The Christ Element in the Chemical Elements - The Mineral Cross

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

The Mineral Cross

We saw … previously… that lime and silica are opposite poles of the cosmos, with aluminium and phosphorus, a second polar pair, engaged in a harmonising pendulum-swing between the first pair. It would be possible to explore many more aspects of this relationship than there is space for here. The indications given…, however, may perhaps serve to illustrate clearly the harmonious interplay of these four substances, particularly in the field of physiology.

The mineral cross (alongside the atmospheric cross)

The aluminium and phosphorus processes work, as we have seen, in blood and nerves, linking silica and lime, the skin and skeleton. Blood is the plastic element that builds and maintains the body tissue, whereas nerves transmit the formative forces that take over the plastic material provided by the blood and give it the shape of muscles and organs. The phosphorus process active here is like a sculptor’s hand, with its sensitive touch for shaping plastic clay.

Aluminium and phosphorus, then, are a polarity midway between the polar opposites lime and silica. The macrocosmic processes that create these four substances spring from four cosmic points of origin which form a cross: Aries - Libra / Capricorn - Cancer. Just as we found the four substances: hydrogen - oxygen / nitrogen - carbon falling into the pattern of an ‘atmospheric cross’ which pointed to the cosmic sources of protein and of all organic nature, there is a similar comprehensive significance in the cross formed by silica - lime / aluminium - phosphorus.

It can easily be shown that the whole mineral earth is really built in the main of these four substances. Organic creation with its flowers, trees and grasses, its butterflies, beetles and other creatures is as it were a panorama of fleeting images that seem to emerge out of the atmosphere, take on material form, and just as quickly melt away again. Mineral nature, with its mountain ridges, its plains and valleys, is by contrast the stable, solid core of this passing show. Or perhaps we should say, relatively stable; for it too came into being out of the great reaches of the universe, and will one day dissolve back into it.

Previously … we related the atmospheric cross formed by hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and carbon to the four Aristotelian elements: fire, air, water, earth. This fourfold principle, in which earth’s evolutionary phases can be recognised, is so fundamental that we may expect to find it again in the mineral cross. Disregarding for the moment the natural, earthly state of these minerals and considering them purely as principles, or processes, we do indeed find the four Aristotelian elements reflected in them. The relationship of the highly inflammable phosphorus to fire is immediately obvious. Then there is the silica process with its affinity to lightness and buoyancy, exemplified in the flight of birds and the spherical tendency inherent in the formative forces of the macrocosm; here we discern a relationship to light and air. Aluminium, which has so strong a proclivity to the plastics to the levelling, flowing liquid element, leaves no doubt where it belongs. And the statics of lime clearly shows its relation to the earthy element.

To sum up these conclusions: