Chapter 9- Horticulture

CHAPTER 9

Horticulture

Dietary Exercise Suggested:

To experience foods, condiments, cordials and teas, made from the produce of buds, blossoms and berries.

Commentary:

Of all of the expressions within the natural world: … the running waterways, the sinewy trees, the cavernous hills, the secretive woods, the hoary characters of vegetable, the fragrant winds from sea and grove, the sunlit paths, the sprouting of bushes, the sands and the glassy-smoothed pebbles, the hunchback boulder and even the towering mountain … in the step of a lively beast, the face of a child, or the features of wisdom; the grace of the rain’s fall, or the mystery in thorny icicles; in the ever-changing bodies of cloud, and the hues of the sky-dome as it kisses the horizon beneath …

Of all of the expressions within the natural world it is from the bud and the blossom and the burgeoning berry that we can learn of the abundantly free merriment which does chortle within the etheric life today.

Infant-spirited and given only to pure joy, it is the floral kingdom which contains the spiritus-vitae of the ancient gods. Whilst the elements conceal many an angelic collective, and the trees and rocks bring in the planetary aspects as are responded to; whilst Man is responsive to Christ, and the Animals are responsive to Man; and even the most serious of vegetable has a planetary wisdom to impart … Amongst all of these virtues as named (and ones not so named) … there are the GRACES.

Grace is distinct from virtue. The powers of virtue are discriminating and are only responsive to that which calls upon them duly. The curiousness of Grace lies in its charity to all that it visits – being as a universal token, with no particular exchange rate or currency – it is freely obtained and yet, uncommitted to the particular.

The old gods of the first world have preserved it. It is illusive, rarely thought about, and by the time we have concluded this paper about dear Horticulture it is our hope that the very magic of it shall be felt somewhat by the reader … enough to feel the excitement and hope that projects in the ethers, because of it.

There are common ideas circulating about ‘energies’ and life forces (similar to Star Wars), and yet the higher supplement to all of our beings actually exists in Grace. (“May all of the Grace be with you.”)

You may have noticed in some communities of the Church where this is said in effect, but how a sadness creeps over the soul, as if sensing that the Grace is so very far away and yet all the more needed?

The word itself does not invoke it. This is unusual as most words (if not all) call in their parent host, to some degree upon utterance. If I make a mantra out of any of the virtues, this will certainly assist in both the contemplation and the reality of their presence of force working within me. But if I call to ‘Grace’ it is as a nothing – almost alike to an open window that she has flown out of, leaving me waiting and without; this is for the very reason that the nature of Grace is as unfettered and free as it is within us. It is beyond invocation, beyond provocation, beyond ownership, without specific entitlement, distanced from all laws of causality save one, indifferent to methodology, untameable, unharnessable, immeasurable. 
 

Grace is not obligated by the laws of karma, as it did precede karma, sustains the karmic impulse and intercedes where karma cannot. Grace is above and beyond all else save Father God.

It is Grace that entices the young lovers into their rapturous play, it is Grace which invites the newborn into each womb complete; it is Grace that brings peace where no peace should be found; it is Grace that brings hope to counter a sadness; Grace that brings sleep to the sick and the pained; Grace that brings laughter amidst desolation; Grace that examples kindness which is pure, genuine and mighty; Grace which eases the weary in the last moments of their journey; Grace which teaches us in insight, in a leap of understanding that even reason could not reach to; Grace that shoulders each Kingdom, irrespective of the tensions necessary to such an untidy mix; Grace that keeps the stars in place and stops them from falling into our sea; Grace is what babies smile at so long and so often for; Grace is both the sugar and the salt which is given to our meal; Grace is that compassion when a strong God cares for his defiant and unruly of peoples and loves them well.

The properties of heavenly influences are represented here in the Physical World. They appear sometimes transitorily carried in the etheric vapours, or in a characteristic as is given out, exampled in some species as a living link to their domain. This goes for many marvels, and although the entire zodiacal astrea is mirrored completely in Man, these properties to which we subscribe to as being predominant within the floral kingdom, do not enter via the astral gateways but are given and received through the etheric life from cosmic fields lying further to our own.

If we consider Life as it manifests within the natural world we can come to realise that there are elements of obstinacy, of wilfulness, of opulence and of remarkable courage, synthetic to the spring and the push into actual being. For a plant, for example, just to find its way into this world, there has been such a determined effort just to break through the soil and flourish as it does. 
 

The flowers hold to the gentler of aspects, being agents for divine hosts whose passage in and out of this world do not require the same driven fervour as is applied to living elsewhere. The properties of many a grace are received and welcomed in all realms, and they can afford to be relaxed and as merry as they appear. This is why the elemental-faeries will be perfectly tempered and blissfully occupied around their blossom-buddies. We give flowers to our beloved and to the ill (and to the deceased). And the flowers themselves are actually visible in the spiritual worlds adjoining ours – being exactly what they are: these bodies of certain Grace. 
 

When taken internally (and please be discriminating as to what is edible and what is not) the bud, blossom and berry illuminate within us many sun properties as well. Their chief radiance comes of the Sun as it is the very heart to which the Grace does well into and out of, flowing to us.

The connection between this, and the learning of Horticulture in general pertains to the etheric/esoteric sphere in which they reside. Although difficult to picture, there are differing realms within the etheric paradise – not all plants are so tangled together, but rather segregated depending upon what age and influence they come from. The turnip does not reside with the cabbage (which, by the way, is where the babies come from – being a bud, i.e. Grace); and there are some cactus plants which pretend to be as flowers, but are astral sleuths which are quite deadly, both here and in their ethereal bodies.

But if you go to the garden and wish to converse with the sweet-voiced wisdoms that will introduce you to the happiest of truths about themselves, it is preferable to begin with the flowers. The trees may tell you of deep-rooted memories, but not so much of themselves in particular. Self-knowledge will not come of a sleep-talking tree. Grasses and leafy bushes, seaweeds and vegetable conundrums will all have great wisdoms to offer, but not of the garden, the most esoteric of all gardens, we ask the secrets of.