by Dr Demeter / Emily Samuels-Ballantyne, Magical Farm Tasmania
Yesterday I harvested Valerian with Brian Keats, the visionary behind the Astro Calendar and one of the clearest readers of the biodynamic cosmos I have ever met. Working beside him, I was reminded that biodynamics is not just a farming method, it is a way of perceiving the world as an alive, coherent conversation between earth and sky. Con Viv! Brian spoke of Saturn, the planet biodynamics associates with valerian.
Many imagine Saturn as cold, distant, restrictive, the furthest classical planet, ringed and remote. But in the biodynamic understanding, Saturn carries a very different gesture. It brings warmth, concentration, inwardness, and the subtle fire that protects and holds form together. Saturn is the elder planet, the guardian of boundaries, the one who gathers scattered forces and weaves them into coherence.
Brian Keats and Dr Demeter / Emily samuels-ballantyne
Valerian meets Saturn in that gesture.
The plant is a study in inwardness and warmth:
its root plunging into the quiet dark,
its hollow stems carrying sweetness,
its soft mauve flowers lifting delicately into dusk light.
There is a descending and an ascending, a compactness and a fragrance: an alchemy of Earth and cosmos.
Brian reminded me that valerian is not harvested in parts.
You take the whole plant, leaves, stems, blossoms, and the deep-rooted essence that carries its warming, Saturnian signature.
In biodynamics, the wholeness matters. You work with the full gesture of the being, not the fragment. Only then can the planetary forced the far Saturn warmth, speak clearly into the preparation.
As we lifted the whole plant from the soil, I felt a subtle shift in my own body. Something in me quietened, gathered, warmed. Saturn’s gesture is not harsh; it is precise. It asks us to come into form. To know where we stand. To settle into right proportion and inward strength.
Valerian’s scent rose softly from the basket, sweet, nocturnal, strangely reassuring, as though each part of the plant remembered a different layer of sky:
the root recalling winter starlight,
the flower holding summer dusk,
and Saturn binding them in a single, warming breath.
In tending this plant under Brian’s guidance, I felt my own edges come home.
A sense that the compost, the soil, the human nervous system, and the cosmos all share the same need:
warmth that begins in darkness,
form that arises from inwardness,
and alchemy that only unfolds when the whole being is honoured.
This is the quiet gift of valerian.
This is the Saturn rhythm in biodynamics.
This is the teaching I carry back into Magical Farm Tasmania.
Poem: Valerian, Saturn’s Root
Valerian, warm root of the farthest ring,
Saturn’s hush in the garden bed.
You gather time into a single breath
and soften the hard edges of night.
Whole plant, whole star, whole song,
teach my body the warmth
that begins in darkness.
#conviv