Holy Seasons, Holy Nights
Originally published 2025-12-24. By Lloyd Nelson, Stewart Kahn Lundy, JPI Biodynamics, Max Leyf.
Automated reading
contemplations for Christmastide
Biodynamic Digest #22
12 holy nights, the plan, the activation of the soil and the soul
The Josephine Porter Institute - Applied Biodynamics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
The spiritual power of Christmas and the new year can be renewed in our hearts, minds, souls, and even the soil, as we reflect on past, present, and future.
Liturgy of the Season translated by
THIRTY-SEVENTH WEEK OF THE YEAR
37. Zu tragen Geisteslicht in Weltenwinternacht
Erstrebet selig meines Herzens Trieb,
Daß leuchtend Seelenkeime
In Weltengründen wurzeln,
Und Gotteswort im Sinnesdunkel
Verklärend alles Sein durchtönt.
∇∆
TO bear the light of mind
into the night of world-winter,
my beating heart impels my soul,
impels her to impart and sow
a shining kernel from herself
into the world’s fertile ground
from whence it then may come to spring,
in course of time and dark of sense,
the sacred Word resound
and draw all beings to transfiguration
The individual human being is full of untold potential. With the arrival of winter, we explore the boundaries of possibilities. We can glean the wisdom of what was, what trials and tribulations, challenges, and advancements occurred, and put that to good use in what is to become.
Freedom and human potential are on trial. The advent of AI makes it easy to get quick answers, but real knowledge is another story altogether. Much of what AI produces is incorrect, but because it produces it with such rapidity and without disclosing its guesses (what is being termed “hallucinations”), it is spreading the illusion of universal comprehension without any experiential knowledge. The age of the computer gives us answers to our questions, as can readily be seen in the youth (and many, many others) who ask questions and seek advice directly from the machine rather than from the real world. Learning without doing is invariably dry, bloodless, and barren.
Will we remain stuck in the mud of the materialistic age we live in, or can we break free of the ruts and plow a courageous path forward? The result will remain to be seen. Many are drowning in the deluge of AI content, losing their sense of reality because AI is not designed with any reality checks. Instead, it can easily induce a kind of psychosis. “Conversations” with AI are anything but conversations – a hall of mirrors, speaking to an echo of our most recent expressions, drawing us further into a shadowy realm of our own egos. This is an utterly stark contrast to a living relationship.
“Whence came you hither?” asked the golden king.
“Out of the clefts where gold dwells,” replied the serpent.
“What is more glorious than gold?”
“Light!”
“What is more quickening than Light?”
“Conversation!”
AI is trained in the art of seeming compelling – of feeding us what we seem to want to hear. But an honest conversation with a real friend won’t constantly flatter us, and most importantly, they will have the loving courage to tell us when they think we’re in the wrong.
You were born with wings. Why prefer to crawl through life? - Rumi
What are we, as free human beings, capable of? This was one of the foundational questions laid on the altar of the Earth at the beginning of a quest of exploration into the unknown frontiers of farming.
Rudolf Steiner shares in the Agriculture Lectures that in the same way that I can pass by a dull and insensitive person without being noticed, so can everything within and above the soil pass by a dull and insensitive plant1. What a plant cannot perceive, it cannot put to use for its own growth. But fundamentally, what a plant cannot resist, it cannot perceive. If a plant couldn’t intercept light – blocking it from passing through it – it couldn’t photosynthesize. Likewise, the human eye cannot perceive gamma rays because they pass through our tissue freely. We can only perceive that which we can resist. If a mood or feeling simply inundates us and we cannot hold it at arm’s length, we cannot perceive its objective form, its meaning – instead we simply drown in the transient experience.
Education forms our understanding of the world around us. If we can open to new possibilities from previous concepts, the doorways to new ways of working with the natural world open.
Creativity is one of the highest forms of freedom. The ability to operate not from horizontal causality in time, but from vertical causality from the spiritual world is the essence of inspiration “from above” and the power to shift streams of karma by acting in an unnecessary way – a rupture of grace into the undertow of necessity. The classic example of this is Jesus Christ, who demonstrated a radically new possibility: that of Life overcoming Death.
The late great Hugh Courtney would say, “The Biodynamic preparations are much more powerful than anyone will know, for some time to come.” Hugh was always experimenting, questioning, developing new ways to accomplish the task of biodynamics: “so that the Earth may be healed.” Hugh encourages his students to work on ways to improve biodynamics for the future generations that will come, when biodynamics will be needed. The work must be done with our will, gestate in our heart and be born onto dry land if it is to service life on Earth. Hugh founded JPI – the Josephine Porter Institute for Applied Biodynamics as a way to teach others how to make the best biodynamic preparations, and help teach the next generation of prep makers to further the evolutionary task of Biodynamics. Luckily for Stewart and Lloyd, the ample time spent with Hugh sparked the courageous attitude to reinforce this foundation, to help others learn from the best of what biodynamics can offer, and to test and experiment on ways to develop the world of biodynamics. Hugh Courtney emphasized the twelve holy nights as a powerful way to work with the spiritual forces of the universe!
The beginning of winter is one the best times to plan ahead, both physically and spiritually. A time of preparation for the upcoming preparations,
A deep dive into the 12 holy nights
What astronomical events are happening in our skies? We can use our handy Biodynamic Almanac for real-time answers.
https://www.jpibiodynamics.org/products/maria-thun-biodynamic-almanac
The 2026 biodynamic almanac is available and is one of the more valuable tools available for improving the Biodynamic work.
When we cast our gaze to the starry heavens, and look for ways to work with the stars, we would do well to remember a potent window of opportunity that perhaps yields the greatest potential of them all. This is the mysterious dive into the Twelve Holy Nights, where we reckon with the past and look towards the future.
The 12 holy nights are a time of reflection and time to plan.
There is a great spiritual cosmic opening, a gateway of potential, an opportunity par excellence, during this the darkest time of the year. All that has come and all that will be can be reflected in our minds, hearts and souls. A twelve night practice provides an opportunity to reckon with the past and future.
Much has been written on the 12 Holy Nights, so we can encourage your own development by offering a few resources for your perusal.
An excellent resource from the ever brilliant Mary Stewart Adams with a clear path, plan and homework that can assist your twelve night journey:
Kelly Ann Wilson provides an excellent practice diving into the mysteries of the cycle of the year. Additional windows into the potential of greatness open up before us.
Now is the time that plans can be made for what is to come to birth in this new year of 2026.
As Goethe says, “Beware of wishing anything in youth, because you will get it in middle age.” As the spiritual year begins in autumn, the winter solstice marks a time of harvest for the soul. That which we gave out returns its lessons to us in the quiet of this season – if we meet it with interior silence. If we work at cross-purposes with ourselves, we create unnecessary suffering – like a tree whose branches shade out all its fruit. We must pick which branches to leave now, before cutting off the others. If we try to do to many things in too many directions, we produce small sour fruits. We cannot say yes to everything. Beauty requires rejecting what does not belong and the courage to exclude it. Widely attributed to Michaelango is the sentiment that “The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”
The holy nights begin on Christmas Eve and lasts for twelve days/nights, culminating in what is otherwise known as Three Kings Day. These Twelve Holy Nights offer an opportunity to create a harmonious union with the world of the stars. The longest night provides a chance to work toward the future. The world of the stars awaits a dialogue, an opening to the great potential, a casting of the proverbial net into the endless sea of possibility. At JPI, this is a time to make another batch of the Pfeiffer Field and Garden Spray, which is mixed daily for a full hour, twice, straddling exact sunrise and exact sunset. What is trained here is the deep winter receptivity of the season. Our own breathing is a microcosm of the seasonal breathing rhythms: the pause at the depth of our inhale is the winter solstice, the change of directions is the spring equinox, the pause at an empty lung is the summer solstice, and again the change of directions is the autumn equinox. The same is true of stirring and the reversal of mixing water.
Inspirational source and resource:
Lynn Jericho has been an amazing source of inspiration
The Viva la Vida foundation has excellent ongoing resources in their newsletter, and they always take a deep dive into the holy night practice .
https://vivalavidapaonia.org
The Sophia Institute has an amazing resource and blog:
https://www.sophiainstitute.us/blog/the-twelve-holy-nights-of-christmas-and-their-significance
Here is a short version of the potential practice of the holy nights:
Each of the Twelve Holy Nights has a reflection with the twelve months of the year and the twelve constellations of the zodiac.
For the practical practice of the Twelve Holy Nights, we look towards the past, present, and future.
The practice is to put ourselves into the ongoing evolution of the Earth, humanity, and all of Life, both physical and spiritual.
For the first of the twelve holy nights, here is a practice that I use and can be used as a template for your own development.
Holy Night #1- constellation of Aries
Christmas Eve to Christmas morning:
Reflect on the previous January (2025) and look forward to the next January (2026). What events will transpire in (future) January 2026? What events occurred past January. What areas can you improve and make better? Where were the shortcomings? Here we can question our decisions, and look for new possibilities.
Christmas Eve, take past January and Future January into your dream world, into your sleep.
Upon waking Christmas morning, whatever information you took into the sleep world into your dreamworld, wake up, reflect, and journal. What dreams did you have – what thoughts or imaginations? Any inspirations?
Now, put your thought process to future January, which is soon! What will happen, what great things might develop and what relationship should you nurture? Questions to internalize, inner discovery and possibilities of improvements may come to mind.
An example: in January 2025, Stewart and Lloyd went on an epic adventure to teach workshops at the amazing Utah Farm and Food Conference. We can reflect on and contemplate the upcoming January, and we can imagine how we can improve on our teaching and make biodynamics more accessible.
The Utah food and farm conference, one of the most important conferences in the west, brings together farmers, ranchers, food enthusiasts, chefs, gardeners, spiritual leaders and a large cross section of the population. This conference has done more to foster Biodynamic development in the southwest United States perhaps than any other in recent years, and for that we remain continually grateful to our friends in Utah and the surrounding region.
As a result of the Utah Food and Farm Conference, biodynamics has been spreading like healthy mycelium, below ground, unnoticed “below the radar” by systems that simply aren’t tracking it. Biodynamic preparations have been broadcast on over half a million acres as a direct result of the meetings from the relationships built at the Utah farm and food conference. Hope shines for the future out of such gatherings! All of the biodynamic preparations are being made in Utah now, and for anyone who has ever tried to make them, this is no small feat!
Stewart and I lead some fun workshops. Here are a few pictures:
Taking time to reflect, learn and improve is a powerful and potent opportunity for growth.
Another example:
Last January the Fellowship of Biodynamic Preparation Makers (FOPM) annual gathering was hosted in Viroqua, Wisconsin. Next month, January 23-25th 2026, the FOPM gathering will be in Pennsylvania at the Camphill Village Kimberton Hills in Phoenixville, PA
What more can I bring to this Fellowship gathering this year? Who was I last year, and who am I now?
The fellowship is a group dedicated to securing a fertile future for the Biodynamic preparation work in North America.
Last January, I presented a wide-ranging vision of biodynamic activities and practical implications, and this January we are both presenting.
We will be talking about one of the pioneers of the Biodynamic movement, E Pfeiffer, on the first day, and then embark on a mission to understand the mineral kingdom.
Last January Stewart went to share Biodynamics in Mexico, and he is returning for more real soon!
A direct result from these cross cultural Biodynamic excursions is now several of our Substack articles have been translated and made available to the Spanish Speaking world!
Here is a link for the upcoming Mexico Biodynamic gathering January 10th, in Baja Sur, Mexico:
Future and Past, All these things should be taken into account as we transition towards the dawning of the new year.
Second Holy Night contemplate Taurus
Next on this pathway of the 12 holy nights, the second holy night happens Christmas night, Dec. 25th and continues into the morning of December 26.
Reflect on past February and look forward to future February.
Third Holy Night contemplate Gemini
Going to bed on the 27th you reflect on past March and future March, look to the warm days of the spring equinox when things are back in balance with celestial balance, equal day and night.
What seeds will you plant? How will your garden look?
Fourth Holy Night contemplate Cancer, the Crab
For the 28th reflect on future April and look back again towards last April, how did your plantings grow? Are there ways to improve
Fifth contemplate Leo the Lion
For the evening of the 29th, and the morning of the 30th reflect on May 2025 and look forward to May 2026, will you have early tomatoes this year?
Sixth contemplate Virgo
For the evening of the 30th, through the morning of the 31st, we will look towards June, past and future. In June we can ponder summer solstice, the longest days of the year. This is an interesting thing to reflect- the polarities this time of outward summer.
Seventh contemplate Libra
Here we enter the great night of New Year’s the evening of the 31st waking up on January 1, 2026 beginning.
Reflect on July 2025 and look forward to July 2026
The midnight hour, the awakening
Historically, people did not sleep through the night. They would sleep a few hours, wake up in the middle of the night for an hour or so, and then go back to sleep. A memory of this is retained in parts of the world where people take a midday siesta.
The Eighth night contemplate Scorpio
The evening of January 1 into the morning of January 2 reflect August
Ninth contemplate Sagittarius
Evening of January 2 morning of January 3
Contemplate September
Tenth contemplate Capricorn
Evening January 3 and morning January 4 contemplate October
Eleventh contemplate Aquarius
Evening of January 4 and morning of January 5, contemplate November
The 12th Night contemplate Pisces
Evening of January 5, morning of January 6
Reflect on past December, envision future December.
The culmination of the Twelve Holy Nights ends on Three Kings Day, otherwise known as Epiphany!
The Twelve Holy Nights are a window or an opening,
What happened last year and what will become?
Open the doors of Life!
The dawning of Life that returns each spring out of the darkness of winter is part of the ongoing evolution of Earth and all of her inhabitants.
There is a daily renewal of life each morning as we awake from slumber.
The Twelve Holy Nights are the time to create a better future while remembering our past, where we come from and ways we can improve.
Go Biodynamic
For Life!
R. Steiner, Agriculture Course, pg 104
