Cosmic Cabbage, Conscious Cauliflower

Give thanks for the beautiful cabbages and cauliflower in the fall garden. So much more than just vegetables, these are substantial foods. According to Rudolf Steiner, cabbages and cauliflower, the head of crowded flower buds, will support our lungs and heart. He bases this on the role that sun forces play in plant growth. Leaves grow up toward the sun, or rather, are drawn up by the forces of the sun, and the sun has a strong connection to our heart.

Cauliflower has developed past the leaf stage, to the blossom stage, although still closer to leaf than to fruit. Research done by Dr. Rudolf Hauschka using capillary-dynamic patterns shows that cauliflower, and also plants in the blossom stage, have been energetically “cooked” by the sun to their state of blossoming, or more eloquently put, ripening and warmth forces are infused into the plant at this stage from the cosmos, and thus needs only light steaming, or can even be eaten raw. Where as cabbage, still in the leaf stage, also affected by the heating affects of the sun’s warmth, can be brought to the state of raw cauliflower also with light steaming, or eaten raw. Cooked beyond light steaming, both foods tested as being “dead,” void of nutrients and enzymes, in other words, carried too far over into realms that equate to overripeness or rot in nature.

If left in the garden, and allowed to continue to grow own, the cabbage would eventually shoot up a stalk from out of its packed round layers of leaves, and the cauliflower, would unfurl itself into a million blossoms. Yet, even though they will never reach their potential, it does still exist, as Goethe described, in the archetypal plant, existing in completion, as an imprint, in “space” or the akashic realm. Each plant has its guiding spirit, and star to coax it toward its fulfillment.

So much we take for granted when we go out to the garden or to the shop and buy produce, often hurrying up with our chores, ready to rush home, pressured to make supper, worried about spending so much on groceries. For all of that “important” mind clutter, we miss out on the richness of participating in the experience of the life of a vegetable, which is so much more interesting, rhythmic, filled with contributions of fairies, gnomes, sylphs and undines, the beings of the four elements, who embody the elements, the “clay” who make these nourishing manifestations come about, grow in the dirt, sprout, blossom and even sometimes rot. A vegetative state of mind can be more enlightening than the cliché would lead us to believe.

Coleslaw and creamed cauliflower never tasted to good.