THE SPIRAL OF CREATION

Chapter Thirty-Five of The Nature of Substance

By Rudolf Hauschka

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The findings advanced in previous chapters can brought together schematically in the diagram below.

 

The formative impulses at work in substances of the mineral earth, the hydrosphere and the atmosphere, spring from the Zodiac; whereas the impulses active in metals originate in the planets.

The question to be considered now is whether these formative impulses all work in simultaneously and equally on the earth from its cosmic surroundings, or whether there is evidence of a law which selects and guides these impulses and causes them to take effect on the earth in a certain sequence.

An ordering, governing role of this kind may readily be ascribed to the sun as the central organ of the living cosmic whole. The sun itself, or some such definite point on its path as the vernal point, which makes its round of the cosmos once in a Platonic year, could be the mediator, the regulator of the cosmic impulses that gave the earth its form. The vernal point might serve as the outlet through which a formative impulse streams in to shape an earth always in the making.

The vernal point’s advance from one constellation to another has marked a corresponding advance from culture to culture in the course of history. This point now lies in the constellation Pisces. When it was progressing through Aries, the Graeco-Roman epoch ran its course. It moved through Taurus during the Egypto-Chaldean culture, when the leadership principle was worshipped under the image of the Bull. Earlier still came the Gemini culture of the Persians, with its central emphasis on the antithesis of light and darkness, Ormuzd and Ahriman. Still prior to this there was the ancient Indian civilization, of which the Vedas are only a late echo. The constellation Cancer ruled this period. As smaller rhythms are always part of similar, larger rhythms, we may assume that the position of the vernal point in periods preceding these not only left its mark on human spiritual development, but decisively affected matter in the forming of substances.

It takes a Platonic year (25,920 sun years) for the vernal point to complete one round of the cosmos. If, in its journeying, it is to transmit and mediate the formative impulses radiating in upon the earth from the Zodiac, the result of these two interacting movements is an inward-turning spiral, which would have to wind its way through all the planetary spheres before reaching earth.

Indeed, a spiral tendency is the evolutionary pattern more or less clearly present wherever life has left its imprint or is in process of developing. An example is found in the morphology of plants. It is not hard to discover the spiral in the arrangement of leaves around a stalk or in rose-petal patterns.

A spiral is even hidden in the acceleration pattern of a falling body. An even rate of travel on a spiral path, seen in side elevation, produces pendulum-like movements of a length and duration that decrease in proportion as their frequency rises. Pendular motion is governed by laws very similar to those obtaining in free fall.

A physician discovered that the law of falling bodies applies also to embryonic development in a striking way. The lengthwise growth of the embryo is at first almost imperceptible. If measurements are taken at regular intervals during pregnancy, however, one finds that the initial minimal growth-rate speeds up increasingly, and just before birth makes a tremendous spurt. This happens also with free-falling objects. The acceleration of a falling stone can be calculated by the velocity formula V = (g/2)t².

In the first second a stone falls 5 metres
In the 2nd second a stone falls 20 metres
In the 3rd second a stone falls 45 metres
In the 4th second a stone falls So metres
In the 5th second a stone falls 125 metres
In the 6th second a stone falls rSo metres
In the 7th second a stone falls 245 metres
In the 8th second a stone falls 320 metres
In the 9th second a stone falls 405 metres

We see here that the rate of fall is almost one hundred times as great in the ninth second as in the first. The rate of increase in the size of an embryo, determined in monthly measurements, is roughly proportional to that of falling bodies. We might say that new-born human beings fall to earth out of the cosmos according to the law of falling bodies. We can at least not lightly dismiss the possibility of a connection between the spiral pattern and creative processes as witnessed in the development of man, earth and universe.

As the great spiral of creative evolution rolls in from the cosmos towards the earth, passing through the various planetary spheres as time goes on, it transmits the formative impulses radiating from the zodiacal constellations to the earth. This zodiacal radiation would be the sole origin of substances were it not for the fact that the mediating, ordering, creative force is always passing through one or other of the planetary spheres. The planet thus tempers the formative impulses of the constellation.

 

On its next round, the in-spiralling path transmits the same constellation, but has meanwhile entered a planetary sphere closer to the earth. This gives a different tempering to the creative action of the constellation. That is why certain earth-substances resemble each other so closely. They are of the same macrocosmic origin, but they also differ as a result of differing planetary influences. 

It is a universal law that smaller cycles are part of larger cycles, lesser rhythms part of greater ones. These phenomena therefore have a certain periodicity. There are good reasons to assume that one of the Platonic years began with Aries, the constellation in which the vernal point was located at the start of our era. It is natural to think of Aries as the starting point of the whole cycle of creation, to picture its evolutionary spiral coming from cosmic infinitude and entering the realm of our planetary system at the Saturn sphere and in the Aries segment of the Zodiac.

With the passage of the spiral through the Saturn sphere, the formative impulse of Aries was stirred to action. Had this been able to radiate in upon the earth without any interference, it
would have produced a substance that was a simple fixation of the Aries process. But the fact that the stimulating force was also in the Saturn sphere meant that a Saturnian tempering was given to the Aries impulse. Earthly silica was the result. It is easy to see the Saturnian influence in the properties of silica. One has only to recall its surface-forming tendency and its connection with the sense organs, where Aries and Saturn forces work together.

In its further progress, the spiral then passes through the Mars sphere. As it enters the Aries region on its second round, it again releases the forces of this region. But this time they receive a Martian tempering, with the resultant earthly creation of titanium (titanium dioxide), a substance very closely resembling silica. Like silica, it is a component of primeval rock. Mineralogists call it rutile. It is a younger brother of silica; physically and chemically it behaves almost exactly like silica. It betrays the Mars impulse in its crystalline form, for it does not crystallize in the aristocratic columns and pyramids typical of rock crystal, but in needle form.

The ‘blood relationship’ of the two shows up in the fact that rock crystal often encloses sheaves of rutile needles. And titanium has a noteworthy relationship to Mars through its occurrence in certain iron ores, especially iron rose. And – so wonderfully do these things fit together – the fragrant red garden roses, which are the offspring of Mars’ creativity in the plant world, contain titanium in their ash.

Just as the Aries process is modified by the Mars sphere to form titanium, Mercury modifies it to form zirconium, followed by cerium and thorium. Thus a group of related earthly substances comes into being as the original formative impulses undergo modification by the various planetary spheres.

The silica minerals, then, are products of the Aries impulse. Sulphur and its relatives, selenium and tellurium, derive from Gemini; sodium and the other alkalis – lithium, potassium, rubidium and caesium- from Virgo; lime and the mineral alkalis – strontium, barium and radium- from Libra; aluminium and its brothers- scandium, yttrium and several other rarer minerals from Capricorn; and the halogens, finally, from Pisces.

These groups of related substances recall the Periodic Table, where they are also arranged in groups. The Periodic Table might justifiably be thought of as the final expression of the creative cosmic symphony, which can be experienced in a more living way as it sounds through the spiral of creation. The Periodic Table could be described as a static abstraction. In the creative spiral, on the other hand, the succession of events in time is expressed.

Every year, as we know, the vernal point drops back a little, so that in the course of about two thousand years it passes through one constellation in the opposite direction to the sun’s course. Applying the law of the periodicity of smaller cycles within larger ones here, we can assume that in the course of each Platonic year the formative impulse released by the creative spiral drops back one constellation. Thus, after the Saturn sphere had tempered the Aries impulse and formed silica, the next creative impulse would be released in the constellation Taurus before the end of that Platonic year. Meanwhile the spiral has entered the Jupiter sphere. The formative impulse of Taurus tempered by Jupiter leads to the formation of nitrogen. The Jupiter aspect of nitrogen will be evident in the light of our description of tin.

The creative spiral then enters the Mars sphere, and again, before the end of the next Platonic year, releases those Gemini forces that lead on earth to the forming of sulphur. Similarly, Cancer, tempered by the sun sphere, produces phosphorus; Leo tempered by Mercury, hydrogen; Virgo tempered by Venus, sodium; Libra tempered by the moon sphere, calcium.

This would constitute creation in its entirety. But we must attribute to the moon sphere the same reflective capacity that we found to be a property of the moon and saw in the physical and chemical aspects of silver. As the spiral of creation nears the earth, it passes through the moon sphere, at the same time making a transit of the reflected spheres of the other planets. Thus we find not only a moon aspect in calcium, but a Saturnian as well. It is a peculiarity of lime that silver and lead are often found embedded in it – a fact that was brought out in Chapter Nineteen. And we see the formative impulses of Saturn and Libra uniting in the calcium framework of our bones.

It may be asked here why the Saturn sphere is the one reflected, when the laws of reflection would lead us to expect it to be Venus. But on closer study it seems that the reflection here is more in the nature of a repetition, a recapitulation of an entire cosmic pattern, in the sense that wave follows wave.

After completing its transit of the reflected Saturn sphere, the creative spiral enters the reflected sphere of Jupiter, and in conjunction with Scorpio releases the forces that form carbon. It is easy to grasp the connection of Jupiter with carbon if we recall that its structure of chains and rings makes possible the fashioning of organic substance. In a picture – carbon’s relatedness to tin enables it to keep on soldering itself together. The Jupiter process is a sculptor both in the fluid element and in our thought-life, where the power of association links concepts in a ‘train of thought’, somewhat as carbon forms chains and rings in the chemical structuring of substances.

To continue; the spiral creates magnesium under the influence of Sagittarius working in conjunction with the reflected Mars sphere, and aluminium under Capricorn working with the sunsphere. Again, it is not difficult to discern the sun aspect in Capricorn’s aluminium process, which we may remember as the harmonizing, balancing force at work in gem-stones, especially tourmaline, while recalling also that aluminium joins forces with the central directive power of the universe found in the activity of gold.

Similarly, oxygen comes into being under the influence of Aquarius in the reflected Mercury-sphere; and fluorine and the halogens, finally, originate in the reflected Venus sphere under the influence of Pisces.

Again, as fig. 33 shows, the places of origin of these substances form a spiral that runs counter to the course of the creative spiral, just as the path of the vernal point in the ecliptic moves counter to the direction of the sun.

This pattern takes account of the time element in creative evolution. It pictures earth’s development from the earliest phase of material evolution, beginning with a light and air phase, passing through a fluid state, and only at the very end of creation becoming solid.

The Periodic Table brings out some of the same facts as the spiral, but by no means all. There is bound to be a difference between the living picture drawn in these pages and an abstract system of numerical tabulation.

The metals, for which there seems to be no suitable place in the Periodic Table, appear in the spiral as materialized planetary processes. It would seem natural to put the ‘brothers of iron’ that spring from modifications of the Mars process in the various reflected planetary spheres, since the modifying forces that produced them were terrestrial ones that affected the moon’s reflecting realm.

The emergence of the material world, however, is not to be thought of as having come about through a kind of short-circuit between earth and cosmos. Cosmic order weaves and pulsates through the whole of creation, descending step by step to the mineral phase of earthly substance. The creative spiral permeates every level of events – the spiritual, the psychological, the biological, the mineral.

‘Wherever lime or magnesium are found, a plant must have lived and produced these substances,’ says Herzeele. ‘The first milligramme of lime is no older than the first plant.’ Creative impulses always act first in the organic realm, in organisms. But we must conceive of organisms as far less clearly defined in those early days – still as processes, not yet as isolated single forms.

We must also take into account the fact that the impulses of evolution were not always able to proceed in a straight line, without interruption. The spiral of creation is to be conceived rather as a framework which can help us to live into the evolution of substances. It is not to be taken as a hard and fast system in every detail, but rather as an attempt to picture the dynamics of emergent material evolution. 

 

CONCLUSION

Chapter Thirty-Six

The sun makes music as of old
Among the rival spheres of heaven.
– Goethe (translation by Shelley)

 

In times these when words, human Goethe beings brings still us an actually echo of heard those the very sounding ancient harmonies of the cosmos and felt how by them heaven and earth were formed. Plato, one of the last men able to experience this ground-tone of creation, called it the ‘harmony of the spheres’.

The cosmos resounds. There is a twelvefold sounding from the zodiacal constellations, a sevenfold sounding from the planetary spheres.

The cosmic ‘Word’ described by St. John as having ‘made everything that was made’, draws the consonantal framework of its body from the Zodiac, the sounding vowels of its all permeating music from the planetary spheres. These two elements combine in ever-new varieties of ways to fashion the world thus far created and still in process of becoming.

Earth, like heaven, is shaped by the musical ordering power of this cosmic Word, which reaches into matter itself and gives it patterns of coherence. Earth is the materialized cosmic Word, ‘the end of God’s path’.

When we go out into nature and look at trees and flowers, stones and mountains, veins of ore, trying to grasp all we see in a way that will lead us towards the creative archetypes, we can perhaps catch a glimpse here and there of what lies beneath the surface. This means beginning to read the divine cosmic Word again – a reading that frees it from captivity in matter.

The word chemistry comes from the Egyptian ‘chemi’, which originally meant ‘dark earth’. Later on, it came to mean the science of obscure, secret things – ‘occult’ as opposed to manifest, accessible knowledge. The ancients could experience cosmic forces as directly manifest, whereas the earth, as the finished work of creation, seemed to them, by comparison, hidden and im penetrable. Chemistry, therefore, was knowledge of the ‘hidden’.

Nowadays the situation is just the opposite. Knowledge of divine reality is lost; earth has become the object of our researches. Physics, chemistry and the other natural sciences have made the things of earth familiar knowledge. A science that dealt with divine reality would be called ‘occult’ in the sense that the facts and foundations of such a study are not ‘manifest’ to people of the present time.

Yet if we are to strive for a fulness of knowledge, we must seek for a scientific outlook which will embrace both halves of reality, the heavenly as well as the terrestrial.

Astronomy, of course, is not a true science of the heavens in our sense; it is terrestrial science projected into cosmic space. On the other hand, the doctrines and dogmas of the various Churches no longer satisfy modern man, for they cannot bridge the gap that separates them from terrestrial science, and modern humanity wants to know, not simply to believe.

We have attempted to show here how it is possible, while maintaining scientific exactness, to feel one’s way towards the living laws of the world; to find and unravel the threads which lead from earthly matter to its origin in the creative spheres of the cosmos. This book was meant to be a contribution to discerning the pulse-beat of the cosmic organism. The author’s hope is that it may encourage further progress, through which these unfinished first steps will be justified.

 

Recommended Further Reading

• Kolisko, E. & L., Agriculture of Tomorrow, Second Edition, 1978,Kolisko Archive Publications, England
• Fyfe, Agnes, Moon and Plant Growth, Capillary Dynamic Studies, Society for Cancer Research, Arlcsheim, Switzerland
• Kolisko, E., Nutrition No. I (3 lectures) & Nutrition No. 2 (2 lectures), Kolisko Archive Publications, England
• Kolisko, E., Nutrition and Agriculture, Kolisko Archive Publications, England
• Kolisko, E., Twelve Groups of Animals, Kolisko Archive Publications, England