Overview on etheric research and the plant kingdom

An holistic view is required to appreciate the various angles to research into the Formative forces and Spectrum of elements and ethers

goethean science: careful observation of plants, their growth and metamorphosis (the formative forces in action)
theoretical foundation: projective geometry and path curves as the mathematics of counterspace (the etheric)
experimental work eg linking measures of bud formation to theory and calculations
experimental methods for systematic analysis of planetary influences and zodiacal influences
practical experience with elementals from supersensible observation
and then there is the application domain of using all the above knowledge, eg in biodynamic agriculture with research also done on transmutation of elements in plant growth, and deducing etheric properties from their effect on plant growth with potentization

An overview

This provides an overview, based on Goethe's foundation and Rudolf Steiner's extensive sharing of knowledge on a number of areas. Besides providing a spiritual scientific knowledge framework, Steiner gave many hints for further work, specifically towards projective geometry, potentization, studying zodiacal influences, etc. Note his hints regarding researching the etheric are not limited to this domain with the plant kingdom, see eg the Strader apparatus or the Schiller file.

The point of this section is to provide some guidance for your own research by touring the work of some 10-15 pioneers in this research field.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe observed plant grown carefully and saw that the plant goes through a process of metamorphosis. His 'Metamorphosis of Plants' dates from 1790. From this he came up with the idea of the 'archetypal plant' underlying the whole complexity one can see in nature. This also triggers the question what laws drive this process and the forms it generates.
Someone who was inspired by Goethe's work and followed in his footsteps of observing the plant word was Dick van Romude (see his book 'About formative forces in the plant world, 1988). Also see 'New eyes for plants: workbook for observing and drawing plants' by Margaret Colquhoun (1996).
Combining this with a botanical method that takes into consideration the spiritual aspects of the plant, and the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, Gerbert Grohmann developed a framework for understanding the plant kingdom in 'Metamorphis in the plant kingdom' (two volumes, 1935-37) and 'The Plant' (two volumes, 1944-51).
Frits Julius and later Ernst Kranich studied trees and investigated how the seven categories of trees link to planets, and how there growth and formes relate to the planetary influences. From that work also other plant families can be linked to the different planetary influences. See for example Julius' books 'Trees and planets' and 'Evolution and metamorphosis' (1948) and Kranich 'Plants and cosmos' (1997) and 'Trees and Planets (2007). Note some of these books are available in Dutch, German and French but not in English.
Another line of development was happening in the UK. The mathematician George Adams-Kaufmann has taken Rudolf Steiners hints about counterspace and projective geometry and developed his writings in the period 1931-33, especially looking into path curves. See for example his works 'Physical and ethereal spaces', Space and the light of creation', and 'the lemniscatory rules surface in space and counterspace'. He worked with Olive Whicher, see her book 'Projective Geometry'. Together, starting from a mathemathical theoretical foundation of counterspace based on projective geometry to study the foundational laws they could see in the plant world, they wrote 'The Living Plant and the Science of Physical and Ethereal Space' (1949) and the important work 'The plant between sun and earth' (1952). Whicher later also wrote 'Sunspace' and 'The heart of the matter' which are worthwhile reading.
- see more on Mathematics of the etheric
Also coming from this background of researching and teaching projective geometry, Lawrence Edwards, after his books 'The field of form' (1982) and Projective geometry (1985), wrote a groundbreaking work 'The vortex of life' (1993). This book summarized his research on bud shapes in nature, as the basis to explain the forms of plants but also organs such as the heart.
His work was followed up by Graham Calderwood and John Blackwood. See for example Blackwood's beautiful book 'Geometry in nature' (2012) or the entry-level educational 'Mathematics in nature, space and time' (2006).
Much inspired by the work of George Adams and Lawrence Edwards, we have a unique contribution coming from Nick Thomas with his two books ' Science between space and counterspace' (1999) and 'Space and counterspace' (2008). In the latter he puts forth the result of his original thinking in an ambitious framework to provide explanation for many riddles related to our observation and experience with gravity, time, and light.
Linus Feiten and Renatus Derbidge developed a software program LambdaFit for matching path curves from the mathematical field of projective geometry to the shapes of plant buds and berries in digital photographs.

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The focus of the above was on the planetary influences and how these can be mapped to what we can see in nature forms (eg Kranich) and the growth dynamic (eg Edwards). Now we know, see Golden Chain, that

the spiritual energy streams in from higher realms, in other words: the influx comes from the spirit world (represented by the zodiac, and
that the planets modulate these zodiacal influences
that the elementary kingdom and plant group souls also lie in the lower mental world

Biodynamical agriculture

Regarding the moon cycle and its effect in biodynamic agriculture, as put forth by Maria Thun, research was done by ao Hartmut Spiess 'Chronobiologische Untersuchungen mit besonderer Beruecksichtigung lunare Rhythmen im biologisch-dynamischen Pflanzenbau'

Zodiacal influences

Hence there is also another area of research into zodiacal influences.

Joachim Schultz pioneered this area together with Suo Vetter and Georg Unger. Also see Rudolf Hauschka in 'The nature of substance'.
Recently this work was taken up again by Wolfgang Findeisen.

Elementals of nature

A last section hardly does not really fit into the scientific research part, but it does belong here because it gives confirmation of the elementals working in nature through witness reports from people. As Rudolf Steiner mentioned, miners and farmers sometimes had real experiences with gnomes. Gnomes, sylps, undines and salamanders are called elementals and real beings. We hear of them in many country myths and folk stories. People with supersensible capabilities, say natural clairvoyance, have a vision of these astral beings and their working in the etheric.

It is therefore interesting to survey the literature for a sampling of witness reports and experiences (surely non-exhaustive), see Elementals of nature> References and further reading

Related pages

References and further reading

George Adams and Olive Whicher
- 'The Living Plant and the Science of Physical and Ethereal Space' (1949)
- 'The plant between sun and earth' (1952)
Joachim Schultz: Pflanzen, Planeten, Golderner Schnitt. Drei Aufsätze (1968)
Frits Hendrik Julius (1902-1970)
- Bomen en planeten (1971 in NL, in DE as 'Bäume und Planeten - Beitrag zu einer kosmologischen Botanik)
- Metamorfose (original 1972 in NL) (also: 'Metamorphose: Ein Schlüssel zum Verständnis von Pflanzenwuchs und Menschenleben' (1984 in DE); 'Evolution et métamorphose : L'action des 7 planètes dans la plante et dans la vie humaine' (2007 in FR); 'Metamorfosis' (2014 in ES)
Ernst Michael Kranich (1929-2007)
- Planetary influences upon plants (1984 in EN, original 1976 in DE as 'Die Formensprache der Planze' Grundlinien einer kosmologischen Botanik)
- 'Plants and cosmos' (1997)
- 'Trees and Planets (2007)
- 'Urpflanze und Pflanzenreich. Metarmorphosen von den Flechten bis zu den Blütenpflanzen' (2007)
Dick Van Romunde (1916-2010)
- About formative forces in the plant world (2001)
Lawrence Edwards: 'The vortex of life' (1993).
John Blackwood: 'Geometry in nature' (2012)

Computational mathematics

LambdaFit: Renatus Derbidge and Linus Feiten developed a software program LambdaFit for matching path curves from the mathematical field of projective geometry to the shapes of plant buds and berries in digital photographs.
Assessment of Shape Changes of Mistletoe Berries: A New Software Approach to Automatize the Parameterization of Path Curve Shaped Contours (2013)
- links to paper online, see source A and source B
- Coauthors of the paper are Linus Feiten, Oliver Conradt, Peter Heusser, Stephan Baumgartner.
- In the framework of the research project Rhythmical Change of Shape in Mistletoe Berries According to Moon and Zodiac Constellations by Renatus Derbidge at the Natural Science Section of the Goetheanum a first paper was published in the open access journal PLOS ONE. It presents methods and software to capture and measure the shape changes of mistletoe berries and leaf buds over time. The paper describes the software used to automatize a number of tasks including contour recognition, optimization of fitting the contour via hill-climbing, derivation of the path curves, computation of Lambda and blinding the pictures for the operator. The validity of the program is demonstrated by results from three independent measurements showing circadian rhythm in mistletoe berries. The program is available as open source and will be applied in a project to analyze the chronobiology of shape in mistletoe berries and the buds of their host trees.

Websites

Various more

Paula Spiegel: Anthroposophy’s etheric forces: exploring the relation between music and plant-growth (2010) - download PDF