Potato Consumption & Materialistic Thinking

"A...far reaching example, frequently emphasized by Rudolf Steiner is related to potato consumption which has spread and increased enormously in the last few centuries. Steiner explains: "The inner thinking of Europe has been regressing since the moment potato consumption took hold" - now [over] two hundred years. The potato has effects on man opposite to those of sugar, because "it has no relation to the spiritual."
-The Dynamics of Nutrition: The Impulse of Rudolf Steiner’s Spiritual Science for a New Nutritional Hygiene, by Gerhard Schmidt

"The community of potato eaters, still significant in number today, will elicit completely different physical and psychological processes within themselves, which can even be transmitted to their offspring by inheritance. If parents eat too many potatoes, then a human germ develops in which the "soul-spiritual is not properly in the physical body."

Rudolf Steiner actually drew a parallel between increasing potato consumption in the last centuries and a progressively materialistic way of thinking in the European people.

-Quotes from Rudolf Steiner, Lectures to Workers, Dornach, 22nd September 1923

"The potato takes little care of lung and heart. It reaches the head, but only, as I said, the lower head, not the upper head. It does go into the lower head, where one thinks and exercises critical faculties. Therefore, you can see, in earlier times there were fewer journalists. There was no printing industry yet. Think of the amount of thought expended daily in this world in our time, just to bring the newspapers out! All that thinking, it is much too much, it is not at all necessary — and we have to thank the potato diet for that! Because a person who eats potatoes is constantly stimulated to think. He can't do anything but think. That's why his lungs and his heart become weak. Tuberculosis, lung tuberculosis, did not become widespread until the potato diet was introduced. And the weakest human beings are those living in regions where almost nothing else is grown but potatoes, where the people live on potatoes." 

-Rudolf Steiner, Lecture 2, Nutrition and Health.

It is hardly likely that you will ever have listened to sermons on subjects like the respective merits of potatoes or wheat as food! At any rate it will not be your experience that most clergymen think it important to preach about the effect of rye or wheat upon health. They attach no importance to these matters because in their opinion they are not sacred. To pray or to expound the Gospels, that and that alone is sacred according to their way of thinking. ... 

But the Divine is at work in the whole of nature, not only when men pray or converse on the subject of Holy Writ. The Spiritual is an active power in nature. If man prevents the Spiritual from having access to his head because by eating potato food to excess he gives the head too much to do ... well, he may pray, but it will be to no purpose because he has been sidetracked from the Spiritual. That too is something that escapes notice. God did not find the earth as a clod out of which all things were then made; the Divine Power is active everywhere, in every single particle, and it is there that we must seek for its manifestations. But when this is done, the theologians accuse us of materialism!

-Rudolf Steiner
Here is a great alternative to potatoes:

From Hannah Townsend’s review of Ralf Roessner’s book The Light Root in the Autumn 2014 issue of New View magazine (article not online).

To quote from Hannah’s review:

“Rudolf Steiner was apparently just about to depart from the gathering at Koberwitz where he had been giving the course of lectures that would lay the foundation for the development of biodynamic agriculture.....

"As Steiner waited for his car to arrive to take him to the train station, two of the course participants came up to him with a question. They wanted to know whether, if all the indications that he had given were followed, it would be enough to raise the quality of nutrition to give adequate spiritual nourishment for our times. The answer that Steiner gave seems to have been both surprising and direct:

‘It will not be sufficient, even in the most favourable circumstances,’ he said. ‘What should be done is to cultivate Dioscorea batatas in Europe so that it can take over from the potato as the staple diet…’ ”

Upon the Subject of the Etheric Life

'Life' is the driving propulsive force which needs go before all manifestive examples. Life makes the space, the cavity which will permit the ensuing manifestation to be. Not only is it as essence, but ensoulment - in the greater context - that the spark/spirit of Divinity has projected itself into the substances that enclothe actuality, enshrouding in soul.

The Etheric Life is the Physical Complex, and yet, having stipulated this, the physical matter is not necessarily bound in autoclave and with synchronicity. As yet, Christ is fully realized in perfected Etheric Matter. This is the evolutionary modicum for future substance, at present only realized in part.

Consciousness may drift into bodies, which although connected, are not 'lit' by the conscious mind/awareness hitherto. During sleep a man is not fully separated from his physical and etheric bodies and their counterparts, but his consciousness has shifted its emphasis; and his ego-self - to which the consciousness is bound, has extended itself into and out to greater perimeters of being. The etheric mass of the World is as [in example] the physical body of Christ. As with a sleeping frame unlit by conscious activity or will to motivate the inanimate limbs, the etheric system ran with a sufficient metabolism regular and correct, awaiting the filling of form by Christ, the owner. In this sense He was here before He arrived.

The seeding of the physical matter is another 'matter' entirely - this being meant in both senses, of course. For as it has been alluded to previously, the physical world itself requires both transformation and at the same time, direct crossing into future worlds and their substance. Kinetically, Christ entered into a concentrated point of then perfected physicality, and the subsequent dispersement of that body itself seeded the region and the lands around, which in turn set about changing the makeover of the entire Globe.

The physical entrance as we know it, was as the sub-physical to Christ, whose life is the Etheric World, from which we are all sustained. His 'waking' into His body, is ever circulating and insisting itself here and there; however, as pointed to once again, every being which inhabits and comprises that light world is summoned to an audience with Christ.

The fairies have found a greater King - not as their former, being an imp or a devil or a man. Now it is that they too - and even without the gifts that Man has had bestowed upon him - may come to Christ in delight, with applause and in celebration. This will go well for Man also, for hitherto these kingdoms have been prone to impatience and hot-temperedness at the shortcomings and idiosyncrasies of the dullards who are insensitive to their parent realm.

-B.Hive 

Carrots, Horseradish & Beetroot: effects on thinking

Quoting from:

Dynamics of Nutrition: The Impulse of Rudolf Steiner’s Spiritual Science for a New Nutritional Hygiene, by Gerhard Schmidt

Both red beets and radishes are true root formations, and they are characterized by Rudolf Steiner as follows: "The red beet stimulates thinking very strongly... but it does that in such a way that one actually wants to think. He who doesn't like to do this, doesn't like red beets either." 

The strong salt effect of horseradish is well known and has long been used in dietetics. Rudolf Steiner suggested: "If somebody is not very active in the head, then he will be benefited if he adds horseradish to his meals, because it brings a little movement into the thoughts." In this connection it is remarkable that the beets concentrate certain mustard oils in their roots. The radishes are said to contain a compound which contains sulfur and cyanide, a thiocyanate. In the red beets a color substance has the basic structure of a betacyanide.

"If you feel sometimes that you have a weak head, a feeling of emptiness in the brain, that you cannot think very well, then it is good if you add yellow beets [carrots] for some time in you food." Rudolf Steiner adds,"this is the most effective course in children".

Quotes from Rudolf Steiner, Lectures to Workers, Dornach, 18th July 1923

Dr. Steiner claims that the results of potato eating can be observed in the astral body around the region of the forehead. Potato eating turns us into superficial thinkers, quick to grasp a subject but then to lose details. This is what happened when the potato was unleashed in Europe.

Root vegetables (the potato is not a true root but a "thickened stem") should support our brain sense system (Man being an upside down plant). The beetroot, the radish, aid our thinking. Horseradish sets our thoughts in motion, carrots put thoughts into empty heads, the turnips turn us into prudent thinkers.

We never satisfy our need for a root vegetable by eating potatoes but keep eating in hope.

Of course for turbo-charged power, try carrot juice- or any of the others.

We should feed our children beets and other root crops during a Full Moon for greatest nutritive effect. Dr. Steiner says that eating beets at a Full Moon will kill any worms that one might have:

"You see, gentlemen, it is like this. When you eat the root of a plant, this is under the influence of the moon just as much as a poisonous root is. . . . Beetroot is a good food for people who easily get worms. When the beetroot gets to the intestine the worms get upset; they are paralysed and are then eliminated in the stools.

"People who have certain illnesses may even be helped a great deal by giving them a root diet, arranging things in such a way that the diet is taken at the time of the full moon and not at the time of new moon. . . . Children who have a tendency to stay small could also be brought on a bit with such a root diet . . . between birth and the seventh year of life. . . And the moon's influence is mainly apparent on the earth's suface. It does not go deeper. It goes just far enough to stimulate the roots of plants.

- Beetroot to Buddhism, Rudolf Steiner

"If old man turnip could converse with Man he would share the knowledge of sharp, prudent thinking. He could speak, not with cunning, but actuality, of the secrets of the seasons and when best to plant by them for the rest of the wellbeing of the garden. He would not favor the flowers, nor the aromatic herbs, but in plain speak contrast the properties of both trowel and soil, principally and practically, and to the point."

- B.Hive

The Body Astrea

The Body Astrea is not to be confused with the astral composite-slag which impregnates physical matter. The Body Astrea is a finer light body which faithfully mirrors the cosmic aspects of starry configurations and their qualities.

The veritable map of the Zodiac, light and as incorporeal as the gossamer strands in fairy legend, this 'starry' body is our carrier into the cosmic realms, and is in the likeness of Christ whose Body Astrea is all that is the Zodiac.

Therefore, one cannot separate the synthesis of astreaic membrane from the Christ; even though He has not as yet, awakened the astral realms which adhere to the planet. Those astral spaces are timeless, and they are unruly. However the astral world which is attracted to the manifested physical world is by nature and in actuality, immature by comparison to the starry body around which a man's physical organs do gravitate.

-B.Hive

Upon the Subject of 33 1/3

As it was aforesaid, the time periods are not in actuality comparable. An example of this can be of a student who on the same day must attend four classes. To each class he has been committed to produce papers for which he has worked upon for weeks leading up to the submission date. One might think that as the papers were orderly brought in during the one day that this was indeed but the culmination of just one day's work.

The fact that Christ may work two sets of time simultaneously is not to be dismissed as the one. It is necessary because the 'deadlines' are significant to the progress and determination of a larger humanity; and in this instance it is as though He skips out of our time during that one day and achieves 'catch up' in between sessions.

The significance of 33 1/3 is, masonically, a Sun division. Working backwards, if the sixty minutes that comprise an hour were each given 33 1/3 increments the value of the increments would be 2,000 for that hour.

In this 'one hour', every year passed in the last nineteen plus centuries was as an increment. Every 33 1/3 years was as a minute.

It, (time) had to alter. So in this instance the 'minute' being one day of the Sun, becomes a degree-divisioning of 33 1/3. Therefore, the full day of Christ is 48,000 years, all up.

[The above remarks relate to questions arising from Robert Powell's Christian Hermetic Astrology.]

"Thus the etheric body of Christ contained all the experiences from the moment of birth in Bethlehem to the resurrection, comprising a time span of 33 1/3 years. But whereas at the death of the human being the etheric body, generally speaking, dissolves back into the cosmos, in the case of Christ his etheric body did not dissolve but has remained preserved. More than this, it has been - and continues to be - active, unfolding its activity every 33 1/3 years. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, therefore, the 33 1/3-year rhythm has played a role in the cosmic order, just as the planets always have done, e.g. Jupiter's 12-year rhythm and the 29 year rhythm of Saturn. In contrast to the planetary rhythms, which are specified in terms of cosmic space (that is, by their passage against the background of the zodiacal constellations, so that a planet's rhythm is determined by the time period that elapses between its conjunction with a given fixed star until its return to conjunction with the "same" fixed star), the 33 1/3-year rhythm is a purely temporal rhythm, specified by the duration of the life of Jesus Christ.

"However, since the commencement of the New Age at the start of the twentieth century, the 33 1/3-year rhythm has begun to play a much more significant role than hitherto. This has to do with the second coming of Christ. For, whereas the first coming was an event on the physical plane, the second coming is taking place on the etheric plane of existence, that is, in the realm of life forces. And it is especially Christ's etheric body that is active here."
-Robert Powell