Stewart K Lundy
“The fire must not be too hot, for the heavens and earth of man could not bear it. Nor should it be so gentle as to be incapable of destroying and consuming astrayness and selfness.”
John Pordage, Sophia
One less discussed aspect of biodynamics is “pest peppers” or ashing. The idea is relatively simple. You take weed seeds and burn them conscientiously in particular ways and at specific times so that you have no longer viable seeds but the antithesis of seeds: a powder that inhibits the reproduction rate in those specific weeds. This powder can be diluted and sprayed over specific areas to inhibit the reproduction of particular plants.
There is precedent for this approach. In the medieval agricultural text, the Geoponika, methods are described in which various pests “may be driven off by catching and burning one of their number.”1 We are familiar with how other species are often far more sensitive to scents than we are, and many of us know how long the smell of burnt human hair lingers in the nostrils. There is something like this to pest peppers.
The healthier an organism is, the more it contains its own scent. If you hold a healthy chicken, it smells one way. But if you handle raw chicken meat, you get what is called “meat hands” — that is the inner scent of that animal that normally should be contained within the animal. A sick animal, by contrast to both of these, radiates a repugnant odor. “A living organism and particularly the plant organism (apart from the flower) is designed not to give out scent but to take it in.”2 In animals, this means that their primary aroma should belong to the floral pole (e.g., pheromones), as distinct from an unpleasant body odor. As a rule, no healthy organism should actively stink. When we burn pests, we create something that “stinks” to that species. When we roast weed seeds, we can imagine we are creating something that stinks to that specific weed species. Because all living organisms “and particularly the plant” are designed to absorb scents, the production of peppers, on a subtle level, is about creating a particularly unpleasant atmosphere for a specific problematic plant or pest. Remedies made from reducing seeds to ash are called peppers because the mixed ash and blackened seeds look like pepper.
Parts per million (ppm) can be a matter of life or death when it comes to trace minerals and is not less true of pest peppers.
In The Spear of Destiny, peppers make a curious appearance. This book was published as non-fiction but reads rather obviously like a novel. Though this is not how peppers work in my experience, I feel it is worth quoting in full as a point of departure:
So far, so good. Ashing and potentizing in milk sugar (lactose) is a common approach to diluting substances. In short, you begin with one part substance and nine parts lactose (or some other carrier such as water) and mix those thoroughly. This gives you what is called D1, or a 10% solution. This is repeated successively. With each additional step in dilution, the decimal point moves once. D1 is 10%, D2 is 1%, D3 is 0.1%… D6 is one ppm (part per million), etc. While this way of diluting is traditionally used in homeopathy, it is also a way you can make precise dosages of particular amendments. For example, if you want a precise dosage of one ppm boron as a foliar spray, you can follow this dilution process. Starting with 1 gram of substance, “When one proceeds in this way one reaches D8 with 100,000 litres of water. Naturally one can’t cope with this. Therefore one goes up to D4 and then begins again with smaller amounts.”3 Much of early homeopathy (often dilutions under D8) gives rates that are now recognized as necessary for life — we often call things that are absolutely necessary (albeit in tiny amounts) “trace elements.” But if a living organism requires one ppm of a particular substance and has none, it simply perishes. Just because trace minerals are needed in tiny amounts does not make them less important — quite the contrary! Similarly, peppers do not require enormous amounts of substance to affect a large area. Parts per million (ppm) can be a matter of life or death when it comes to trace minerals, and this is not less true of pest peppers.“On arrival at Koberwitz he requested that a male rabbit should be shot and brought to the room temporarily set up as a laboratory. He removed the spleen, testes and a portion of the rabbit skin. These items were burned to ashes. The ashes were then mixed with a neutral powder, sugar of milk, and homeopathically ‘potentised.’”2
Pest and Weed 'Peppers' Revisited
Anything we try to do in biodynamics already exists as a process in Nature. Likewise, anything that is internalized by any organism through the process of evolution already pre-existed as a possibility in the greater world. When we handle pest "peppers,"
According to The Spear of Destiny — the claims of which do not seem to match results obtained by biodynamic researchers over the years — supposedly, after applying the rabbit pest pepper on the estate, all the rabbits on the 7500 hectares (over 18,000 acres) of the Koberwitz estate ran away. Setting aside the fact that it is a large area to treat effectively, this report has several problems. Firstly, if this had actually happened, I strongly suspect the journals of attendees at the original Agriculture Conference would have corroborated this claim. I have not seen anything to support this, though I would be happy to be shown to be wrong! Secondly, the original biodynamic lectures were given in June, and Steiner says pest peppers made against mammals should be made closer to November. It’s possible that a demonstration of the method was made. Still, it seems unlikely, given that Steiner was traveling by train to deliver his Karma Lectures in another city during some of the same days of the Agriculture Course. Thirdly, Steiner says these remedies must be used for several years to see their full effects. As Maria Thun remarks, “Following an indication by Rudolf Steiner to burn the seeds of weeds and scatter their ashes over the fields to repress the weeds, we carried out experiments over twelve years. We were able to confirm that the effects worked over periods of four years.”4 Fourthly, he warns that it is harder to keep mammals out than plants.
On the whole, the radical claims of The Spear of Destiny feel more like anthroposophical fan fiction than the fruits of observation. Finally, if this fantastic claim is not true — and I’ve encountered no similar stories — a fictional account of “miraculous” results could easily provide grounds for disappointment when using the preparations. If I were to make a pest pepper and expect every rabbit in the region to flee my property immediately, I might wrongly conclude that biodynamics was nonsense. Partly for this reason, I prefer not to make miraculous claims about biodynamics. This does not mean that I have not experienced incredible results, but that replicating those results requires more than many situations are willing or able to give. The claim in The Spear of Destiny is as follows:
Perhaps this happened, but I'm doubtful. But if it did happen (and yet has not been effectively repeated) it makes one wonder if it was Steiner himself that made the remedy effective or some other neglected factor. Steiner is asked a question about whether the quality of the person doing the work matters, which he answers positively:“Reports came in from all parts of the vast estate and neighbouring farm lands. Throughout the entire area rabbits were quitting their burrows and warrens as though their natural habitat was now a threat to their very survival, forming other huge clusters in a condition of frantic agitation. By late afternoon the separate clusters had joined together in a single mass in a far corner of the estate. Shortly before dusk the entire rabbit population disappeared in one enormous panic-stricken swarm heading in a north-easterly direction towards the distant wastelands and marshes. No rabbit would be seen nor rabbit spoor discovered on the Keyserlingk lands for many years to come.”5
The preparations made by an initiate will be qualitatively different than those made by anyone else, which is why the most critical thing you can improve on the farm is not this or that but yourself. I have witnessed people handling seeds, and all the ones they touch fail to germinate. Or people who transplant with me and all the plants the handle — no matter how gently — wither and die. Others have had the same experience. Parasitic people take far more energy than they give, and this can be seen in how plants respond to them. Conversely, initiates of the flame give far more than they take. Great souls, just by their proximity, have “a favourable influence by their mere presence and not by anything they say.”7“Question: Does it matter who does the work? Can anyone you choose do the work, or should it be an anthroposophist?
Answer: That is the question. If you raise such a question at all nowadays, you will be laughed at, no doubt, by many people. Yet I need only remind you that there are people whose flowers, grown in the window-box, thrive wonderfully, while with others they do not thrive at all but fade and wither. These are simple facts.”6
Taking a step back, we must consider perennial crops like grasses, which produce seeds, many of which rot in place. If we do not consider where seeds naturally rot and what that does to plants, pest peppers will not be adequately understood. We must always refer back to the greater environment, the macrocosm, as a guide for what we do on a small scale in the farm or garden. The result of rotted grass seed is enormous fertility for other species and something Alan Chadwick observes: a very low germination rate for established perennial grasses.
When initially seeded out, grass seed viability will be much higher. But as when humans drinking water from a stream passing through a graveyard inhibits reproduction rates, so too do perennial grasses, unable to move themselves away from the “graveyard” of their own seeds, experience a decreased germination rate while remaining established. This is a further consideration for weed peppers: they do not necessarily expel established perennial plants but will reduce the reproduction rate.“One little realizes that grass hardly produces any seed, and when it does, there is only about eight percent germinate-able. And that here is one of the incredible magics: that it produces both in the atmosphere and in the soil, a fertility which is almost incomparable… Grass is making compost all the time, and its roots are making compost in the soil as well as the grass in the atmosphere.”8
1 Geoponika, Agricultural Magic, pg. 74.
2 T. Ravenscroth, The Spear of Destiny, 322.
3 Maria Thun, Results from the Biodynamic Sowing Calendar, pg. 206.
4 Ibid., 204.
5 Ibid., 324
6 R. Steiner, Agriculture Course, Lecture IV, (GA327, 12 June 1924, Koberwitz)
7 R. Steiner, Agriculture Course, Lecture V, (GA327, 13 June, 1924 Koberwitz)
8 Alan Chadwick, Reverence, Obedience and the Invisible in the Garden, pg. 134.