Musing with a colleague about 505 and why a domesticated animal skull is used
https://www.natureinstitute.org/article ... -an-animal
Interesting that (some / all ??) domesticated skulls are noticeably different!!!
https://moodie.biz/product/commentary-o ... re-course/ p193
"Then we find the indication that the crumb-like bark must be pressed into the cranium of a domesticated animal. He specifies that it is of little importance which animal’s cranium is used, but he specifies that it must be ‘domestic’ and this, of course, can not be unimportant. The fact that an animal is domestic actually means that it has renounced its natural way of being, and its proximity to the human means it is acquiring a universal character. The old-time wild dogs preyed upon sheep and now, renouncing this way of being, have turned into shepherds’ dogs and protect the sheep. They have been able to adapt to the needs of man and become an indispensable support in a situation of objective difficulties, as in the case of dogs for the Blind. Similarly this preparation supports the plant to take within itself - into the area of flowering and fruiting - only those forces (quality) that will be able to be transformed in order to nourish the higher realms of nature, and not only enough forces (quantity) to produce the seed suitable for a new life cycle. We could say that 505 marks the transition between selfishness and altruism for a plant. It corresponds to the ‘Guardian of the threshold’ in human spiritual development."
Denis Klocek also has some insight into this preparation, ie that Calcium, usually the greedy grabber, in both the cranium and the oak bark has become peripheral and more silicious in its gesture. This reversal suggests some role in the transition from the etheric-dominated growth phase to the mainly catabolic maturation phase 'without shock'.
Thoughts invited ....
Domestication
Re: Domestication
Manfred Klett - The Foundations and Principles of the Biodynamic Preparations
According to Steiner, ‘the skull of any of our domestic animals will do – it makes little or no difference.’ This statement conceals a great riddle. In the case of the other preparations the organ sheath is taken from a very specific species of animal – red deer stag or domestic cattle. However, in the case of the oak bark preparation, the kind of animal is not important, only that it fulfils the role of a domestic animal. These vary greatly and distinguish themselves significantly from their wild relatives in terms of form and behaviour. What is it then, transcending of species, family and order, that makes an animal into a domestic animal?
Domestic animals exist thanks to the intervention of human beings. This is not simply a question of breeding in the way it is understood today, but of education: the domestic animal needs an education to become a domestic animal just as the human being needs one to become human. This educating of the animal into domesticity in a conscious and species-appropriate way is an art that enables the animal to grow beyond its inborn instincts. The domestic animal renounces, to some extent, the wisdom-filled instincts of its wild form. Human beings then have the responsibility to make up for this loss. Because animals have no personal self, they need the guidance of human beings. With the disappearance of traditional farming practices and the connections between animals and humans that formed part of them, a new understanding of animals is needed today that gives value to the working animal. Biodynamic animal husbandry is founded on this approach. If a deepened understanding of the nature and development of domestic animals is sought in this way, then it will be possible to find skulls that are suitable for making the oak bark preparation. .... The anatomical development of the body and skull of domestic animals is no different to those of their wild equivalents, yet there is a significant difference in the way they are formed. The facial skeleton stays somewhat shorter and the size of the braincase is significantly reduced, sensory capacity is less and metabolic activity is greater. These are all symptoms of a development held back in the domestic animal, of youthful forces retained in a more embryonic state. This preserved youthfulness is what distinguishes the domestic animal; human beings are responsible on an evolutionary level for this youthfulness. This fact makes us duty bound to train, manage, feed and care for our domesticated animals out of knowledge and with love.
No conclusive answers can be gleaned from the foregoing considerations as to why Rudolf Steiner recommended a skull from any domestic animal for the oak bark preparation. A likely answer is to be found only by focusing on the relationship of humans to animals since the last ice age. Humanity at that time lived in a dream-like consciousness from which flowed the folk myths and inspirations that came from a supersensible spiritual world still experienced as real, and they were led by the inspired priests of the mystery centres. This is the spiritual background against which the origin of domestic animals must be sought. It involved gradually replacing what had evolved in the animals as instinctive life with the guiding leadership of human beings. This transformative step, arising from the soul-spiritual consciousness of people at that time, was impressed upon the life bodies of the animals and from there to their physical bodies and the line of inheritance.
This helped domestic animals to retain their youthfulness and keep their bodily constitution open to variation.... This attempt at understanding oak bark preparation and the skull of the domestic animal needs to be developed further.
According to Steiner, ‘the skull of any of our domestic animals will do – it makes little or no difference.’ This statement conceals a great riddle. In the case of the other preparations the organ sheath is taken from a very specific species of animal – red deer stag or domestic cattle. However, in the case of the oak bark preparation, the kind of animal is not important, only that it fulfils the role of a domestic animal. These vary greatly and distinguish themselves significantly from their wild relatives in terms of form and behaviour. What is it then, transcending of species, family and order, that makes an animal into a domestic animal?
Domestic animals exist thanks to the intervention of human beings. This is not simply a question of breeding in the way it is understood today, but of education: the domestic animal needs an education to become a domestic animal just as the human being needs one to become human. This educating of the animal into domesticity in a conscious and species-appropriate way is an art that enables the animal to grow beyond its inborn instincts. The domestic animal renounces, to some extent, the wisdom-filled instincts of its wild form. Human beings then have the responsibility to make up for this loss. Because animals have no personal self, they need the guidance of human beings. With the disappearance of traditional farming practices and the connections between animals and humans that formed part of them, a new understanding of animals is needed today that gives value to the working animal. Biodynamic animal husbandry is founded on this approach. If a deepened understanding of the nature and development of domestic animals is sought in this way, then it will be possible to find skulls that are suitable for making the oak bark preparation. .... The anatomical development of the body and skull of domestic animals is no different to those of their wild equivalents, yet there is a significant difference in the way they are formed. The facial skeleton stays somewhat shorter and the size of the braincase is significantly reduced, sensory capacity is less and metabolic activity is greater. These are all symptoms of a development held back in the domestic animal, of youthful forces retained in a more embryonic state. This preserved youthfulness is what distinguishes the domestic animal; human beings are responsible on an evolutionary level for this youthfulness. This fact makes us duty bound to train, manage, feed and care for our domesticated animals out of knowledge and with love.
No conclusive answers can be gleaned from the foregoing considerations as to why Rudolf Steiner recommended a skull from any domestic animal for the oak bark preparation. A likely answer is to be found only by focusing on the relationship of humans to animals since the last ice age. Humanity at that time lived in a dream-like consciousness from which flowed the folk myths and inspirations that came from a supersensible spiritual world still experienced as real, and they were led by the inspired priests of the mystery centres. This is the spiritual background against which the origin of domestic animals must be sought. It involved gradually replacing what had evolved in the animals as instinctive life with the guiding leadership of human beings. This transformative step, arising from the soul-spiritual consciousness of people at that time, was impressed upon the life bodies of the animals and from there to their physical bodies and the line of inheritance.
This helped domestic animals to retain their youthfulness and keep their bodily constitution open to variation.... This attempt at understanding oak bark preparation and the skull of the domestic animal needs to be developed further.
Re: Domestication
Manfred Klett again from a previous publication
"Why do we take the skull from a domesticated animal? The latter can be distinguished from the wild animal because in its physical and mental being is kept back in a more embryonic state. A domesticated animal does not develop right into the wild. When we approach it it doesn't run away, It comes towards you. It is ever and again a most remarkable experience, which seems so obvious, to enter a cow stable and see all the animals standing or laying there somewhat expecting you to come to milk, feed and care for them.
Their being is open towards you, to your guiding ego and towards their group soul. Looking from a higher aspect domestication means that in former times people were able to keep the animal back in its evolutionary development - manifest in morphological and physiological features - and thus to open its soul being to the group soul and to the guiding consciousness of man. This is the reason why I think that the skull of a domesticated animal is used for the oakbark preparation."
"Why do we take the skull from a domesticated animal? The latter can be distinguished from the wild animal because in its physical and mental being is kept back in a more embryonic state. A domesticated animal does not develop right into the wild. When we approach it it doesn't run away, It comes towards you. It is ever and again a most remarkable experience, which seems so obvious, to enter a cow stable and see all the animals standing or laying there somewhat expecting you to come to milk, feed and care for them.
Their being is open towards you, to your guiding ego and towards their group soul. Looking from a higher aspect domestication means that in former times people were able to keep the animal back in its evolutionary development - manifest in morphological and physiological features - and thus to open its soul being to the group soul and to the guiding consciousness of man. This is the reason why I think that the skull of a domesticated animal is used for the oakbark preparation."
Re: Domestication
Walter Goldsteiner
Oak bark in the skull of a domesticated animal.
White oak trees are common in the landscape I live in in Southern Wisconsin. The older trees are not graceful, but rather give the impression of predominant extrusion of massive substance. They grow very slowly, forming broad, lumpy forms, with powerful thick trunks. They have impressive heavy branches full of curves and bends and they are armed with dense foliage and branches. Branch placement can seem chaotic, and higher branches can deprive lower branches of light and kill them. The slow growth of the oaks provides dense wood suited for floors and furniture. This wood produces intense heat when it is burned.
In folk medicine, oak bark is used to treat hemorrhoids, diarrhea, and bleeding gums. Its tannins constrict tissues. The motif for its effects seems to
be reducing excessive exudations that are out of place in the human body.
For biodynamic farming, oak bark was proposed as a universal remedy to counter plant disease, based on its calcium content. If chamomile is important because of the way it regulates calcium, the important thing about oak bark is the calcium it contains in itself as a living substance. The fifth lecture states:
We live in our brains inside the bony, lime-rich cave of our cranium, partly cut off from the world, dependent on images from our senses, and living in mirrored ideas, feelings and dead concepts derived from the outside and inside. In the mirror world of the brain, calcium plays a major role by enabling nervous system function. It has been called the critical element and ultimate multitasker for neurons, helping nervous system function by propagating electrical signals down axons, enabling the movement of neurotransmitters, memory formation and metabolism and growth. According to Steiner’s lectures astral influences of the moon have their home on the Earth through calcium.
Why do we put oak bark into the skull of an animal? The answer in short is that we are enhancing the ability of the oak bark to be influenced by the lunar astrality. This is accomplished by surrounding the crushed calcium-containing bark with a calcareous sheath. In Steiner’s medical book with Wegman (chap. 6), they describe nerves – and the brain in particular – as an arrested kind of bone formation. In the skull the deadening tendencies already present in the nerves reaches its limit. The home created for the oak bark is as for a brain.
Why is the skull of a domestic animal important? In my opinion this is because the domestic animals are more emancipated from regulation by their cosmic environment than are wild animals. Domestication of animals leads to smaller brain size. The smaller brain is due to reduction in tissues associated with motor control, seeing, hearing, and smelling. Thereby domesticated animals are more cut off from fully participating in the extended world of their environment which is cosmically oriented. Hence they are less shaped by it. This enables humans to re-direct the plastic forces of their development to serve human interests. But it also means that domesticates have a different mental life, more dependence on humans, more earthly-
lunar, and less, as is the case of the wild deer, in synch with other cosmic aspects of their environment.
Oak bark in the skull of a domesticated animal.
White oak trees are common in the landscape I live in in Southern Wisconsin. The older trees are not graceful, but rather give the impression of predominant extrusion of massive substance. They grow very slowly, forming broad, lumpy forms, with powerful thick trunks. They have impressive heavy branches full of curves and bends and they are armed with dense foliage and branches. Branch placement can seem chaotic, and higher branches can deprive lower branches of light and kill them. The slow growth of the oaks provides dense wood suited for floors and furniture. This wood produces intense heat when it is burned.
In folk medicine, oak bark is used to treat hemorrhoids, diarrhea, and bleeding gums. Its tannins constrict tissues. The motif for its effects seems to
be reducing excessive exudations that are out of place in the human body.
For biodynamic farming, oak bark was proposed as a universal remedy to counter plant disease, based on its calcium content. If chamomile is important because of the way it regulates calcium, the important thing about oak bark is the calcium it contains in itself as a living substance. The fifth lecture states:
Already with the discussion of the deer and the bladder we touched on an important fact. The nervous system and sensory/soul life of animals and humans is the realm where astrality can easily unfold on the Earth. The nervous tissue can serve for this because it dampens down the vibrant life forces found in other parts of the body in order to provide a basis for the astral world to manifest in the inner soul life of an animal or human. The lack of vitality associated with nervous tissue is also why it is so difficult to heal physical damage to it. In fact, vitality and consciousness often have an inverse relationship. For example, when human babies are growing actively, it can be observed that they have limited ability to have a conceptually-based inner life. But that this capacity increases as children age and the rate of growth body decreases.Now one plant that contains plenty of calcium is the oak. Seventy seven percent of its substance consists of finely distributed calcium. And oak bark, in particular, represents a kind of intermediate product between the plant and the living earth element, in the same sense as I already described the kinship between bark and living earth. Of the many forms in which calcium can appear, the calcium structure of oak bark is the most ideal. Calcium has the effect that I have already described. It creates order when the etheric body is working too strongly, so that the astrality cannot influence whatever organic entity is involved. Calcium in any form will kill off or dampen the etheric body and thereby free up the influence of the astral body, but when we want a rampant etheric development to contract in a beautiful and regular manner, without any shocks, then we need to use calcium in the particular form in which it is found in oak bark. For this purpose we collect the oak bark that can be easily obtained; we do not need a great deal. Then we chop it up until it is of crumb-like consistency, put it into a skull from any one of our domestic animals, it hardly matters which one; and finally close up the skull, preferably with a piece of bone. Next we place the skull in a relatively shallow hole in the ground, cover it with loose peat, and set up some kind of a pipe or gutter so that as much rainwater as possible flows into the hole. You might even put the skull into a rain-barrel where water can constantly flow in and out. Then add some kind of plant matter that will decay, so that the oak bark in its bony container lies in this organic muck for the whole winter, or better still for the whole autumn and winter. Water from melting snow will do just as well as rainwater. When this material is added to your manure pile, it will truly provide the forces to prevent or arrest harmful plant diseases.
We live in our brains inside the bony, lime-rich cave of our cranium, partly cut off from the world, dependent on images from our senses, and living in mirrored ideas, feelings and dead concepts derived from the outside and inside. In the mirror world of the brain, calcium plays a major role by enabling nervous system function. It has been called the critical element and ultimate multitasker for neurons, helping nervous system function by propagating electrical signals down axons, enabling the movement of neurotransmitters, memory formation and metabolism and growth. According to Steiner’s lectures astral influences of the moon have their home on the Earth through calcium.
Why do we put oak bark into the skull of an animal? The answer in short is that we are enhancing the ability of the oak bark to be influenced by the lunar astrality. This is accomplished by surrounding the crushed calcium-containing bark with a calcareous sheath. In Steiner’s medical book with Wegman (chap. 6), they describe nerves – and the brain in particular – as an arrested kind of bone formation. In the skull the deadening tendencies already present in the nerves reaches its limit. The home created for the oak bark is as for a brain.
Why is the skull of a domestic animal important? In my opinion this is because the domestic animals are more emancipated from regulation by their cosmic environment than are wild animals. Domestication of animals leads to smaller brain size. The smaller brain is due to reduction in tissues associated with motor control, seeing, hearing, and smelling. Thereby domesticated animals are more cut off from fully participating in the extended world of their environment which is cosmically oriented. Hence they are less shaped by it. This enables humans to re-direct the plastic forces of their development to serve human interests. But it also means that domesticates have a different mental life, more dependence on humans, more earthly-
lunar, and less, as is the case of the wild deer, in synch with other cosmic aspects of their environment.