As Above, So Below
Biodynamics as the Conscious Emulation of the Evolution of the Celestial Spheres
Once upon a time… our solar system did not exist as we know it now. Instead, it was an inconceivably large ball of energy. The hand of the Great Spirit set this ancient prototype of our solar system spinning. As it spun, it slowly condensed. This web of super hot energy gradually contracted into an egg-shaped cloud of glowing gases. If you could have viewed it from deep space, you would have witnessed a shining ovoid.
And then this oval ejected a ring. If you had viewed it knowing what you know today, you’d have realized this ring looked a bit like Saturn. But this was a Saturn from an ancient time.1 Though it would have looked mostly like a ring of gas, the planet we now call Saturn had been conceived almost as a skin around our nascent Sun. For a long time, a lot happened, but little was externally observable. This was the first trimester of our solar system.
Our young solar system continued to contract, growing brighter as it did so. Within this brilliant cloud were “currents” that would seem almost like streams of color through clouds. These were the beginnings of other planets, which the seer, Jacob Boehme, saw arising from a cataclysmic event of cosmic proportions. After this event, the Sun from that ancient time was no longer just gas—it had ignited as if iron had struck a flintstone. Yet even here, currents continued within the contracting sun.
Jupiter and Mars found themselves outside the embrace of our shrinking star. Before this cataclysm, Mars would have been molten—“watery” in a primordial sense —before it was reduced to a solid iron core. From here Jupiter would serve a protective role, encompassing all the nearer planets in its embrace, catching countless asteroids before they could break through to these inner planets. Our solar system had begun to demonstrate externally observable movement. This was its second trimester.2
The inner currents of our Sun were now much denser. It was as if a smaller sphere rolled within a larger sphere—as if this developing Sun had within itself a Moon. But then this too separated and became the basis of the inner planets. This ancient idea of an early Moon gave rise to Mercury, Venus, and a prototype of our own Earth. This was the third trimester of our solar system.
The separation of Earth from these siblings was also its first independent breath, its physical birth. It took its first breath of the in-streaming substance and energy from all the planets that preceded it.
By this time, Saturn had created a ring around itself, as the Sun had once created Saturn out of itself. But Saturn’s young ring was gaseous and eventually became a real moon. Much later, this moon shattered to become the rings we know now.3 Not without reason, Saturn is depicted as an old crippled man—his etheric double, his moon, is gone. The many “moons” surrounding Saturn now were not born from itself, but rather are asteroids caught in its gravitational pull.
Consider that the molten Earth underwent a sort of recapitulation of the solar system’s birth, repeating its formation in microcosm. The Earth became a ringlike “synestia”4 before our Moon departed.5 When our Moon separated from the Earth, a subtle umbilical cord was cut. We remain close to our Moon, and she still gives us nourishment, but those old times are gone when the Moon and Earth were one body. Remember, none of this evolutionary tale is meant to contradict established science, but rather to paint a picture of the evolution of our solar system.
Preparations connect to macrocosm…
Within biodynamics, everything we do reconnects us to the macrocosm. This is why we reach for planetary terms to describe what we see here on Earth. A physical planet called Saturn does not govern physical processes here on Earth in a linear way. Rather, the same living process that once formed that planet has now moved down into the sphere of the Earth. Planetary influence is based on a correspondence (or harmonic resonance), which is how the planet Saturn influences the use of the biodynamic Valerian preparation. As a plucked string on one guitar causes the corresponding note to sing out from a second guitar, so do astronomical aspects of the planets stimulate a corresponding activity here on Earth. It is the kinship of inner meaning that resonates between Saturn and Valerian. Whenever we employ the powers of Valerian, we bring into play the forces that once formed the planet Saturn, regardless of the position of the planet itself.
When we make the preparations, we draw upon these primordial processes that once labored at a massive scale to form the solar system. It is as if something that once built cathedrals now becomes focused on embroidery— even though it occurs at a much smaller scale, it is the same process. Imagine that a construction worker gets too old to lift stones and then, in his retirement, he concerns himself with weaving tapestries—his work may seem different, but no one would question that the same person performs both. Likewise, the processes that created the planets also form our inner organs and weave together the subtle forms of plants.
When we use a mesentery to encompass dandelion blossoms, we should remember that Jupiter is the grand benefic, encompassing all the inner planets the same way that the mesentery encompasses the metabolic bud of our bodies. When we make the dandelion preparation, we place a specific process within a corresponding mammalian sheath. As rings of gas once condensed into planets, in a microcosmic manner, we encapsulate the plant substance within animal substance—or rather, the etheric within the astral. With biodynamics, we don’t merely seek to use dead chemical fertilizers, but rather to condense fertility as a microcosm of the evolution of the cosmos itself. When we make biodynamic preparations, we mimic the creative evolution of the solar system.
Our favored Saturnine herb, Valerian, enhances the surrounding ring of warmth around the compost, the latest humble working of that once titanic Saturn. The evolution that made the metabolic pole also gave rise to the head polarity, as Jupiter and Mars were created, respectively. Similarly, as the mesentery protects the gut, the skull protects the brain. Every preparation sheath is an animal membrane that by design contains the same process that each respective herb is intended to influence.
Stinging Nettles, like the heart, have no prescribed membrane but are the radiating center of our agricultural microcosm.6 Chamomile, which traditionally helps combat flatulence and aids assimilation, we place within the same membrane that contains digestion, namely, the intestines. Yarrow, an herb that excels at separating pure fluids from impure fluids, is contained within a bladder.7 These two inner metabolic functions correspond with the emergence of the planets Mercury and Venus.
It is on Earth, that sacred compost pile of the solar system, that the universe could stream in its influence and that those forces could be collected, then rayed back to the cosmos. Everything in the cosmos works in huge circles. If we cannot trace a process from its beginning and back to its source, we are not yet thinking holistically. Everything that comes into being also passes out of being. Everything that comes from the Spirit also returns to the Spirit. The alchemist traces the footsteps of the Spirit in Nature.
Preparations draw in new life…
Because of the constant influx of new energy, life on Earth can evolve. This does not deny the second law of thermodynamics. Quite the contrary. The total amount of useful energy within a closed system is always decreasing. But since energy always moves from high concentration to low concentration—in the same way, that real knowledge can only flow from someone experienced to someone inexperienced—this means that within an open system, we experience negative entropy. Because the Earth receives new energy every year and doesn’t send it all back, we have the development of rich soil over time and the evolution of ever more complex forms of life. If the Sun were ever to cease being a greater concentration of energy than the Earth, the Earth itself would be like an etheric star radiating to the Sun, rather than vice versa.
When we age the preparations, we liberate the herbal qualities from their herbs. The cosmic structure of the herbs abandons their substance as the preparation is reduced to formless anonymity. We should keep in mind that Steiner reminds us that we are spreading forces, not substances. What remains within the sheath is not the herb itself—it is unrecognizable even under a microscope!—but all the qualities of the herb, liberated in their formlessness so that they can be assimilated as qualities of compost, soil, plants, and human beings.
The oft-quoted hermetic maxim of correspondence must be recalled in full: “As above, so below, but in a different manner.” The Jupiter process that formed that planet looks radically different here on Earth, but, nonetheless, serves a similar function. No physical Jupiter planet exists on Earth, but the same process that created Jupiter radiates its forces in the mesentery. Outwardly, the planet Jupiter and a cow’s mesentery do not resemble each other, but their inner meaning discloses that they both encase and protect the entire astral world. Jupiter, as a planet, protects the inner planets from harm, and Jupiter, in the form of the mesentery, performs an analogous process, protecting the inner metabolic organs.
This is what Steiner means when he says we must “remain within the realm of the living.” We create preparations that emulate the evolution of life itself and the creation of the solar system. Each time we treat the soil with new preparations and harvest herbs from that treated soil, an entire planetary system forms dissolves, and reincarnates, in a manner of speaking. Wherever possible, our preparation herbs should be drawn from soil treated annually with this evolutionary impulse.
Steiner indicates that, at best, mineral fertilizers can only stimulate “agitated watery growth.” As a diet too rich in sodium stimulates water retention, so plants with surplus minerals get bigger, though they require potential energy to grow to their fullest expression. Plants did not arise from dead salts any more than life arose from dead matter. Dead matter condensed from life just as the physical planets coalesced out of formerly active processes.
On the contrary, plants are a reflection of the energy that has flowed into the earth and is streaming back to the cosmos. Mineral deposits, like the planets themselves, are what remains of gigantic processes once active and alive. As the ash is the leftover of fire, mineral deposits are the remains of formerly living processes. It is not enough to give our plants the ash of other plants, but the contained, carefully concentrated potential energy of those herbs. No amount of minerals alone can restore deep vitality, though obviously, plants cannot live without minerals.
Thoughtless agriculture has depleted the soil of its potential planetary energy reserve. If we want our plants to thrive as expressions of kinetic energy streaming back to the cosmos, we must restore these potential planetary energies to the soil and create them in a way that mirrors the creation of that potential in the first place. We cannot simply throw herbs around a plant and expect it to have the right effect. We must transform, condense, and collect these potential energies carefully. If we try to extract them too violently, they will be destroyed. The slow alchemy of biodynamics separates out these planetary potential energies without thoughtlessly discharging them. As a young bird must have food prepared by its mother, these planetary processes must be brought into the soil in the right way.
If we want our farm to function like a microcosmic individuality, we should keep in mind the macrocosmic individuality in which we all participate. In this time, the hands of the Spirit may seem to have grown quite small, but their work is no less significant. In fact, the hands of the Spirit may now seem no bigger than our own.
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1Steiner refers to this epoch as “Old Saturn” which is perhaps somewhat of a misnomer because it was a very young Saturn. More of this can be explored in his sequel to Theosophy, Esoteric Science. What are referred to as "trimesters” here are parallels to Steiner’s stages in Esoteric Science.
2 Steiner refers to this as “Old Sun” in Esoteric Science.
3 See for a summary of current thinking about the origins of Saturn’s rings: https://www.space.com/10468-saturnrings ... -moon.html
4 Wikipedia defines synestia is a hypothesized, rapidly spinning, mass of vaporized rock. Named by Sarah T. Stewart-Mukhopadhyay, the name was a combination of Hestia, Greek goddess of the hearth, and the word syn, meaning together. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Synestia#/media/
5 This corresponds to what Steiner says about “Old Moon” and the earlier form of the Earth and its relationship to the Moon.
6 The late Devon Strong used the pericardium for a sheath for nettles, drawing on the image that Steiner gave that nettles belong growing “around the human heart.”
7 Steiner speaks of how the names Mercury and Venus were switched, historically, and that what we call Mercury is an esoteric Venus, and what we call Venus today is an esoteric Mercury.