Biodynamic Burial Considerations

Originally published 2025-10-26. By Lloyd Nelson, Stewart Kahn Lundy, JPI Biodynamics, Max Leyf.

Digest #14

TWENTY-NINETH WEEK OF THE YEAR


Sich selbst des Denkens Leuchten
Im Innern kraftvoll zu entfachen,
Erlebtes sinnvoll deutend
Aus Weltengeistes Kräftequell,
Ist mir nun Sommererbe,
Ist Herbstesruhe und auch Winterhoffnung.

∇∆

THE self-irradiance of thought:
a spark enkindling inner light
to read the book of self-experience,
and draw new draughts of insight from the spirit’s font:
what Summer has bestowed
in Autumn has been sowed:
abiding warmth in Winter’s cold.

November’s Astronomy is stacked in favor of building soil health with Biodynamics, with no fewer than 10 beneficial planetary trines. Most are occurring in the second half of the month, so for now, we can look towards November 3rd when Mars trines Neptune. Trines happen when planets line up at 120 degrees from each other. These trines are considered excellent times to apply Biodynamic preparations, so we encourage you to stir it up!

The November third trine occurs in front of the Water/Leaf constellations of Scorpio and Pisces. Two days later, on the morning of November fifth, is the full moon.

Biodynamic preparations applied near the full moon and during a beneficial planetary trine can yield superior results. An application of BD #500 horn manure and BD Barrel compound will help energize the soil for winter.

We are still busy making Biodynamic preparations and have a few more good weeks to go before we get them all in the ground for winter. We are going to focus on what Steiner tells us about the best sites and locations for burying Biodynamic Preparation. We will consider Practical BD preparation making, location considerations, and how we can enhance, protect, and build resonance in BD prep production.

Location, Location, Location

We have all heard the phrase “location is everything” for business, real estate, restaurants, etc. Why wouldn’t the same be true for the location of the Biodynamic preparations being made?

Throughout history, we know sacred sites such as ceremonial places, temples, churches and cathedrals, pyramids, all were built on energetically powerful spots. Biodynamics is a powerful method of incorporating spiritual foundations to renew agriculture. We can bring Biodynamics to new spiritual heights through our engagement in practical work on the production side.

“The temples of the Greek and the Gothic cathedral show how human will and artistry can create spaces where divine presence and higher awareness is felt. The inspiration which was once reserved for public communal spaces, to be experienced at certain times, may now be evoked partially in our everyday private dwellings so that we can be continually uplifted. Small and grand gestures, consciously made to our surroundings remind us of the majesty we hold as humans and how artistic and symbolic creations invigorate the human spirit.”1

With Biodynamics, we can evoke divine presence in our home gardens, fields, and sanctuaries.

We can impart forces into the BD preparations through our work, and we can look towards Steiner’s agriculture course for the blueprints to produce new remedies.

Practical considerations for locating BD prep sites

We can consider Steiner’s indications as the foundation for all our work, but what practical enhancements can we add, especially regarding locality, to make the BioDynamic preparations more effective?

Many factors to consider in locating an ideal spot for making the Biodynamic preparations.

We can consider soil type and drainage, irrigation, water table, the site’s overall energetics, freeze-thaw dynamics, and much more. Careful consideration is given to the site location, as the location where preparations are made in the ground can make a considerable difference in the quality of the finished product.

We can also consider the site’s specific energetic qualities. This is where dowsing can become helpful. With dowsing, one can pick up on subtle energies that are flowing and work towards finding harmonious spaces. Hugh Courney would always dowse before locating any burial site to make sure the energetics were correct.

Making concentrated fertilizer

Steiner details the following instructions:

“Now let us take the manure, in whatever form is available, stuff it into a cowhorn, and bury it in the ground at a certain depth – I would say between about ¾ and ½ meter (2.5 to 1.5 feet) provided the soil is neither too clayey or too sandy. We should select a good soil that is not too sandy.”2

The indications here point to an ideal depth and a well-balanced soil. If our soils are very clayey, we can add sand, and vice versa: adding clay can help balance a super sandy soil. The ideal soil is loamy and rich with organic matter. When in doubt, add generous amounts of well-aged compost to improve soils towards balance. Steiner tells us,

“You see, by burying the cow horn with the manure in it, we preserve in the horn the etheric and astral forces that the horn was accustomed to reflect when it was on the cow. Because the cow horn is now outwardly surrounded by the Earth, all the Earth’s etherizing and astralizing rays stream into its inner cavity. The manure inside the horn attracts these forces and is inwardly enlivened by them. If the horn is buried for the entire winter- the season when the Earth is most inwardly alive- all this life will be preserved in the manure, turning the contents of the horn into an extremely concentrated, enlivening fertilizer.”3

In the topsoil?

Q: Is it absolutely necessary to stay within the topsoil when burying the manure preparations, or can the cow horns also be buried deeper?

Steiner: “It’s better to stay within the fertile layer. In fact, you can assume that if they are buried in the subsoil, what you get out of them won’t be as good. A deeper topsoil layer, of course, would be ideal. The spot with the deepest layer of topsoil will certainly be the best. You won’t get any useful results below the topsoil.”4

A couple of practical considerations here. One is, if you don’t have much topsoil, what do you do? Indeed, out here in the desert southwest, most soils only have an inch or two of topsoil, if you’re lucky. We have conducted experiments and found that well-aged compost is one of the best additions for improving deeper topsoil, especially in the preparation of a burial site. Ideally, the horns are buried within “Horizon A,” but if Horizon A isn’t at least 18” deep, then you need to add compost all throughout to make sure there is enough vitality for the horns to absorb. Wherever there is organic matter in an ongoing process of decomposition, etheric vitality is radiating. In an excessively deadened soil that is reduced to mere sand or clay, there is little for the horns to absorb. Dewayne Morgan, for this reason, buries horns so they do not touch each other and are surrounded by soil enriched with compost. Imagine planting acorns. In Dewayne’s imagination, if you want each to grow into a beautiful oak tree, each acorn needs to be spaced far enough apart. In India, burial sites are deliberately enriched with compost. Stewart also always adds compost to his burial sites. It is not always practical to separate every single horn, as in large pits such as in Australia or India, but these images are worth keeping in mind.

If the compost you add is still somewhat raw, this will attract earthworms to your burial site. Ideally, we don’t want too many earthworms in our preparations because they will release some of the vitality contained within the prep. Nothing wrong with fat, happy earthworms but we want them everywhere, not only around the horns! In India, the iridescent sheen of earthworms is called a “peacock” energy, that opaline shine of the highest alchemy, the rainbow of all the planetary powers in balance. In Steiner’s words, these earthworms are “release valves” leaving behind only the “perfect ethericity” necessary for plant growth (never too much “moon” force that might lead to fungus). Never forget to spray 500 horn manure because these shimmering subterranean alchemists love fields sprayed with biodynamic preparations! While visiting Mexico, Stewart saw how beautiful the chromas were in the oak forest soil, so his friends in Tepetlixpa [Teh pet LEEX pah] added oak leaves to the pit to enrich the subsoil.

All Together Now!

Q: Do you have to bury the horns in the particular location you want to manure (fertilize) afterwards, or can you bury them all next to each other somewhere else?

Steiner: It makes so little difference that you don’t have to worry about it. In practice, it is best to look for a spot that has relatively good soil with some humus in it, a soil that is not too highly mineral. Then you can bury all the horns you need in one spot.5

Well, this looks like what Stewart did with this remarkable horn pit:

Considering and contemplating this image is impressive. We can think about scale as a necessity of production here. We can imagine how many different places across the country and the world these preparations will be distributed to when they are all finished.

Layering the layers

The following is a picture of three layers of horns in the same pit, with a layer of soil between them. See if you can notice the different arrangements in the three layers:

Tree Roots

Trees, bushes, and even grasses are attracted to biodynamic preparations buried in the ground. Why wouldn’t they? Here is the power of the living earth, the winter moon, and the summer sun all at once! It is prudent to use caution when selecting a site, making sure to keep it far from the hungry roots of any perennial plants.

We do have grasses, clover, sheep, and cows grazing over several of our BD pits, so some vegetation can actually be good for the preparations underneath. Stewart’s imagination suggests that, like “recharging” horns according to Steiner’s recommendations, by placing them near cows in a dairy barn, something similar is attained by burying them near animals. As when you have two guitars and plug one string, the other guitar also resonates, having these horns near living cows stirs them to a more vigorous secondary life in the soil, extending their use for years to come.

Q: Is it all right to have plants growing in the soil on top of where the preparations are buried?

Steiner: That soil can do whatever it wants. In cases like this, it is actually quite good to have it overgrown with plants, even with cultivated plants.6

We can take Steiner’s words literally here and see how things turn out. Where we run into problems is when the roots of trees and other plants discover the buried biodynamic preparations. This is best displayed in the following example of a cow horn that was buried a little too long. The tree roots consumed the entire preparation! This tells you how delicious plants find the preparations! Alex Podolinsky gave an example of filling a glass jar with 500 and burying it in a field and returning in a month or so. The entire container will be filled with white roots!

We shouldn’t be surprised that Steiner says that roots are composed mostly by humus and mineral salts, whereas flowers are from this year’s sunlight, while leaves are a compromise between the two:

“We therefore only have a genuine botany that is in accord with the whole physiology if we take into account not only the dynamics of warmth and light and of light conditions in the year when the plant is growing, but starting from the root base ourselves on the dynamics of light and warmth at least in the year before…. If on the other hand you study the foliage, and even more the sepals and petals, you will in the leaves find a compromise …. In petals the current year finally shows itself in its purest form. The colours and so on in the petals are not something old—they are of this year.”7

BD #501 Silica

What Steiner tells us here with the making of Horn Silica is the mirror of the process of the horn manure:

Instead of leaving the cow horn in the ground through the winter, let it stay in the underground all summer, and then take it out in late autumn.8

Here we are to remember that last part of the statement and not unearth the horn silica too early. It should not be unearthed until autumn or even late autumn, a practice many practitioners neglect.

The horn silica wants to be exposed to the forces of summer, as well as the inhalation forces flowing in Autumn. We miss part of the full process if we unearth the silica horns too early.

Hugh Courtney liked to bury the silica preparation in an area of his farm that was rich in silica, where milky-white quartz crystals were visible.

BD #502 Yarrow

Our instructions, Steiner indicates, for the yarrow preparation are fairly simple:

“Hang (the yarrow) up in a sunny spot and let it stay there during the summer. When autumn comes, then take it down and put it in the ground - not too deeply - and let it spend the winter there….

….You will find that they take on a very characteristic consistency during the course of the winter.”9

For yarrow we find a nice locality and be sure to make the spot well, so six months later you can find the place again!

BD #503 Chamomile

Steiner tells us:

“[Chamomile] should be placed not too deeply in a soil that is as rich as possible in humus. We should also try to choose a spot that will remain covered in snow for a long time, and where this snow will be shone upon by the Sun as much as possible, so that the cosmic-astral influences will work down into the soil where the sausages are buried.”10

Hugh Courtney would argue that much of what Steiner says about any given preparation, as a rule, is true for all the others. So what do we have? Not too deep, not too clayey, rich in humus, a sunny spot, etc. And where does snow remain on the ground AND get sun? The eastern side of a building in the northern hemisphere! Stewart, as such, hangs his preparations where they get the light of dawn and are shaded before the harsh, desiccating sun of the afternoon. In the dry tropics, the preparations hanging completely dry out, so Matias Baker has reasonably recommended that people skip the hanging process altogether. After all, the chamomile preparation has proven itself effective even though almost no one follows Steiner’s indications to hang it like yarrow, so why not? Stewart has proposed hanging preparations in dry regions, much like making sun tea with valerian, sealed in glass jars like terrariums, where all the moisture remains inside. Steiner suggests hanging the preparations for the summer; therefore, both arid and excessively wet regions might benefit from this protective measure.

High up on the hills above the Grass Valley of California, we bury the chamomile preparation at the highest overlook facing the western sunset. It’s a gorgeous spot that receives some snow and is exposed to full sunlight all day.

BD #504 Stinging Nettle

Steiner says to “take whatever stinging nettles we can gather… compress them a bit and put them straight into the ground… you can use a thin layer of peat to protect them from the surrounding soil. Bury them right in the ground, but mark the place carefully so you do not just dig out plain soil when you come back for them.”11

Here, we must comment on the importance of marking the site carefully! Oh, how many BD preparations have been lost because the site was not marked well enough! From the birth of biodynamics, losing preparations has been a long tradition. But now that we’re 101 years later, hopefully we can break that habit. We don’t have to copy everything Steiner’s students did! What good does it do us if we perform spiritual exercises and then, right when we are intending to use their fruits in the real world, we forget what we learned! One can imagine buried preparations intentionally left in the ground might serve to treat large landscapes the way a teaspoon of each treats a compost pile (or how the tree harmonizer works by burying small vials of preparations around a tree).

We have personally lost enough preparations that I mark the sites with extra caution now! Large rocks and even fence posts mark the prep site nicely. Stewart uses big T-posts, and extra ones too! Cows sure love to knock those over. One year, he lost his nettle preparation in a buried clay flue tile and couldn’t find it for three years. And it wasn’t even him who found it — it was his dog! As he was burying a new (carefully marked) batch, his dog unearthed the nearby old batch which had reduced to a mere handful of completely transformed colloidal humus.

Many years ago, we were at a JPI preparation-making workshop. Hugh Courtney requested we go out and dig the hole where we were going to bury the stinging nettle prep we just made. He showed us the approximate spot he wanted to bury the nettles, and then we set to work. Of course, any time you made preparations with Hugh, they would be done on a large scale so the hole was rather large. For years, when making nettle preparation they were usually buried in Hugh’s productive home garden by the tall pine trees. We were digging down about 18 inches for the new burial site when we unearthed a long-lost treasure! We had just found the nettles that had been lost for four years! Oh, how happy this made Hugh, as he had numerous failed previous attempts to find this lost preparation. Upon unearthing the four-year-old nettle, Hugh was surprised by how beautiful and energetic it was. He dowsed it and found this four-year-old prep to be superior, which led him to think and adapt his preparations to four-year cycles. For example, burying 501 horn silica horns not just for one summer and unearthing them, but repeating that process four consecutive times.

The important lesson learned was to make sure the prep is contained in such a way that it is preserved so it can be unearthed and used. All too often, worms, roots, or other things make preparations disappear, so careful attention to the burial process is a key factor in producing good preparations. Hugh had so well protected the nettle that it withstood a four-year burial!

BD #505 Oak Bark

Here we have a unique site that is needed to make this preparation:

Steiner tells us: “we place the skull in a relatively shallow hole in the ground, cover it with loose peat,nand set up some kind of 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 winter and autumn. Water from melting snow will do just as well as rainwater.”12

The oak bark site needs careful consideration. In high elevations we can enter the oak prep where the snowmelt will drain over the area. We have found an ideal spot that receives irrigation water in the summer and snowmelt runoff in the winter. We leave the Oak bark preparation in the ground for a whole year in Colorado. Things transform a little slower at 6,700 foot elevation.

BD #506 Dandelion

Steiner shares the following on dandelion preparation burial:

“The dandelion is really a kind of messenger from heaven. But if we need this plant and want to make it effective in the manure, we have to utilize it in the right way. It must be exposed, of course, to the Earth’s influence, to the Earth’s winter influence, but in order to acquire the surrounding forces, we must also treat it just as we have the others.”13

This last sentence leads to potential and possibly provocative indications that we need to be hanging the dandelion preparation in the summer, and then burying it in the winter. This is certainly a possibility as we can see in Steiner’s handwritten notes for the Agriculture course, he writes, “Dandelion…:in mesentery hang in the air.” I don’t know about you, but I trust what the man Steiner himself wrote down rather than what someone listening to him wrote in their notes! After all, when Steiner asked the host of the Agriculture Course, Count Keyslerlingk, whether he understood the lectures, Count Keyserlingk replied, “No, Herr Doktor, I didn’t understand a word.”14 If the people who helped pioneer biodynamics and hosted the lectures didn’t understand what they were hearing, we have good reason to trust Steiner’s handwritten notes when in doubt!

The importance of digesting Steiner’s indications is paramount to furthering Biodynamics. Steiner gave more clues on the burial site after he received this important question, we can take note of as far as locality:

Q: Should the preparations all be put into the ground together, or should they be buried separately?

Steiner: This is actually of some importance. For the sake of what’s happening to them while they are in the ground, it’s good if the preparations do not interfere with each other; they should therefore be buried some distance apart. If I had to do it on a small farm, I would choose places around the periphery, as far apart as possible. On a large estate, you can place them as far apart as you like.15

This is important for understanding that the Biodynamic preparations most likely need to be placed in the ground for burial at some considerable distance from one another. We can see these preparations as the accumulation of etheric, astral, and other forces and subtle frequencies. If they are too close together during the production process, the frequencies and energetic qualities may not be able to accumulate optimally. Even if considered only as special microbiological cultures fed a single food (dandelion, yarrow, chamomile, etc.), they are special concentrates meant to be kept separate.

Why? Energy only moves from high to low concentration, as knowledge flows from a teacher to a student or from the Sun to the Earth. Even when a child teaches an adult, it is from the concentrated wealth of their perceptions that adults later forget. When we insert each preparation into the compost pile, it radiates from each point of entry through the entire pile. Dandelion radiates towards chamomile, oak bark towards yarrow, and vice versa! It is this energetic criss-crossing that amounts to turning the compost pile without so much as lifting a shovel. If they were all inserted into the same hole, instead of getting each distinct color of the rainbow, you get a confused admixture of muddy browns. Think of watercolors when you add too many layers of pigments all at once. While yes, we are after a beautiful brown humus as a final product, we first want it to experience the radiant differences of each planetary vibration.

Just as we want to place the preparations in the compost individually at some distance from each other, the production of the preparations most likely wants to be made at some distance from each other.

With the right location, we can work wonders on increasing the healing powers of the biodynamic preparations.

You can use the November third planetary trines energies to enhance the biological and microbial life, and prepare the way for fertile gardens in the future

Go Biodynamic, For Life!