A report after the event
The Second International Conference on Homeopathy for Plants was held in Maringa, Brazil over the weekend of the 7th and 8th September 2013. Maringa is only 60 years old but already half a million people live there. The twin facts of being planned and being on a plane mean that the city is laid out in blocks. Before the flight approaches the city one can see that the surrounding land is characterised by contoured ridges to retain and guide water within the extensive cultivated land – usually for maize and soya, but also for tobacco and vegetables.
Brazil has embraced homeopathy at Government level and this has made it possible for there to be two universities with departments dedicated to developing homeopathy within agriculture. Whilst the attitude which dominates UK academia – that homeopathy is intellectually bankrupt and should be bracketed along with ouija boards and Harry Potter – whilst this attitude is not absent, the university has labs, faculties, inter-disciplinary discussions, graduates and undergraduates busily producing academic papers as a result of trials that stick to the scientific method. The university gives guidance and trains farmers and gardeners through various outreach initiatives and undertakes research on the basis of the needs of those same growers.
I was flattered that this gathering of around 200 people has taken its lead from the first international conference that I initiated 2 years previously with the encouragment of Dr Waris of Lahore. The informal UK event at Oaklands Park attracted many fewer people but from more countries – 13 indeed. The Brazilian event was predominantly full of Brazilians and was held in a convention centre in a very comfortable hotel in town. I could look down on the conical cathedral from the 22nd storey where I had a luxurious room and contemplate the contrasts.
Professor Carlos Bonato clearly enjoys the affection of his students and colleagues. He invited me to talk for an hour on experiences from outside Brazil and to form a link to the first event. I gave myself permission also to discuss the impact of the fact of this official recognition in Brazil for those beyond Brazil who have to fight to be taken seriously. I showed the delegates some of the more visible impacts of using potencies in a powerpoint (
http://tinyurl.com/qd62kh4) and showed them images of Kolisko Farm since Lili Kolisko’s work is acknowledged to be the start of all such strivings.
I explored the dynamics between the agricultural homeopaths and biodynamics – an approach which is also represented in Brazil and at the conference by a handful of people. Whilst Lili Kolisko and Dr Steiner were clearly working 50 years before the homeopaths took on agriculture, biodynamics does little to bring academia and their work closer together. Partly this is because Steiner, unlike Hahnmeann, does not pull his punches about the spiritual foundations of his work and the dominant scientific paradigm considers the spirit to be an emergent or derivative phenomenon of the one actuality – matter. This is compounded by the lack of work in the academic tradition on biodynamics. However, I pressed on to show how Hahnemann’s process of trituration is clearly allied to the one hour of stirring of the field preparations. I mistimed my talk so I had to leave out the clearest example I know which I consider to confirm this, but I pointed the interested listener to the discussion (
http://tinyurl.com/msryqvh) I submitted for the annals in which this was described. Actually, this worked out rather well because those who were interested collared me in the breaks and social evening to discuss this episode at greater length. It is clear that Dr Steiner’s work may be a difficult cousin to integrate from the academic point of view, but it is of great fascination to the less restricted spirit of enquiry of the individuals.
Along with the many posters and reports of specific investigations, presenters also discussed testing preparations and remedies including the evaporated drop images being developed in Bologne and work from Russia on Excited Photon Imaging or Gas Discharge Visualisation. In addition, it was interesting to hear that despite the governmental support of homeopathy the reality on the ground is very complicated and constantly evolving. Brazil is bureaucracy-heavy and several different bodies have to have to grant approval before anything happens in agriculture. The audience were never more animated in discussion with a speaker than in the session devoted to this aspect of the work.
I will take many happy memories from this gathering and feel sure that the event increased the number of those I consider colleagues. Some approach the mystery of agriculture and homeopathy from a material perspective, others from a spiritual perspective but I feel that our different directions of travel do not make us opponents.
It is hoped to hold the third of these conferences in Italy or France. Contact me if you would like to be informed –
mark@considera.org. The fourth – in 2017 would most likely return to Brazil. I can hardly wait.
I would like to thank those who offered support at, before and after the event – both financial and less tangible support. I would not have been so relaxed and receptive without this. I hope that your input will be returned many-fold as this discipline finds its identity and begins to have a noticeable impact on the destructive aspects of modern agriculture.
Mark Moodie