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Viktor Schauberger Viktor Schauberger was an extraordinary man, a visionary with a new, integrated way of understanding the processes of nature. A forester by training, he lived in Austria in the first half of the 20th century. Through observation of the workings of nature in the forests under his care, he developed a view of the Earth as a living entity, with water as her lifeblood, a living fluid.
Viktor Schauberger rejected academic training as a young man, preferring to learn from experience in the woods and mountains while he did his work as a forester. He was a patient, intuitive man. He had opportunities granted to very few today – he could observe Nature in her raw state, undisturbed by human technologies. In the mountains where he wandered, some areas had hardly ever been visited by humans before. How many of us, in the course of our work, have stumbled across the place where the chamois go to die? And seen the flowers grow on their grave?
He learned from what he saw, the ways of Wise Nature, as he called it. He developed an understanding of the way that Nature worked. He then, much later, developed practical applications based on what he had observed.
One such application was a copper-plated plough, which was the original inspiration for our garden tools.
For a summary of the results of field trials with Viktor Schauberger's copper-plated plough, look at the table.
Here is a short article about Viktor Schauberger's ideas as they apply to agriculture. Viktor Schauberger had many ideas which are of direct relevance for today. As a boy and young man at the turn of the twentieth century, he was able to roam in almost untouched forests, and from the experiences he had there, he developed a huge respect and reverence for Nature. He envisaged a future in which humans could work with Nature on principle, rather than being employed for a money wage. A world in which ‘instead of work (in its present sense) a sense of service will evolve for which humanity was destined since the beginning of time; service to Nature’. [Nature as Teacher, p32]
From his observations and understandings of the way that Nature works, he also developed a whole system of thinking. He used this paradigm to invent practical applications, which would be of benefit to humans and Nature alike. We will now take you on a whistle-stop tour of his ideas as they relate to one of these applications, agricultural tools.
He designed a plough of a very specific shape and material, and declared that the principle could be extended to other agricultural implements. The shape must be curved, spiralling; and if made of metal, the metal must be copper or bronze.
Viktor Schauberger believed that western industrial technology is based on an understanding of only one half of reality. For example, energy can move in one of two directions, spiralling inwards or outwards. Humans know about the hot, noisy, outward-spiralling, explosive motion. It is used in all of our machines. Unfortunately, it is also destructive and can only be used in the short term.
Viktor Schauberger saw the opposite process in the darting of a trout upstream and the dive of the fish-eagle to the lake. They spiral inwards, quietly, concentrating the power to the centre of the spiral. He described this motion as planetary, as it reflects the movement of the planet through the heavens. Planetary motion is centripetal, concentrating towards the centre, while modern industrial technology tends to use centrifugal motion, outwards from a drive-shaft. Relating this observation to the design of agricultural tools such as a ploughshare, the correct spiralling motion removes the pressure from the walls and focuses it on the centre. This reduces friction, which is itself heat-inducing.
through these same observations of Nature, he realised that the force of gravity is part of a duality. The other half is levity, which he saw in the movement of the trout as it defies the conventional laws of physics when it leaps up a waterfall. By spiralling inwards, the resulting motion allows levitating forces to be concentrated at the centre of the spiral. At a waterfall, the trout finds the point at the centre of the spiralling downward stream, and leaps up inside it. With the plough, the inward-spiralling motion that is encouraged, allows the increased concentration of qualigens (to be explained later) which themselves enhance the levitational quality of the groundwater. This encourages growth and helps to prevent the soil from drying out. Gravity originates from the atmosphere, levity from within the Earth.
Qualigens exist as an electrical potential in the water. Electricity, in his view, is generated and discharged by the interaction of levitation and gravitation. The existence of this electrical potential in the soil is ‘responsible for the quality of the soil, for all growth and the overcoming of physical weight’ [The Fertile Earth, p130].
And this brings us to the next duality, a crucial one. Water, the living blood of a living Earth, can have a masculine or feminine potential. ‘If this aqueous fluid is created inside the Earth, then the isotrope [virgin water] will develop a feminine or negative potential (maternal, ovigenous water). On the other hand, if it evolves in the atmosphere, then it will be endowed with a masculine or positive potential (fertilising water)’ [The Fertile Earth, p130, author’s italics]. If there is a preponderance of the masculine influence, as for example, when the land is cleared and directly exposed to the sun’s rays, then gravity predominates and the water-table sinks. With the balance towards the feminine influence, the water-table rises. This is why springs at high altitudes have a healing quality and often have a female deity associated with them.
Water which comes into contact with iron, however, has neither of these qualities. It is demagnetised, and in Viktor Schauberger’s view, becomes carcinogenic. ‘In the same way that steel, machine-drawn ploughs progressively discharge the soil …, the various species of plant also begin to degenerate, if their roots are systematically loosened and discharged by steel hoes. Iron and steel, which have been polarised by fire, are very dangerous to forest and field alike, because these discharged substances attract the valuable soil-energies like a magnet.’ [The Fertile Earth, p124]. Discharging the soil can be understood as draining it of the natural electrical charge which, as described above, is what carries the beneficial qualities to the plants.
Not only that, he believed that an iron plough has an electrolytic effect on the water in the soil, breaking it down into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen, particularly if the plough is drawn rapidly through the soil, causing frictional heat. From observing Nature, he concluded that copper-bearing minerals have a water-retentive quality. He also believed that ‘the use of copper replaced the destructive ferro-electromagnetic effects with beneficial bio-electromagnetic ones which through processes of bio-electromagnetic ionisation enhanced growth and soil fertility’ [Living Energies, p256], and so he recommended copper as the metal for agricultural implements. Incidentally, given Viktor Schauberger’s view that heat is associated with explosive, destructive forces, and that the Earth is most fruitful when cooled, it is interesting to note that copper and bronze are hardened by cold-working, whereas iron and steel are hardened by heat.
In the late nineteen-forties, he conducted field trials with rye, barley, winter wheat, maize, carrots and potatoes. He ploughed different portions of the same fields with iron and copper-plated ploughs, but in all other respects the crops grown in each portion of these fields were treated in an identical manner. There was a consistently higher yield in the portions ploughed with the copper-plated plough. There were also fewer pests and healthier, greener plants. (Full details of the trials are in ‘The Fertile Earth’, pp185-192).
However, I am sure that we have only just started, that more can be done. Viktor Schauberger himself says, in the same way that a gigantic tree can arise from the minutest seed, ‘a properly planted potato can produce up to 20kg of high-quality potatoes within half a year ’ [Nature as Teacher, p97]. He believed that for the land to produce consistently high crop yields, three ingredients are necessary. These are: cultivation using only copper or wooden tools, compost that is the result of cold decomposition, and energised water. In this way, humans can start to work with Mother Nature rather than in competition with her, for the benefit of both. Jane Cobbald, December 2002 |
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