A Guide to Understanding Healing Plants: Volume One (Mercury Press)

“We should be clear that development begins with the feelings and thoughts we live with all the time, but that these feelings and thoughts must be given a new, unaccustomed direction.... In the final analysis, everything is based on the simple fact that, though we carry body, soul and spirit about with us, we are conscious only of the body.” ― Rudolf Steiner, CW 10, How to Know Higher Worlds, p. 55

The path of this work begins with Rudolf Steiner’s preliminary work in anthroposophically extended medicine. One aim of this guide is methodically to bring about percepts of the connection between people and natural substances and thus awaken a clearer awareness of how feeling judgments arise and what they are directed at. To begin with this requires us to extend our ability to perceive our own thinking activity and to reflect on the movements it makes as well as on the assumptions that are made in every act of comprehension. This method brings life processes into our consciousness.

The author examines the experiential aspect of metamorphosis in the context of botanical perception. He discusses the healing substances in plants and the inner capacities we need to develop as a way to perceive them. After a suitable preparation, the path taken here leads from outer observation to inner perception and thus to the human being. Thus, we arrive at a perception of a substance’s particular direction of activity that is permeated by our own experiences.

In speaking about the senses, our attitude toward the spirit should be one of waiting to see to what extent an indication of the spiritual results naturally from sensory observation. This spiritual aspect should be neither denied nor presupposed; we must wait and see if it shines in. ― Rudolf Steiner, CW 45, Anthroposophy (A Fragment), p. 86

Originally published in German as Ein Leitfaden zur Heilpflanzenerkenntnis, Band I (Science Section of the School of Spiritual Science, Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland, 1996).

Jochen Bockemühl (1928–2020) was born in Dresden. He studied zoology, botany, chemistry, and geology and, in 1956, became a coworker at the Research Institut at the Goetheanum. From 1970 to 1996, he was director of the Natural Science Section, and beginning in 1980 led seminars on landscape in Europe and elsewhere. His publications in English include: In Partnership With Nature, Dying Forests, Toward a Phenomenology of the Etheric World, and Awakening to Landscape.

Dr. Wolfgang Goebel trained at the university pediatric clinic in Tübingen and, for a year and a half, at the Ita Wegman hospital in Arlesheim, Switzerland. He co-founded the pediatric department at the community hospital in Herdecke and was its leading physician until 1995. He has also facilitated conferences on immunization and related topics.

David Heaf is a beekeeper, biodynamic expert, author, and translator. His books include Natural Beekeeping with the Warre Hive: A Manual (2013) and The Bee-friendly Beekeeper: A Sustainable Approach (2015). David lives in Wales, UK.