Spirit Alchemy

Chapter 5 – Applications of the Elemental Cycle

Discussion of Example Applications

Dimensionality, Kingdoms of Nature, and Consciousness

As indicated in the discussion of plant physiology, there is a relationship between the four elements and dimensionality.  It will be interesting to discuss this further, as dimensionality will provide an Air aspect of how the elemental cycle can apply to a given domain, i.e. in reverse.  At the same time, the discussion of dimensionality will take us further afield into other realms in which the cycle also applies.  We will see that many seemingly separate phenomena are in fact coherently linked together in a way made clear through the lens of the elemental mandala.  This shows a Water aspect of the cycle. 

Following the way that plants develop, we can associate Earth with the point, Water with the line, Air with the Plane, and Fire with the volume of 3D space, the sphere 23.  Such association makes a great deal of sense.  The point is an exactly defined, unique geometrical construct – it has no dimension whatsoever, and is precisely what it is only because of its position, its complete isolation from every other point.  It is the primal fact of geometry, its foundation.  The line is what occurs when any two points come into relation with each other.  In a line, an infinite stream of points now connect each point to every other through its neighbors.  The arising of the plane from the line is the foundation for the membrane, the division of one world from another.  It polarizes space and allows the possibility for three points which do not exist on the same line, allowing for enclosed two-dimensional shapes.  There can thus be an ‘outside’, and an infinite multiplicity of lines connecting one point to any other.  The volume of space contains all the lower dimensions and integrates them at a higher level, allowing each of the basic elements of geometry, the point, line, and plane, to make their diverse relations. 

However, it is equally possible to examine dimensionality from a completely reversed approach, in which Earth is the volume of space, Water is the plane, Air is the line, and Fire is the point.  In this case, the volume of space is expressive of the Earth in that it is within three dimensional space that the highest level of isolation and uniqueness of form is possible.  The diversity of forms present in the world is possible only because of the three dimensionality of space.  Following Arthur Young’s insightful links between dimensions of freedom and constraint (Young, 1976), those entities most directly expressive of the Earth element – the crystals – are symmetrically ordered in three dimensions; they are the most bound and therefore have a fixed position (zero degrees of freedom, three degrees of constraint), expressed both atomically in the arrangement of the individual atoms and macroscopically in their lack of self-motion (all their motion is a result of outside impulses). 

Correspondingly, in the Calculus we could express the positionality of Earth with a function, of which we can take the 0th derivative, which is another way of saying we simply take the function itself (in this case of position) – this will come into play once we see the other elements at work.  We can thus begin to perceive a relationship between the kingdoms of nature, the geometric entities, degrees of freedom and constraint, symmetry, the derivatives, and the elemental cycle.  In the case of the Earth element, we can relate to it the mineral realm, volume, 0 degrees of freedom and 3 of constraint, 3-fold symmetry, and the 0th derivative.

We have already seen that the element of Water has an intrinsic planarity in its tendency to form surfaces, whose manifestation in the plant realm is most typified by the leaf form – which, remembering Goethe, is the essential unit of the plant whose transformation yields all the other parts.  Thus we have a number of connections linking the plant world, the world of life – and its Goethean archetype in the leaf-form, with the element of Water.  Notwithstanding that water regulation is perhaps one of the most important requirements of the plant realm (and the leaf is the primary organ for this), plants also exhibit two degrees of symmetry (a radial symmetry), while having one degree of freedom.  The additional degree of freedom, which the mineral realm does not enjoy, is expressive of 24 the plants ability to grow.  This remarkable capacity occurs along the vertical line of polarity established between the Sun and the Earth, between the forces of levity and those of gravity.  We could say that it is along this idealized line that the drama of plant growth is played out, and that (following Goethe’s style of thinking) all the myriad aspects of plant growth which are seemingly not along this vertical line result from the complex individual context of the particular plant’s nature within its particular environment as modifications of the archetypal rule.  The fact that plants grow means that instead of simple positionality, plants must be described through time: the height of a tree changes over time.  In the Calculus, this is expressed by the first derivative, which takes the position function and relates its changing to time; the first derivative of position with respect to time is known as velocity. 

When we examine the outer movement of the plant realm, we find it to be essentially linear.  The reader may wonder how this helps support the supposed link between the plant realm and the geometric entity of the plane.  Here we are led to something new, and potentially strange-sounding: we must distinguish between an outer movement and what occurs within an inner realm, the inner movement.  Certainly we can immediately reflect on this difference, in which it is directly apparent that such a distinction has validity; I have an inner life which is different from, but connected with, the motion of my physical body.  When I have the inner experience of wanting to go somewhere, some process is required for the inner movement to be translated into an outer movement. 

For now, the reader is asked to consider the possibility that humans are not the only beings with inner lives, and that in fact we can consider this distinction to hold across all kingdoms.  Animals, plants, and yes, even the mineral realm can be experienced as having both an inner life as well as an outer one which is available to our physical senses.  25Perception of the realms in which these beings have such an inner life requires organs capable of sensation in the corresponding realm, just as an eye is an organ for the perception of sight but will not yield any other sense experience than a visual one to the perceiving being. 

It is beyond the scope of this study to provide a complete and coherent account of the nature of these beings and their differences.  The following discussion may therefore be far enough from ‘normal’ experiences and concepts that it seems fantastic to some readers, in which case it is only asked that the reader consider the points made from a logical but open-minded standpoint.  Interested readers are referred to a very accessible introduction relevant to the material presented here, found in Steiner’s book Theosophy, particularly the first chapter.

With this distinction between the inner and outer made, we can recognize that the polarity of binding and releasing must also be present in the inner realm – we could say that on a non-physical level, the beings of each respective kingdom have some level of self-restraint, as well as some level of inner freedom, or non-restraint.  If, following the insights of Steiner, the alchemists, and countless others from a variety of traditions the world over, we can imagine that in addition to human beings, of which each individual is like an entire species, other beings too exist: the animal species, plants – even mineral beings, each with their associated inner life and level of consciousness.  The elemental cycle can help us understand the differences between these various beings, and in the process illuminate something of our own humanity.

So for a moment we must backtrack to the mineral realm, where we have already indicated that the outer positionality of the minerals was correspondent with a lack of self-motion.  We can see now that this is really indicative of the inner life of the mineral being: it has essentially no self-restraint, which results in its full outer constraint in all three dimensions.  In other words, we can point to the idea that a degree of inner freedom requires a degree of outer constraint.  Or stated another way, the lack of inner restraint requires the physical manifestation of the being (its material aspect) to become subject to outer laws.  As Young indicates, “Laws describe constraints; they do not create.” (Young, 1976 p. 30)  What the being cannot take up within itself inwardly is dealt with (from the perspective of that being) by forces other than what it provides itself, i.e. outwardly.  We can think of inner-restraint almost like it is indicative of the level of ‘binding’ or ‘interest’ by a being in its mineral body, or we could say, its level of incarnation.  In this sense, the mineral realm is the least incarnated of the beings of the various kingdoms under discussion – its inner life is unrestricted (zero degrees of restraint), yielding three degrees of outer constraint.

With regards to the Water element and the plant kingdom, we find now one degree of inner restraint; the plant being is more incarnated than the mineral being.  As the incarnating being focuses itself more and more closely on its evolutionary development – in which the physical component plays an important role as the most ‘dense’ part of the evolving being – the effects in the material realm of the work of that being become more and more evident.  The inner restraint requires that the outer aspect of the plant being – its manifestation in the physicality of the plant realm – submit to one less degree of outer constraint, manifesting in the plant’s capacity for growth.  This results in the vertical velocity descriptive of the plant realm – the outer manifestation of an inner restriction.    On the inner level, the plant has freedom, as it were, in two dimensions: the being only restricts itself in one dimension.  Therefore there is a sort of planarity in the inner world of the plant – this planarity is found only when we consider the whole plant realm in its entirety and not just an individual plant.  With respect to the forces that produce the life of the plant, we cannot distinguish an absolute boundary from one plant to the next – the life of the entire plant realm is, as it were, a singular whole, across the whole surface of the planet.  Although not available directly to our outer senses, we can still have something of a feeling of this aspect of the inner life of the plant realm when we travel from one biome to the next and notice that a certain transitional coherence – the life of each area flows into the next, with all the plants constantly exchanging life forces.  The growth and decay of the plant realm operates by forces which are, in a sense, planar, and which cover the planar surface of the Earth as a whole.

We can thus link the Water element to the plant realm, “outer” linearity, 1 degree of outer freedom and 2 of outer constraint, “inner” planarity, 2 degrees of inner freedom and 1 degree of inner restraint, 2-fold (radial) symmetry, and the 1st derivative.  Examining the chart at the end of this section will be helpful in seeing all these relations at once.  Now on to the Air element.

With the line, we can immediately note that the quality of polarity exhibited by the Air element is naturally expressed by the two-directionality of a single dimension.  Every line is necessarily the establishment of a polarity, and it is precisely this polarity that provides the foundation for all measurement through a continuously additive and subtractive scale of defined segments: inches, meters, and so forth.  As with Young, Steiner, and many others, we can recognize that in the animal realm, something lacking in the life of the plant realm manifests itself, which we can call desire.  Desire arises only because animals have an inner life (we could say a soul 26); they have sense organs which perceive the outer world and represent that world inwardly to the animal, which can then respond and act on the basis of those sensations.  This is expressive of the Air element’s quality of reversal: the outer becomes inner.  In other words, an animal has the capacity to feel: pain, lack, excess, comfort, etc., all of which fall within the polarity between sympathy and antipathy.  This reversal itself goes through a reversal, whereby the inner state of the animal is transformed into an outer expression: a movement.  The animal’s outer movement, as an expression of the linear polarity in its inner life between sympathy and antipathy, allows it an additional degree of freedom not found in the plant realm – the animal is free to move in essentially two dimensions (a plane) 27.  Correspondingly, instead of exhibiting two degrees of outer constraint it is only limited to one, because its inner life is correspondingly restrained by an additional dimension, to be line-like.  This also finds a relation in the animal tendency for bi-lateral symmetry, where the front and back as well as the top and bottom are asymmetric, while left-right symmetry is generally preserved.  The animal can thus act out its desire by either moving away from or towards sense-objects in any direction in the plane.  This movement is not, like the plant realm, best characterized by the 1st derivative of position (velocity), but requires something new: the 2nd derivative, also known as acceleration, which is the rate of change of velocity with respect to time.  Animal movement is best characterized by continual changes in velocity, in particular movement in circular or spiral motions, which always require acceleration.

Thus we can see that the animal realm continues to follow the pattern established previously, where an additional level of inner restriction yields both a corresponding addition to its inner life as well an additional level of outer freedom.  The Air element is thus linked to the animal realm, “outer” planarity, 2 degrees of outer freedom and 1 of outer constraint, “inner” linearity, 1 degrees of inner freedom and 2 degrees of inner restraint, 1-fold (bi-lateral) symmetry, and the 2nd derivative.

Now we come to the Fire element.  Whereas our original connections between the elements and the geometric entities followed the outer aspects of the relevant kingdom, from Earth as a point to Fire as a sphere, we see now that, in accordance with the nature of Air, following the elements into the inner world requires a reversal, proceeding from Earth as a sphere to Fire as a point.  The human being enjoys something beyond what is available to the animal world.  We can, through a certain kind of inner restriction, live not just through the acting out of our desires, but instead can raise ourselves up to the level at which we can contemplate our own inner life as well as the cosmos in thinking, allowing us to lead our lives in accordance with principles beyond those available to the animal realm.  In other words, humans have the potential to act morally.  This is indicative of the deeper level of incarnation of human beings, in which our spiritual component restricts itself even further, to be point-like.  The ability to not let desires rule our life requires a one-pointed concentration.  Keeping our inner life from immediately seeking satisfaction of sympathetic or antipathetic desires through the grasping or releasing of the object of our desire takes an additional degree of self-restraint that is the hallmark of what we could call the Ego 28, or “I-being”.  Thus the Ego is the most bound – the most point-like, the most constrained – of all the aspects of the human makeup.  The Master, says Novalis, is self-limiting.

This additional degree of inner restraint yields an addition degree of outer freedom.  Thus, the 3-degrees of outer freedom of the human kingdom are a result of the fact that on an inner level we have something point-like.  We could say that the incarnation of our I-being all the way into the physical realm allows us to have the creative thoughts that can then be turned into reality (cars, airplanes, spaceships, submarines, and so forth) which provide us with a true three-dimensional freedom, in which we can even leave our planet entirely if we wish – in our physical bodies.  This is representative of the general link between the inner and the outer –constraint on the inside provides the capacities which yield outer freedom – but in the human this happens only through the non-natural element of creativity in our thinking – a capacity of the spirit – which allows us the freedom to externalize our inner state through creative production. 

It might be thought that the human kingdom is still bi-laterally symmetrical, and that this is evidence against the above distinction between the animal kingdom and the human kingdom; indeed, modern physical taxonomy clearly identifies the human being as belonging to the animal kingdom.  But even if we only view the human being inasmuch as we are physical beings, we can still see this progression, which moves more and more towards asymmetry in the human being.  In particular, the physical organ that serves as the basis for the human capacity for thinking, as well as for the overcoming of desire and our creativity, is our brain, and the asymmetry predicted by the model above is most rightly found in just this realm.  Whereas the ‘oldest’ parts of our organism, considered ontogenetically, are quite bi-laterally symmetrical, the ‘newest’ parts – our neo-cortex, are the most asymmetric.  The folds and undulations of the cortex itself are quite asymmetrical, and it is becoming more and more apparent to modern science that the two halves of the brain are not at all mirror images but are unique and complementary to each other.  Even colloquially we now consider ‘right-brained’ people to be creative while ‘left-brained’ people are thought to be more analytical.

It should also be apparent that the 2nd derivative, acceleration, is now no longer capable of correctly describing what is uniquely human – we require a 3rd derivative.  The 3rd derivative of position with respect to time is the change of a change of a change – a change in acceleration.  This is known in physics as ‘jerk’ for the type of motion it produces: jerking motion, as when you press on the brakes with increasing force and not with steady pressure.  Quite independently, however, Arthur Young, who first pointed out this quality of the derivatives (in correspondence with the quantum of action, associated with light, but this takes us too far afield in this already diverse discussion), called the third derivative “control” (Young, 1976 pp. 43-44), precisely because it expresses the ability to work from a realm above that of purely natural law.  Even though the complete physical system of the car and the human being’s physical body in the seat follow the laws of physics when braking is applied, no law of physics could initiate the braking without the control of the human being who has an incarnated ego and the ability to make such decisions in the first place.  Hopefully it is clear how we can coherently relate to the Fire element the human kingdom, the “outer” sphere, 3 degrees of outer freedom and 0 of outer constraint, the “inner” point, 0 degrees of inner freedom and 3 degrees of inner restraint, asymmetry, and the 3rd derivative.

Taking this one step further, we can point out that, when speaking of the movement of the Elements from Earth to Fire, we can see quite a progression with respect to the kingdoms of nature, both in a purely outer way as well as an inner way.  But humanity is not completely separate from all the other kingdoms of nature – quite to the contrary, we are completely connected with them.  In fact, we carry within ourselves each of the lower kingdoms.  The mineral realm provides the physical foundation of our being in the material world; we have a physical body.  But we also, like the plants, have a body that is characterizable only when we leave what is purely physical and enter the realm of growth and decay.  We can call this realm, immediately above the physical, the etheric, or life realm.  If we only had a physical body, that body would immediately begin to decay – ashes to ashes, dust to dust – as it does at death.  The life body continually maintains and generates the physical form.  We also, like the animals, have a soul life, a life of desires full of sympathy and antipathy, which is like another body which is subject to laws beyond those present in the etheric realm.  We can call this realm the astral realm, and our body of desires the astral body.  But humans also have something that works from beyond the astral realm into it, allowing us the capacities of creativity, for objective thought about things outside ourselves and the ability to control our desires: the Ego, or I-being, which can be understood as the most directly spiritual component – the essence of – the individual human, living in the spiritual world.

Thus, we can see that, because human beings contain all four of these components, human consciousness must take part in each of those realms in some way.  Indeed, we can see that human consciousness is in no way singular in nature, but has a wide variety of potential states inclusive of, but modified from, the states of consciousness of the lower kingdoms.  The human being can be completely “awake” in the physical realm, and we have the corresponding capacity to say “I” to ourselves, to think about ourselves objectively as both subject and object, and to know the difference.  Our day-waking consciousness is possible only because of the level of incarnation of our I-being – it has united with the lower bodies in a unity, and provides us with the capability to awaken to our own being: thus we are humans.

We also contain the animal world within us, but although we can, because we have an incarnated Ego, be aware of our desires, we have almost no control of their actual arising: they simply present themselves to our experience, which we can then become conscious of.  In other words, we experience the arising of our desire life to be like that of a dream: the dream simply goes by and happens, as it were, to us, while the dreamer is essentially a watcher. 29  We could say that we are dreaming in our astral body.  This insight can actually help us to understand, in at first a purely conceptual way, the inner life exhibited within the animal realm.

In our life body, we are, as it were, in a state corresponding to dreamless sleep.  We are only conscious of our etheric body when something is unbalanced enough that our astral body is able to have a sensation, which can then be experienced by the Ego.  For example, the regulation of our lymphatic system proceeds according to the laws inherent in the etheric realm, but when it gets out of whack we notice it in our stuffy nose and feeling of malaise.  The consciousness of the plant realm does not rise to the level of sensation, let alone to day-waking recognition; where the animal realm is dreaming, the plants are in a dreamless sleep, and their inner life consists in the regulation of the processes of growth.

The human being also has a body that is completely in the mineral realm, and within this body human consciousness is at its most dull.  We have some access to the astral realm and the desire life in our consciousness – we can awaken from our dream to the conscious recognition of our desires – but we can only sleep into our etheric body, while into the physical we are almost completely unconscious.  The consciousness of the mineral realm is something like this, whose function is only to harmonize with the outer world, hence the lawfulness inherent in its behavior (Steiner, 2005 p. 147).

The four-fold division of the human being follows the overt hierarchy of the kingdoms of nature, and through and through is permeated with the qualities epitomized by the elements.  The spiral nature of the elemental cycle applies here as well: the Ego, once it awakens to itself, has the capacity to transform the lower bodies, the astral, etheric, and even the physical, yielding a higher octave of the elemental cycle completely in the spiritual realm, but this perhaps takes us too far afield.

The above discussion, although likely introducing thoughts about the world that at first seem bizarre, unlikely, or at least unfamiliar, can in fact be thought through on quite logical grounds on the basis of our normal experiences.  The elemental cycle provides a guide and key to which we can return again and again in order to find our bearings when our everyday thoughts begin to fail us.  Thus one of the strengths of the cycle is in its ability to act as a sort of scaffolding for our consciousness which might otherwise be overwhelmed in the inability to distinguish the relations and importance of one fact from the next.  A chart depicting all of the above information can help clarify this:

We can even notice how the elemental cycle applies to the reading of the chart: the Earth level is the individual cells containing their own unique fact of information.  The Water level is found in the connections and movements from one cell to the next, either across rows (from left to right or right to left), and columns (up to down or down to up).  The Air element is apparent in the reciprocal relations between the rows or the columns, and the Fire element is found when we consider the chart as a whole and its underlying meaning that unites all of these facts together into a unified concept.  The above is an almost completely superficial pass over the relationships described, and should be understood as in no way a definitive statement.  Much more could be said about the relationships expressed or implied, but for the sake of brevity – such as it is – this will be left for another time.  Suffice it to say that the above discussion is meant to illuminate the elemental cycle’s potential for depth and its embeddedness as an active pattern in the various cycles of the world around and within us.

Footnotes:

© 2008 Seth Miller | Site: Spirit Alchemy Design | Alchemical.org
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