The Christ Element in the Chemical Elements - Sulphur

From the book The Nature of Substance: Spirit and Matter by Dr Hauschka.
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​Chemically speaking, sulphur is the most active of all substances It does not act in any one clear direction as do the halogens and oxygen, rather does it form combinations in a sociable way, creates new possibilities and supplies warmth, acting towards other substances as a kind of cook.

Sulphur’s function in protein is of just such a nature Its liking for the colloidal state and thus for everything alive, its capacity for change, its brood-warmth make it a natural mixer of substances, particularly the organic. It is the carrier of upbuilding vital forces, looked at materially, though not in the same sense as oxygen which presses into living manifestation out of macrocosmic realms of spirit. Sulphur is rather a uniting force that prompts cosmic essences to work together in building up matter. It gives itself over wholly to organic life, promotes its physical functioning, and in this way keeps it clear of infringements from the side of consciousness.

Sulphur thus plays a very important role in metabolic processes. Everyone knows how harmful emotions such as anger, fear and worry can be at mealtime. Digestive upsets are sure to result. Sulphur in the appropriate dosage is a common remedy for such afflictions, for it supports digestion by guiding nutritional elements, especially protein over into the life of the organism in the proper way. It is active wherever a too close connection of the emotions and consciousness with the vegetative physical indicates a need for a releasing agent; in cases, that is, where we need to have more life in our physical processes with no interference from the activities of the soul.

The fact that sulphur has this effect is shown when an excess of it causes dizziness or a dimming of consciousness. This same effect makes sulphur useful in treating insomnia. For sleep is an extreme bodily condition in which the whole organism behaves as the metabolic system normally does. Soul and consciousness are driven out and separated completely from the purely vegetative-physical life-processes so that these are left free to do their up-building work undisturbed.

This gives sulphur a dual nature such as the centaur has, except that it is the reverse of his. The centaur’s higher self saves him from becoming wholly hardened in animality and lifts him towards the light. He longs to cast off, to reject, his lower nature. The dual-natured sulphur, however, inclines to the purely vegetative, rejecting the higher qualities which lead towards the development of consciousness.

When we walk through a blossoming meadow in June (in the Northern Hemisphere), the month when the sun is in the constellation Gemini, we can feel the sulphuric element rampant in all the sprouting and flowering of nature. The soul of nature slumbers like the Sleeping Beauty, in the midst of all this vegetative burgeoning. (In the Southern Hemisphere at this time the soul of nature is in deep slumber holding an opposite picture which the North will experience at the opposite solstice.)  In their blossoms, plants come into touch with the soul-sphere which is the source of consciousness in animals, but with the aid of the sulphur activity within them they keep the soul-sphere from penetrating more deeply into their organisms. Otherwise, as we know, they. would become poisonous.

When, in December (in the North), the sun passes through Sagittarius, almost every physical trace of plant life has disappeared; tiny, mineralized seeds are all that remain. But the being of the plant has withdrawn to live in the luminous heights of the realm of archetypes, where it reaches a culmination at the time of the Winter Solstice.

Thus we see how the processes active in sulphur and magnesia lay hold of and penetrate the human being and nature, having originated respectively in the constellations of Gemini and Sagittarius. (Their interplay is also expressed in the opposite picture held in the balance of tension in the Southern Hemisphere’s experience.)