Question from Dan Mangum:

I have been using biodynamic preps (including the 3 Kings) and I am getting an increasing amount of insect/pollinator diversity and quantity. I had problems with yellow jackets eating the cherries but after balancing the soil and trees that has subsided. This year I have a LOT of songbirds and such, including new varieties. But now the birds really took a toll on the cherries. Is this because of unseen insects? Is there some soil imbalance? Is it just the price of having birds? Do you have any ideas?

Answer from Kym Green:

We had huge issues with rainbow lorikeets that arrived on Christmas Day 2013 on our apples. We had all of our 20 kilometre of nets deployed on our cherry trees in harvest. The weather had been exceedingly hot and dry for Spring and Summer— strong astral forces. I decided to make a homeopathic reagent based on biodynamic preparations that work mainly on the soil — etheric forces, to balance the atmosphere. I used my Rogers radionics instrument, and Malcolm Rae bd cards that Hugh made. I made remedies — horn manure, chamomile, yarrow, all at 20c, Also oakbark, stinging nettle at 30c. Combined the 2 and broadcast. The birds moved away from our orchards into 2 days. Our neighbour was inundated!!! I have had birds since but not been as successful in moving them off like I did that year. Hope this helps!

Answer from Hugh Lovel:

I’m glad to hear Kym use the word astral, as this is an important concept. But what does astral mean? What distinguishes it from the etheric?

Astral has to do with nitrogen and animal activity. Birds are astral beings, but so also are bugs and worms in the soil, or even protozoa. It is the astral activity–particularly the manuring–that feeds the trees with the lime minerals and the nitrogen compounds plants need for growth. So there is astrality in the canopy with the birds eating the fruits, and astrality around the roots of the plants chewing away at the soil food web and feeding it to the trees with their gift of fruits to the astrality in the canopy. The intense warmth that was occurring is etheric, as warmth, light, tone and life are etheric and have to do with plant activity. Oxygen carries the etheric activity, and this oxygen, basic to chemistry rather than astrality, paves the way for engaging nitrogen. It frees up or activates the soil’s mineral complex. The yarrow preparation is intensely astral. It is made out of flowers packed into the bladder of a male deer, which is an extremely sensitive animal aware of its surroundings. Yarrow is an herb associated with the nitrogen excretions of the kidney bladder system and it is associated with the planet Venus, which as the planet closest to the earth and is the planet of affinity. It helps the body shed nitrogen that has fallen out of the living process, keeping the chemical equilibrium of the blood shifted toward the living amino phase instead of the uric acid/salt phase. But it is just this uric acid chemistry that frees up potassium in the soil to be taken up at the roots of plants to build–with the help of sulphur, which locks the potassium in place to form the fibrous transport system that carries nutrients up into plant growth and fruiting. The yarrow, using stationary sulphur’s connection to the widest circumference, engages mobile potassium with immobile silica to form plant stalks tough and make the plant strong. The chromatogram of the yarrow preparation shows extremely strong peripheral silica forces. The old wiccans used to use yarrow stalks to make their ‘brooms’ that carried them on their nightly astral flights, and yarrow stalks are used for divination using the I Ching–also an astral activity. The chamomile preparation, working with digestion and absorption of proteins works more with Mercury, carbon and the solid life ether where yarrow works with Venus, silica and the soluble chemical ether. The nettle preparation, which works with the heart and blood, the ego, identity and the sun is involved in the whole works, and is the most intensely astral of them all, the richest in protein (36%) and the most awareness provoking. It supports the other two and really may be the main thing that mirrors the bird’s astrality and scares them away. Then, lastly the oak bark preparation, working with the moon and reflecting the nettle’s intense light ether, keeps oxidation of amino acids in the living realm so the oxygen activity of the chemical ether is not so strong that the astral nitrogen compounds break down to the nitrate form. Between the yarrow and the oak bark astral nitrogen compounds are kept in the living phase or else excreted into the soil to activate potassium to carry amorphous fluid silica into the capillaries of plant’s xylem that hold up the plant. This could all combine to make the astrality within the fruits so intense it repels the astral (bird) activity surrounding the plant and its fruits. This should repel insects too.

I want to ponder how one might tweak this recipe further. Right off, I think I would like to include the horsetail decoction (BD 508) to ensure potassium silicate availability. And you’d want to prepare in advance by keeping/feeding the soil food web to be strong and robust. If you come out of a long, wet period in the preceding spring this might not work so well.