The Secrets of Seed Peppers

1. What Are Seed Peppers?

In biodynamic farming, a “seed pepper” is not a chili pepper at all—it’s an ash made from weed seeds. That might sound strange at first, but this is a method developed from Rudolf Steiner’s teachings. Just like how a vaccine uses a tiny bit of a disease to protect you from it, seed peppers use the burnt essence of a weed to stop that weed from growing in your fields again. Just as homeopathy uses a like-to-cure-like principle, seed peppers are like antimatter to weeds.

You burn the seeds of the problem plant during special times of the year, especially when the moon is in certain constellations. Then you grind that ash very finely, mix it with water, and spray it in a field—not to harm anything, but to influence the life forces of the soil. Done correctly, this method can reduce weed pressure dramatically over several years.

“The secret of seed peppers is that the plant which they are meant to repress is present in the very substance of the preparation—only as an ash, a burnt remnant that no longer seeks life, but instead discourages it in others” (Stewart Lundy, "A Secret of Saving Seeds," Stella Natura 2018).

2. Density, Receptivity, and Chaos

The process of making and applying seed peppers is deeply sensitive to timing, density, and cosmic rhythms.

In the seed, formlessness becomes a vessel for form. Steiner said: “If there is fertilised seed at all, the chaos is complete” (Agriculture Course, GA 327). That moment—when the flower has successfully produced a viable seed—is when the seed becomes utterly chaotic and most receptive to spiritual forces. It’s precisely this receptive chaos that the seed pepper seeks to influence.

When a farmer spreads seed pepper ash, they are not adding a “chemical” or “fertilizer”—they are influencing the plant’s capacity to form at its very origin. Just as a seed’s chaotic potential becomes actualized through its surrounding, the application of a pepper encourages the soil to say: no to this particular form.

“The chaos in each seed is ‘tuned’ to a specific constellation, so to speak, so that it only receives that single impulse and becomes a dandelion and not a barberry” (Stewart Lundy, Bringing Order to Seed Chaos, 2018).

Through careful burning—a method requiring smoky, grey ash and never the intense glow of red embers—the seed’s “idea” is inverted. What remains is not dead matter, but a spiritually negative imprint—an echo of what not to become.

This understanding aligns with broader biodynamic pest and disease management. Instead of targeting the visible pest or fungal blight, one identifies its spiritual polarity and works with preparations that withdraw invitation to those forms. As explained in JPI's pest management series, these gestures include inversion, inversion through fire, and rhythmical dissuasion.

“Every pest is a guest, and a guest is only present because an invitation was sent.” (JPI, "Biodynamic Pest Management")

This principle reframes the whole approach to biodynamic work: pest pressure is not a hostile invasion but a karmic conversation. Peppers—whether from weed seeds or insects—speak the same negative dialect: You are no longer welcome here.

“If a plague represents an ecological overstatement, the pepper acts as an invitation rescinded” (JPI, "Biodynamic Pest Management: Part 2").

3. Seed as Cosmic Memory

Seed chaos refers to the moment when a pollinated flower produces a viable seed. That seed, according to Steiner and echoed in the work of Jacob Boehme—who wrote that "the chaos is the matrix of all essences, and it is the root or beginning of nature" (Aurora, ch. 23, §1), and described creation as arising from the "abyss" through divine will—becomes a point of maximal spiritual receptivity—a microcosmic void. The cosmic forces impress themselves upon the utterly chaotic matter of the seed—and it is this image that is then recapitulated at germination.

To make a pepper is to reverse that imprint. Just as a spell must be undone with its exact inverse formula, so the seed’s generative impulse must be dismantled by its own negated form.

Steiner again:

“When the complexity of structure has been enhanced to the highest degree, it all disintegrates again… into cosmic dust. Then… the entire surrounding Universe begins to work and stamps itself upon the seed…” (Agriculture Course, GA 327).

The pepper preparation arrests this stamp mid-air, turning it away. One might say the pepper is the spiritual antonym of the seed’s own signature. It does not kill the plant; it cancels its desire to incarnate.

📚 Bibliography

• Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Metamorphosis of Plants. Translated by Agnes Arber. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
• Lundy, Stewart. “Bringing Order to Seed Chaos.” Private circulation, 2018.
• Atkinson, Glen. "When Is Seed Chaos?” Star & Furrow, no. 134, Autumn 2020.
• Steiner, Rudolf. Agriculture Course: The Spiritual Foundations for the Renewal of Agriculture. GA 327. Translated by Malcolm Gardner. Hudson: SteinerBooks, 1993.
• Thun, Maria. Gardening for Life. Stroud: Hawthorn Press, 1999.
• Lundy, Stewart. “A Secret of Saving Seeds.” Stella Natura, 2018.
• JPI Biodynamics. “Biodynamic Pest Management.” Substack, https://jpibiodynamics.substack.com/p/biodynamic-pest-management
• JPI Biodynamics. “Biodynamic Pest Management: Part 2.” Substack, https://jpibiodynamics.substack.com/p/biodynamic-pest-management-48b