Lecture by Alan Chadwick in New Market, Virginia, 1979
Lecture 1: Philosophy of Gardening, Part 5
An Introduction to Alan Chadwick's Lectures and a Glossary of Terms
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Human individualities conceive of new plant forms and then coax them into existence. But man can work for ill as well as for the good. The vision of the garden is much larger than merely horticultural. This can not be found in the education of today, or by thinking in words. The truth is right in front of your nose. Poise and balance. Breathing. The dawn of every day. Food is not a material substance, rather it is metamorphosis, change, energy. All of the senses feed the body and soul. Food is a sacrament. The shadow side. (9:19)
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New Market, Virginia, 1979, Lecture 1
Philosophy of Gardening, Part 5
...through seed, which are a participant of your relationship to the horoscope also, that you are bringing into this world a gift that only you can bring out of Paradise into this world. What secrets are these that you possess, each individual of us? What incomprehensible secrets? This is where all of the great and beautiful fruit trees, and forest trees, and garden trees and shrubs and flowers and vegetables and grasses and cereals have all been born from. They didn’t come through a ministry of agriculture. They never came, certainly, through a commercial seed nursery, for they had no such attribute of focus. They were brought by the will of the Angels through an individual because he was an artist in the performance of his destiny in Paradise on Earth. And these things then had excellent nutriment and they were grown in fertile soil. And the soil was produced fertilistically. And the whole attribute of focus was one of beatific.
Now, do you see, Paracelsus also said in this matter that all of this plucking from heaven and bringing through seed to the earth is, in a sense, one. That all birth comes out of one. But the moment it is born, it is two, the darkest shadow being inside the highest highlight. But that, in origin, everything comes out of one. And that out of Paradise, into this world, it is not possible to bring the malefic. The malefic is a performance of misconception. And therefore, in a sense, it’s like a shadow behind all the time. But it can grow into a parasite. That shadow can require feeding. And the physical development that is handling the beatific, can through malformity of the forms, sense the requirement of the malefic. And because of an unbalance, require to feed it, and will feed the shadow of the parasite, and it can become a mania.
It can become a total magnetic performance of requirement, not only in an individual but can become a mass. And what else has it become? Exactly what else has it become? What is it but that? It is so obvious. It is so clear. It is one huge mass deformity. Where at one time everything would be thought of putting any gratuity into building a cathedral. And how all those cathedrals were in parks, how they must be in parks again. How we must build cathedrals in great gardens, and never allow car parks, and city tarmac and shops around it.
Oh Sirs, do you see what we’re looking at? We said that you were going to study horticulture. And what is horticulture? Do you see how we’ve been caught? An incredible destiny. A new vision that includes the visible and the invisible, the spiritual and the physical, all as one, not separate, no separation whatever, but living together completely. You cannot separate them. The moment you separate them, it can’t work. There isn’t any balance to work on. And the whole secrets, the whole mystery is in the leadership that is in this law of nature. It can’t be found in the education of today, it can’t be found in the verbosity of the mind. And you can’t think that you are going to lead the mind into spiritual living and activity and vision by leading it by thinking, by thinking in words. This is the huge thing of all the gurus tearing about in aeroplanes, screaming their heads off. It’s there all the time. It’s terribly simple because it’s right in front of the nose.
This huge matter that one is talking about, the ritual of day and the ritual of the cycles of the earth and the revolutions of the planets which we are going to discuss and look into. Is exactly what we are, poise. It’s what everything is first: poise, balance between Luciferic and Ahrimanic. And within that poise is breathing. What is this huge thing, breathing? Who comprehends breathing? You can’t study breathing. To some degree we have to but we’ve so “gone.” But you can’t study breathing, but you can perceive breathing. And this whole thing of birth, of Aurora, this great ritual that takes place, and breathing in and breathing out, that the whole tides do, that the whole of the Earth does. That is Summer and Winter that are two opposites.
And so it is that in this madness of talking about the garden or the farm, we have come instantly to think of food. And then you think of the emporium that sells it all in bags at a profit. And this food is what? It is exactly the same as breathing in and out. It is change. You stop breathing in and you breathe out. You completely go to the opposite. And what is food? It isn't what you eat that feeds you at all, in a certain sense not at all. It’s the metamorphosis.
It’s what the bee does, when it lives in the Venus, the love life of all the flowers, collecting the nectar. And everybody thinks that the bee makes honey. Stupid idiots gone wrong in the head, you see. They don’t of course. They collect the utmost bitterness. And their acid blood then chews with a saliva and metamorphoses back together and creates honey. And that is exactly what the whole procedure of food is. But it is turning it from one live spiritual thing, into another, that is energy, the hands of God. What an immaculate thing is food. How can you turn food into a utility? You can feed by breathing the [ ]. You can feed by breathing when listening to music. You can feed by observing color. All of this is a form of food because it is a form of metamorphosis that is connected with the whole of the systems of the diaphragm and these glands and nerve relationships that one is talking about.
So you can no longer talk about having to grow something for utility. It’s gone. I’m sorry. It’s holy. It’s a sacrament. The whole of food and the whole idea of growing food is a beatific matter. Just as you grow a flower to love looking at it, so you grow a beautiful strawberry to exquisitely eat it. And the whole performance of a bee, flying towards the sun as it has to, to go to the toilet. And the whole performance of the dew and the atmosphere in the morning, of the whole earth going to the toilet. And you breathe it and you say “Oh, how exquisite is it all”.
And how only in deformity and unbalance, and not plucked from Paradise, but as a shadow...