes, take it down
again and bury it not very deep in the Earth throughout
the winter.
So you will have the yarrow flower (it matters not if it
be tending already towards the fruit) enclosed in the
bladder of the stag for a whole year, and exposed —
partly above the earth, partly below — to those
influences to which it is susceptible. You will find that
it assumes a peculiar consistency during the winter.
In this form you can now keep it as long as you wish. Add
the substance which you take out of the bladder to a pile
on manure — it may even he as big as a house! —
and distribute it well. Nay, you need not even do much to
distribute it: the radiation itself will do the work. The
radiating power is so very strong that if you merely put
it in — even if you do not distribute it much —
it will influence the whole mass of manure or liquid
manure or compost. (If we speak of radiating forces, the
materialists will believe us, will they not, for even
they speak of radium!)
The mass we thus gain from the yarrow has an effect so
quickening and so refreshing that if we now use the
manure thus treated, just in the way manure is ordinarily
used, we shall make good again much that would otherwise
become a ruthless exploitation of the earth. We re-endow
the manure with the power, so to quicken the earth that
the more distant cosmic substances — silicic
acid, lead, etc., which come to the earth in finest
homoeopathic quantities — are caught up and
received.
Here again the members of our Agricultural Circle should
make experiments; they will soon see how well it works.
And now the question is (for we should always work with
insight, not with lack of insight), the question is: As
to the yarrow, we have learned to know it. Its
homoeopathic sulphur-content, combined in a truly model
way with potash, not only works magnificently in the
plant itself, but enables the yarrow to ray out its
influences to a greater distance and through Large
masses. But the question remains: Why should we sew it up
precisely in the bladder of a stag?
Here we must gain an insight into the whole process that
is connected with the bladder. The stag is an
animal most intimately related, not so much to the Earth
but to the Earth's environment, i.e. to the Cosmic
in the Earth's environment. Therefore the stag has
antlers, the functions of which I explained yesterday.
Now that which is present in the yarrow is intensely
preserved, both in the human and in the animal organism,
by the process which takes place between the kidneys and
the bladder. Moreover, this process itself is dependent
on the substantial nature or consistency of the bladder.
Thus, in the bladder of the stag — however thin it
is in substance — we have the necessary forces.
Unlike the former instance (the cow, which is quite
different), these forces are not connected with the
interior. The bladder of the stag is connected rather
with the forces of the Cosmos. Nay, it is almost an image
of the Cosmos. We thereby give the yarrow the power quite
essentially to enhance the forces it already possesses,
to combine the sulphur with the other substances.
In this yarrow treatment we have an absolutely
fundamental method of improving the manure, while all the
time we remain within the realm of living things. We
never go out of the living realm into that of inorganic
chemistry. This is important to observe.
Now take another example. We want to give the manure the
power to receive so much life into itself that it is able
to transmit life to the soil out of which the plant is
growing. But we must also make the manure able to bind
together, still more, the substances which are necessary
for plant growth — that is, in addition to potash,
also the calcium compounds. In yarrow we are
mainly dealing with potassium influences. If we also wish
to get hold of the calcium influences, we need another
plant, which — if it does not enthuse us like
yarrow — also contains sulphur in homoeopathic
quantity and distribution, so as to attract through the
sulphur the other substances which the plant needs, and
draw them into an organic process.
This plant is camomile (Chamomilla officinalis).
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.
Now once again you can look around you. The indications
of Spiritual Science invariably consider the great and
wide circles of life — the macrocosmic, not the
microscopic conditions. Now you must trace, for example,
the process which camomile undergoes in the human and
animal organism, when taken as food or medicine. The
bladder is comparatively unimportant for what the
camomile must undergo in the human or animal organism. In
this case, the substance of the intestinal walls is far
more important. Therefore, if you want to work with
camomile — as is the other case with yarrow you
must proceed as follows.
Pick the beautiful delicate little yellow-white heads of
the flowers, and treat them as you treated the umbels of
the yarrow. But now, instead of putting them in a
bladder, stuff them into bovine intestines. You
will not need very much. Here again, it is a charming
Operation. Instead of using these intestinal tubes as
they are commonly used for making sausages, make them
into another kind of sausage — fill them with the
stuffing which you thus prepare from the camomile flower.
This preparation, once more, need only be rightly exposed
to the influences of Nature. Observe how we constantly
remain within the living realm. In this case, living
vitality connected as nearly as possible with the earthy
nature must be allowed to work upon the substance.
Therefore you should take these precious little sausages
— for they are truly precious — and expose
them to the earth throughout the winter. Bury them not
too deep, in soil as rich as possible in humus. If
possible, choose a spot where the snow will remain for a
long time and where the sun will shine upon the snow, for
you will thus contrive to let the cosmic astral
influences work down into the soil where your precious
little sausages are buried.
Dig them out in the springtime and keep them in the same
way as before. Add them to the manure just as you did the
yarrow preparation. You will thus get a manure with a
more stable nitrogen content, and with the added virtue
of kindling the life in the earth, so that the earth
itself will have a wonderfully stimulating effect on the
plant-growth. Above all, you will create more healthy
plants — really more healthy — if you manure
in this way than if you do not.
I know perfectly well, all this may seem utterly mad. I
only ask you to remember how many things have seemed
utterly mad, which have none the less been introduced a
few years later. Read the Swiss newspapers of the time
when someone first suggested building mountain railways.
What did they not throw at his head! Yet within a short
time the mountain railways were there, and to-day no one
remembers that he who devised them was a fool. Here, as
in all things, it is simply a question of breaking down
prejudice.
As I said before, if these two plants should he difficult
to get in some locality, they might be replaced by
something else, though it would certainly not be so good.
Moreover, you can perfectly well use the plant as dried
herb. On the other hand, most difficult to replace for
its good influence on our manure is a plant which we are
frequently not at all fond of — I mean, in the
sense that you like to stroke what you are fond of. This
is a plant we do not like to stroke — it is the
stinging nettle. Truly it is the greatest
benefactor of plant growth in general, and you will
scarcely find another plant to replace it. If it should
happen to be unobtainable in any place, then you must get
it dried from elsewhere.
The stinging nettle is a regular “Jack-of-all-trades.”
It can do very, very much. It, too, carries within it the
element which incorporates the Spiritual and assimilates
it everywhere, namely, sulphur, the significance of which
I have explained already. Moreover, the stinging nettle
carries potassium and calcium in its currents and
radiations, and in addition it has a kind of iron
radiation. These iron radiations of the nettle are almost
as beneficial to the whole course of Nature as our own
iron radiations in our blood. Truly, the stinging nettle
is such a good fellow and does not deserve the contempt
with which we often Look down on it where it grows wild
in Nature. It should really grow around man's heart, for
in the world outside — in its marvelous inner
working and inner organisation — it is wonderfully
similar to what the heart is in the human organism. The
stinging nettle is the greatest boon.
Forgive me, Count Keyserlingk, if I become a little local
in my references at this moment. But I would say, if ever
it should be necessary in a certain sense to rid the soil
of iron, you would do well to plant stinging nettles
where they will do no harm. For in a certain sense the
nettle plants would liberate the uppermost layers of the
soil from the iron influence, because they are so fond of
it and draw it into themselves. Though this might not
undermine the iron as such, it would certainly undermine
the influences of the iron on plant-growth in general.
Hence it would undoubtedly be of great benefit to grow
stinging nettles in this district. However, I only
mention that in passing, to show you how important the
mere presence of the stinging nettle may be for the
growth of plants in the whole area around.
Now, to improve your manure still more, take any stinging
nettles you can get, let them fade a little, press them
together slightly, and use them in this case without any
bladder or intestines. You simply bury the stuff in the
earth. Add a slight layer of peat-moss or the like, so as
to protect it from direct contact with the soil. Bury it
straight in the earth, but take good note of the place,
so that when you afterwards dig it out again you will not
be digging out mere soil. There let it spend the winter
and the following summer — it must be buried for a
whole year.
This substantiality will now be extremely effective. Mix
it with the manure, just as you did the other
preparations. The general effect will be such that the
manure becomes inwardly sensitive — truly sensitive
and sentient, we might almost say intelligent. It will
not suffer any undue decompositions to take place in it —
any improper loss of nitrogen or the like.
This “condiment” will make the manure
intelligent, nay, you will give it the faculty to make
the earth itself intelligent — the earth into which
the manure is worked. The soil will individualise itself
in nice relationship to the particular plants which you
are growing. It is like a permeation of the soil with
reason and intelligence, which you can bring about by
this addition of Urtica dioica.
What, after all, do they amount to — the customary
modern methods of improving the manure? No doubt their
first superficial effects are sometimes surprising, but
the result will soon be that the alleged “excellent
agricultural products” which you obtain thereby
become mere stomach-filling for the human being. They
will no longer have the proper nutritive power. You
should not be deceived by the swollen size of any
product. The point is that it should be inwardly
consistent, with really nutritive intensity.
Now we may be concerned, here or there in our farming
work, with the occurrence of plant diseases. I am
speaking in general terms at the moment. Nowadays people
are fond of specialisation in all things; therefore they
speak of this disease or that. It is quite right to do
so. If we pursue pure science, we must know what one
thing or another looks like. Yet it is generally of
little use for the doctor to be able to describe an
illness ever so clearly. Far more important it is for him
to be able to heal it, and in healing quite other points
of view are important than those that the scientists
generally have to-day in their description of diseases.
We can attain the greatest perfection in the description
of disease, we can know precisely what happens in the
organism in terms of modern physiology or physiological
chemistry; and yet we may still not be able to heal the
disease at all. In healing we must proceed not from the
histological or microscopic diagnosis, but from the great
universal connections. And so it is in relation to
plant-nature.
Moreover, plant-nature in this respect is simpler than
animal or human nature; therefore our healing too can
take — if I may say so — a more general
course. For the plant world, we can indeed apply a kind
of universal remedy. Indeed if it were not so, we should
be in a very awkward position over against the vegetable
world, as we often are over against the animals in
veterinary work — of which, by the way, we shall
still have to speak. This difficulty does not occur tn
human healing, for a man can say what hurts him, while
animals and plants can not. However, it is a fact that
healing in this instance takes a more universal course. A
large number of plant diseases, although not all, can be
removed as soon as we observe them, by a rational
improvement in our manuring, i.e. by the following
methods.
We must bring calcium into the soil by our manure, But it
will not be of use to bring the calcium to the soil by
any channels that avoid the living sphere. To have a
healing effect, the calcium must remain within the realm
of life; it must not fall out of the living realm.
Ordinary time or the like is of no use at all in this
respect.
Now there is a plant containing plenty of calcium —
77 percent of the plant substance, albeit in a very fine
state of combination. I refer to the oak —
notably the rind of the oak, which represents an
intermediate product between plant-nature and the living
earthy nature, quite in the way I explained when I spoke
of the kinship of the living earth with bark or rind. For
calcium as it appears in this connection, the
calcium-structure in the rind of the oak is absolutely
ideal.
Now calcium, when it is still in the living state, not in
the dead (though even in the dead it is effective) —
calcium has the property which I explained once before.
It restores order when the ether-body is working too
strongly, that is, when the astral cannot gain access to
the organic entity. It “kills” or damps down
the ether-body, and thereby makes free the influences of
the astral body. So it is with all limestone. But if we
want a rampant ethereal development, of whatsoever kind,
to withdraw in a regular manner — so that its
shrinking is beautiful and regular and does not give rise
to shocks in the organic life — then we must use
the calcium in the very structure in which we find it in
the bark of the oak.
We collect oak-bark, such as we can get. We do not need
much — no more than can easily be obtained. We
collect it and chop it up a little, till it has a
crumb-like consistency. Then we take a skull — the
skull of any of our domestic animals will do, it makes
little or no difference. We put the chopped-up oak-bark
in the skull, close it up again as well as possible with
bony material, and lower it into the earth, but not too
deep. We cover it over with peat-moss, and then introduce
some kind of channel or water-pipe so as to let as much
rain-water as possible flow into the place. (We might
even do it as follows: Take a barrel where rain-water is
constantly flowing in and out. Put in it vegetable matter
such as will bring about the continued presence of some
vegetable slime. Let the bony vessel which contains the
crumbled oak-bark lie in the slime in the water). This,
once again, must hibernate. Snow-water is just as good as
rain-water. It must pass through the autumn and winter in
this way. What you add to your manuring matter from the
resulting mass will lend it the forces, prophylactically
to combat or to arrest any harmful plant diseases.
So we have added four different things. All this requires
a certain amount of work, it is true — yet if you
think it over, after all it involves less work than all
the devices that are pursued in the chemical laboratories
of modern agriculture, which are also costly. You will
soon see that from the point of view of national economy
what we have here explained pays better.
But we shall also need something to attract the silicic
acid from the whole cosmic environment, for we must have
this silicic acid in the plant. Precisely with regard to
silicic acid, the Earth gradually loses its power in the
course of time. It loses it very slowly, therefore we do
not notice it. Nor must you forget that those who only
look at the microcosmic or microscopic and never at the
microcosmic spheres, are unconcerned in any case about
this loss of silicic acid; they think it insignificant
for the growth of plants. In reality, it is of the
greatest significance.
There is something you must know in this connection. For
the scientists of to-day it will no longer argue such
entire confusion on our part as it would have done a
short time ago. Are not they themselves already speaking
frankly of a transmutation of the elements? Observation
of several elements has tamed the materialistic lion in
this respect, if I may say so. Processes, however, that
are taking place around us all the time are as yet
utterly unknown. If they were known, people would more
readily believe such things as I have just explained.
I know quite well, those who have studied academic
agriculture from the modern point of view will say: “You
have still not told us how to improve the
nitrogen-content of the manure.” On the contrary, I
have been speaking of it all the time, namely, in
speaking of yarrow, camomile and stinging nettle. For
there is a hidden alchemy in the organic process. This
hidden alchemy really transmutes the potash, for example,
into nitrogen, provided only that the potash is working
properly in the organic process. Nay more, it even
transforms into nitrogen the limestone, the chalky
nature, if it is working rightly.
You know that in the growth of plants, all the four
elements of which I have been speaking are involved.
Hydrogen also is there, in addition to sulphur. I have
told you of the significance of hydrogen. Now there is a
mutual and qualitative relationship between the limestone
and the hydrogen, similar to that between oxygen and
nitrogen in the air.
Even externally, in a quantitative chemical analysis as
it were, the relationship between the oxygen-nitrogen
connection in the air, and the limestone-hydrogen
connection in the organic processes, might well be
revealed. The fact is that under the influence of
hydrogen, limestone and potash are constantly being
transmuted into something very little nitrogen, and at
length into actual nitrogen. And the nitrogen which is
formed in this way is of the greatest benefit to
plant-growth. We must enable it to be thus engendered by
methods such as I have here described.
Silicic acid contains silicon as you know, and silicon,
too, is transmuted in the living organism —
transmuted into a substance of great importance, which,
however, is not yet included among the chemical elements
at all. Silicon is transmuted. In time, we need the
silicic acid to attract and draw in the cosmic
properties. Now in the plant there simply must arise a
clear and visible interaction between the silicic acid
and the potassium — not the calcium. By the
whole way in which we manure the soil, we must quicken
it, so that the soil itself will aid in this
relationship.
We must now look for a plant which by its own
relationship between potassium and silicic acid can
impart to the dung — once more, if added to it in a
kind of homoeopathic dose — the corresponding
power. And we can find it. This, too, is a plant which if
it only grows among our farms, has a most beneficial
influence in this direction. It is none other than the
common dandelion (taraxacum officinale).
The innocent yellow dandelion! In whatever district it
grows, it is the greatest boon; for it mediates between
the silicic acid finely, homoeopathically distributed in
the Cosmos, and that which is needed as silicic acid
throughout the given district of the Earth. Truly this
dandelion is a kind of messenger of Heaven. But if we
need it especially — if we want to make it
effective in the manure we must use it in the right way.
To this end — it will almost go without saying at
this stage — we must expose the dandelion to the
influences of the Earth, and in the winter season.
Here, too, we must gain the surrounding forces by a
similar treatment as in the other cases. Gather the
little yellow heads of the dandelion and let them fade a
little. Press them together, sew them up in a bovine
mesentery, and lay them in the earth throughout the
winter.
In springtime you take the balls out, and you can keep
them now until you need them. They are now thoroughly
saturated with cosmic influences. The substance you get
out of them can once again be added to the dung, and in a
similar way. It will give the soil the faculty to attract
just as much silicic acid from the atmosphere and from
the Cosmos as the plants need, to make them really
sentient to all that is at work in their environment. For
they of themselves will then attract what they need.
To be able to grow truly, the plants must have a kind of
sensation. Even as I, a human being, can pass a dull
fellow by and he will not notice me, so too all that is
in the soil and above it will pass a dull plant by, and
the plant will fall to Sense it; will not, therefore,
enlist it in the Service of its growth. But if the plant
is thus finely permeated and vitalised with silicic acid,
it will grow sensitive to all things, and will draw to
itself all that it needs.
We can easily bring the plant into such a condition that
it only needs a limited environment — immediately
around it in the soil — to draw to itself what it
needs. But it is not good to do so. Treat the soil of the
earth as I have now described, and the plant will be
prepared to draw things to itself from a wide circle.
Your plant will then benefit not only by what is in the
tilled field itself, whereon it grows, but also by that
which is in the soil of the adjacent meadow, or of the
neighbouring wood or forest. That is what happens, once
it has thus become inwardly sensitive. We can bring about
a wonderful interplay in Nature, by giving the plants the
forces which tend to come to them through the dandelion
in this way.
And so I think you should try to create good manures, by
adding these five ingredients — or suitable
substitutes — to your manuring matter in the way
indicated. Manures in future should not be treated with
all manner of chemicals, but with these five: yarrow,
camomile, stinging-nettle, oak-bark and dandelion. Such a
manure will have very much of what is actually needed.
Now you have one more river to cross. Before you make
use,of the manure thus prepared, press out the flowers of
Valerian.
Dilute the extract very highly. (You can do it at any
time and keep it, especially if you use warm water in
dilution). Add this diluted juice of the Valerian flower
to the manure in very fine proportions. There you will
stimulate it to behave in the right way in relation to
what we call the “phosphoric” substance.
With the help of these six ingredients you can produce an
excellent manure — whether from liquid manure, or
ordinary farmyard-manure, or compost.
Notes:
1. Achillea millifolium, — also known as Milfoll.
2. Valeriana officinallis.