Biodynamic Digest #6

Originally published 2025-08-31. By Lloyd Nelson, Stewart Kahn Lundy, JPI Biodynamics.

courage, fall applications, cosmic considerations and more!

Your weekly update on the Biodynamic Astronomical Calendar

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Sharing our cosmic adventures through the Biodynamic Digest by keeping track of celestial opportunities and optimal timing for planting, biodynamic spraying, and more.

This week, let’s explore:

Courageous Biodynamics

A meditation from Steiner:

Out of the gravity of the times
must be born
the courage to act.

Give to teaching
what the spirit gives you
and you free humankind

from the crushing
mountain of materialism bearing
down on it

• Rudolf Steiner

September's astronomical forecast has a few outstanding challenges and opportunities to work with Biodynamics beneficially. We will experience a series of eclipses and a rare planetary trine. Our concern in this week's Biodynamic Digest is how we can muster the courage to start thinking about these far-out concepts.

One of the easiest ways to get the full benefits of biodynamics is to use Barrel Compound, which has the full spectrum of biodynamic compost preparations as well as basalt, eggshells, and valerian. The best time to apply compost and preparations is the autumn, as things seem to be going to sleep – because the soil is quickening to a special kind of vitality during the cooler months. The beginning of the spiritual year is upon us, and begins with the autumn equinox! What you do now is of special significance. Soil scientists almost universally seem to agree that the best time to apply compost is in the fall, so get ready!

As you are winding down parts of your garden, save all your weeds in buckets and then pile them on your compost pile if they don’t have too many seeds. Dust each new layer of weeds with a layer of topsoil from the garden, maybe some old compost or clay, and water each layer thoroughly because water is life. If a compost pile ever dries out, the entire process stops.

There is nothing more important than getting out a fall application of biodynamic preparations, and the surest way to use them incorrectly is by forgetting to use them at all!

Barrel Compound is ideal to apply in the late afternoon or evening of any given day and particularly in the “evening” of the year as autumn approaches. Some farmers use it immediately before cultivating beds or turning under cover crops for superb results. With the energetics of the upcoming lunar and solar eclipse, now will be an excellent time to use Barrel Compound to benefit your garden.

The Challenge of the Courageous

Biodynamic agriculture challenges us practitioners on many fronts, while also providing untold potential for creative opportunities. Beginning with the fact that biodynamics is a relatively new approach, having been around for only 101 years, we are still in the early research and development stage. Results of practicing this new method of agriculture have been fantastic though mixed, sometimes with astonishing revelations; however, the results cannot always be replicated. Some research has demonstrated scientific results that suggest that biodynamics can outperform all other forms of agriculture in building soil health. However, when someone else tries to duplicate these experiments, sometimes they fail to see the same results.

Equally as challenging is adopting a new type of language and cosmology in agriculture. Words and deep concepts such as Etheric, Astral, and Spirit, and working with the moon and stars in a new way, can easily challenge our belief system. These terms are actually easier than they appear to be and are not intentionally difficult. Steiner simply said, “We have to call it something.”

For example, when you hear etheric or ethericity, think vital or vitality. If composted manure is meant to “enliven” the soil, it is supplying it with vitality. When we say astral, think soul or atmosphere. When things are calm within, our inner atmosphere (our organized astral “body”, you might say) is like a bright, cool day with a warm sun and clear skies. When we are depressed or angry, our inner climate is like a violent, torrential storm. When we eat an apple or a plum, it is full of a particular nourishing atmosphere that we can consume – literally sugars condensed from air, light, and warmth around us!

When we get to the term “spirit,” we may lose some of our audience, but here we mean the unifying idea: what makes a plant a plant, a dog a dog, a rock a rock, a human a human. When we depart from this blueprint, we suffer from diseases. When we are aligned with this archetype, we experience health. None of these terms is a superstitious concept, nor do they challenge any previous notions of medicine or spirituality, but they are ways of thinking that have sometimes fallen by the wayside.

Using biodynamic preparations is a relatively new and unique technique in the long history of agriculture. Even the best teachers of the biodynamic work may have vastly different opinions and theories as to how this new science works and how it should be practiced. Then we face the challenge of finding others who practice Biodynamics, as these people are few and far between. Additionally, many people worry about what others might think, and this concern alone can severely limit our practices. Biodynamics isn’t a popularity contest! Our most interesting innovations are often achieved despite what others say is impossible.

Acquiring Biodynamic preparations may be easier now with mail-order preps delivered to your front door, but you still have to use them for them to work. Have you even attempted to make one or more of the biodynamic preparations? Carefully collecting all the necessary ingredients, finding a suitable spot to prepare them, and the actual physical work all add up to a considerable amount of effort. Then you hope your preparations turn out well or at least decent, which is not always the case.

Finding the time to do the Biodynamic work is also highly challenging, given our busy lives and numerous other priorities. Traditionally, farmers have had two jobs: they grow food on one hand, but they also practice a trade, such as being a cobbler or blacksmith or woodworker, among other things. Some of us still work in order to keep farming. Others of us take on jobs in order to keep doing biodynamics.

Luckily for us, some of the hard work has been done for us with the Biodynamic astronomical planting calendar, which guides us most helpfully. Even with the biodynamic calendar and finding the very best days to apply Biodynamic preparations, it can still be challenging. What planets are where, what to do when, and is the moon helpful or challenging today? These are a few questions that confront one on the journey into the world of Biodynamics.

Another question may arise: Is it possible to free ourselves from the boundaries and limitations through explorations of making Biodynamics our own individual practice that works for you?

Getting Eclipsed

Examining the biodynamic astronomical calendar for September reveals an intriguing series of challenging astronomical events, including one planetary occultation, two eclipses, and a spectacular and rare beneficial planetary grand trine.

On September 7, we will experience a Lunar Eclipse, followed two weeks later by the September 21 Solar Eclipse. Research within the framework of the Biodynamic astronomical calendar has consistently shown that eclipses present unique challenges to the life of our farms and gardens.

In biodynamics, we can encourage the courageous flame of enthusiasm to help us be better stewards and practitioners. Test and try to do. By actually using the nine preparations, Biodynamics comes to life! Let's explore the possibilities of freedom within the Biodynamic framework.

The (Cosmic) Weather Forecast

Growing up, I rather enjoyed reading the weekly horoscope in the Sunday newspaper. A quick look at the sports and comic section, the weather, and then the astrological weekly horoscope! What have the stars forecast for the week? Sometimes the stars were aligned in my favor, and at other times, they created enormous challenges. Which way was Mars going to take our communications? Or is Libra out of balance, because Venus rules Libra, and Mars is quite uncomfortable being in her house? Wow, I thought, how cool are these individuals giving indications of what was happening on Earth and how that related to the stars. How do the stars relate to me? Interestingly, if I read my weekly horoscope in a different publication other than the newspaper, there would be an entirely different astrological forecast. Do all astrologers use the same planetary information but have totally differing individual opinions and interpretations as to how my week would go?

Each starry interpretation is up to the individual and is left to each of us to develop our relationship with the heavens. There are various streams in Biodynamics, but these streams are less like tributaries of a river than they are like various currents circulating in the same ocean whose contents are constantly in flux, exchanging with the far reaches of this single watery body. It is a mistake to trace one's pedigree to this or that rivulet on some isolated mountaintop, because in the spiritual world, things are never so separate.

The anthroposophical current of wisdom has many sister streams. Still, one doesn't ever claim the Gulf Stream is “better” than another ocean current: the virtues of each stream are evaluated not as this versus that but by how they each — assuming they do — support the whole ecosystem. One may consider one flowforms to be home, and love it best, but that does not give us the right to condemn anyone else for being part of another vital ecosystem.

Lest we mistake the stars as a cosmic dictatorship, we must constantly reassert against the backdrop of determinism that we are free beings. We cannot perhaps fly or breathe underwater, but our distinctly human freedoms remain with us. Steiner denies the existence of any “dictator God” because such a being would reduce us to mere automatons. No, the divine world is one of love, and love by definition can never be coerced, or it is not love. A forced kiss, like a forced smile, is not the genuine item. So we are left free, free to choose to love or not to love, free to cheapen ourselves with small loves or ennoble ourselves by humbly serving higher spiritual worlds. Through courage to free ourselves from boundaries, we can create life anew.

The physical planets above us are not astral demagogues. They are merely corpses of formerly active processes. They have “died” into solidified form, but still retain slow rhythms older than our instincts that pulsate like a deep thrumming bassline in a song to our unconscious mind. The physical planets are like ancient mile markers or great tombstones to ancient formative processes, which now work here below in smaller, more intimate ways. The living activities of what formed the planets are now active here on Earth, in unfolding lifeforms, not in the wandering planets themselves. To think of the surface of the Earth as the only part that “matters” — itself a term that reeks of materialism — is like stripping a song of subtle undertones and overtones; no, we can't hear them directly, but when we remove them, the sounds we can perceive become flattened. The initiate Dante in his Paradiso describes ineffably beautiful, yet silent, music of the higher spheres. Plants without connection to the deep vibrations of the planets are like a song made tinny – like old, nasally recordings. Biodynamics is about restoring the cosmic song, and plants' ability to hear its full-throated voice.

When the planets move above our atmosphere, it is like the spirit hovering over the waters, each a cosmic exhalation that causes perturbations. We cannot forget that all our weather is based on the fluid dynamics of our atmosphere. Take a bowl or bucket of water and breathe over it. If you have someone else with you, have them also breathe over the water from a different angle. This is like the constant influx from the cosmos and the planets.

Making Biodynamics Your Own

One of the beauties of Biodynamics is that every individual comes to it from their own unique perspective. In fact, if Biodynamics is healthy, the idea of a “farm organism” will manifest in different ways in each particular place. Why? Because Biodynamics isn't a prefixed formula. It is about adapting to the local environment and enfolding those natural rhythms within the sheaths of an emergent farm organism.

Somewhere, Rudolf Steiner once suggested that each of us should write our own version of the Philosophy of Freedom in our own words. If we were to take this seriously, we could almost extend this to biodynamic farmers and gardeners and suggest that we should each write our own version of the Agriculture Course in our own words, even if no one else were to read it.

Take the Best!

Often, we tell workshop participants to take the best and leave the rest. That means to take what works for you as an individual. It also means that some ideas and concepts may not be for me, and that is perfectly okay. What are your core beliefs? What cosmology do you subscribe to?

Biodynamic teachers and authors Hugh Courtney, Hugh Lovel, and Harvey Lisle all utilized dowsing to gain further insights and answers in their biodynamic quest for learning and exploration. They would even teach at many biodynamic conferences how dowsing can be used to locate things such as water, as well as ley lines or energy lines. Sometimes they were questioned and challenged by people who didn't believe that Biodynamics and dowsing should be combined. Because Steiner didn't specifically say we can use dowsing as a tool for further insights, many feel this strange art should be forbidden. Hugh Courtney would tell you that long before he ever even stumbled on biodynamics, he had a long and studied history with astrology and dowsing. That was one of the reasons he was able to easily share amazing insights into the best use of biodynamic preparations within the framework of astronomy and cosmology.

Some might call dowsing an “atavistic” practice – something that belongs to an earlier time but is inappropriate for today. But nothing is ever discarded. In human evolution, we have a reptilian brain stem onto which is layered a mammalian brain, a monkey mind, and only finally the human forebrain that lets us say “No” to ourselves. We can allow our instincts to speak, but we can always choose to do something else. The psychoanalyst C.G. Jung would allow half of his day to be the free play of his unconscious mind, but he always reserved the right to refuse to do anything immoral or unethical in that state of abandon. He might build sandcastles naked by the lake, or climb trees and hoot like a monkey, but then when the clock struck noon, he would clean up, put on his suit and tie, and behave like a civilized person for the rest of the day. We can listen to our instincts as they speak through things like “dowsing” (or even just when you “listen to your gut”) but we always reserve the right to doubt those results, particularly if dowsing or our gut instincts would suggest that we do anything that goes against our principles.

When I was studying for my yoga teacher's training, and also studying biodynamics at the Josephine Porter Institute, I was cautioned to be ever so careful because Steiner warned of the dangers of modern yoga, particularly for Western souls. Anthroposophists can be rather strict about this, but the world is much more nuanced now than in Steiner’s time. We contain entire worlds in each of us now. Be careful how you breathe, they warned – so many rules! But as Steiner consistently said, anthroposophy can easily tell you how things are but it cannot tell people what to do. It always leaves individuals free. When it doesn't, one must doubt whether it's really anthroposophy!

We should take the best of what we have learned from all our different teachers and studies, and make Biodynamics work for us, always reserving the right to say “no” to an instinct or imagination that does not foster human freedom and the proliferation of greater compassion towards others. Freeing ourselves from artificially imposed limitations is a crucial step for the future of Biodynamics, where we learn to explore different readings of the same text.

Who Can Be Biodynamic?

The critical point is to work with our own unique individual perspectives. This isn't relativism, but about developing a living relationship without which we are merely repeating someone else's ideas.

Even during the presentation of the Agriculture lectures in 1924, Steiner was questioned as to who could and should be doing the biodynamic work:

Question: Does it matter who does the work? Can anyone you choose do the work, or should it be an anthroposophist?

Answer: That is the question. If you raise such a question at all nowadays, you will be laughed at, no doubt, by many people. Yet I need only remind you that there are people whose flowers, grown in the window-box, thrive wonderfully, while with others they do not thrive at all but fade and wither. These are simple facts. These things that take place through human influence, though they cannot be outwardly explained, are inwardly quite clear and transparent.1

As you can know a tree by its fruits, you can know a person’s character by their actions. And you can know the quality of a soul by their relationship with plants. Have you ever met someone with a “green thumb” or the opposite, someone who has bad luck with keeping houseplants alive? I’ve encountered energy vampires who merely have to touch seedlings for them to wither and die. Then there are other people, who would never call themselves “anthroposophists,” who can bring almost any ailing plant back to new life. Those are the true anthroposophists – because living anthroposophy isn’t an ideology but a disposition of the heart, a felt devotional commitment to living out spiritual ideals.

“Kant once said very beautifully that there were two things that especially uplifted him—the starry heavens above him and the moral law within him…. Both are the same—the starry heavens above us and what we bear as moral law within us…. Here the human being feels full responsibility towards his own being, for he realizes that between death and a new birth the whole cosmos worked into his being, and he gathered together what he derived from the cosmos. He is responsible to the whole cosmos, for he actually bears the whole of the cosmos within him.”2

Courage, an open mind, and a caring heart are needed to transform long-held ideals and beliefs into something new. Following all the rules is one thing, but coming up with new insights is a completely different path. To vary from the established pathway takes courage and a willingness to be unconventional. Someone who studies Earth science will have a completely different and unique perspective from someone who studies music theory. Notes, tones, vibrations, and frequencies can all be viewed from an endless number of perspectives. We are lucky in the biodynamic world to have had some excellent historical teachers who still inspire us today. The work of Maria Thun inspires daily contemplation, even when one merely glances at a biodynamic planting calendar.

Because the pulse of each particular place is distinct — just as my heartbeat is different from yours — each living organism that incorporates those rhythms must also be distinct. In human embryology, it is the independent pulse that emerges before the heart itself forms. This is because the heart is not primarily the mover of blood; blood is the mover of the heart. This is true of all evolution: we can only internalize what already existed outside us. This is no less true for a farm organism, which grows up around the natural rhythms of a given ecosystem.

Each and every farm individuality has a specific set of conditions into which it must adapt with distinct boundaries, various soil types, a particular atmosphere, unique fauna and flora, and its emergent human cultures. Goethe describes the influence of local plants on us:

"[T]he vegetation of a country is said to influence the temperament of its inhabitants. And it's true: someone who is surrounded by tall, stern oaks all his life is bound to turn out differently from someone who wanders every day beneath airy birch trees. But you have to remember that the general populace is not made of such sensitive stuff as we are, and that on the whole they just live their lives in their own little world, not realizing how much we are affected by outside influences.” Goethe, as quoted by Peter Johann Eckermann in Conversations with Goethe

The permaculturist Bill Mollison would say that the first thing you should do is: observe everything without intervening for a full year. Watch what grows on the farm, where things emerge, the succession of wild annual plants, the dry patches, the wet patches. Only by getting to know these rhythms can we use them to produce a healthy farm organism. If we disregard these rhythms entirely, we will tend to make a factory farm, which is not a living thing but a kind of mechanical imposition on living nature. To modify nature harmoniously, we must first invite nature inside our own souls.

Dowsing, kinesiology, herbology, reiki, astrology, botany, are all tools and systems of various ways to understand and work with the natural world, creating our own unique view to any situation. We aim to take the combined experience of the best of what we know today, from the very best teachers who have guided us on the way , and put that in a format that we can use to have the most fruitful results in your biodynamic work.

Towards Cosmic Thinking

Regularly studying and working with the astronomical calendar can lead to “cosmic thinking.” In biodynamics, we seek to think in terms of the living. This means rather than thinking in subatomic particles, amorphous statistics, or dense brick-like thoughts, we use the plant itself as our archetype for our thinking to remain within the realm of the living. We make special fertilizers with living reagents so that nothing we do falls out of the realm of growing, living, and reproducing. In an earlier mode of thinking from the former epoch, this was articulated in the heights of Scholasticism as the analogia entis, or the analogy of being. We do not “build” plants; we tend them so they can grow. As Evrett Lundquist of Demeter USA astutely noted, when botany texts say “plants are made of calcium, magnesium, sulfur, etc.,” this is bad grammar and poor science because it is the passive voice which rather subtly conceals the primary agency of life. The periodic elements are not the agents of life but the instruments of life! Plants make themselves out of humus, minerals, light, air, water, and warmth. However, these physical components will never, by themselves, spontaneously produce a plant.

Even in conventional agriculture, whether or not they recognize the cosmic connection, farmers are beholden to the rhythms of the Sun and Earth, and they plant according to the four seasons. Even Steiner suggests that if we ignore the moon, plants don’t: they will often wait for the approach of the full moon to germinate, whether or not we as growers are attentive to these rhythms. Fortunately, Nature continues to work around us whether or not we consciously integrate with her specific cycles. However, more conscientious agriculture often deliberately incorporates lunar rhythms for planting and sowing, both for improved productivity and to foster a greater sense of connection with Nature.

The worldview from which Biodynamics originated teaches us that the sun, moon, planets, and even the stars have a profound influence, and that everything above has a corresponding reflection below. Humanity has lost its sense of meaning in the cosmos, but we are the unique confluence of all cosmic forces held together in dynamic harmony. We are microcosmic images of the big picture, able not only to live and feel in the world, but to be self-conscious in a uniquely cosmic way. Every being has its own way of experiencing the world, but the human being can think beyond the boundaries of ourselves because we contain the entire cosmos within us. The sun we carry as the pulse in our warm blood; the forethought and afterthought bookending experience is the oscillating course of mercury in us.

This macroscopic view stretches our sense of the boundaries of space and time. Cosmic thinking is a veritable springboard for human freedom. By thinking of everything we do as a reflection of something at work in the far reaches of the cosmos, our activities never become estranged from the whole, and we never lose our footing in this unfolding journey. This may sound abstract, but taking the broader view helps ground us in reality. The universe is unnecessary, and therefore it is essentially free. Because we have internalized a nearly complete image of the universe, we possess a distinctly human kind of creative freedom through which we can explore new vistas and generate new solutions to emerging dilemmas.

There may be a “biodynamic rulebook” to follow with time-tested good and best practices. We can use those rules as a launching point for explorations. But when you're in the desert, many of the biodynamic herbs refuse to grow, and fungal diseases are far less of a problem. The “rules” of biodynamics are merely indications (andeuten) not fixed dogmas. To read Steiner's words as narrow limitations is like describing the molecular structure of a wooden arrow — as it careens away from you through the air! Steiner's words are vectors full of force, each pointing into a yet unformed future.

Moreover, Steiner's words were suggestions for a particular place in what is now Poland. Do you farm in Poland? Probably not! Then why would you expect your farm to need strictly the same medicine as a Polish farm? If you don't have the same disease as someone else, why would you expect the same remedy to be appropriate for you? If Steiner’s indications were given in Europe, how do I make farming work if I live on the edge of a desert? Here, much experimentation is needed to find suitable indigenous substitutes and to demonstrate their effectiveness repeatedly.

Beyond Boundaries

Dead thinking plagues materialistic minds. The last century, in the fallout of the spiritual dark age of the 20th century, produced a plethora of fundamentalist ideologies, each determined to explain away almost all of reality by a small part of the truth. Monty Python humorously depicts this kind of narrow thinking:

One of the funnier stories Steiner shares is that he once told a group that being able to put a shoe on while standing on one leg has a certain benefit — namely, equilibrium lets you do this. He returned months later to discover that the audience had turned this into a “spiritual exercise” of standing on one foot and putting on a shoe in the middle of the night! Even at the Agriculture Course, the attendees noticed that Steiner wasn't eating his soup. Whispers began: did the clairvoyant master know something they didn't about the spiritual quality of the soup? Were they harming themselves by eating it? Finally, someone mustered enough courage to ask: “Herr Doktor, why are you not eating your soup?” To which Steiner dryly replied, “Because I have no spoon!” Let's pray this is not how we think about biodynamics.

Steiner warns us that these days, people can only think what they already believe. If this seems untrue, try discussing anything online. People are often unaccustomed to trying on the ideas of others. People tend to shoot first and ask questions later, and this is just as true within anthroposophical circles as outside them. And why wouldn't this be true? Anthroposophy is not separate from the world it lives in. This is why Steiner is so easily reduced to another kind of pope of something that was never meant to be a religion. We can't blame anthroposophists for creating idols; this is just what human beings tend to do, especially in the last century, when we imagine ourselves most free from prejudices.

So, when Steiner tells us not to believe what he says, but to think about what he says, this is no small ask, because Steiner says this is precisely what people cannot do these days. But what he is asking us to do is to exercise willfully our own imaginations, to try on the thoughts of others and think them through to their conclusions without judgment. Then and only then should we evaluate their internal contradictions, but only after first thinking through the entire line of thought. These days, people often need no more than a headline to know what they think about something they haven't even read! We must break such stagnant patterns of thought by setting aside our own ideas and adopting those of another person.

In gardening and farming, this can be extended as far as thinking like a plant. This creates thoughts that cease to be merely an intellectual process of metaphysical bricklaying (a tower of Babel), and leads to a process more akin to growing into a great tree. Even Steiner remarks how our (dead) buildings can only be so tall in relation to their base, and how much greater a plant can rise from such a small foundation.

While Steiner suggests there are no upper limits to knowledge in his Philosophy of Freedom, our approach must remain organic if it is not to be a towering edifice of pride. It must ever be a process of growth, maturation, self-surrender, death, and resurrection.

Even what we designate as “unknown” is rendered knowable precisely because we have framed it.

Irritating Conjunctions

What are the frequencies, energies, emanations, radiations, the stream from the beings of the planets and stars? What happens with communications when Mercury goes retrograde? The atmosphere of the Earth becomes a bit disturbed. Imagine being forced to stay at a party with people you really do not enjoy being around, but your ride is enjoying themselves and so you have to stay uncomfortably in a group of people that really do not suit you. That is what a conjunction is like!

What has Steiner expounded on that gives us new indications? The beauty of the scope of his anthroposophical work is that if you read one lecture a day, it would take an entire decade just to get through the works that were put down on paper.

Conjunctions (shown as ☌) occur when two planets stand behind one another in space. Usually, only the planet closest to the Earth has any influence on plant growth. If this influence is stronger than that of the Moon, cosmic disturbances can occur that irritate the plants and cause problems with growth.

This adverse effect is increased if the Moon or Sun stand directly in front of a planet, called an occultation (☌ filled in). In the case of Sun and Moon, this is called an eclipse. Sowing at these times will harm future growth and damage a plant's ability to reproduce. These times are marked as an unfavorable time (shown as gray blocks).

If we were more familiar with the qualities of these “unfavorable” times, we would understand that these are unique moments for enhanced transformation. But because we are looking for reliable productivity in the garden — and not surprising changes — these “blackout times” are windows particularly suited for therapeutic interventions, to counterbalance the uncomfortable tension of a given constellation, and otherwise belong to alchemists seeking to transform plants and create new varietals.

Biodynamic thinking and action provide endless opportunities to become aware, engage, and participate in the cosmic rhythms of the great creation of life on Earth.

Go Biodynamic — For Life!