Steiner’s Biodynamic Vortex as Analogy for Chaotic Transtion

I studied Rudolf Steiner’s biodynamic method of agriculture for a while. Much of it reads like witchcraft, actually — the magical application and use of the subtle energies. We may take it that this is significance of what Gebser calls the “effective” mode of the magical consciousness structure. Biodynamic agriculture is widely practiced in places like Switzerland and Australia. A few years ago I read that about 1 million acres of Austrialian farmland is given over to biodynamic cultivation

The “biodynamic vortex” is one of the more intriguing practices of Steiner’s method. It refers to the practice of energising water or compost tea by generating a vortex in the liquid and then reversing the flow of the vortex creating a period of turbulence — a clockwise flow is reversed to become a counterclockwise flow, and so on. In the transition from one direction to the reverse direction, there is, if course, a period of turbulence. You can observe this yourself when you make your morning porridge or when cooking liquids.

We might reflect on this biodynamic vortex in relation to Marshall Berman’s remark, from his book All That is Solid Melts Into Air, that today “everything has become pregnant with its opposite”, or what we sometimes refer to here as sudden “ironic reversals” or as the process of enantiodromia. In The Ever Present Origin, Geber himself refers to the chaotic transition as a “maelstrom”, which is a vortex. So Steiner’s biodynamic vortex may provide a useful analogy for reflecting on these transitional processes, and even Yeats’ notion of “the gyre”.

Moreover, there is some contemporary scientific support for Steiner’s biodynamic vortex, particularly in Ilya Prigogine’s chaos theory as described in Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue With Nature — an excellent book, by the way, for gaining insight into newer systems and chaos theories, and for which Prigogine won the Nobel Prize in chemistry. Nor should we overlook here the significance of the “flow” in David Bohm’s physics — as “undivided wholeness in flowing movement”.

Prigogine, in the case of chemistry, describes states “far from equilibrium” as “chaotic” or turbulent, but also as states of transition from an old order to a new order. As you might surmise, this also describes the chrysalis state of the caterpillar or the crucible in alchemy — a state of disintegration that is also a preparation for a new integration — the worm to the butterfly, or lead into gold, respectively.

I do not know whether this technique also enthuses your morning porridge with subtle energy, however. Still, you can observe the process here discussed in your cookery — whisk the liquid clockwise and then reverse the motion counterclockwise, and you’ll witness the turbulence generated in the interim. That’s “chaos”.

I do think that Prigogine’s work in chemistry will also provide you with insight not only into David Bohm’s “holomovement” or the “flowing movement”, or the Heraclitean flux, but also into Yeats’ “gyre” symbolism and Steiner’s biodynamic vortext, as well as Gebser’s “maelstrom” at the social and psychological scale. I would think, too, it would also deepen your appreciation for the Holling Adaptive Cycle discussed earlier, since the “Release” phase of the flowing movement is just this chaotic or turbulent period of disintegration in preparation for the “re-organisation” phase of the ecological flow. The “release” phase could be said to correspond to the reversal phase in the biodynamic cycle as well.

Holling’s Adaptive Cycle

This has also influence D.C. Wahl’s pattern thinking of “regenerative cultures”.

Daniel Wahl’s Regenerative Model

This also you may think of as the biodynamic path of Steiner’s energising “vortex”.

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