Save as PDFMy first foray with the Agriculture Course took place when in the summer of 1961 Ehrenfried Pfeiffer stopped me along Hungry Hollow Road. He asked if I would form a study group. He suggested this as he said he would like to join a group but not be a group leader. He said he would like me to try to evolve a group, taking on leadership. He would like to participate. He said his experiences were usually that when he was in a group he became the dominant figure and then others became passive. I told him that I would have to think it over. I asked him what he might like to study. He said, of course, the Agriculture Course. After some days I returned, told him that I would try to be helpful. I wasn’t so sure about group leadership, but felt it would be worthwhile to try to gather a group who might work together and include him as he had expressed such a desire. About a week later I returned to him, saying I had made a plan, and had asked about a dozen individuals to get together. I said I had worked out topics from the first lecture, had assigned them and asked individuals to come together to share. His immediate reaction was that this was not the way to go about things. I answered by saying that he had said I should go ahead and that was my method of going ahead. With this he shrugged his shoulders with a smile, and said “Well, let’s try it.”
Our first meeting took place in mid-November 1961, a Saturday evening. I think it was about the 20th. The members of this group were Dickie Vibber, Howland Vibber, Alice Heckel, Fred Heckel, Emmy Van Vurmb, Hans Van Vurmb, Stella and Arnold Brugger. Margaret Selke was invited but didn’t come. Erica Sabarth was included. Walter and Eva Leicht were included but did not join in at first. Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, of course, was to be part of it. We had our first meeting but Ehrenfried couldn’t come because he was ill. After the meeting I was called by Adelheid, saying that he was at home in pain. I went to see him only to find that he was obviously having a heart attack. The next ten days were very difficult. In the end, on November 30 he left the earth, dying of a very severe heart attack.
The group went on to work with this course, several times over. This went on for nearly four years. We actually went from house to house in the Threefold Community. The method I devised was generally accepted and individuals made their contributions and there was a continual rotation and sharing by those who attended. This work came to an end when we were asked to bring the activity to the Main House. Others in the community then joined in and the effort to stimulate preparation, to have different people contribute, did not work. So approximately 1965, 1966, also with the opening of the Fellowship Community, this group work came to an end.
Now turning to the course itself, various things have been written about it. In one of the first conversations I had with Ehrenfried Pfeiffer he shared his feeling that this was one of the best courses Rudolf Steiner had given. He commented that other courses weren’t nearly as good. At the time I felt that he was a bit supercilious in making such comments. However, as the years have gone by, I’ve had occasion to try to work with other courses. I have become deeply impressed that Ehrenfried Pfeiffer’s assessment was and is correct. There is a profundity in this course which is absolutely incredible. The concreteness of this course asks that we change our view of the world around us. The course is direct and it’s stimulating. It is almost exhilarating to be placed in direct contact with Nature. The world of the farm can be approached as an individual. The domain of agriculture can be undertaken in a quite new way.
Let us turn to the first lecture. For a long time I rather puzzled about the introduction. Rudolf Steiner begins by talking about the being of Anthroposophia. He indicates that what he is giving is actually a gift of this Being. Most think of Anthroposophy as a body of knowledge – not a spiritual being who imparts knowledge. The course thereby seems to be a product of the exchange between Rudolf Steiner and a spiritual being who gives the anthroposophical content out of the spiritual world. So that the first tasks can be to try to pose to oneself who this Being is. Who is the Being who carries the wisdom of man, can share this with initiates such as Rudolf Steiner, and then help us to understand the task of working with the earth, enculturating the earth? How can this Being help evolve a new agriculture? This being we might consider to be a supersensible spiritual being, but is a being, who if we take this course seriously, can relate not only to man, revealing his deep workings and wisdoms, but can show how man’s wisdom throws light on the whole world of nature. In addition, nature has to be placed into the planetary, zodiacal, starry worlds.
The quality of the introduction further indicates that the course is, in a way, a festival. If we note the time of the year when the course was given it is near the time of midsummer, midsummer solstice, the time of St. John. Those who have worked in nature know well how as one draws towards this time of year what a rather special time it is. It is possible to look out into the burgeoning nature, its transition from growth and flowering, to one where gradually with the increase of the light of the sun, the vegetative flowering passes over into the domain of fruit. We can say nature begins to show new beingness. We can think that this is the time nature is baptized by fruit and seed. The plant grows in order to be baptized. The time of St. John, of the Baptist, unfolds in the course of the year in order to be able to incorporate a lofty, supersensible element which comes to expression in fruit and seed.
Midsummer is the time when nature in the wonderful garment of green passes through other colors to become concentrated in the color of the fruit. We can speak of Mother Nature to whom something quite new is being born – fruit and seed. A kind of a new birth is occurring. There is a growing of a being who will increase. On the other hand, there is a part of this Mother Nature that will decrease, the purely vegetative. If we consider the rising sun, the increase the sun, this light globe-sphere, we can think that it points to the Father Spirit of the heights. We can contemplate how out of the depths of the earth there also rises a Motherly Nature being. To this mother-earth nature the seed and fruit can be born – as a child is born to a mother. We might consider this as a baptism, and at the same time a birth. There is a possible decrease of the nature-mother on the one side and a potential evolution of the spirit on the other. The purely vegetative decreases while the seed/fruit increases. The new can begin to appear in nature. The new here is not the new life of spring. The new here is the life that’s going to carry on into the future through fruit and seed.
Though such a contemplation can be a bit abstract, in fact it’s not abstract if we work in nature, permitting the sun, it’s blinding light and heat, to daze us. In this circumstance, dazed by light and heat, the outer sun can become dark while from within the soul itself a light can shine forth. This blaze of outer light, of outer sun, blinding the human being, as it were beheading the human being, permits an inner light to evolve. This inner light that rises while the outer blaze of bright sun becomes darkened speaks to the beheading of John but also an increase that is connected with the evolution of the child born in the light of the inner human being. This is a mighty festival occasion for the human being who can walk in the bright daylight of the sun, sense the darkening of outer light, with a concomitant rising of inner light. This is a kind of an inner midday soul birth. It can occur as a sacramental process at the height of noon, at the height of midsummer. This soul condition is one of a soul-like woman – a midday soul-woman. This midsummer woman I would call the being of Natura. This is a being who not only appears as an inner light-soul-being but also appears with tonality with music raying in from far distances of the circumference. For one who stands in the middle of nature thus, the heights and distances ring as the musical element, a mighty cosmic harmonious element enters the soul which produces the festival aspect of this time of year.
In this way I would gradually approach this “festival” cycle of Rudolf Steiner’s – The Agriculture Course. It’s a very special gift to mankind. Coming out of the spiritual world, spoken by Rudolf Steiner, it’s a gift to be cherished. It permits us to sense that we can again and again enact a solemn St. John festival in the name of this course.
For a moment I would like to diverge from the course to discuss the midsummer festival. I do this because our current study of 1992 corresponds with midsummer time. In order to discuss the midsummer festival I would like to turn to the being of Mary. For quite some years I’ve tried to consider how one can find so many different expressions, so many different views of this being, the being Mary. By looking to, looking into and looking at this Mary being it seems to me that we can be helped in approaching this midsummer festival.
If we start with the polar season to summer we have winter. In midwinter we celebrate a solemn festival. We celebrate a festival when the sun is at its low point. The moon and the stars are in ascendancy. Darkness tends to envelop the earth. The outer air becomes crisp and clear. The earth becomes hard and crystalline. The star world and the dark earth with a shining moon signals the time of the year when we speak of a virgin birth. At this time we speak of the Virgin Mary who conceived the Jesus child. This being we can say was conceived in a state of virginity. This opens the door to many questions. How is such a thing possible? How can there be conception and a virginal soul state as well? So at one point it might be well to tackle this problem. Here I would think it’s sufficient to say or contemplate that a virginal state is possible when in fact the human soul is able to converse with an archangel. The archangel of conception we know as the Archangel Gabriel. This the winter festival, the Christmas festival, is connected with the birth to a virginal being. Virginal then can possibly be considered to be a state where there is a birth, be it physical or soul/spiritual, as long as the event is enveloped in the being of an archangel. This, of course, is no usual state of existence. This state of soul is a rather lofty state where human thinking has been deepened into feeling and the feeling is able to birth content which enters as inspiration. The birth, if it is physical has to occur so that the soul is immersed in the spiritual archangelic while conception occurs. This state of events Rudolf Steiner tells when discussing the Nerthus Cult of the Northern Mysteries. Here we can say that the soul has become pure and virginal, even with physical birth. We now celebrate the festival of Christmas, commemorating the birth, the birth of a Jesus being, but with more careful perusal we also celebrate the purity of soul that must accompany such a birth. It is an archangel state of soul.
If we move on now to spring we come to a time when the outer nature that has been dead begins to come to life again. In the Northern Mysteries – 3000 B.C. – it was the actual time of celebrating the Nerthus Cult. Today Easter has gained other perspectives. Today Easter is not the time of virgin birth. It is the time of the renewal of life – physical life. Nature itself bespeaks a resurrective process. In Christendom we speak of the resurrection that follows the suffering, the crucifixion, the descent, and mediates the process of ascension. Nature in a way enacts resurrection. This in Christendom portrayed in deeds a spiritual being Who incarnates, goes through suffering, dies, descends earthward and then resurrects from earth to reascend into the cosmos. If we now look for a Mary figure at Easter time we actually come to two. We come to the Mary Magdalene, who has sinned and who bears witness to the events of the death and the resurrection. She is a semi-clairvoyant who could see what was occurring. We also then have the second, the sorrowing, suffering Mary. We can call her Mother Mary. Though we can speak of a Mother Mary, if we contemplate the death, crucifixion, resurrection we actually are not struck by the mother element but the suffering Mary. This is a suffering of the deepest kind. Just as Mary Magdalene suffers her sins – and thereby can “see” – so Mother Mary accompanies the process of crucifixion, descent, and resurrection, not clairvoyantly but in a condition of deep inner suffering. This death, suffering, resurrective process could be considered to be that of a hallowing process, the making the soul holy-pure. Many, particularly Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg address speak, of the dying making the earth holy-hallowed. here with Mother Mary we can consider the hallowing of the suffering soul. The soul is not only purified as in the case of the virginal soul but the soul is sanctified and hallowed, becomes holy. Here we can consider not only an archangel entering the soul but an archai and even a higher spiritual being. In this way the soul is indwelled – while the physical is also transformed. The sinner becomes seer, the sufferer can carry lofty spirituality while the physical is transformed by spirituality to appear once more – living. In Christendom this is often spoken to as the dying in Christ. Out of this comes the Mary soul principle, sinning, suffering and gaining life in relation to the living physical. Here we then make the transition from the soul in which virgin birth process can occur, to one where there is a hallowing, there is a sanctifying, there is a deepening of that soul so that another step in soul enfoldment can occur. The soul can live to transform sin and the Fall of materiality. The soul can transform the materiality of human existence.
Now let’s turn to midsummer. Here again we can think of a Mary. This is not a pure soul Mary, if we contemplate the virgin birth at Christmas. This is not the hallowed birth of the soul at Easter – a suffering of soul birth for the life in the human organism. The midsummer Mary is related to a birth into the substance of nature. The soul of midsummer Mary is born into the world that surrounds man. We can think of an ensouling of nature. We can speak of a nature Mary. Here we can think of the lush growth of midsummer that is coming to its peak, the first hint of a decrease of the life, pure life element and the birth of seed and fruit. This can speak to the human soul, to a birth, a kind of natural birth. Here nature becomes a kind of a Mother Nature. It’s not Mother Earth, but Mother Nature. It seems to me that one of the most beautiful depictions of this “mother in nature” with a birth, a birth in purity, is so well depicted by Matthias Grunewald in the Isenheim altarpiece. Here we see a female being, sitting in nature, red-robed. From the bottom of the robe is a silvery light reflection. From the heights above the head to the left one sees a golden, father-like element. Heavenly angels play in the gold and then descend toward the nature mother being who holds a child in her arms. The scene is one of nature in full life. The scene is also one of the blossoming of the red rose. The scene is one of depicting nothing but the greatest of purity of nature – of the living soul of nature. In this depiction by Matthias Grunewald we see an empty potty. We can see there is no excreta as far as the bowel/bladder is concerned. The bath is not used. There’s no sweat, it is all totally pure. The vessel standing at the portal of the musician’s sanctuary contains an absolutely pure, clear liquor of life. The pure waters, the pure red rose, with the gate in the back with the cross reminds one of the whole Rosicrucian process of purification. The purity of the rose, the purity of the clear waters all bespeaks the birth of a child being to the being of Mother Nature, Mary Nature. I gather this is the same being that in the Middle Ages was known as Natura.
Thus at midsummer we can think of the lush growth, the green of the plant, the red of the rose, the blue of the sky, the silvery moon reflected below, the gold glow above. All of this hints to the mighty imagination that Rudolf Steiner has given for midsummer. Something of a pure artistic rendition of this seems to have been painted by Grunewald. Matthias Grunewald sets this nature mother, Mother Nature, Natura being in a most wonderful way, color-filled, expressing an experience of the beingness of nature at this time of the year. It’s then that the soul can feel quite newly born in nature. The soul can feel as if the greatest heights of the Father God plays into the soul, the Mother element is present and a Son soul birth can occur.
If we wish to continue our contemplation of the soul Mary element we have to move on from the virgin, to the hallowed, to the nature Mother Mary, Natura. The next step we have to make is into the cosmos. Here we have to consider how the pure color element of Mary ascends into the light of the sun. The sun is darkened, the stars shine. We are carried from midsummer to Michaeli when gradually the outer sun fades and the light of the stars begin to shine. Now what is needed is not a darkening of the outer bright sun but what is needed is the revelation and the flaming glory of the garment of Mother Mary in the cosmos. Here we have to speak of the cosmic destined mother as Mother Substance of the Cosmos. We have to speak of the matter or Mother Substance in its glory, in its divine state. The nature soul mother element has to become glorified in the domain of the star astral world, radiant mother aura substance has to follow from the Nature Mother or Natural Mother Substance. Thus we have to see a step further of the soul development, the soul born as Nature Mother, has to transform living nature substance to a higher state. This is the task of the child born in the Mother Substance. The goal of the child is to grow for the glorification of Mother Substance, of matter. The child must become full grown man. This man – true man we call Christ-man. In relation to substance we have to speak of radiant, glorified matter, or mater gloriosa, as has been depicted to us in the second part of Goethe’s Faust.
Thus our journey with the soul’s Maries leads us to various transformations and birth. Pure soul, hallowed soul, nature substance soul has to be elevated by a new birth which can create glorified-radiant substance. This is not substance destroyed with atomic explosion – it is newly created with substance of man. The step then is into nature where nature becomes Mother Nature, where the Mother Substance of the soul spirit exists for a birth in nature. Through the human soul as spirit evolution there is a transformation of this nature substance into glorified substance or mater gloriosa. We have to think not only of the soul and its birth and its purification but its taking hold of the matter in the world and evolving it to further states of existence. The soul as mother requires birth, evolution of this birth, the working of this birth, so that the child actually brings about glorified substance. I gather this is the substance that is carried into the future by man. This becomes a part of the further evolution of substance in the world. This is the substance that keeps our physical earth alive. This is all part and parcel of the story of the Mary principle, the soul birth Mary which can sustain birth and then birth into matter and its transformation.
A demonic, devilish opposite of what is described here, I take it, is in fact what is happening today with materiality. Materiality is subjected to subnature forces. The materiality that we have is subjected to electromagnetic accelerated gravitational force systems where there is a bombardment of solid substance so that instead of radiant glory evolving out of substance one has actually horrendous explosions as we have been witnessing in the last nearly fifty years with atomic explosions. The opposite process to this, I gather, is actually the taking of substance and subjecting it to a rhythmic alteration so that then its nature becomes radiant as is the case when substance is rhythmically put through the process of potentization. Rhythmic dilution and proper movement may well create a radiant condition of matter. This is an appropriate condition of matter, not the condition which is the result of atomic bombardment or explosion. This discourse about the mother soul element, the Mary natures, is very important. This course is actually nothing but a revelation, a new revelation, of the dynamics and working of matter on earth and in the cosmos. Matter has to be used for healing as well as nutrition. Here in this course stands totally new avenues, totally new approaches to that which we generally consider to be matter which we image as cosmic systems shrunken to atoms.
Now let’s move on with the course. The introduction, as just noted, points to the festival occasion of midsummer. It points to the being of Anthroposophia. But the introduction also points to the whole domain of the earth as it is a part of a much, much larger cosmic system. It’s to this cosmic system that Rudolf Steiner turns in discussing the earth in its relationship to the moon, its relationship to the watery element, to rain. His discourse concerning Professors Gustav Fichner and Schleiden brings in humor. It is not the wisdom of the professors that prevail – that of the women who wash clothes by the phases of the moon. Professor Schleiden, the intellectual, felt that there was no relationship between the cosmos and the earth, the working of the moon, the rain and the earth. Professor Fichner and both wives knew the facts. It’s this orientation that Rudolf Steiner is trying to give us in this introduction. He does so by pointing to the rain, the moon, the earth, also the needle of the magnet. He indicates that the plant, notably the root, is very much connected with the earth. There follows then that the remainder of plant is very much connected with the systems of the cosmos. Notable in this discourse is that the simple folk, the simple farmer had a sense about these matters. This can no longer be relied on. A totally new sense for the relation of earth and cosmos has to be acquired. A totally new relation between plant and cosmos has to be attained. A totally new relationship between the knowledge process of the past and the knowledge process of the present moving into the future has to be unfolded. The older peasant truisms have to give way to a knowing insight into earth, cosmos, plant, animal and mineral – and particularly man.
One of the deepest insights that will have to come will be that of materiality and particularly the condition of materiality called protein. It’s the element of protein that is crucial to the existence of man on earth. It’s the protein which we can say is crucial for the future of the earth. It permits man to be present on the planet. As we shall see it is protein, or the basis of existence, that comes directly out of the cosmos. How are we then to make our way to understand these new dimensions of existence?
The first possibility of doing so is to consider the human being and the earth. A first condition of humanity that we have well to consider as a basis for earth existence, is that of humor. The humor makeup of man, the humoral, the etheric makeup of man is crucial. This determines how the physical existence will go. It is this which has to be cultivated as culture in man; this in turn can influence the physical. Thus the impact of peasant humor. If we turn to the earth we have to speak of something similar in the earth. This is not humor, but humus. The contrast of humor and humus becomes the contrast of two major cultural evolutions on earth which are crucial to mankind’s existence. Perhaps we can spend a minute and trace this evolution, the evolution of humor, the evolution of humus.
Let’s first turn to humor. Humor in a way is the revelation of the life in the soul in a balanced fashion. Humor evolves the human being through life, through his soul. This points to cultural evolution. In order to look at cultural evolutions it is well to go back to the significant point of man’s evolution, evolution from race to culture. For this we have to look at Atlantis, at the Sun mystery of Atlantis. Until Atlantis we have racial evolution. We have the racial evolution of Polarean man, then Hyperborean man, then Lemurian man, then Atlantean man. In the middle of Atlantis racial evolution in a way comes to its culmination and begins to give way to cultural evolution. In the Sun mystery there begins a work to evolve man not now out of race, out of that which is given to the physical cultivation of man, but to the cultivation of the soul which will carry man into further states of existence. As we know, in this mystery center those souls were cultivated, initiated, so something new could come into human evolution. Human evolution actually determined earth evolution from then on. This evolution began with something new – with souls who had lost faculties given by race. There the first steps were taken so that man could gradually come to incarnate his individuality. Through his individuality man could take his own evolution in hand. It is Manu, the great Sun initiate, who was given this task and began a process which became post-Atlantean cultural evolution.
If we follow this evolution we are told that Manu migrated from Atlantis to the area of Ireland. We don’t have to consider this purely physical. There was something almost superphysical involved with this migration. This migration touched down into the region of Ireland. There was a migration – an evolution that went through northern Europe into northern Asia to Mongolia. We are repeatedly told by Rudolf Steiner of this migration, how Manu took souls through northern Europe into Mongolia to establish the center for cultural evolution in the Gobi Desert. We can consider, that on the way souls were left in northern Europe to form an impulse for a culture later on. The cultural center developed in the region of the Gobi Desert sent streams out into the East, into India. We have repeatedly been told of the Indian cultural evolution. Then we were told how out of the Gobi cultural center a most significant impulse was sent into the region of Persia. An impression I have now is that this helped establish the Colchis mysteries where I suspect – but don’t know – that Zarathustra incarnated and radiated his influence into the whole region of the middle and southern middle east regions. We are told how Orpheus came out of this Colchis mystery. We are told how Zarathustra gave over his membering so that Hermes could incarnate in Egypt 3000 B.C. We are told how the ether member of Zarathustra could so work so that his etheric organism could serve the work of Moses in 1500 B.C. We are also told how out of this center impulses could go into the region of Sumer and Assyria to begin to establish the enculturation of the human being, particularly his enculturation so that he could develop the earth.
Thus the thematic consideration of the human being and his humor opens the door to an immense possibility of contemplating cultural evolution of man. Race governs the hereditary-physical makeup of man – culture the etheric-humoral.
Now let’s take the opposite and consider not the cultural evolution of man but the cultural evolution of the earth. This we would have to call agriculture. The product of this evolution I would like to consider as bringing forth not humor, but humus. It’s the transformation, needed transformation of substance of the earth so that the earth can remain a possible vehicle for life, can remain and alive for reproduction for nourishment in man – through the plant. This dealing with the earth and transforming the earth for earth culture, for agriculture, I wonder if we can’t look at it from two perspectives. The first perspective, to see that in fact that impulse from Zarathustra emanated into the region of the Tigris and Euphrates. There the evolution of agriculture in the area —the Fertile or Green Crescent took place. Here we have the birth of agriculture which is traced from 8000 to 6000 B.C. Rudolf Steiner intimates that Zarathustra and his workings streamed into this area of the world. The Assyrian, Chaldean, the Babylonian cultures all somewhat have to be taken into consideration here, although each one is somewhat distinct and hopefully we can take up these distinctions at a later time. Thus we can see the evolution of agriculture as coming out of the cultural evolution of man. This stream we can trace back to Atlantis, to the work of Manu, the coming forth of Zarathustra and Zarathustra working, so that the earth itself can be transformed. Zarathustra then gave over his membering so that the further earth working could occur in the middle east. Hermes and Moses are two of the major individualities who bring that impulse to further evolution in the region of the middle east and Egypt.
I’d like to contemplate another possible origin of agriculture and that is one that surfaced in Egypt along the Nile River. The time, the origin of the earth being cultivated there has generally considered to be about 3000 B.C. There are some suggestions this culturation began before 3000 B.C. I have the great question whether we don’t see here in the Nile culture a different impulse working. I would like to suggest that the first insurgence to work the earth here came not from Atlantis but from Lemurian origin. Here an impulse comes from the south, working north rather one working from west to east and from north into the south. This working of the Lemurian impulse from east to west and then north brings the agricultural impulse of the Nile valley into relationship with the mysteries of Lemuria. As we know from many indications from Rudolf Steiner there was this immense impulse in Egypt, in the Egyptian mysteries, to return to Lemuria. We do not hear of the same tendency in the Persian epoch, to return to Lemuria but rather to Hyperborea and to Atlantis. One can contemplate a mingling of these two major cultural impulses however. I wonder if it isn’t helpful to make this distinction for the moment.
If we want to continue this contemplation it’s quite possible to consider that the mysteries of Polarea could be located somewhere in relationship to the east, in the region of Asia, China, Malaysia. The time of Polarea would not carry the present earthly conditions. More astral-physical conditions existed. This also would make it understandable that in the far east there was this immense striving to find Brahma or the original Word, the original God man of Polarea.
If we continue these contemplations we can then contemplate Hyperborea in the northern lands. Again, it’s not an earthly impulse or an earthly culture. It’s a superearthly culture. It ‘s a sun culture. It’s the time of the recapitulation of Sun evolution. It’s in Hyperborea that the impulses originated which were taken up in the Atlantean Sun mystery. The Hyperborean impulse can be seen more north to south.
By this depiction we have placed agriculture as evolving out of the time of Polarea in the East, the time of Hyperborea in the north, the time of Lemuria in the south, and the time of Atlantis in the west. The racial element falls away, man comes to earth and man then has to evolve from racial man to cultural man. In order to manage this he has to unfold an earth culture, an agriculture. One side of agriculture, we can contemplate flowing from west/north into the south. The other impulse of agriculture we can consider flowing from east to west in the south, then in a northerly direction. This places our agricultural contemplation within the directions of the earth as related to the racial originally. With the advent of culture the earth is not racial-cosmically determined but begins to be part of the evolution of man as an individuality. By this means one can contemplate not only the unfoldment of the individual but also the individual element within the earth. It’s by this means then that we have to come to be able to address the agricultural individuality that has to unfold on the earth just as with the human being his individuality has to unfold. The expression of cultural evolution in humor is a brief way of stating this. The other aspect of this evolution is that of the evolving the earth through agriculture. Its epitome is expressed when one speaks of humus. The evolution of both impulses we can trace back to the mysteries.