Blog – Tagged "alchemy"– The Josephine Porter Institute

Jun 12, 2023

First Rule of Intitiation

If we don't first accept there's a problem we also can't fix it. So the first step is not hiding in denial but accepting the exact conditions as they are and looking within those for hidden possibilities. This is the very basis of fertility for the farm organism and even the emergence of the biodynamic preparations from latent potential in manure and humble weeds.

May 19, 2023

Light Ether

The value of humus comes from light. As such, it's easy to see why cultures would venerate the Sun. The Sun shines on the righteous and wicked alike, sharing with impartiality to all. If we wish to make plants more receptive to the light streaming in from the cosmos, we must add some carefully decomposed byproducts of light (humus and biodynamic preparations) so the plants "remember" who they are.

May 8, 2023

Alchemy & Crucifixion

In alchemy, this mirrors the process of distillation. Alchemical mercury and sulfur (oil and alcohol) both distill readily when heated. This is Christ and the Good Thief. But the bad thief is the "mark" -- the leftover plant materials after extracting the distillate. The leftovers must be burned at high temperatures called "calcination" (from the word chalk).

May 3, 2023

Jacob Boehme

Steiner offers a fascinating suggestion about Boehme and the alchemist Paracelsus: “One needs only to know Paracelsus...

May 1, 2023

Freedom & Farming

Imagine every farm being free in itself (freedom within the boundaries of the farm), of itself (free from dependence on outside inputs), and for itself (free to pursue its own creative expression within the farm). Moreover, imagine countries doing the same. People ask, "Is biodynamics scalable?" If it means freedom, then, yes, it's one of the only things worth scaling.

May 1, 2023

Gifts for the Soil

With biodynamics we are gifting to the soil a concentration of forces and a kind of "sweetness" that naturally wouldn't occur by chance in nature. And that is the secret of alchemy: taking things to their fulfillment when Nature, left to herself, could not do so.

Apr 26, 2023

Devils & Angels

In Steiner's terminology, there are two aspects to what is often described as a single being in conventional Christia...

Apr 26, 2023

Leavening Your Soil

The biodynamic preparations work a bit like specialized "yeasts" in compost and create a better final product. Are the biodynamic preparations absolutely necessary?

Apr 24, 2023

Rudolf Steiner

How do we restore healthy life to the soil? We do this with responsible common sense farming, incorporating the latest scientific research plus biodynamic preparations. We don't have to exclude anything that works.

Apr 24, 2023

What are pest peppers?

The charred dandelion seed can only rot, but the charred seed can only rot in a dandelionish way. This means you're really creating a pathogen vector by rotting these seeds, specifically something that will corrupt the seed-forming process of that specific species.

Apr 21, 2023

Is Biodynamics Pseudosience?

What hypothesis does biodynamics as an intuition advance? That these special biodynamic preparations will measurably improve the quality of compost, hasten the formation of humus and the build-up of organic matter in the soil, and increase the nutritional value of crops. This hypothesis must be tested, but funding for research is a very different question!

Apr 17, 2023

Build Soil Rapidly

“In the early days we ran trials. Depleted soil was deep ripped. We sowed the right species and applied 500 and had the well known results. In six years we raised the organic matter levels from 0.9% in the top 4” to approximately 12% and, varyingly, to 2.4% at 40” depth. Ripping exactly the same way etc, but without 500, the soil biology developed to 20 cm depth, no further. In modern farming the right soil treatment and the Bio-Dynamic preparations must be applied together."