<This article copied from
http://www.kheper.net/ecognosis/essays/Biodynamic_500.html You'll
find the referenced illustrations at this link, also -AB)
About Biodynamic "500" spray.
This article orginally appeared in the Anthroposphical Journel of
Australia in February 1991. It was subsquently picked up by the
biodynamic gardening journal in the USA.
Mentioned in this article are Marion and Walter Burley Griffin. They
created the forms and plans that have resulted in modern Canberra -
the National Capital of Australia. Much of the material in this web
site is related to them. Both were deeply into the spiritual aspects
of reality. Oral history tapes about their personalities exists in
the National Library of Australia. In time more about them will
appear in the Ecognosis material.
Over two thousand Australians and New Zealanders use Biodynamic "500"
spray on their land. The spray is one of Rudolf Steiner's ideas. It
is made by filling cow horns with fresh cow manure and burying them
in Winter. In Spring when the horns are dug up the manure has been
transformed into the crumbly mixture known as "500" - the Soil
Preparation. Correctly stored it keeps for years. Sprayed onto the
soil in Spring it - in some mysterious way - improves the soil and
the quality of the plants which grow in it.
What follows is an account of my experiences with "500" about ten
years ago. It was an experience that was both practical and
spiritual. At the time I was a concerned Anthroposophist who felt
that I needed to make the Spiritual aspects of my experience
available to readers of the Australian Anthroposophical Journal - who
hopefully will not come to the conclusion that I am always "Off with
the Fairies".
It all started about 5 years before I wrote the article when we
visited Robert Walcott, a long time user of "500". His farm is a
sheep property on the Southern Highlands of NSW, Australia. The
property, to my slightly experienced but amateur eye did not appear
to be anything special, it suffered from too many sheep and a run of
dry years. At that stage I had no confidence and little knowledge
about biodynamics or "500" spray. When pressed by my host I mumbled
things like, "Interesting," and "Oh yes, it is QUITE possible."
We forgot our cooler box in the Walcott's kitchen. In it we had
bananas, bread, a bit of cheese and some apples. Later the cooler was
returned to us. The puzzling thing was that nothing in the cooler had
gone off - everything was fine and eatable even after a week of
sitting in the enclosed box in a corner of a heated kitchen.
Peculiar, "Well," I said to myself, "It may be due to the quartz
crystals which abound on the farm or to the "500" spray or to God
knows what." I now know that I was almost right ... but therein lays
more of the tale.
Rob gave us ajar of "500" preparation neatly tucked into a box of
peat moss. Remaining cynical, I put it in my cellar and left it there
for two years. This year we had a wet, warm Spring, and so we decided
it was time to try "500".
It was the 6th of October, 1990, at about eight in the evening. The
moon was full in the sky. Dew was starting to fall and. the earth, in
the jargon of Biodynamics, was "open" or "breathing in". After a
pleasant dinner on the veranda we hunted up a bucket, poured some
"baby bottle"-warm rain water into it and dug through the kitchen
drawers for a long handled wooden jam making spoon. We crumbled a bit
of "500" Preparation into the bucket. Then we started to stir. There
were four of us and we stir-red for the recommended hour. After about
half an hour we noticed a smell - it was a bit like frangipani - a
pleasant sweet smell and not at all what one expects to get from cow
manure.
We stirred in the prescribed way, clockwise and anticlockwise forming
a whirlpool in the Centre of the bucket. The biodynamic literature
suggests that this whirlpool is a chaos situation. Seemingly, the
forces of the cosmos and the stars enter the mixture during the
stirring to activate the energies that were locked in the specially
buried cow manure. Later, when the mixture is sprayed, it is said
that the captured cosmic and earth forces are released to enliven the
soil and give strength to plants. This is an interesting picture but
one I doubt after my subsequent experiences.
At this stage I was still both skeptical and curious. I have been
divining water and dowsing Geomantic energies for many years. So I
hunted up a pendulum and held it over the mixture, curious to see
what sort of reaction would result. I got no reaction at all. Now, I
expected a strong clockwise or anticlockwise rotation of the pendulum
over the bucket. Surely you would expect that, I mean here we had
been stirring water in a bucket for an hour creating whirlpools in
either direction but no, I did not get that. What I got was nothing,
a complete blankness - most peculiar, because even an unstirred
bucket of water has radiations that affect a pendulum, Intrigued, I
walked around the bucket with its potentised "500" mixture trying to
understand what had happened and discovered at about 1.25 metres from
the centre of the bucket that there was a circle at the edge of which
the pendulum swung in an anticlockwise direction. For a dowser it was
a bit like Coming up to a water line and then finding a hollow, a
thing that 1 have never known to happen. The circle, in three
dimensional terms, seemed to be either a ball or a cylinder that
surrounded the mixture and extended into the ground - a most
unexpected and rather peculiar result.
We then poured the mixture into little spray guns and went into the
garden in the moonlight spraying "500" up into the air. We walked
around the house and did two large vegetable plots, in total, I guess
we sprayed almost a hectare. When we had used up all the mixture we
washed up and scraped the cow dung mixture - thin and homeopathic as
it was - out of our hair, faces and eyes. We said "Well, you know,
that wasn't much trouble, it was rather fun. Let's see what happens"
. . . and of course we didn't expect anything to happen. In fact we
had been warned not to expect marvellous results or else we'd be
disappointed and give up Biodynamics without having given "500" a
fair go.
When 1 woke the next morning 1 felt that we had a circle of
"nothingness" around the house - a peculiar situation. Even the areas
that were not sprayed (because we couldn't spray everything at night
with our ineffective spray guns) were in this "nothingness " - so
although our block is triangular we had a rough circle, or it may
even have been a ball, of nothingness around us. Interestingly, this
circle has gradually contracted back into the shape of our yard.
The nothingness persisted for about 2 or 3 days - I wondered if it
wasn't drawing energy from around the village or from around other
farms in the area. Certainly, energy was being accumulated in our
circular space; it was the sort of energy that precedes a
manifestation, a feeling that the threshold is very near.
On the third day after the spraying 1 noticed a web of formative
force formations started to weave themselves into the air directly
above the soil. To my minds eye it looked a little like bee cells or
perhaps like those microscopic pictures one sees of aligned plant
cells. Later in the day it became clear to me that the developing
formations were more like aligned crystals than anything else - the
spaces in between filling in with more crystals. The crystals were 6
sided and varied in size. They ranged from about 15 to 80 millimetres
in width and from 2 to 30 centimetres in height.
1 don't know where this crystal formation came from, perhaps it came
from the stars as Marion Griffin (see below) suggests. In my case, it
took three days for these formations to appear but I see no reason
why this period should be fixed and why only crystal shapes should
appear to fill the "500" created void.
[Inset into the article... Over the years I have seen "500" used on
many other occasions. Once, in the same garden as the experiences I
am relating a friend did the stirring and spraying for me. What came
into the space was mushroom shapes - fungus; and that year the garden
was subsequently plagued with moulds. I have helped friends spray
"500" I prepared with small hand sprayers, Returning later I found
the areas I sprayed were having a growth spurt, while the areas they
sprayed - from the same bucket - received no effect.)
The crystal web was being held in place by something, perhaps will or
thought. It created a formative force field which made the soil
pattern itself into the shape suggested by the ethic 'crystals'. Soil
structure is vital for the growth of plant roots and the activity of
the millions of soil insects that are the actual creators of soil
fertility.
By this time the moon was waning and the nights, as is often the case
in Galong, were close to perfect with few clouds and bright stars. As
usual, I went to bed early and around midnight began to get a dream.
It started with the sensation of little worms with legs like
centipedes crawling all over my body, they made me terribly itchy,
they seemed to be biting and drawing juice out of me. Later they were
exchanged for another sort of creature, a little leech-like beastie
that clung to my arms and sucked my blood, these persistent little
fellows moved around my body and began to make me feel very
threatened and uncomfortable. "Ridiculous," I said to myself, "this
is only a dream," and woke up. Next morning, when 1 thought about it,
I came to the conclusion that the dream was related to what the "500"
was doing to my garden. Perhaps, somehow or other, the soil creatures
that lived in the garden had found a way to visit me during the night
and to use me to help them work the soil.
In practical terms what did the "500" spraying achieve? Well, I
sprayed my thirty or so tomato plants with seaweed (seaweed spray is
often combined with "500", particularly in New Zealand) three days
after we had sprayed the "500". A further two or three days later and
the growth results were amazing. There was no two ways about it. The
soil darkened, and seemed to be warm when I dug holes to put in extra
tomato plants. The plants sat up clean and straight in a way I have
never seen happen before - and I have been growing tomatoes for close
to 15 years. Something clearly has happened.
Kurt, my neighbour who helped me with the stirring and who also
sprayed "500" in his garden came to the same conclusion something
really had happened. As Kurt said, "Steiner, well, let's face it, he
was a genius. What happened, well, nobody really knows, but clearly
something has."
In his garden Kurt noticed that the start of grape fungus disappeared
three days after he applied the "500". Kurt has had fungus problems
on his grapes for years, the result of a house that once was on his
block. The leftover foundations had that strange musty feeling that
one can often sense in old buildings.
This brings me back to my early "500" experience on my friend's farm
when the food in our cooler didn't go off even after a week.
Apparently, with "500" the forces of decay are reduced, yet the
forces of soil growth which are related to the vital soil organisms
like springtails seem to prosper. It is from the bodies of these
creatures that healthy 'living' soil is built.
In my mind's eye I saw the "500" working to create an interlocking
web of crystal like formative force structures held in place by
thought. I know that my perception of these forms helps to hold them
in place, but I am also aware, from an experience I will outline
below, that Gnomes are helping to hold these etheric structures in
place. Below is an extract from "Magic of America" one of the oddest
manuscripts ever to come out of Anthroposophy. It was written by
Marion Griffin, wife and vital helpmate of Walter Burley Griffin, the
designer of Canberra and the creator of Castlecraig. The manuscript
is available at the National Library in Canberra. Marion was a superb
draftsperson and the sketches below tell me as much as her words.
A star is a point in the universe. Each star throws out certain
beams, sometimes one kind of beam, sometimes other kinds of beams.
Let us watch their play. Two stars send out a message each a living
thing and a quadrilateral is created. All these great beings have
children and we human beings call these children of the angelic
beings Fairies.
We have spoken of the Star Beings, the Sun Beings and the Moon Beings
but now we have come to the Earth Being whose children, the Gnomes,
help her to live and grow. For when the Earth has come into existence
as an idea of one of the Fire Spirits the other Fire Spirits become
interested and begin to send out their rays and the quadrilateral is
formed, the Gnomes get busy to keep this form fixed, a solid material
body and as the stars create form after form the Gnomes gather them
together and build up the solid earth as we know it.
For as the stars send out rays and rays they build up all the
wonderful crystal forms in creation and the solid earth is made up of
all those lovely crystals that the star beings imagined. When all the
fairies got together in council to see they couldn't bring all the
lovely forms that the heavenly beings were creating to the Earth
where they could use the crystals to built up all sorts of lovely
living, shining, moving, singing creatures.
About ten days after "500" had been sprayed in my garden 1 was
confronted by a Gnome; it wasn't the usual representation one sees
with a chubby face and a pointed little hat. It was like a knight in
armour, without a head, The body armour was made out little plates
similar to what one seems on the backs of slaters - except much
larger. And there he was, sexless and very large, a gigantic size, he
reached almost to the top of our 10 foot walls, he wasn't sharply
defined but to my minds eye he certainly was very real. He had come
out of the ground - where he really should have been and was trying
to dominate the area. He wanted to become King of the area and the
"500" had seemingly given him the opportunity to do this. Fortunately
he was out of his realm and had no real strength. So when 1
confronted him he retreated. Certainly. the desire to be the King of
the area, to be the chief Nature Spirit, to be the chief force of the
area was very strong.
1 have met quite a number of Australian and European Nature Spirits.
Tree beings, and the delightful little European fairies the dance
around flowers - the sort of things that children have no trouble in
seeing- but up until my "500" experience I have never been confronted
by a being of this nature. I have met Gnomes before, they are there
when you transfer yourself into the ground to cheek what's happening,
they are more of the seven dwarf variety. This type of Gnome is a
fascinating creature, that really can entice and enthral and lead
people into what 1 guess is gold fever, or diamond fever, or mining
fever - the Gnomes like to do that. But this was something else, this
was a King Gnome, and a European King Gnome at that, called up by the
ritual of making, stirring and spraying "500".
Three months after spraying the influence of the "500" has faded, the
etheric crystal web seemingly being destroyed by the natural
electricity that links the ground and the sky. In the first eight
weeks the influence of the "500" extended up from one metre on hard
ground to three metres on soft ground. On healthy trees it reached to
their peak. Now, the crystal web extends out of the ground for only
10 to 30 centimetres. Associated with the shrinkage of the size and
quality of the etheric crystal web has been a reduction in the domain
and strength of the King Gnome.
At first the Nature Spirits in my garden, particularly the Australian
ones were terrified by the King Gnome. They didn't like him and felt
intruded upon. Now, although they do not cooperate with the King
Gnome, they have called a truce, understanding perhaps that the King
Gnome work in a different sphere than they do.
In practical terms the "500" allowed my unstaked varieties of'
tomatoes to reach almost 1.5 metres. As the influence of the "500"
faded the tomatoes started falling and have kept growing along the
ground. The zucchinis (all hybrid types) have done marvellously. The
beans have grown well, flowered badly and fruited not at all. I also
had trouble getting the tomatoes to flower and fruit, I suspect that
- certainly in the Australian home garden "501" the silicon spray, is
needed to balance the excessive power and influence of the gnomes and
to encourage flowering and fruiting to occur normally. I haven't
tried "501 " and don't know what will happen when I do . . . I'll let
you know next year.
Reference: "Man as Symphony of the Creative Word", Rudall Steiner, (
1923). Particularly Lectures 7, 8 and 9.
Steven Guth Galong Village NSW 2585 Australia
