ELEMENTAL

Sitting at my desk is a random selection of whatnots. Each came into my life through an incidental channel: being inherited from someone, gifts, things I’ve found on the ground. They lay splayed across my work space in a random formation born of my neurosis. Keeping the small trinkets organized on top of my desk, I feel at least somewhat in control of the vastness of my experience. The tiny town of “Desk” is neat and well run and all of the tax payer’s dollars are spent on safe, equitable, and rational projects.

Amethyst, varying pieces of quartz, a geode, an arrow head, shells from the sea, a cow horn, a single earring, an abandoned hornet’s nest. Every piece is stationary, quietly absorbing the energy around it and blending it with its own. The origin of each object softly chatters in the background as new life envelopes it with every lift, jostle, or dust. Each creation was fabricated from the organized forces of this Earth and through this harmony, a resonance signature was placed in its womb.

This has been added to and subtracted from throughout the seasons and cycles of time. Whether made from wasp saliva and wood pulp last summer, or carved by hand during a different time, their very harnessed substances and the stories of their existence bring into each a character that is not completely unlike a human soul.

Objects, especially naturally formed ones, are pieces of our living planet. Every single granite tile, violin, fanny pack and battery has been created through the mining and melding of our natural world. Every object carries the sentience inherent in our conscious Earth.

Crystals themselves are keepers of information. Their lattice interiors hold onto bits of knowledge sunk into them from the places they’ve been and the experiences that have evolved around them. Their growth from this Earth is a fractal of the region: the wisdom of the Earth’s forces in this place channeled within and imprinting a perspective that is unique and defining. The way a crystal communicates is not a language but a presence; enlightening through relationship and rewarding those willing to get to know them through sudden visions.

My amethyst is sculpted like a pendulum, but full of imperfections. The contrast of geometric perfection to the open veins that cloud the crystal within speaks deeply to my heart. Trying tirelessly to keep a perfect and polished exterior story of my life while carrying damages on the inside is a difficult way to exist and something we all know well. 

Everything around us, in fact, carries its own sort of knowing. My dresser may not be as sentient as the chestnut tree outside, possibly not as involved in the life forces that once had it standing on its own roots, but levels of consciousness have been laced throughout it as it was living, cut, milled, manufactured, and opened and closed for years before I snatched it up at the local antique mall. Consciousness has been etched into it from use, patterns of behavior, and the raging storms of human interaction that flow all around it. We may not care to think about poor workers’ conditions or child labor, but we often invite this energy directly into our house and sleep on it every night.

Trauma is not the only information caught by material things. The earthly realm is a densely populated spiritual phenomenon whose natural forces dance across the landscape and create the physical plane. The stones, the wood, the sweet breeze and babbling creek; each aspect of the natural world is curated and inhabited by an intelligence whose sentience exceeds our own.

Earth, Water, Air, and Fire: each archetype brings with it an essential wisdom that has been channeled from the infinite. These forces have mastered the beginning and the end, dynamically exacting the present moment by weaving together the past and the future. The materials these elemental beings use to create are equal parts Earth and cosmos and are always able to recede and be reused by these forces.

I find myself interacting with the specific consciousness of the elementals all of the time. When you start to work with land as a partner–going to nature for ideas and inspirations and setting up systems that work on her engine–you are ushered into a realm that does not operate the way you’ve been taught to perceive it. The world opens up, seeking union, and each decision or method unravels the universal mysteries slowly uncovered with practice and observation.

Before long, you are able to join into the ceremony, find a role where you can be of service to creation. Soon the Earth, Air, Water, and Fire reveal themselves and offer up opportunities for lessons and possibly even cooperation.

Attempting to join these forces is wrought with the challenges of learning something new. Working land offers up ample opportunity to misjudge a lesson as a failure. Watching a hoop house get torn apart or being unable to save a dying crop: these conflicts are the very building blocks of what it takes to speak the language of the elementals. It is through knowing too little and trying anyway that we are able to face the tests that force us to make better decisions. The elementals operate a certain way in every differing bioregion, and have a particular signature on even the smallest plot of land. They share their deepest secrets with those willing to put in the time to get to know them and gift those interested in cooperation over dominance.

The spirit of Air is Light. 

The challenges of the atmosphere are well observed by someone who spends a lot of time and money to erect structures with plastic walls. A random summertime storm can be all it takes to lose the benefits and money generated from and invested in a high tunnel or greenhouse. The wind has thrown large livestock shelters from their place in the field, ripped frost cloth off of vulnerable, baby plants, and toppled over the strong arms of corn, okra, tomatoes, and others.

In times of drought, the wind serves as the first symptom of oncoming rain, a blessing during a stale, dry heat. Periods of excess rain can be broken up by an afternoon of sunshine and a stiff breeze. The air moving through the valley can be enough to dry out the soil so that the tractor may enter safely without smearing the wet particles together and limiting respiration and circulation.

The air is a realm that shares limited predictability and yet expresses a daily presence. During early spring the cold, brutal gusts can last all day, and one tires out just from walking against it. It is hard to imagine during the early season that there would come a day in late summer so stiff with humidity, you find yourself praying for the air to move.

As a steward of the Earth, observing the way air moves through the property and considering it in all decisions on the farm is an important part of long term success.  You may not be able to change the course of the prevailing winds, but through plantings, structures, and proper orientations you can protect your plants and livestock from potential damage and stress.

Some days in winter when large snowflakes fall, the air is so still that you can almost hear them accumulate. Throughout the seasons, the wind and clouds remain playful, curious. Every moment I get to experience the changing temperaments, the more prepared I am to properly set my sails.

The Spirit of Fire is Warmth.

There have been springs here where a cold snap sneaks in well past the frost-free date, and the beautiful blooms of the pears and apples are enveloped in glassy ice. To see these tender expressions frozen in time, glistening from the rising sun, bears witness to the complex art of the natural realms. Once the day climbs out of the freezing temps the blooms begin to melt off of the plant and we lose the potential for an apple or pear harvest for an entire season. All of this momentum and build up alive within this thriving plant is lost in a single morning.

The way that warmth within living systems coaxes from us patience and focus nurtures within our being the foundation for letting go. There are days in these southern mountains that are so hot we have to take shelter in the shade for hours. There are magical moments when the soil warms just enough in early spring that the cotyledon leaves of  seedlings jump from the soil like lines of tiny green butterflies.

We do our best to capture warmth and preserve it. Whether we are applying horn silica to the fields, valerian to vulnerable buds on trees and shrubs threatened by frost, or through our greenhouse and hoophouse to get a head start in the garden, or to allow crops planted in fall to be protected through the winter. When warmth is a little too readily available, we must do the opposite work, covering the greenhouse with shade cloth and opening the hoophouses as wide as they will stretch; planting lettuces and delicate crops under taller plants like tomatoes and basil to protect them from the harsh heat of direct sunlight. During these days my thirst for sugary, ice cold drinks is addictive, and I do my best to drink warm herbal teas instead.

The warmth that is catalyzed from the landscape provides so much for the ecological networks that bring nutrition to our tables. This very warmth can be tied to the nurturing the farm organism provides for the stewards of her own body, the medicine she stocks in her overflowing shelves and the shelter she provides from the released and manufactured toxins of our modern world. The warmth of productivity within the landscape is the warmth of a loving entity who cannot control the free will of those they love, but can offer compassion, patience, and a nourishing meal as they walk their roads of self discovery.

This radiant force cradles us like fruit on the limb. My mind may wander into the depths of the difficulty and despair of the human realms, and I need only experience the great wealth of activity that constantly produces miracles for me to taste, touch, and smell to feel hope again. The aesthetic of a natural space warmed into complexity is enough to heal a soul struggling with loss and rejection.

Most importantly, warmth properly utilized in a farming system serves as a reminder to the spirit that warmth used throughout all aspects of our lives will offer the greatest yield. When we are kind to plants and livestock or kind to people, we see these gestures returned to us with the altered unfolding of our paths; each positive encounter builds the momentum of an ever more prosperous potential future.

The Spirit of Water is Tone.

Practicing Biodynamic agriculture has connected me deeply to certain communities, thinkers, practitioners, and scientists. It has also made me seem totally insane to others. Even so, the cyclic planning, the harmonizing of forces, the formation of compost, and the Biodynamic Preparations themselves have always spoken to me on a soul level. Understanding that each mineral has many forms in many seasons, bodies, and deposits and is connected by a single song that transcends each expression has given me the opportunity to understand wellness and flow.

It has given me the lens to see the human mind as a foreign object of cosmic origin suspended by fluid within an earthen case and allowed me to explore the ways we are desperately drawn to each realm. I have, on several occasions, stirred the preparations with a group or totally alone and watched as turkey buzzards gathered in circles above in their own vortex of synchronized gliding.

When I think of the knowing shared by water, beyond the clarity, flow, release, and cleansing of this elemental, I am most struck by its gifts when I am homeopathically applying the Preparations. The Preparations themselves serve as a comprehensive representation of how the earthen experience is made. Each Preparation a beautifully intuited mixture of cosmic and earthen forces, seasonal influence, plant and animal expressions of mineral signatures, and the potential to heighten the awareness of the living system into bringing into being the needs that cure what ails it directly from the living potential that already exists within the farm.

When these healing agents are combined with water that has been enlivened astrally and ethereally from stirring and human intention, the tone of water transmits the harmony while the permeability of the water as liquid physically scatters and incorporates the energy into the pulsating, living system.

Walking every piece of the farm, throwing tiny droplets of crafted dynamic creation energy over the dew covered leaves of plants and over the backs of the animals in the field is a deeply moving prayer and commitment to the wellness of the farm. As the water across the valley begins to climb into the sky with the rising sun, you can surely feel the tone in the atmosphere and the syntropy erupting underneath.

The Spirit of Earth is Life.

The etheric vitality of the natural world, its physical, syntropic force and momentum, seems to offer the soul some of the hardest lessons of all. Life as spirit is a beautiful thing. The powerful etheric force constantly recycling decay, those lost to death always reborn anew, murder into miracles-transformations beyond imaginings. We are built of this vitality, the earthly forces alive and well in the formation and function of our legs and torso.

We drink from the cup of this beautiful nourishment, yet our lives are not as simple as the mullein or elderberries who spend their days collecting minerals and building complex tissue. We are tied to this space, but we are equally severed from it. As our own astrality grants us entry to higher thoughts and deeper purpose, we simultaneously suffer for it, as we remain rooted to the physical world through bodies capable of harboring disease.

We often think of illness as a very material, physical condition. This view of health is fed to us from most any channel of modern science and medicine and is even seemingly mirrored to us from the biological pathogens that inhabit plants and animals. There is indeed a physical element to it, as this is the structure from which our realities are built. The rock formations of a place, the type of water, the levels of toxins, and the habitat resonances form us in many ways, including what ailments may be most likely to beset our physical form. Just like crystals growing from the Earth, our life forces build the case in which our consciousness is held. Every building block layered in from our waking experience has its own effect on what and who we are.

Pain and disease in our lives exist within these physical realms but start as an imbalance of our spiritual and emotional selves. Where we experience weaknesses in our consciousness, where our fears, shame and emotions run rampant and out of control, we see the doorways opening for illness to manifest in the physical form. Where a weakness or stagnation in the inner mind persists, the physical state creates within a vulnerability that is then preyed upon by the intense living realm of the earthly world. Sometimes it is the endless crying out of our physical bodies that stops us long enough to address the lingering problems in our lives that we have ignored that must now be faced.

We’ve built a society on tobacco, video games, sugar, caffeine and alcohol, and never stopped to consider what these building blocks would create. The instability derived from the overconsumption of these chemicals is not only felt in the body. Just as a nutrition based on whole foods eaten from the region that one occupies stimulates wellness in the body, it also generates a holistic framework that allows us to manage the impulses of our minds.

Disease in itself is often a pathway to personal growth. Where we indulge in substances as a temporary solution to an unacknowledged trauma or to curb lingering depression, we pull within our form the toxins that will permit illness to invade. When we eat a clean diet, drink fresh water, and avoid heavily refined foods, we allow the life giving forces to help us facilitate wellness and allow our mind some clarity to do the same.

I am certainly not a doctor and would not claim that I am anywhere near being a physically or mentally healed person, but my glances into the life cycles of ecosystems have shown me how essential ecological purity and diversity are to both the complexity and sentience of a living system. I don’t have a cure all superfood to recommend or even a clean cut diet that will heal all that ails, only the understanding that we each struggle internally from differing traumas and karmas that will manifest in different ways. In the end, we will all leave this realm in one way or another, and often disease, while seemingly our biggest threat in life, is the very shepherd who will lovingly guide us into our next great adventure at death.

What we are physically made of and what we are consciously dealing with make each of us unique; therefore our needs could never be universal. As I encounter the physical struggles of my existence, I try and show some compassion for myself when things flare up. I use the disturbance in my mind and body to regroup in the present moment and share gratitude for all my life has given me. I check in with where my mind has been focusing lately and go outside within the pulsating spirit of life to try and find something to ease the body, an experience that often soothes my mind.