Lecture by Alan Chadwick in New Market, Virginia, 1979
Lecture 6, Fertilization, Part 5
An Introduction to Alan Chadwick's Lectures and a Glossary of Terms
The full text of this lecture segment
Back to the Virginia Lecture Series Index Page
Contents of this Segment:
Comfrey and nettles. Compost as a source of warm, moist gasses, which are the basis of fertility. Use compost as it is decomposing, not after the process is finished. Wild origin plants are much more potent in their contrubutions to fertility than highly cultured plants. Heat is produced through the interaction of the sun with the earth. Never sterilize soil. Guano is superior to farm animal manures. How Guano is produced. The Chadwick family business of importing guano from Chile to England. (16:36)
Full Text of this Lecture Segment:
New Market, Virginia, September 11, 1979
Lecture 6, Fertilizations, Part 5
… that we have begun to discuss, in the lea areas, if you take such things as Symphytum… There was at one time the collection of one hundred tons per annum per acre of Symphytum, and Symphytum is again a compost of great uniqueness. It has little or nothing in comparison, great as it is, compared to Urtica. Urtica pilugium and Urtica dioica are incredible secret composters and herbs, of course.
Here again is an interesting matter, do you see? The Vanessa butterfly, which at the height of its beauty rivaled the peacocks, the tortoise shell... the Vanessas. They all lay their eggs upon the Urtica. But the Vanessa is feeding upon the nectar of flowers. It couldn’t touch the Urtica blossoms. It would destroy it literally, because of its virulence. But it lays its eggs upon the Urtica, because the Urtica foliage is the foliage that the caterpillar is going to eat after metamorphosis.
And as a medicament, the Urtica is just unrealized—Urtification comes from the word Urtica—and as an invocation[?], as a reliver[?]. It was Julius Caesar, when he was sending his troops to invade those white chalks of England, he said to the centurions loading into the procedure, “Well you can’t have new uniforms, you are going to wear exactly the same thing. And I assure you it is a deplorable climate, and there is nothing we can do about it here. We can’t make you new costumes in time for the ground, and in any case it wouldn’t suit your purpose because you’re athletic and you wouldn’t be able to get on if we did. But here is the whole answer to it boys: take these bags with you. Each group of you take a bag and when you get there, sow the seed, particularly on the downs in the south when you land, which you will do quite easily. They’ll all be scared at the sight of you.” And this seed that he gave them was Urtica umbellelaria, which at that time did not grow in England. Urtica dioica did, the big one. And they sowed it. And Caesar said, “Now the moment it is grown, collect it and rub it all over your skin, all over you.” And sure enough, it did work perfectly. They didn’t feel the cold at all, if you like, because they were so stunned. But that is not really true, the point is, it is urtification.
And so the incredible thing you understand is that the Urticas are under the influence of—well, you can imagine can’t you—Mars. You see it’s there written. You will begin to see it. You already are beginning to put two by two without knowing the words. We’re entering the secrets, and yet, with all of those extraordinary gifts that it contains. A frog has only to enter Urtica and it will surely die. It cannot tolerate it. And Urtica is also one of the most huge disinfectants. All rabbits in warrens, where they live on downs, love to make their runs and all their burrows amongst the roots of Urtica. And the whole odor is very similar to that of a bee, which is formic acid. Urtica is the fastest decomposing plant in the heap that there is. I have composted Urtica for use in three days.
(Now, I want to return to that compost matter by reason of what I have just said. Comprehend this: One of the attitudes today of some of the growers that… You see you mustn’t mix up this wonderful group that are here with this magazine for they are striving to bring professionalism into the matter. But many such growers, because they have had no leadership before Organic Gardening came to America, they had to be amateurs surging against the huge tide. And that… Oh God, you’re going to get lost again… I’m so sorry. I’m afraid I’ve got lost again. You should be able to see what I’m aiming at... I don’t know… there’s something wrong with… Oh yes, of course. Thank you so much. This is just what I needed. I’m asking for… Do please try and help a little. I’m obviously over the crater…)
You see the whole idea of organic composting at one time was to make organic soil. That really is only a very far-fetched one end of the issue. It’s very seldom in the garden that you actually want to make out of compost heaps, soil. We use our turf loam and we use all our mixtures for that. The whole purport about the organic, about the compost heap, is an incredible matter. That you are going there for warm moist gases. So that when you put a whole secret in the soil, you have created a volcano of revolutionibus. That the performance of all the planets and the Sun and the Moon are going to demand to come out and meet, and make atmosphere in the soil in the bed, and atmosphere in the air, which you are going to control with the foliage of the plants by this brilliant planting of the French method that you are not going to let out of the bed. And all the plants, with their roots and their leaves, are going to go by what you have put of compost in that bed. They are going to go, ahah, ahah, ahah, ahah, ahah, ahah and they are going to draw it back out of the atmosphere and put it into the bed. And it is going to increase in that bed, which we are going to discuss when we discuss fertility. But now do you see, the main impetus and import of that compost heap, is not soil, but its decomposition? You want to attack those compost heaps when they are at the height of the manufacture of warm moist gases. Do I put it somewhat on the nail on the head?
I give you a note. Here is a great mystery in this. Discover it. Don’t twist it in the word-mind. Discover it. The utmost energy is in origin. That all peripheralia that comes out of that utmost moment of origin only contains the same amount of energy. It becomes reduced and reduced and reduced. Think you, in symbol, of dropping a pebble in the middle of a pond. The moment that that pebble hits the pond, you get your first origin energy and that is the biggest wave that you are going to have. From then on, it looks more and it’s less. The whole vibratory is the same as the impact of the origin. Now this is only a symbol that I am giving you, you understand. But you must observe this because we are going to bring it up when we discuss fertility. That you are going to discover the importance of receiving your thoughts from above, that shall then come through the corridor of the mind without words, and become thought as given to man from above. This then gathers the will and destiny, the will and desire of the charm of the physical mind, and brings it onto Earth, out of the planets. Therefore you must look at this matter of energy and origin.
You must see the whole import, again, of the reference of the Sun. I must make these references during these weeks for us to revive the whole matter of the Sun’s coming of Aurora, demanding the inferiority, if you like, that its leadership over the energy of the Earth to come out and meet it. With the energy of the Earth there is no argument, there is no discussion, “Do I feel like getting up this morning? Do I feel like doing this?” The will and the destiny is held in the other forces. The will and the desires of the Earth are held in the Ahrimanic forces that don’t come up. And they are the part that are able to restore the ego after the leader has exhausted the inter-marriables. And that therefore that energy that has come from the Sun, that we stupidly call from a hot Sun, sending heat and light, it is the atmosphere, it is the marriage of the two that produces that heat and light, the metamorphosis again, the same aspect of food.
Now I want to touch on a very exciting and interesting matter, if you’re not too tired. Are you alright?
Just one brief statement: never sterilize soil if you can avoid it. Never sterilize. You can always improve upon the requirement of sterilization by stockpiling and using the four elements. The four elements can perform your sterilization for you.
When I spoke of guano, I placed guano at the top of the list, alongside pig and cow manures and such like. You could place it very far above. It doesn’t matter because you don’t want to put things into scales. So I am going to refer to guano and I am going to refer to the coast of Chile. Now it is off the coast of Chile that the Humboldt Current runs from the south Antarctic (am I right?), flows up round the Cape Horn, round the whole coast of Chile, up past Santiago, which is inland a little, and up that coast. And it is that current which keeps the Andes at one and two inch rainfall. When that current is forced out into the Pacific, which it is about once every thirty or thirty-five years by a Pacific current driving it out, they have incredible monstrous rainfalls that wash away all the villages in the mountains. But that is a performance of Nature. I am not discussing that. I am talking about the Humboldt Current. That Humboldt Current then, flows up from the south Antarctic and is of the most exquisite performance of angelic weeds, seaweeds, growths of names which we have all sorts of scientific idiocies for, which I am not going to bother you with, which you know infinitely better than I do. And the less you know them, actually, the better. Algae and seaweeds.
And that those seaweeds and algae are because of certain contents in the water, and those certain contents of the water are because of the revolutionibus playing minerals into it, and that produce also astonishing temperatures that are maintained in those waters of the Humboldt. And the Humboldt maintains them and says, “These are mine. Atlantic, go up there. Pacific, up there please. Mind your own business. Keep out.”
And so that Humboldt flows with that extraordinarily exquisite, fertile flow of seawater, of oceanic, containing so much of particular salts and matters. And as it flows and comes up into more slowly sub-equatorials, it changes temperature slightly, but very little, and brings with it those angelic plants, and upon which feed all the crustace, the mollucules, and indeed the fish. And because that water is so exquisite, more exquisite than any other current shall we say, being presumptuous of course, so those plants are more exquisite. Presumptuous, but pretty realistic. And so the fish feeding upon them are also exquisite in their vitality, the speed they travel, the beauty of their flesh, the breathing of their fins, and the way they can turn that no other fish can. Indeed endless secrets about them, which if we were to go down, we would see this very moment. Where you will find you have already traveled.
Likewise, those fish, that live upon those exquisite plants in that exquisite water, are eaten by the seabirds of that area. And likewise the seabirds, eating those exquisite fish, are eating the exquisite foliages, are eating the exquisite water, are eating the planets. And therefore they have to come ashore during the nighttime to sleep. And they sleep upon the rocks of the coast of Chile. Indeed my family had over a million pounds in the Chilean government for this purpose at one time, because it was an excellent investment when agriculture was a little bit still intelligent, and it imported it by the vast, enormous, endless shipload as one of the great manures of Europe. So that went on the land. And in many cases on the rocks of Chile, it was over fifteen feet deep in deposits. For you see, it was a one-inch rainfall. It did not wash it away and it remained there in solid formation.
Now you must look at that conservatoiree. You see, Nature does perform her conservatoirees as well as her [?]. And there they sit.