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A contrast, indeed, between this quiet emergence of forms from levity into gravity, and the form-denying volcanism surging up out of gravity into levity, as shown by the ever-restless activity of the Solfatara. As we found volcanism to be a macrotelluric manifestation of functional sulphur, we find in the process of snow-formation a corresponding manifestation of functional phosphorus.

Thus he had learnt from the macro-telluric realm that with decreasing density of the corporeal medium, the blue sky takes on ever deeper tones, while with increasing density of the medium, the yellow of the sunlight passes over into orange and finally red. Prismatic phenomenon and macrotelluric phenomenon were seen to correspond in this direction, too.

Such a case is the appearance of yellow and blue when we look through a clouded transparent medium towards a source of light or to a black background. There is no special difficulty here in bringing the appearance of yellow into line with its macrotelluric counterpart, but the appearance of blue requires some consideration.

To develop a corresponding picture of the function of phosphorus, we must try to find the macrotelluric sphere where this function operates similarly to that of sulphur in volcanism. From what has been said in the last chapter it will be evident that we must look to the atmosphere, as the site of snow-formation. It is this process which we must now examine more closely.

Having in this way established the existence of certain processes of materialization and dematerialization in single organisms within the earth's vegetable and other kingdoms, we shall now turn to the earth as a whole to find out where organic being that she herself is she manipulates corresponding processes on a macrotelluric scale.

The so-called enzyme action, ascribed by physiology to the various digestive juices, is in reality the product of an activity of the lower part of man's astral organization, for which the relevant juices exercise the function of physical 'carriers'. In the field of macrotelluric phenomena, the metamorphosis of the atmospheric moisture extending beyond the different cloud-stages up to the stage of pure warmth is an example of the activity of the same forces.

A macrotelluric counterpart of this is the transformation of the red river-mud into the blue-black continental mud at the bottom of the sea, around the continental shores. Here, again, reduction takes place without those preliminaries that are necessary for carrying through the process by technical means.

Only when the power of the life-ether is added to the three others can etheric action reach as far as the sphere of solid matter. To mention an instance from our previous studies: in the same way as volcanic phenomena manifest the warmth-ether's gravity-overcoming power on a macrotelluric scale, so snow-formation illustrates the life-ether's matter-shaping might.

Having observed the action of sulphur and phosphorus in the laboratory and in living organisms, we will now turn to phenomena of a macrotelluric nature which reveal the participation of sulphur and phosphorus. There, sulphur points unmistakably to the earth's volcanism. It is a fact that, wherever mineral sulphur occurs in the earth, there we find a spot of former or present volcanic activity.

These realms are, on the one hand, the inner being of man, and, on the other, the phenomena of macrotelluric and cosmic character. The fruitfulness of linking together these two will become clear if we reflect on the following. The field of the inner life of man allows us, as nothing else does, to penetrate it with our own intuitive experience.