LEAD – Saturn’s Heavy Metal
‘ ‘Haifa century of tail pipe emissions have bathed American cities and towns with a sheen of this cumulative poison. About 800 million pounds of lead were poured into California skies, three-fourths of it from leaded gasoline.” It is estimated that 4 to 5 million metric tons of lead from gasoline remain in U.S. soils.
In experiments inspired by Rudolf Steiner to demonstrate the effects of lead on certain formative forces, olants grown in air containing lead terra-ethyl showed changes in the stalk cells which sprouted with hyper-active vitality at first, but died off prematurely.
THE SURPRISING WARMTH OF LEAD
Despite lead’s chilly reputation it has a strong relationship to warmth, as mentioned before, melting in the heat from a candle flame at 327°C, and vaporizing at 1555°C. Wilhelm Pelikan2 observes that:’ ‘Although it is solid under normal conditions, it is so strongly connected with warmth that it behaves as though it were constantly at the extreme edge of solidity,” another example of lead-Saturn’s role of boundary keeper.
For a metal lead is extremely soft, easily scratched with your fingernail, or drawn into a thin wire, or beaten into the thinness of paper. You can draw with lead, which is where our first lead pencils came from. Unless cooled intensely it is the least conductive among the other metals for warmth and electricity, and although it could be described as sluggish, it expands and contracts vigorously when exposed to changes in temperature.
The dullness of lead extends to its resonance: “When we touch a sounding object with lead, the sound immediately congeals, all vibrations cease.” It is the last metal you would associate with musical instruments, except alloyed with bronze, perhaps, for a bell’s depth of tone. And yet lead crystal has the purest ring, as the light forces of silica transcend lead’s dullness and liberate through sound its mysterious inner beauty.
But in its chemical life lead congeals, or precipitates into insoluble compounds, more so than any other metal, although it combines readily with other elements and easily forms alloys. This precipitating, or calcifying nature of lead can be compared to the calcium minerals which it strongly resembles, and curiously enough lead ores are often found in limestone formations.
LEAD AND RADIOACTIVITY
The protective shielding properties of lead mentioned earlier, are invaluable for this metal’s use as a barrier against x-rays and radium in hospitals, and the extreme density of lead provides insulation against radiation in the generation of nuclear energy.
While the sphere of Saturn’s orbit in the macrocosm encloses the solar system and provides Earth with a protective shield from cosmic radiation penetrating from beyond, lead on earth helps to protect us from the poisonous rays of nuclear death temples and other sources of radiation that man has let loose upon the planet.
Lead itself is very closely connected with the radioactive processes in nature. As Saturn has come to be associated with Time and Death, so lead is connected with the decay and decomposition of matter which consists of a process of transmutation, setting free the energy trapped in matter in the form of radiation. In the transition of the highly dense and radioactive uranium and thorium towards disintegration, lead is found with an exceptionally high number of radioactive isotopes. In the last stage of radioactive decay, non-radioactive lead is “the final substance which can undergo no further changes.” The most lead is contained in the oldest radioactive ores — it represents the end of a complete cycle of life and transformation, “the ultimate substance of age and death.”
THE PATTERNS OF SATURN ECHOED IN LEAD
As the great cycles of Nature turn and return, focussing planetary energies on the earth and bringing life and growth with the Sun’s power at the summer solstice, Saturn’s season is mid-winter, in the place of darkness and death. Winter is also lead’s season, as the experiments of scientist Lilly Kolisko showed, the time of greatest contraction, “when the forces of vegetation withdraw, then crystallization is at its culminating point. Even the water is overpowered by its strength and turns into solid ice.”4
Solutions of lead nitrate produced the greatest weight of crystallization in the month of February, as compared with their minimum weight in the summer month of June. In many respects lead was shown to be opposite to the forces of Jupiter and its metal tin. While lead contracts, precipitates and congeals, it is the nature of tin-Jupiter to expand. While tin is associated with light and is most active in the summer and has a close affinity for light’s mineral silica, lead is the metal of darkness, and is allied with calcium and the forces of the earth.
To explore the relationship long said to exist between Saturn and lead, Lilly Kolisko used a solution of lead nitrate to study the patterns formed as it crystallized before, during and after a conjunction of Saturn with the Moon. There is a certain period of time lead takes to crystallize normally, but at the exact time of the Saturn-Moon conjunction Lilly found this crystallization to be nearly always delayed, and sometimes the solution failed to crystallize at all. Meanwhile the copper and iron salts remained completely unaffected. ‘ “The effects of a conjunction between saturn and the moon are only to be found in the solution containing lead.”
Following up on the results of Lilly, another scientist named Theodor Schwenk performed further crystallization experiments to study the effect of certain planetary aspects on their corresponding metals. For several days before, during and after a conjunction of Saturn with Mars, he studied the patterns made by a solution of iron sulphate, lead nitrate and silver nitrate. In the pictures formed by the crystallization of lead, as Lilly had said, there are no soft and delicate forms seen, for example, in the pictures of silver, rather they are heavy and hard. “Like the wrinkles of old age,” she said, “…the formation looks like that of a rock which has undergone the process of weathering. Somehow a process of ageing is expressed. Lead adds ‘weight’ and something that gives an impression of age.”5