CONTEMPLATING THE PREPARATIONS: 500 AND 501 BY PETER STEWART
Gathering together to sBr and spread 500 on a farm in the aGernoon is one of the great shared experiences of pracBcing biodynamics. In this arBcle I would like to examine the nature of the biodynamic preparaBons 500 and 501 in relaBon to the anthroposophical picture of the plant, as a way of deepening our understanding of the preparaBons, and also developing that way of seeing the world, out of which the preparaBons arose.
In the simplest terms, as discussed by Rudolf Steiner in lecture six of Introducing Anthroposophical Medicine, the plant lives between gravity and light, between the earthly, centric forces of weight, and the buoyant forces of light working from the cosmic periphery. We can observe this every Bme we plant a seed in the ground. As the seedling unfolds and the plant develops, the root orients itself to grow down toward the center of the earth, while the shoot springs up and grows out into the illuminated spaces, towards the all-round, surrounding hemisphere of the sky. In botanical terms, the root's tendency to follow gravity and grow downwards is termed geotropism, while negaBve geotropism and phototropism describe the tendency of the upper pole of the plant to grow up away from the earth and out towards the light. If you have seen a plant which has been knocked or Bpped over, you may have observed how, leG to itself, the growing Bp of the shoot soon turns upwards and reorients that pole of the plant to the verBcal. The same is true for the growing Bps of the roots, which redirect themselves verBcally downwards. Though we ordinarily consider plants to be fairly staBc objects in the environment around us, we must really feel that the plant lives in a state of constant equipoise between the polar forces of downward-drawing gravity and outward-drawing light. With this picture of the plant, we can begin to find our way toward an understanding of the biodynamic preparaBons 500 and 501... ... ...