An obvious divergence in my interpretation of RS and that of GW Schmidt is our understanding of ‘ Mass formation’ and ‘Reproduction’.
I see the ‘Life Ether’ / Earthly Substance / Cations activity as creating ‘Tissue’, so it is responsible for creating the physical form and its basic structural integrity, however Mass or the size of something is determined by the amount of Etheric activity present. It is the Etheric that makes things bigger. The ‘Earthly processes’ are seen as ‘condensing’, rigidifying, hardening, and so are the opposite of what makes something ‘large’. The ‘Earthly Substance’ activity does control the amount of Cations and physical building blocks that are available, however the size the plant becomes is controlled by the amount of Etheric activity we can bring to the plant…….In RS’s stories he comments on how a fat pig is really a sack of ‘Cosmic Substance’. This is the Astral inspired forces working from the Head downwards into the metabolism, and combining with the Etheric inspired Earthly Forces to create the size of the animal. The Cosmic Substance / Astrality / Light Ether controls the nutritive quality of the animal but the Earthly Forces / Etheric controls its ultimate size and ‘mass’. If you want something to be big you bring Etheric activity to it. The attached picture shows the effect of one application of a ‘Etheric enhancing product’ on turnips…………
With ‘Reproduction’ I see it as a primary Moon process,( albeit the constellation of Cancer and thus part of the Indirect Moon 2, that is the spark of life at the beginning of the Manifest phase, ala Lievegoed) coming from below . However the ‘below’ is an interplay between the Spirit inspired ‘Cosmic Forces’ which carry the archetypal plant impulse – a rose to be a rose ‘coming from the stars’ – and stimulated by clay, and the Physical ‘Earthly Substance’ primary desire to reproduce itself, using Calcium -the element of Life – as its primary substance. The key here is that while the Physical processes are dominate in the soil /head region, it has the etheric as a supporting player. So while we can identify the ‘Physical’ pole as condensing and manifesting, it is also the carrier of the Etheric supported primary Moon impulse, to reproduce itself. This is the ‘wood sap’ RS talks of coming from the Earth, and the previous year and whose life processes have to be met by the ‘Life sap’ / Earthly Forces / Etheric processes coming from above, this season, for the plant to not die in early spring…….the ‘reproductive force’ is coming from the physical pole,-showing firstly as cell division – however its strength is enhanced into ‘birthing’ by how much Venus tinged Etheric activity it has available…….. The Physical and Spirit work from the Head / Soil to provide a field of play / body, for the Etheric and Astral to work together within the metabolism to ‘fill the sack’…….. This is what I read is the story in the Ag course and medical lectures. GW Schmidt does not tell this story………..