The plant in between: Entanglement and analogism in an Italian community of anthroposophists
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-2530
Questo testo si articola all’interno della svolta denominata “Plant Turn” (Myers 2015) ed analizza il particolare rapporto intessuto dall’antroposofia con le piante. L’Antroposofia è qui analizzata come una forma particolare di analogismo (Descola 2005), cresciuta storicamente a partire dalla filosofia di Rudolf Steiner fino alle pratiche antroposofiche contemporanee che l’autrice incontra con i suoi lavoro sul campo presso una comunità di antroposofi del nordest italiano. Sia la lettura dei testi steineriani che l’analisi delle pratiche contemporanee di Antroposofia, mostrano un rapporto con il mondo vegetale che viene letto dall’autrice con le categorie ingoldiane della “ tessitura” del mondo, del divenire e del compenetrarsi tra elementi (Ingold 2011). Ne deriva una rappresentazione del mondo vegetale che coinvolge il cosmo intero, umani e non umani, terrestri e non, in una espansione cosmica delle relazioni tra gli esseri tipica degli analogismi. Le pratiche relative al mondo vegetale, attivate dagli antroposofi incontrati, sono intense, coinvolgenti, dialoganti e provocatorie nel loro scardinare molti elementi del naturalismo e nel mostrarsi capaci di confronto con un mondo contemporaneo caratterizzato dalla crisi ecologica. 
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The plant in between: Analogism and entanglement in an Italian community of anthroposophists
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                                           2016 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 5, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2016: 131-157




                                                                       SEZIONE TEMATICA

The plant in between
Analogism and entanglement in an Italian community of anthroposophists
Nadia BREDA
Università di Firenze




ABSTRACT: The article analyses the special relationship with the world of plants de-
veloped by anthroposophy from the framework of a new perspective called the “plant
turn” (Myers 2015). Anthroposophy (AS) is analysed as a peculiar form of Analogism
(Descola 2005), historically derived from the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner and sub-
sequently evolved into contemporary AS practices that the author encountered during
her fieldwork in a community of North-Eastern Italy. Both Steiner’s texts and the ana-
lysis of contemporary practices of AS reveal a relationship with the world of plants that
the author reads in light of Ingold’s categories of “interweaving” of the world, the inter-
penetration of elements, and their ceaseless becoming (Ingold 2011). The result is a rep-
resentation of the vegetal world involving the whole cosmos, humans and non-humans,
terrestrial and celestial, in a cosmic expansion of the relations between beings typical of
Analogisms. The practices referring to the vegetal world enacted by anthroposophists
are intense, engaging, dialogue-based and provocative in their ability to uproot many
elements of naturalism and deal with a contemporary world characterised by ecological
crisis.

KEYWORDS: ANTHROPOSOPHY, ANALOGISM, PLANT-TURN, ENTANGLEMENT, HOMEODYNAMIC AGRICULTURE.




This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Nadia Breda
The plant in between: Analogism and entanglement in an Italian community of anthroposophists
2016 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 5, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2016: 131-157.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-2530
132                                                                                NADIA BREDA




Introduction
   The syntax of the four ontologies outlined by Philippe Descola in his Bey-
ond Nature and Culture (2013), distinguished according to the ratio of simil-
arity/dissimilarity of interiority and physicality, limits the scope of the com-
position of the world to a very small number of cosmologies (Benadusi, Lutri,
Sturm infra)1. Of these four ontologies, two, the naturalism and the analo-
gism, are historically related in the Western world, since the former sup-
planted the latter through a process carried out over the last three centuries;
namely, the fading and diluting of analogism into naturalism, at the end of
the Renaissance (Descola 2013: 205; see also Benadusi infra). Analogism is,
in fact, considered by Philippe Descola an ontology that, after enjoying great
success until the sixteenth century in Europe, is now to be considered − with
regard to the Western world − largely subsumed into naturalism, still partly
persisting, with traces in astrology, in numerology, in New Age visions, in al-
ternative contemporary medicines (ibidem: 218). Descola explains that such a
transition marks the dominance of naturalism in the West, producing a sort
of underground, karstic life of analogism. However today, provocatively and
sporadically, the latter can be seen again (ibidem: 205). Contained in this nu-
ance of Descola’s text is the broad issue that stimulated my anthropological
thinking and my ethnographic assessment. What do we know about these
worlds of analogism, we sometimes discover within a Western world strictly
considered in naturalistic terms? How can we get to know them? What ques-
tions and challenges does their presence raise? And, what role do these ana-
logisms play today, within the political framework of conflicts and quests for
solutions to our increasingly unsustainable ways of life?
   These questions compel me, since I identified during my field research a
strong analogical matrix in the anthroposophical Steinerian movement and
its rapidly expanding ramifications2. This is a type of cosmology that brings
to our present time a path of esotericism and spiritualism that, according to
historian Antoine Faivre (1992, 2012), starts from Paracelsus’ theories, and
through Goethe, the inspirer of Rudolf Steiner’s theories (Steiner 2008;

1. I would like to thank the peer reviewers of Anuac for the helpful assistance for this public-
ation, Enzo Nastati and La Nuova Terra community for agreeing to my fieldwork among
them, the anthropologist Silvia Lelli for the help with the English translation of this paper.
All the colleagues and friends that helped me in this research will be thanked personally in
my forthcoming monograph.
2. For quantitative information about Anthroposophy in Italy and abroad see: www.rudolf-
steiner.it/societa_antroposofica.php.


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THE PLANT IN BETWEEN                                                                         133


2014), continues with the foundation of Anthroposophy 3 in the early XX cen-
tury and, in my field research case study, develops in the homeodynamic
variant I will focus on in this article4.
   I will therefore develop the line of this argument as follows: after a brief
description of my research field, I will show some characteristics of Anthro-
posophy (AS) as a form of analogism. This first phase gives me the opportun-
ity to open a field of study that I will define “anthropology of Anthropo-
sophy”. In a second phase, I highlight that the analogical characteristics of
AS need to be understood through other categories that I consider import-
ant, such as those of overlapping, fuzziness, interweaving and those of
tramage5 (weft, woof) by Tim Ingold (see below), of the environment like «a
tangle of interlaced trails» (Ingold 2011: 71), of “meshwork” like «entangled
lines of life, growth and movement» in fluid space (ibidem: 63). I have identi-
fied this as an interpretive step that includes the Ingold’s concept of entan-
glement into analogism. Descola and Ingold are therefore two essential au-
thors for experiencing an anthropological study of the anthroposophical
world, analyzed not as “esotericism” (a complex and controversial term that
intends to underline the presence in the Western world of theories of know-
ledge alternative to those of institutional religion and Rationality) 6, but as a
contemporary cultural phenomenon worth studying like any other culture 7. A
third and final part will show the plant handling practices of homeodynamic
anthroposophists: experimentation and alternative agronomies come into

3. Henceforth I will use the abbreviation AS for Anthroposophy.
4. Important texts for historically framing AS are: Corsetti 2003 [1992]; Faivre 2012 [1996];
Garin 1976; Godwin 2004 [1998]; Cassirer 1976; Zolla 1991; Rossi 2006.
5. In French in the original text, not yet translated into English.
6. Western esotericism, since ancient times, is studied in detail by The European Society for
the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE, www.esswe.org). This recent and important work
is conducted with scientific rigor on esoteric texts and subjects investigated with philologi-
cal, interpretive, historical, literary and philosophical tools. This work is strictly focused on
Western esotericism (Hanegraaff 2012), and is quite different from the work I am bringing
forward, dedicated to the contemporary anthroposophical reality. Rudolf Steiner founded AS
as a revelation and an unconcealed process of esotericism, nevertheless anthroposophical
literature remains at a high level of esoteric signification, and a certain degree of familiar-
ization with the anthroposophical language is required in order to make any sense of the an-
throposophical speech and practices. A future interaction between “anthropology of Anthro-
posophy” and the ESSWE scholars could lead to a philological study of the specific terms
used within the AS. I do not intend to reconstruct the history and philology of esoteric
terms, but to show how nowadays they are used in everyday language by the anthro-
posophists I met during my fieldwork.
7. The results of this research will be published in my forthcoming monograph where I dis-
cuss many controversial historical and cultural aspects of this philosophy that I cannot con-
sider in this article including its proximity or distance to/from Nazism and Fascism. The aim
of that study is to investigate Anthroposophy as a cultural form. Among the few studies in
this direction see Brendbekken 2003, and Papageorgiou 2013.

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play in contemporary AS, also in relation to environmental conflicts and eco-
logic disputes, with the results we will see 8. The plant world will act as a
catalyst in the description of the anthroposophical cosmology, a key access
to its world representation.

“Plant turn” and field research. Among anthroposophists
   Before meeting the anthroposophists’ community where I now develop my
fieldwork, I had already attended and observed many anthroposophical prac-
tices, in a kind of diffused and low intensity field research, distributed over a
long period of about 10 years. The anthroposophical movement is indeed
widespread in my area, and on many occasions I attended their events, I vis-
ited their structures and frequented their open proposals (in schools, health
food stores, festivals, conferences, medical care, painting lessons, concerts,
theaters, and even artistic circuses), interviewing and discussing with various
anthroposophists. At the same time, I started reading Steiner’s books and
seeking an access key to his language. My fieldwork was for me, in fact, a long
apprenticeship of the anthroposophical language. This language consists of
terms, concepts, images, and narratives that I consider self-referential, inser-
ted in a “circular” writing (a huge and always re-produced and re-interpreted
one)9 where anthroposophical terms and concepts are given for granted and
not questioned except within the anthroposophical analogical scheme itself
− and the text sounds like a bumper circle with no access doors. A language
that, although not intending to be esoteric, has its own semantic, lexical,
syntactic, stylistic articulation, and a conceptual reference that must be in-
tended, in order to talk with the anthroposophists themselves. The study of
some of the approximately 6000 “lecture texts” by Rudolf Steiner and 80
books written by the community leader, Enzo Nastati, was therefore an in-
tegral part of my ethnographic experience, and Steinerian/anthroposophical
literature, both old and contemporary, is the linguistic-conceptual back-
ground I will often refer to.
   Two years ago, I arrived at the community La Nuova Terra (“The New
Earth”), about 100 km from my home, informed by some other anthropo-
sophists about a group particularly passionate about the plant world and act-
ively experimenting with it. This community and my interest for the “plant
turn” met there.
8. It is also important to note how the anthroposophical movement created by Rudolf
Steiner at the beginning of the twentieth century has changed over time; the homeodynamic
agriculture is indeed an evolution of the biodynamicagriculture, derived, on its turn, from
AS.
9. As Descola writes, Analogists were highly interpretive, this ontology expressing a sense of
totalitarianism, and at the same time a compelling need for writing for interpretive purposes
(Descola 2013: 238, 243).


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THE PLANT IN BETWEEN                                                                 135


   The turning point called “plant turn” (Myers 2015: 40; Marder 2013; Hall
2011; Holdrege 2013; Kohn 2013) represents a subset of the “ontological
turn”. Surpassing the classical anthropological approaches to the plant world
(ethnobotany, cultural ecology, etc.), this turn moves from the social con-
struction of observed facts, to the survey of the nature and quality of the re-
lationships among living beings. The question changes from «how does “an”
animal or “a” plant think?» to the more relevant question «how can we think
“together with” an animal or a plant?» (see Houdart, Thiery 2011: 195). The
“plant turn” realizes a sort of update of the «exceptionnalisme anthropo-
centrique» (anthropocentric exceptionalism), mentioned by Descola (Descola
2011: 19), and allows us to deal with the nonhumans as «une sorte de planète
autour de laquelle gravitent de multiples satellites, le foyer de l’analyse» (ivi).
A process called by Descola «condensation par totalisation» (ivi), in which
«les non humains mobilisés […] rendent possible la condensation autour
d’eux de réseaux spécifiques d’actants dont les configurations définissent des
cadres pour l’action» (ibidem: 20). The “plant turn” broadens my long term
interest in the human encounter with the plant world (Breda 2000, 2001).
The attention to the plant world can help in building less-anthropocentric
anthropologies, as indicated by “posthumanism”, towards the construction of
“co-species-landscapes”, where we finally recognize that human beings are
not the sole inhabitants of the world, and agency is not only their own
prerogative (Houdart, Thiery 2011, 2013). The plant, a nonhuman and non-
animal being, to which we begin to devote our renewed attention, serves in
this article as a condenser − whereby to look at an analogical system − yet to
be studied, as AS, in order to investigate the quality of relations that a com-
munity of Anthroposophists have interwoven by thinking and acting with the
plants.
   The community in which I carried out my fieldwork is located in Codroipo
(Friuli Region, near Udine), in Northeast Italy, and consists of a farm, an eco-
village, a research centre, a laboratory. Enzo Nastati, the community founder
and leader, intends to develop Rudolf Steiner’s work. After the Chernobyl
disaster, he stopped working both in industrial agriculture and in organic-
biodynamic production, feeling unable to respond to the new problems our
civilization faced after World War II: radioactive contamination, climate
change, reduced biodiversity, the ozone hole, genetic engineering etc. In
1986, he developed the “homeodynamic” agricultural method, dealing with
the application of homeopathy in agriculture, namely to the plants and to
the earth. Today, 30 years later, the community works on a wide range of en-
vironmental issues ranging from desertification to water saving, decontam-
ination and desalination10. The farm is a cultivated countryside space, partly

10. Cfr. www.dimensione-eureka.it/. For a first ethnographic account of homeodynamic AS,
see Breda 2015.

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set on former landing strips used in World War II. There I interviewed the
founder and his staff, currently 13, around which support groups, volunteers,
young “wwoofer” people11 and other interested scholars visiting the com-
pany, aggregate: a wide variety of people surrounding the tiny community.
The community participants share work and lunches, and they collect and re-
distribute revenues depending on requirement. No part of the farm is owned
by one single person12. I wander around the fields with the farmers, or I stay
in the yard trying to decipher signs scattered everywhere: pebbles stuck in
the ground in spiral shapes, special vegetable intercropping, symbols carved
in the farming tools, in the pruning of the fruit trees, in the house and in the
animal stockyard. An iambic rhythm, they explain, is a basis for inserting the
wooden poles at the right distance along the corral fence. I visit the green-
houses, trying to identify the samples and the witnesses of the plants on
which the community carries out experimentation. I eat with them self-pro-
duced food and no meat, in the big red house built according to organic ar-
chitecture, anthroposophical symbolism, and technological innovations de-
veloped within the community itself. The house is full of colours and wood
structures, wood stoves instead of diesel ones, many blackboards used in
meetings, many books, wicker chairs, old pianos and guitars in the great
central hall. When they are not busy cultivating plants, Nastati and his team
are immersed in intense study activities. A large library accommodates the
desks where they work and write; incoming visitors can find all the publica-
tions here, purchase them or stop by and read them there. At other times, the
laboratory workers operate the crystallization and analysis of the samples.
Other community members prepare the homeodynamic products for sale. In
the evening meetings are held between the farmers and their coordinators,
they write diaries covering the work on the land, they report observations on
the plants’ health and performance, and discuss possible solutions for any
problems in relation to their crops. At night everyone goes back to their more
or less extended families, waiting for the completion of the wooden houses
that one day will host the whole community next to the red house, on the
common land. Often the community opens out for activities promoting the
homeodynamic method, for seminars in collaboration with other scholars or
experts, or to receive guests and hold conferences. Such activities are held in
the “blue house”, called Casa di San Michele. Enzo Nastati carries out an in-
tensive lecturing activity in Italy and abroad, often asked to run clean-pollu-
tion activities, restitution of soil fertility, setting up of farms based on organ-

11. WWOOF is a world movement that puts volunteers in contact with rural projects, pro-
moting educational and cultural activities based on a non-profit relationship of mutual
trust, to help build a sustainable global community. See www.wwoof.it.
12. The farm products, including anthroposophical-homeodynamic remedies, are for self-
consumption and for sale.


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THE PLANT IN BETWEEN                                                                      137


ic and homeodynamic methods, etc. Currently he is developing activities on
all continents, in an “emergency style” because, according to him, he is called
by his interlocutors when they have already tried all the possible solutions
they know, and now they «attempt the impossible» with his homeodynamic
method.
The plant “in between”. Analogism and entanglement
    According to Nastati, «the plant world is currently the most unarmed, face
to contemporary events and it is the first we must take care of» (Nastati
1999: 34). Everything in his work, from written texts to plant manipulation
practices, helps to identify which representation these Anthroposophists
outline of the plant. It can be summed up in the concept that the plant is
formed between the earth and the sky, thanks to the action of many ele-
ments that − both from the bottom and the top − act to build it and conduct
it. The plant’s location is a cosmic dimension that finds its measure within a
nature/culture system, amplified if compared to the naturalistic science.




                       FIG. 1: Representation of the plant in the Cos-
                       mos. Drawing by Walter Roggenkamp Wal-
                       ter, in Wilhelm Pelikan, Medicinal Plants,
                       Alassio, Natura e Cultura Editrice, 2005.


   One of the characteristics of this analogism is to establish itself as a kind
of “gigantism”, where the dimensions are fast increasing and the networks

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138                                                                                  NADIA BREDA


considered are always immense, cosmic indeed, being the analogism, as
Descola says, a cosmocentrism (Descola 2013: 277, 268), in which the collect-
ive coincides with the entire cosmos, as in this case13. The plant, as a result of
such a logic, is related to everything existing “between” the earth and the
sky. It is not limited to the relation with the surrounding environment: the
environment of the plant, in AS, is the entire cosmos.
      We could say that the ecosystem, the environment the plant takes into account,
      is not only the nearby river or hill, or the industry poisoning it; the environ-
      ment that plants take into account reaches as far as the distant stars in the
      Milky Way, and the ends of our Galaxy! [...] The plant, due to its ability to
      “listen” to the stars, is never an isolated being (as it may seem to our physical
      eyes), but it’s always part of a system of relations, ties, interactions with the en-
      vironment (Nastati 2005b: 30-32).




              FIG. 2: The plant “in between”. Drawing by Enzo Nastati.




13. Generally, AS multiplies any dimensions, e.g.: the tree consists of 7 layers, as human
skin, as the Earth, as the 7 types of birds, the 7 types of insects, etc.; the human is composed
of 4 dimensions: physical, ethereal, “animic”, and spiritual; the Zodiac in its turn is multi-
plied as cherubic and seraphic zodiac, and so on.


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THE PLANT IN BETWEEN                                                                        139




                       FIG. 3: The terrestrial plant in the middle of the Cosmos,
                       between Zodiac, anti-Zodiac and its qualitative at-
                       tributes. Drawing by Enzo Nastati.


From above, a plant grows thanks to a subject, the so called “Group-egos” 14
of the plant, an “individual species principle”, endowed – according to testi-
monies − with consciousness and agency, who resides beyond the constella-
tions and the planets; it is considered as a sort of «spiritual archetype», and
an «evolutionary principle» (in Steinerian language). Without it the plant
would only be a passive material. According to AS, the plant’s agency resides
outside it, in these Group-egos postulated by Steiner 15. The Group-egos are
described by Nastati as entities influenced by the consequences of human
14. I adopt in this article the English translation of this concept, used in the Steinerian
Archive (see e.g. the note below), noting, however, that the Steinerian concept of “ego” (an
open and connected entity) must not be confused with the Freudian “ego” (a closed, indi -
vidual, and self-centered one).
15. http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/19080806p01.html.

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behavior, who take decisions that affect us, the humans, as well as them, the
nonhumans. AS certainly is, in many ways, an evolutionary and finalistic sys-
tem of thought, yet not everything in this path is predefined. The situation of
the Group-egos is historically influenced by new events and developments
not foreseen by classic AS, updated nowadays in these terms:
      The “Group-egos”, as a result of the human actions on the plant (namely, in
      size order: graft-transplant, hybridization and genetic manipulation), retreated
      towards the constellations. Therefore, to connect with them, we need to climb
      up to the Zodiac. [...] The not-corrupted “Group-egos” had no other choice than
      retreat and look away from our planet, no longer finding here acceptable condi-
      tions to manifest themselves through the plants they used to be connected, and
      to make those experiences that allowed them to evolve (Nastati 1999: 144-148).

   During my field research, I learned that the practices pursued by the
homeodynamic Anthroposophists, as we shall see in the last part of the art-
icle, consist of a tight, manipulative, inciting, continuous dialogue with these
beings, where the humans are bridges between them and the terrestrial
plant. From this relationship, all the homeodynamic agricultural practices,
experienced and disseminated by this community, derive. This particular ele-
ment, the “Group egos”, has an extremely important function for an anthro-
pological study of AS: it prospects a historical and cultural dimension in a
system of thought that would otherwise appear completely abstract and spir-
itualized. Descola writes that analogism have replaced the concept of “cul-
ture” with the concept of “spirituality”: analogism «is a “spiritual” universal-
ism, if not a strictly “cultural” one» (Descola 2013: 300) 16, but the character-
istics of these Group-egos make the anthroposophical view receptive of hu-
man historicity, therefore allowing a precise and necessary study of “anthro-
pology of Anthroposophy”.
   Getting back to the plant, watching it from below AS assumes the pres-
ence of the so called «elemental beings», as a system mirroring the Group-
egos system, namely the part of the plant not deriving from the sky, but from
the depths of the earth. The «elemental beings» exist «in the lower parts of
Nature», as Nastati explains; they are invisible and not endowed with con-
sciousness or free will; their function is to activate the terrestrial material
elements; they are their constituents, partly equivalent to the physical ele-
ments (iron, silica, etc.), and defined according to the four elements (earth,
air, fire, water) as undines, sylphs, gnomes, salamanders (Steiner 2004). In
Nastati’s words:

16. This is perhaps a reason for its success: the possibility of being applied to every religion
and to every culture, since we do not recognize it as a form of culture, but as a form of spiri -
tuality.


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THE PLANT IN BETWEEN                                                                            141

      They have no weight, no number, they are here and there, the principles of
      physics fail in front of them; we are in the world where, on one side of the spec-
      trum, are the archangel and the angels, and on the other side, are the element -
      ary beings, a sub-nature, not in the sense of inferior, but just as other beings
      that govern the nature. As the super –, the sub –, they are the other side of the
      spectrum (Interview with Nastati, January 2015).




                 FIG. 4: The plant as a "rising mountain", driven by the "ele-
                 mental beings" (Gnomes, Undines, Sylphides, Fire Spirits).
                 Drawing by Rudolf Steiner (2004: 108).

   The presence and actions of these beings constitute the existence of the
plants: by their own action, according to the anthroposophical system, they
carry water, minerals, inanimate parts of earth to the plant, and push it up-
ward. These «elemental beings» interpenetrate something that is not a plant
yet, but becomes such thanks to their action from the bottom upwards, like a
«rising mountain», as in the metaphor that my anthroposophist interlocutor
borrows from Steiner:
      N.B.: Can we say what a plant is, from the anthroposophical point of view?
      M.T.: the plant is a being, you are right, it is a vital being because it is alive, be-
      cause it has an etheric body [...], the plant is a being that brings life and consists
      of many elementary beings [...] that are invisible, but all the Nordic fairy tales,
      and also our old fairy tales bring this memory; this wisdom has always been
      seen, they are the beings of fire, air, water, and earth, they are in each plant, in
      every plant they exist. Rudolf Steiner says that a plant is a vitalized mineral, so
      it rises up from the earth, as a mineral, which is given strength, so it rises up
      and becomes “a mountain”, a living “mountain” (Interview with M. T., January
      2015).

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   Formed “in between”, the plant in the anthroposophical conception is a
catalyst of many other humans and nonhumans around him. Animals, hu-
mans and spirits of the dead contribute to its vitality, as we shall see from
some brief testimony. In the Steinerian literature flowers are considered as
the brothers of butterflies, their terrestrial analogs. Steiner writes: «looking
at the butterfly in the air, we understand it as the plant raised up into the
air» (Steiner 2004: 68); and again: «The plant − the butterfly fettered by the
earth! The butterfly − the plant freed from the earth by the cosmos!» (Steiner
2013: 49).




                 FIG. 5: Above: the evolution of the butterfly in the extra-ter-
                 restrial sphere; Below: the evolution of the plant in the ter-
                 restrial sphere. Drawing by Rudolf Steiner (2004: 66).

   The homeodynamic Anthroposophists I met in my research speak of in-
sects as beings that constitute the sense organs of the plants: without them,
the plants would be blind, deaf, mute, out of balance. The plant needs to be
together with the insects, «although for centuries we have been accustomed
to thrash both plants and insects dousing them with pesticides» (Nastati, in-
terview). Eventually, according to Nastati’s testimony, the plant blooms de-
pend not only on terrestrial elements, but also on the worlds of the dead,
which have to work from their world to ours, to make it possible for the
plants to flower. The plant, within the anthroposophical cosmology, is there-

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fore a “multispecies landscape”17, which interweaves minerals, plants, anim-
als, humans, nonhumans, spirits, dead person and stellar bodies. Though AS
can be considered an anthropocentric view, the space occupied in this cos-
mology by an endless variety of nonhuman beings is so broad that it can only
confirm the cosmic scale and vastness of this intertwining of human and
nonhuman beings. Ingold’s words seem to fit well with the AS view:
      Nous sommes des êtres humains en devenir permanent, car, nous ne cessons
      jamais de nous construire, ni de contribuer à construire les autres êtres de la
      même manière que les autres êtres nous construisent. Il s’agit d’un processus
      ininterrompu (Ingold in Descola, Ingold 2014: 38)18.

   In my opinion, the plant, as analyzed within the anthroposophical analo-
gism, may well represent the concept of being in the making, or «being be-
coming», as coined by Ingold and Pallson (2013), where pre-formed and dis-
crete entities, repeating a fixed and inherited program − whether genetic or
cultural − do not exist, rather movement and growth trajectories exist, as a
collaborative work in progress, in a never-ending life task. Specifically, the
anthroposophical plant appears to be «in between» (Ingold 2011: 218) two
poles which form it by an interpenetration.
   Descola had actually opened the field to this interpretation of the analo-
gism, writing that in this cosmology where every position is a meeting point
for a multitude of influences, the strength of the continuity principle is that
all types of natural beings «are so closely linked one to another that it is im -
possible for the senses or the imagination to determine precisely the point at
which one ends and the next begins» (Descola − quoting Leibniz in Lovejoy −
2013: 204). It therefore seems that AS moves towards a plan of fuzzy rela-
tions − rather than one of essences − where beings fade one into the other.
According to Descola, in the analogism the proximity is so intimate, that «it
becomes impossible precisely to determine the borders that separate them»
(Descola 2013: 203). And he adds: «from the meagerest kind of existence,
which barely escaped non-existence, through “every possible” grade up to
the ens perfectissimum…, every one of them differing from that immediately
above and that immediately below it by the “least possible” degree of differ-
ence» (ivi, quoting Lovejoy).
   The analogical construction of AS imagines and describes the plant as a
sort of passage of elements imbricated one with another. Steiner speaks of
«all the sprouting and weave of the plant world» (Steiner 2004: 105), of the
«physical reality imbued with spiritual reality», of «deep links», of «objects in
17. Cfr. Ogden, Hall, Kimiko 2013; Smart 2014.
18. In French in the original text, not yet translated into English.

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relation to each other» (Steiner 2004: 84). Analogism is here both that frac-
tionation of beings that worries − in Descola’s interpretation − the Analogic-
al cosmology, always chaotic and bloated with separate beings, but it is also
weaving and interpenetration (Descola 2013: 235).




 FIG. 6: The MESWORK. From up to bottom. Drawing by Enzo Nastati; Tim Ingold (2011: 87);
 Tim Ingold, (2001:70).


   Ingold’s categories appear appropriate for reading this system. Ingold’s
work made us assimilate the concept of «one and the same» of the biosocial
organism (Ingold, Palsson 2013, passim), where social and biological are no
longer separate19, and where the notion of an environment as a background
on which separate subjects stand is no longer acceptable. We must rather
talk about interpenetration of bodies, infestation of development lines
(ibidem: 11), of trajectories of movement and growth (ibidem: 8), of field of
relations (ibidem: 10) traced in a flow of materials. Moving away from the
concept of “network”, as an interconnection of points, too rigid since it im-
plies first a set of entities, and then their connections, Ingold proposes the
interesting concept of “meshwork”: «This texture is what I mean when I
speak of organisms being constituted within a relational field. It is a field not
of interconnected points but of interwoven lines; not a network but a mesh-
19. Ingold speaks of the biological-social scope, while AS seems to apply such rules on the
constitution of reality to the spiritual-material scope, of which reality is made, according to
its view – precisely consisting of 4 levels: physical-etheric-“animic”-spiritual.


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THE PLANT IN BETWEEN                                                                      145


work» (Ingold 2011: 70, 63-65). In a recent speech he used as a synonym the
term tramage20 almost synonymously with the term “meshwork”:
      Et nous pouvons donc comparer la vie à quelque chose qui suivrait des lignes,
      des cheminements. Si je parle de lignes ou de tramage, c’est parce qu’un
      tramage n’est pas une série de points interconnectés, mais une série de lignes
      qui se mélangent les unes aux autres (Ingold in Descola, Ingold 2014: 38).

   Also Descola imagines the analogism substantially as a range of paths,
ways and roads that Analogists have to travel to constitute individual ele-
ments, and give them a sense. He writes that the association of the analo-
gism’s singularities can adopt all sorts of roads (Descola 2013: 268), and that
the analogism’s ways are so numerous that «it is always possible to find sev-
eral possible avenues or chains of correspondences that link two entities»
(Descola 2013: 238). Although a recent confrontation between Descola and
Ingold (Descola 2016; Ingold 2016) seems to disprove a compatibility of their
respective anthropologies, Descola opened to a possible interpretation of
analogism in terms of nuances and weavings. Examples of interpenetration
between elements and fuzzy categories are countless in AS. We see here how
the plant is the result of an interpenetration from below and above, seen as a
mountain of minerals and earth elements, which comes to life from the bot-
tom and receives traction, messages and orders from above.




        FIG. 7: Movements of light and plants in the Cosmos creating an "interweaving".
        Drawing by Enzo Nastati.


20. In French in the original text, not yet translated into English.

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146                                                                                      NADIA BREDA




      FIG. 8: The air space at the apex of the root allows the plant's growth not by a "push", but
      by the "backwash" due to the "negative light". Drawing by Enzo Nastati.



   In this analogical complex, the transition to life is nuanced, resulting from
a mix of elements that involve the whole cosmos. In the anthroposophical
analogical system, the living beings, imbricated one into the other, touching
each other, interpenetrating and encompassing one in another, seem to
shorten the theoretical Descolian convoluted paths21.
   Can we then still talk about AS as a view based on essences? Can we con-
sider it a philosophy dealing with human and nonhuman organisms as dis-
crete and separate entities standing out on an environmental background?
Or must we, rather, consider the anthroposophical cosmos as a tangle of in-
tersected and tied guidelines, a locus of growing, as Ingold and Palsson (2013:
10) say, within a range of relations drawn in a stream of materials fading one
into the other?

Encounters and desencontros with the plants
   What do the Anthroposophists do “with” the plants, beyond “represent-
ing” them? My field research tries to answer this question, and I start here
from a comparison.


21. Bortoft (1996), eminent Goethe connoisseur (Goethe is the main basis used by Rudolf
Steiner to elaborate AS), would definitely interpret the plant as a “hologram”, since it con-
tains a little of all the other elements. The hologram feature represents the most complete
way of incorporating beings until the borders and the spaces between them are cancelled
(see also Camoni 2003).


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THE PLANT IN BETWEEN                                                                  147


   Michael Marder22 in his philosophy book Plant-Thinking (2013), an anti-
metaphysical conception of plants23, asks how can we meet the vegetal world,
suggesting a possible encounter derived from a so-called “vegetal way of be-
ing”. Plant-Thinking intends to formulate non-transcendental conditions for
an encounter with plants, not treating them just as simplistic objects to be
known (Marder 2013: 7-8). Plant-Thinking means viewing the plants without
thinking them with our own head, but in a non-cognitive, non-idealistic way;
it means de-humanizing our thought and making it “plant-like”, thanks to
the encounter with the vegetal world. According to the author, to expose
ourselves to the «vegetable logic» and learn from it (ibidem: 10) decreases the
possibility of our domination and violence over the plant world. Actually,
Marder’s proposal speaks however of a desencontro, «an untranslatable word,
in Portuguese» (ibidem: 13)24 which roughly refers to a reunion lost for a nap,
a paths crossing, a divergence of two or more beings, each of which keeps on
its own wavelength. The aim is not to meet the plant as a plant; it seems in-
stead to amortize our identity and the existential ontology of the human be-
ing. The work on the plants would then converge in the de-construction of
human exceptionalism and egocentrism. On the contrary, the proposal of my
main informant Enzo Nastati, tells us about a decisive, highly desired and
practical reunion with the plants. More than a “thought” about plants, AS
and its homeodynamic variant deal with concrete encounter practices, mul-
tiple techniques to be, live, manipulate, handle, treat, meet the plants.
Nastati’s involvement with the plants is a total way of living, not just a mat-
ter of “thinking”. It is a philosophical, physical and scientific involvement, as
well spiritual, political, and economic at the same time. Nastati’s community
makes a living on its agricultural production, the fruits of a «new» agricul-
ture, made by their «new plants», as they define them (Nastati 1999). It is for
them not just a matter of explaining the world (as anyway they do through
the analogical complex), but also to act “with” the world 25. Their agriculture
proposes a plurality of forms of dialogue with the plants, tested and put into
action.
   Let’s go into details. Some dialogues with the plants are defined by Nastati
as «esoteric» (e.g. sowing or transplanting during «the 13 holy nights»,
between Christmas and Epiphany); others he calls «intimate» (e.g. standing
22. Marder is indicated by Natasha Myers as an important exponent of the “plant turn” (My-
ers 2015).
23. Marder’s method is a bricolage of Vattimo’s weak thought, Derrida’s deconstructionism,
and hermeneutical phenomenology (Marder 2013: 79).
24. Somethng like “dis-encounter” or “a missed-meeting”.
25 Paraphrasing Herzfeld 2006: XV.

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in front of a plant and talking to it: «stand in front of it and understand what
that plant wants», Nastati tells). I saw Nastati on a farm, practicing his dia-
logue with a plum tree, through gestures, caressing the base of the tree and
the nearest land, in an intense silence. A long series of basic gestures for
plants are described in his studies, with tangible effects on the health and
growth of the plants, according to his testimony. In the “gigantism style” we
have met several times, Nastati told me he identified 40 types of «caressing»
known and practiced with the plants by his community. It should be noted
that the term «dialogues» means here not only a linguistic practice, but a
whole series of practices, gestures and plant treatments, ranging from the
choice of days for planting, to the direction of the rows, to the rhythm of
treatment with homeopathic products, up to more or less structured prayers,
the most important being those that ask for forgiveness, and those that
simply are «thoughts of love» − according to Nastati’s expression − addressed
to the plants.
      N.B.: Do you mean talking to the plant through a language?
      E.N.: As you prefer, with colors, pictures, sounds... as you like; everybody has
      his own way (Interview with Nastati, March 4, 2016).

   Homeodynamics considers the dialogue with some plants undeniably
«closed»: in the case of GMOs (genetically modified organisms) it is definit-
ively annihilated. A GMO, in the homeodynamic conception, is a being that
has lost any tie with its cosmic matrix (the Group-egos), therefore dialogue is
no longer possible between it and the human. In the case of hybrids, instead,
the dialogue is quite tiring, not immediate, partially compromised, but also
recoverable: in this case some interventions (eg. homeopathic doses) allow
the plant to reopen to dialogue. But there is one point where the philosophy
of this homeodynamic community astonishes and provokes us. Accustomed
as we are, for decades, to working for the spontaneous or cultivated biod-
iversity (Tsing 2012; Breda 2006), we are instead brought by this philosophy
towards a position of indifference to biodiversity, considered, as it is here, a
phenomenon of mummification of the living.
      An old seed, maintained for decades (or more), has actually a blocked etheric
      body: on one hand, this has preserved it from the external changes, but on the
      other, this has made it like a mummy, unable to adapt to the changing present
      situations (climate change, electromagnetic fields, etc) (Nastati 1999: 143).

  The core interest of the homeodynamic vision is to work with all the ex-
pressions of life, rather than with the historical biodiversity, with what is
«here and now living» (as Nastati says), which is wild, infesting, vagabond.
According to Nastati, «the living is everywhere» and it corresponds very little


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to the domestic26. «Welcome to the agriculture of life», was Nastati’s final
farewell on the countryside excursion organized to investigate «the mani-
festations of the living». I took part in it with a group of farmers interested in
learning his method. Nastati is currently domesticating weeds and infesting
grasses, available in the most diverse places on earth (particularly in disad-
vantaged ones), to bring them to produce harvestable fruit. Opponents of ge-
netic manipulation, investigators of several hypotheses, Nastati and his
Eureka laboratory team produce plants they claim to be resistant to drought
and frosts, to GMO contamination, to be exceptionally productive, growing in
salty water, grasses which re-head, vines resistant to drought, onions that
still germinate after devastating hailstorms, salad resistant to frost. They
claim that the plants in this farm need a quarter of the water that the same
plants irrigated with «non-homeodynamically vitalized» water would need.
      Working in this way, we were able to create this soft genetics , to engage in a
      dialogue with the plants, and the plants were able to grow with larger and
      longer spikes, they grow in dryness... we are coming to 25% of the normal water
      amount needed [...]. This is not a genetic manipulation, because the plant uses
      at most 30-40% of its DNA, the nature manifests the minimum of herself; in
      such a context [...] plants have a vastly greater genetic potential we (try) to
      awaken and recall it. [...]. It took 15 years to study these things, to (create) for
      each plant its subtle identikit. It’s a great job, not written yet, but on this basis I
      have developed our products... I do not modify plants genetically, I activate the
      silent genes (Nastati, interview, January 2015).
      We can thus stimulate a future plants’ resistance to cold, to drought, to foreign
      pollen, enhancing its natural aptitudes (to create humus, to fix nitrogen, etc.),
      and more. The work of the “Seed Bath” culminates with the procedure of the re-
      generation of the seeds, an important task carried out by a specific team of re-
      searchers and farmers [...]; in the space of three generations, the seed is recon -
      nected to the spiritual forces that govern its existence, so that it can receive
      new evolutionary guidelines from the Cosmos, and be able to develop meta-
      morphosis and new characteristics” (Nastati, 2005a: 25-27).

   I have not yet worked out a way for evaluating the quantitative aspects of
this information, or the agronomic efficacy on its products. It is not clear
what to measure, how and with what data to compare these anthroposophic-
al farming results. It remains a path of investigation still to be explored.
   What my research allows to clarify is the meaning attributed to these ac-
tions. I feel like claiming that, in this conception, the so-called «activation of
the silent genes» consists of resuming the dialogue with the Group-egos −
described earlier − and in weaving again those relationships disrupted by the
26. At this point Nastati’s homeodynamic Anthroposophy expresses a version, applied to
agriculture, of Gilles Clément’s“Third Landscape”, and of his “Vagabond Eulogy” (Clément
2002, 2014; Lai, Breda 2011).

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contemporary ecological disasters. AS here dialogues with and operates upon
the Group-egos, and they, in turn, act on the terrestrial plants, boosting their
potentials and creating new characteristics, in order to let «new plants»
grow, and be used − according to this anthroposophical vision − on a future
land, highly compromised by the environmental crisis.
      The seed, therefore, does not perpetuate the same plant forever, but after each
      “dialogue” with the Cosmos (its Group egos, the entities governing meteoro-
      logy, the elemental beings, etc.), the plant gets new information, let’s say… gets
      “updated plans”. That’s why a species that has completed its task on Earth may
      decide, within a few generations, to become sterile and disappear, or another
      species, finding an ally in humans, can appear in a short time with more and
      new vigor (Nastati 1999).

   Yet very little of this is told by Nastati in a lecture to farmers, I attended.
Of the cosmic vision outlined by AS, little was revealed in this public lecture,
where Nastati met some farmers from the Treviso countryside, seeking al-
ternative solutions to an agriculture based on pesticides and fertilizers, more
and more expensive and gradually less effective, contested by the local
movements active in contrasting the intensive plantations of vineyards.
Homeodynamic agriculture is presented by Enzo Nastati with a series of
slides, which illustrate cases of intervention on various kinds of problems
and their resolutions through his method. Different types of interventions
are reviewed: from that of corn aflatoxins, to one on the regeneration of
onions after hailstorms. Nastati impresses the farmers and spreads his meth-
od. There are many requests to speak. He often visits the farms and proposes
his method to improve their cultivations.
   I discuss with Nastati some aspects of this public event. He explains that
with farmers he deals first of all with trivial economic issues, starting from
their need to gain a profit, and offers them his method since it is low-priced
and non-polluting. He outlines for them a possible income. He declares that
he is forced to start from this point, otherwise the esoteric and spiritual as-
pects of his method would block the dialogue and the possibility of working
together. In his experience, he explains, after this first approach, during the
application of his method, some people want to know more, and then he can
talk of the spiritual aspects and of the fundamentals of anthroposophical ag-
riculture. In the meantime, he likes to see the results: large plants, abundant
products, overcoming agronomic challenges; his passion, he says, is the
desert, and to pull it back. The farm’s public pages, on line, enhance an agri-
culture able to overcome hunger in the world, to allow fair and equitable in-
come for farmers, to clean the world up.


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   From my “anthropology of Anthroposophy” point of view, it is interesting
not only to go deeper into the anthroposophical thought and into its
branches, in the group’s internal practices, but also to observe how this
philosophy of life embodies and goes further in the relations that the com-
munity has with peripheral or external parties, how all this could be trans-
lated into language and actions of a different, more political, nature in-
volving consociations, stands and positions in the public arena. Unfortu-
nately, I cannot go further here on this point, but I will underline some inter-
esting ideas that arose from the talks initiated in the field, when I was trying
to figure out the relationship of this AS with the two worlds of environment-
alism and of traditional agriculture, involved today in multiple conflicts. So I
asked Nastati, given all the work he does with the seeds, if he knew the work
of Vandana Shiva27 (2000). He answered that he knows and appreciates them,
that he really likes Vandana Shiva, but he has no time to collaborate with
them. I also investigated the role of his community in the disputes against
GMO corn planted in the province of Pordenone, not far from his farm. The
agronomist of the community said that they participated only up to a certain
point. They present themselves as the bearers of a certain method of agricul-
ture, he says, and this is the contribution they can give to the problems of
today’s agriculture. I can affirm, in conclusion, that like other Anthroposoph-
ists I have met, they are not experts in conflicts. Conflict, in fact, is often
avoided. They are rather a community strongly committed to developing
their own experimentation for an environmentally friendly agriculture, in-
spired by the anthroposophical vision. They do tend not to join movements
that could hybridize their culture. My interview on these topics ends, in fact,
with the agronomist’s reflection about how, after the political protests,
everybody goes back home and nobody remains on the field. The farmers find
themselves alone, and do not know where to find a more conscious and sus-
tainable way to produce. They are there for that, he says, they are there be-
fore and after the demonstrations, to offer an alternative, even if such an al-
ternative, often, is not grasped. Nevertheless, in 2015 Nastati was invited to
North America to design a farm based on his method. In the same year, he
was called by a Chinese government agency to clean up several dozen lakes.
Currently the requests for his interventions come from all continents.

Conclusions
  One of the reasons why an analogism can resist in a karstic way for many
centuries and then appear in the present time, is perhaps explained by
Descola: «The analogical collective is unique, divided into a hierarchy of seg-
27. Renowned Indian environmentalist and political activist, a reference point for many en-
vironmental groups due to her struggles against industrial agriculture.

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ments, and relates exclusively to itself. It is thus self-sufficient, for it con-
tains within it all the relations and determining factors necessary for its ex-
istence and functioning» (Descola 2013: 276). The anthroposophical analo-
gism I knew and described here can be considered a cosmology that, as
Descola pointed out, in many ways was so self-sufficient as to be able to
cross centuries without being annihilated by naturalism, closed in its self-
referentiality. This sounds similar to the common perception of the AS: a
world closed in on itself, fanatical, anti-modern, alternative. This character-
istic submits it to two opposing assessments: on one side, it is considered at-
tractive − in an ecologically devastated world − for its ability to be in a rela-
tionship with the natural world in a broad sense, to elaborate sustainable
ways of living, with gestures of caring and manipulation practices that incor-
porate mystical tendencies, Eastern philosophies and ecological approaches.
But on the other side, it is steeped in prejudices and stereotypes. During my
field research, I have often experienced forms of ostracism and condemna-
tion of Anthroposophists due to a lack of understanding of their philosophy,
of its characteristics, and of its attempt to stay in this world and change with
it.
    With this study I have tried to penetrate this philosophy, understand it
from inside, and watch its practices, trying to explain and interpret it with
categories that are not anthroposophical. This is what I call “anthropology of
Anthroposophy”. Here begins the great work, certainly not concluded in this
article, of the analysis of this contemporary analogism. The plant, in its com-
plex analogical weave, shows us that a subject, in this cosmology, no longer
represents a single element, but rather a complex “multispecies landscape”,
which brings together human and nonhuman. Is this the case for all the an-
throposophical elements? Are there differences between human and nonhu-
man beings, in this system? What does AS say about interiority, how does it
describe it? Where does the physicality of its elements ends, and where does
it begin, and what is the material for this analogism? What happens to the
nature/culture dichotomy in this analogism? And, above all: how do the con-
temporary anthroposophical movements manipulate these concepts, how do
they combine them in times of climate change, Anthropocene, and ecological
disasters for human and nonhuman beings? Ethnography has a long way to
go into this analogism to answer these questions.




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 Nadia BREDA is Adjunct Professor at the University of Florence, Italy. She studied at
 Venice University, EHESS of Paris and Toulouse, and holds a PhD from the Uni-
 versity “La Sapienza”, Rome. Her research interests address the relationship
 between society and nature. Her ethnographic fieldwork concerns local knowledge,
 biodiversity management, environmental conflicts, water and wetland politics, and
 Third landscapes. She has participated in international conferences on Road bio-
 graphies, Waterscapes and wetland management, and Climate change. She has
 also edited the Italian version of Par-delà Nature et Culture by Philippe Descola
 2005 (SEID, 2014). Her single-authored books include: I respiri della palude (CISU,
 2000); Palù (Cierre, 2001); Bibo (CISU, 2010).
 nadia.breda@unifi.it




This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Nadia Breda
The plant in between: Analogism and entanglement in an Italian community of anthroposophists
2016 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 5, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2016: 131-157.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-2530
