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Subtle Agroecologies
energy in our landscapes, infrastructure and animals – and specifcally in regenerative agriculture.
Today, he is internationally recognised and respected in his feld.
MacManaway calls himself a holistic therapist. He helps farming landscapes and soils perform
better, relieves ‘geopathic’ stress in landscapes (i.e. negative energy felds or fows) and is specifcally skilled in using earth acupuncture to do so. His father, also a medically trained doctor, discovered he had a gift of healing when he was stranded with a battalion of soldiers and no medical
supplies on the beach of Dunkirk in World War II. While they were being strafed by Messerschmitt,
and as casualties mounted, his father’s only tools were the physical laying-on of hands and providing kind words to his troops. And it worked, often in seemingly miraculous fashion. Patrick discovered he also had the ‘gift’, and so he switched to using the special sensitivities he had been endowed
with to heal landscapes, people and animals via this different pathway.
Patrick MacManaway was frst brought to Australia in 2010 by Terry McCosker and his Resource
Consulting Services. McCosker had already introduced Australian farmers to the concept of subtle
energies when he brought out the American expert Dr. Phil Wheeler to run workshops on dowsing
in 2001. As more regenerative farmers experienced positive results from this programme, McCosker
next invited MacManaway to broaden the implications of the positive use of subtle energies in farming and human health. Says McCosker, ‘Sunlight and rainfall are natural assets which are seen as
“freebies” in your production system that you can manage proft from. With the right knowledge and
techniques, subtle energy is another natural asset that you can beneft from’. This leads McCosker to
conclude that ‘Subtle energy is the next big “freebie” in agriculture’. 1
From an exploration of the origins of biodynamics, it is clear that certain elements of Rudolf
Steiner’s work came from medieval European peasants. Such farmers could detect and work
with ancient earth and cosmic energies and were connected to nature spirits, or what is called
‘animism’ – a trope for beliefs that the natural world is ‘inspirited’ – that is, inhabited by nature
spirits, that a sacred reality exists and is different from everyday profane realities, and is manifested
at special times and places, usually through natural entities and places (Taylor, 2005: xiii.). Yet
it is the ‘mechanical’ mind that reigns supreme today. Thus, the world is now seen as a machine,
deemed fully comprehensible by Western humanistic, rationalistic thought, and is regarded as without value or sensibility. This in turn renders it totally available for human control, domination and
exploitation for proft. Here resides the great divorce, for we are no longer bonded to Mother Earth
and have therefore lost some of our organic senses. The psychological consequence of this break
of the human–Mother Earth bond – a fatal divorce – is what I believe has precipitated us into the
Anthropocene era.
Anthropologist–philosopher Mircea Eliade says that ‘the completely profane world, the wholly
desacralised cosmos, is a recent discovery in the history of the human spirit’ (Eliade, 1961: 13). I
believe he is right. This makes it hard for those of our generation imbued with a post-Enlightenment,
reductionist, mechanistic-minded, modern humanism – and increasingly moored in a ‘rational’ and
profane or desacralised world – to comprehend, let alone identify, with those of other times and
other minds who were – and still are – immersed in a sacred world. 2 Such an ‘organic’ mind varied
from culture to culture over time, but generally, in most eras, things such as place, space and time
could assume sacred signifcance, as did natural, organic, geological and other elements. Even basic
physiological acts such as eating, sex and so on were never just simply ‘physiological’, as Eliade
says, they were or could become ‘a sacrament…a communion with the sacred’ (Eliade, 1961: 14).
As a student of this ancient organic mind, Mircea Eliade captured the almost intangible elements
of the pre-mechanistic mind. The existential situation of people of such a mindset, says Eliade, is
where ‘life has an additional dimension; it is not merely human, it is at the same time cosmic, since
1 McCosker in RCS promotional fyer for Patrick MacManaway’s course, 2014.
2 Eliade used the word sacred to mean: beyond ‘natural’ realities; something that goes beyond the natural experience of
humans; the opposite of the profane; the manifestation of something of a wholly different order, a reality that doesn’t
belong to our world, and can be in objects that are an integral part of our natural ‘profane’ world (Eliade, 1961: 10–11).
Subtle Agroecologies
energy in our landscapes, infrastructure and animals – and specifcally in regenerative agriculture.
Today, he is internationally recognised and respected in his feld.
MacManaway calls himself a holistic therapist. He helps farming landscapes and soils perform
better, relieves ‘geopathic’ stress in landscapes (i.e. negative energy felds or fows) and is specifcally skilled in using earth acupuncture to do so. His father, also a medically trained doctor, discovered he had a gift of healing when he was stranded with a battalion of soldiers and no medical
supplies on the beach of Dunkirk in World War II. While they were being strafed by Messerschmitt,
and as casualties mounted, his father’s only tools were the physical laying-on of hands and providing kind words to his troops. And it worked, often in seemingly miraculous fashion. Patrick discovered he also had the ‘gift’, and so he switched to using the special sensitivities he had been endowed
with to heal landscapes, people and animals via this different pathway.
Patrick MacManaway was frst brought to Australia in 2010 by Terry McCosker and his Resource
Consulting Services. McCosker had already introduced Australian farmers to the concept of subtle
energies when he brought out the American expert Dr. Phil Wheeler to run workshops on dowsing
in 2001. As more regenerative farmers experienced positive results from this programme, McCosker
next invited MacManaway to broaden the implications of the positive use of subtle energies in farming and human health. Says McCosker, ‘Sunlight and rainfall are natural assets which are seen as
“freebies” in your production system that you can manage proft from. With the right knowledge and
techniques, subtle energy is another natural asset that you can beneft from’. This leads McCosker to
conclude that ‘Subtle energy is the next big “freebie” in agriculture’. 1
From an exploration of the origins of biodynamics, it is clear that certain elements of Rudolf
Steiner’s work came from medieval European peasants. Such farmers could detect and work
with ancient earth and cosmic energies and were connected to nature spirits, or what is called
‘animism’ – a trope for beliefs that the natural world is ‘inspirited’ – that is, inhabited by nature
spirits, that a sacred reality exists and is different from everyday profane realities, and is manifested
at special times and places, usually through natural entities and places (Taylor, 2005: xiii.). Yet
it is the ‘mechanical’ mind that reigns supreme today. Thus, the world is now seen as a machine,
deemed fully comprehensible by Western humanistic, rationalistic thought, and is regarded as without value or sensibility. This in turn renders it totally available for human control, domination and
exploitation for proft. Here resides the great divorce, for we are no longer bonded to Mother Earth
and have therefore lost some of our organic senses. The psychological consequence of this break
of the human–Mother Earth bond – a fatal divorce – is what I believe has precipitated us into the
Anthropocene era.
Anthropologist–philosopher Mircea Eliade says that ‘the completely profane world, the wholly
desacralised cosmos, is a recent discovery in the history of the human spirit’ (Eliade, 1961: 13). I
believe he is right. This makes it hard for those of our generation imbued with a post-Enlightenment,
reductionist, mechanistic-minded, modern humanism – and increasingly moored in a ‘rational’ and
profane or desacralised world – to comprehend, let alone identify, with those of other times and
other minds who were – and still are – immersed in a sacred world. 2 Such an ‘organic’ mind varied
from culture to culture over time, but generally, in most eras, things such as place, space and time
could assume sacred signifcance, as did natural, organic, geological and other elements. Even basic
physiological acts such as eating, sex and so on were never just simply ‘physiological’, as Eliade
says, they were or could become ‘a sacrament…a communion with the sacred’ (Eliade, 1961: 14).
As a student of this ancient organic mind, Mircea Eliade captured the almost intangible elements
of the pre-mechanistic mind. The existential situation of people of such a mindset, says Eliade, is
where ‘life has an additional dimension; it is not merely human, it is at the same time cosmic, since
1 McCosker in RCS promotional fyer for Patrick MacManaway’s course, 2014.
2 Eliade used the word sacred to mean: beyond ‘natural’ realities; something that goes beyond the natural experience of
humans; the opposite of the profane; the manifestation of something of a wholly different order, a reality that doesn’t
belong to our world, and can be in objects that are an integral part of our natural ‘profane’ world (Eliade, 1961: 10–11).