United States or Cyprus ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
This riddle is solved by the phenomenon of snow-formation provided we allow it to speak to us as an ur-phenomenon. For it then tells us that matter must be in a state of transition from lightness into heaviness if it is to appear in crystalline form.
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.
The sooner we got the bad heels into the house, the better. The two first sledges arrived at 4 p.m.; the next at 6, and the two following ones at 6.30. The last did not come in till 12.30 a.m. Heaven knows what they had been doing on the way! With the low temperatures we experienced on this trip, we noticed a curious snow-formation that I had never seen before.
In the formation of snow, nature shows us in statu agendi a process which we otherwise meet in the earth only in its finished results, crystallization. We may, therefore, rightly look upon snow-formation as an ur-phenomenon in this sphere of nature's activities.
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.
This corresponds precisely to the polarity of snow-formation and volcanic activity. The former, being the spherically directed process, requires physically low temperatures; the latter, being the radially directed process, requires high temperatures. Here, once more, we see with what objectivity the human senses register the facts of the outer world.
And just as we found in volcanism and related processes a field of activity of 'functional sulphur', so we found in snow-formation and related processes a field of activity of 'functional phosphorus'. Both fields are characterized by an interaction between gravity and levity, this interaction being of opposite nature in each of them.
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.
Word Of The Day