Anthroposophy
Anthroposophy is the spiritual science founded by Rudolf Steiner. It is the philosophical foundation of biodynamic agriculture.
What is anthroposophy?
Anthroposophy is a worldview founded by Rudolf Steiner around the turn of the 20th century, which Steiner himself called "spiritual science". Its basic idea: the spiritual and the material world belong together, and through trained inner perception people can gain knowledge of the spiritual side of reality. Several practical movements grew out of this worldview: Waldorf education, anthroposophic medicine, certain forms of art and architecture, and biodynamic agriculture.
For a biodynamic lexicon, anthroposophy matters as the intellectual background against which the terms of the method make sense in the first place.
Anthroposophy and biodynamics
The Agriculture Course of 1924 applies anthroposophical ideas to agriculture. This explains why the biodynamic method contains elements that go beyond what natural science can explain. Terms such as "cosmic forces", "formative forces", the "etheric" and the "astral", or the particular role of certain organs and substances in the preparations, come from this framework. When Steiner describes the cow horn as an organ that "radiates back" forces, or manure as the bearer of an "ego disposition", these are anthroposophical concepts, not chemical or biological statements.
In this picture, the preparations as a whole are "material carriers of spiritual forces": substances through which ordering, living forces are meant to act in soil and plant. This is the inner logic that sets the biodynamic method apart from a purely material approach to farming.
Context
Anthroposophy is a worldview, not a natural science, and it is debated as such. This lexicon reports anthroposophical terms and places them in their origin; it does not present them as established facts and does not proselytise. One distinction matters, and many practitioners make it themselves: you can farm biodynamically and value the method for its results (soil fertility, the farm cycle, product quality) without adopting anthroposophy as a whole. Conversely, the method can only be half understood without knowing its anthroposophical background, which is why that background belongs in the lexicon, set out factually and openly.
Frequently asked questions about anthroposophy
What does anthroposophy have to do with farming?
Biodynamic agriculture is the application of anthroposophical ideas to the field; anthroposophy is its philosophical foundation. The Agriculture Course of 1924 carries anthroposophical concepts over to farming.
Do you have to be an anthroposophist to farm biodynamically?
No. The method can be practised and valued for its results without sharing anthroposophy as a whole.
What do terms like "cosmic forces" or "formative forces" mean?
They are anthroposophical concepts for active forces that go beyond the purely material. The lexicon reports them as Steiner's terms, not as scientific quantities.