The Christ Element in the Chemical Elements - Limestone and Silica

From the book The Nature of Substance: Spirit and Matter by Dr Hauschka

LIMESTONE AND SILICA ​

Projective geometry provides us with a mathematical illustration. One can think of the surface of a sphere as having two possible origins. The usual concept pictures it as an equal expansion from a central growth-point. Every point on the circumference thus has a static connection with the centre. This concept underlies all our building, the statics of a house, the stability of the physical universe.
 
The alternative method of arriving at the surface of a sphere is just the opposite. Form-creating planes approach the emergent shape from infinity, becoming tangents of the sphere thus enclosed. Such spheres are therefore infinity-created hollow spaces, not solid bodies. Every point on the surface is linked with infinity, rather than with a centre (figure below).
 
This shaping with the cosmic dynamics of infinity is the silica process, which manifests in a fixed form as the substance, silica. It is the force active wherever surfaces come into being: the surfaces of ocean waves and mountains, the epidermis of plants, the skins of man and animals, the membranes enclosing their internal organs.
 
Silica serves as an excellent example for pointing out the difference between substances as the dead mineral end—products of a process and that process itself — a distinction we shall have to learn to make. The silica process is by no means bound to the substance silica. Only where its activity has been intense, does — material silica come into being. Substances are the final stage of processes. Future references to ‘substance processes’ are to be understood as meaning the dynamic activity preceding the emergence of physical matter.
 
Birds are the creatures most closely related to the silica process. Material evidence of this is found in their feathers, ashes of which yield up to 77% silica. The silica process here is not limited to the feather—enclosed bird form; it is the force which relates birds to the entire sphere—shaped mantle of air that encloses the earth. Atmospheric strata arc themselves permeated by the silica process, for their surfaces were formed by its tangential planes. It is not just strength of muscle that enables the eagle to spread his wings and lord it over the heights in majestic flight: it is the profound relation of his being to the silica process active in the airy realm. Gliding is a first step in the same direction, a sport in which man has to develop a special qualitative sense for and sensitivity to the cosmic laws of atmospheric space. It is a sense that borders on perception of imponderable reality. An understanding of the silica process could contribute toward a future mastery of the air, which is structured throughout of plane-surfaces.
 
How different a picture limestone gives! Here we find no such affinity to water as silica possesses, but rather an inclination to aridity. There is no such thing as colloidal lime. Our path to an understanding of its nature cannot therefore trace a relationship to water, as with silica, but rather a connection with dryness.
 
Now the greatest intensification of which dryness is capable is combustion. Firing produces what we call burnt lime, but leaves silica completely unchanged. Lime in its natural state has a greediness, evident in its tendency to absorb liquids, gases and odours. Burnt lime carries this characteristic to an extreme. In the process called slaking, for example, it sucks up water with such ferocity as to cause hissings, clouds of steam and even explosions, so that it has to be very cautiously handled in the lime— pits. Slaked lime is made by pouring water on to quicklime. And though one might think this would satisfy its thirst, it goes on and greedily sucks up more carbonic acid from the air, until it becomes hardened stone again. That is why lime is an ingredient of the mortar (a mixture of sand and slaked lime) used in construction work.
 
Burning:       CaCO3 (lime) → CaO (burnt lime) + CO2
Slaking:       CaO (burnt lime) + H20 → Ca(OH)2 (slaked lime)
Building:      Ca(OH)2 (slaked lime) + CO2 → CaCO3 (limestone)

Lime is thus related by its character to the statics of building, the firmness of our physical frames, the equilibrium and stability of earthly phenomena.

Earthly circle and cosmic circle

The image above pictures the contrast between the dynamics of the cosmic sphere and the statics of the earthly globe. The latter is built up from a central point and obeys the laws of terrestrial space, while the former is shaped by the peripheral forces of infinity.
 
We seldom think of the extent to which as earthly beings we are bound up with the balance and stability derived from the lime-process. Gravity would drag us down into bottomless depths if the earth’s solidity and the statics of buildings were not there to counteract it and to hold things in balance. And we can thank the lime in our bones for the firm support they give to our bodies, for our balance and our upright posture.

Skin and skeleton as expression of the silica-lime processes

Our skin, then, is that part of us built by the cosmic silica process while our skeleton is the expression of the stable earthly minerality given us by the lime-process.  With our ‘skin and bones’ we are stretched between the two polar cosmic forces, silica and lime. Silica shapes from the circumference, lime from the centre. The dynamic relationship is essentially that of circle and radius.