Quartz

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Quartz (Tibet)

Quartz is the second most common mineral in the earth's crust after the feldspars and appears in its most pure and beautiful form as rock crystal. Chemically, quartz consists of very pure silicon dioxide (SiO2) and crystallises in the hexagonal crystal family.

Fine- to medium-grained metamorphic rocks with a quartz content of 98% or more are called quartzite. They are very resistant to environmental influences.

In the human organism, quartz is particularly significant for the silicic acid process, through which the I-organisation can intervene in the nerve-sense system in a formative way. Quartz is therefore strongly connected to the human head, which is the sensory centre.

„Now, if you go out into the primeval mountains, into central Switzerland, you will find granite and gneiss in particular. In this granite and gneiss, the most effective substance is silicic acid, which is then in quartz by itself, silicic acid, silica. So this is also the oldest substance on earth. It must be related to the human head forces. That's why it's easiest to cure diseases of the head if you make remedies out of silica, because that's how you treat the human head. For in the time when the pebble still played a special role on earth, was still in the primeval pulp, was not so hard - today it is hard in granite and gneiss - but at that time, when the pebble still flowed like liquid, the forces which are now in the human head were formed - the winter forces - and have been preserved.“ (Lit.:GA 348, p. 336f)

But in quartz there are also the forces that want to lead us out of earthly existence into that state in which we are in life between death and new birth. Carbon counteracts this.

„The forces that are in rock crystal, in quartz, are also in their radiations and currents in man himself. And if man were to have only these forces, which he absorbs with the harder, slate substance, if man were to have only the quartz-like forces in him, then he would constantly be exposed to the danger of striving back with his spiritual-soul to what he was between death and new birth, before he entered the earth. The quartz wants to bring the human being out of himself, to bring him back to his still unembodied beingness. This force, which wants to bring man back into his incorporeal being, must be counteracted by another, and that is the force of carbon. Man has carbon in him in many ways. Carbon is, of course, only viewed externally by today's natural science, only by physical, chemical methods. In truth, however, carbon is what keeps us with ourselves. It is actually our house. It is that in which we dwell, while silicon continually wants to lead us out of our house and bring us back to the time in which we were before we moved into our carbon house.“ (Lit.:GA 213, p. 88)

For the imaginative view, the quartz crystals, and everything crystalline in general, show themselves as sense organs of the earth, in which the cosmos, the starry world is reflected. The quartz crystals and similar formations, e.g. also snow crystals, are something like the eyes of the earth.

„Let us simply assume that someone, with the imaginative consciousness which I have often described, were to take a walk through the primeval Alps, through the primeval Alps with that rock which consists in particular of quartzous, i.e. siliceous minerals and rocks, which otherwise also contains similar rocks. When we come to the primeval mountains, we come up against the hardest rocks of the earth, but also against those rocks which, when they appear in their special original formation, have something pure in them, one might say, something which is not touched by the ordinary everyday life of the earth. It is really quite understandable when Goethe, in a beautiful essay that has already been presented here, speaks of his experience within the primeval mountains, speaks of how he feels in solitude, sitting in the granite mountains, having imprinted on his mind, one might say, the impressions of this hard and taut rock piling upwards, as it were, from the earth. And Goethe speaks of granite as the permanent son of the earth, consisting of quartz, i.e. silicic acid, mica and feldspar.

When man approaches this primeval rock with his ordinary consciousness, he may at first admire it from the outside, he may notice its forms, all its wonderfully primitive sculpture, which is, however, extraordinarily many-sided. But when man approaches this almost hardest rock on earth with his imaginative consciousness, then he penetrates beneath the surface of the mineral precisely with this hardest rock. He is then in a position to grow together with his thinking with the rock. One might say that the spiritual essence of the human being continues everywhere into the depths of the rock, and one actually enters into the spirit as into a sacred palace of the gods. The interior proves to be permeable to imaginative perception, and the outer boundary proves to be like the walls of this palace of the gods. But at the same time one has the realisation that within this rock lives an inner reflection of all that is in the cosmos outside the earth. The starry world is once again reflected in front of the soul within this hard rock. Finally, one gets the impression that in every such quartz rock there is something like an eye of the earth itself for the universe. One is reminded of the eyes of insects, these facetted eyes, which break down into many, many compartments, which divide what comes to them from outside into many individual parts. And one would like to imagine and must actually imagine that, as innumerable as many such quartz and similar formations are on the surface of the earth, these are all like eyes of the earth, in order to mirror the cosmic surroundings inwardly and actually to perceive them inwardly. And one gradually comes to realise that every crystalline that is present within the earth is a cosmic sense organ of the earth.“ (Lit.:GA 232, p. 57f)

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.
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