Quartz: Spiritual Ancestor to Plants

Bring light into the plant’s forms with its primordial predecessor...

by Stewart Lundy, JPI

In the prehistory of the earth, the planet was too hot for current carbon-based compounds to exist. Lava flowed across the surface of our sphere the way that streams flow now. In this inhospitable climate, the first intimations towards growth forms arose.

Admittedly, these novel forms did not look much like plants, but they were the first crystallization of the upward cosmic stream in translucent structures. It is true they had no leaves, and strove to return to the cosmos, and were permeable to light. These new forms coalesced out of the primordial chaos of the earth.

Consider a plant. Plants arise out of the chaotic blend of materials of the earthy humus. Plants grow upwards towards the universe. And light permeates plants. Though not literal descendants, these are analogous processes and real inner relationships.

Quartz crystal, buried over summer, is the first tendency of plant-like growth to emerge out of the chaos of the soil. Horn silica is a concentrated power to draw the plant up and out of the formlessness of humus and into specialized plant forms.

As Ruskin writes in Proserpina, “Crystals are to minerals what flowers are to plants.” A crystal is like a tendency towards flowering within the mineral world itself. Steiner notes in Theosophy that crystals are a transitional stage between pure formlessness and the dynamic living forms of plants. The silica preparation is often misunderstood, but it should be used at least in proportion to 500 horn manure. The horn manure enhances root hair development, increasing root surface area. The 501 horn silica increases the amount of sugars sent into the rhizosphere, which is the basis of carbon sequestration and soil life. These two preparations are meant to work together.

Ehrenfried Pfeiffer found that horn manure increased the size of nitrogen-fixing nodules in legume cover crops. He found that climates with more rainfall had less available silicic acid than others. For those of us in the Eastern USA, silicic acid tends to wash out of the soil with rainfall. We must make a point to replenish this. The more rainfall there is, the more we will likely need to rely on horn silica

Stewart Lundy, along with his partner and wife, Natalie, farms 50 acres of land on a tiny peninsula in rural Virginia. For the past decade he has practiced biodynamics, and for the past eight years he has made and applied the biodynamic preparations. In his free time he is an active esoteric researcher, amateur alchemist, and practicing herbalist, experimenting with a wide range of innovations on the farm.

© 2023 Josephine Porter Institute. Visit jpibiodynamics.org for more information and to order biodynamic preparations. — Founded in 1985, JPI is a national producer and distributor of biodynamic preparations – the enlivening forces that work dynamically within the soil, compost, and plants to ultimately provide us with healthier foods, healthier bodies, and a healthier planet. The JPI farm and biodynamic preparation facilities are located on a beautiful 25-acre farm in Floyd County, Virginia.