Cosmic DNA

Part 3 of the lecture in Arnhem on 20 November 2018.

When I was preparing for this and was looking for DNA information, I remembered medieval occult philosophy. Of course, we have put that behind us, we have to. But through Rudolf Steiner we know that we have to get through modern science, that we must not get lost in it, but that we have to get through it and that at some point, more or less thanks to what we find in this science that we are now living in, we actually have to find that occult physics again. ne of the interesting writers in this field is Agrippa von Nettesheim. He has written a book 'De occulta philosophia' (The Occult Philosophy). But it is a book not only about philosophy, but also about the science of nature and as an illustration I would like to read a small chapter from it. He then talks about the different elements. As modern people we have a periodic system of elements, in chemistry. In it, we find the solids, the liquid substances, the gases, according to their atomic number. Rudolf Steiner says in his course entitled 'Das Initiatenbewusstsein' that the elements of the periodic system interest the occult scientist just as much as the millionaire interests the coins.

When you start reading in that old physiology, philosophy, physics, in the occult chemistry, then you also see that it is actually mainly four elements and not those large numbers of the periodic system. Here the researcher limits himself to four elements and that is also dizzying. For we know these elements on earth as the element solid, earth, then liquid, water, then gaseous, the air and then fire, the warmth. And in occult physiology there also exists a kind of periodic system and that is in the macrocosm as the fixed stars, as the zodiac. There you will find four substances related to earth, water, air and fire. That forms a cross in the clock you could say of the 12 signs. The earth sign is the scorpion or the eagle, the air sign is the Taurus, the life-sign is the Aquarius, and the fire-sign is the Lion. So, you actually see a twelve with in it a cross and the points of that cross, those four, that are known substances on earth. The substance that belongs to the scorpion is the earth substance, is the carbon. The substance that belongs to Aquarius, life, is oxygen; the substance that belongs to the Lion is the fire, that is the hydrogen, and with the Taurus belongs the nitrogen, the air.

So then, if you want to name them with the letters from the periodic table, we have carbon C, hydrogen H, oxygen O, and nitrogen N. And with that we have the basis of organic chemistry. The DNA also contains phosphorus, which is somewhat eccentric because it is the sign of the cancer. We then actually have the DNA in the basic elements also in the zodiac, namely in the combinations of the Eagle, the Scorpio, the Aquarius, the Lion, and the Taurus with this lateral deviation, I would say of the cross in the phosphorus, which belongs to the Cancer.

The DNA consists of the deoxyribonuclein, i.e. a carbon ring with oxygen and side branches with phosphorus, and also a side branch with the base, one after the other connected to the carbon rings. The bases carry nitrogen and are connected by hydrogen. See figure.

If we could look at it in such a way that the five points in the cosmic constellation that form the substances of the DNA, then this will make you dizzy as well. That is something dizzying because you get a presumption that in the DNA, in the cell nucleus of the human being and of all living creatures, that there is a cosmic constellation living there and of course it does not have exactly that structure, maybe it does, but it does not only have that structure. What is interesting is of course that it is a double helix, so you cannot escape the image of the Mercury staff. The staff with the snakes around it, that's what the DNA-molecule looks like in a certain sense and that's how you can find more correspondences, but the composition of the substance in the occult sense, in the macrocosmic sense, is dizzying in itself.

And if we start from these four elements, then this Agrippa von Nettesheim puts it this way:

'The four simple elements are followed by the four species of the perfect natural bodies, namely stones, metals, plants and animals. Although in order to create the individual objects, all the elements connect with each other, each element has its own preference. All stones are earthy, naturally heavy and sink to the bottom. They form such a dry mass that they cannot be melted. The metals are watery and can be melted. They have always been created, as the physicist admits and what the alchemists know from experience, from tough water or from aqueous mercury. The plants harmonise with the air in such a way that they only grow and thrive under the free sky. The fire is so related to the animals that they die immediately after it has been extinguished.

Each of these species is distinguished by the degrees of the elements. Among the stones there are those that are opaque and heavily earthy. There are watery ones, which are transparent and have also formed out of the water like the crystal Beryl and the pearls. Airy ones that swim on the water and are spongy, like the sponge, are also watery minerals. Then there are fiery ones, which are extracted from fire and are sometimes dissolved in the fire or created for the fire, like the meteor rock, the flint and the asbestos'.

It goes on like this, page after page. I don't know if you have that either, but when you read something like that, you get a tremendous desire to deepen that by meditation, so that you can get that which is actually obvious — but we don't think that way anymore — to get back in touch with it.

This Agrippa von Nettesheim also describes how all the solids that are fixed on earth, in the cosmos are becoming thinner and thinner and eventually fading away, in order to have, high up in the sky near the fixed stars, their actual invisible — at least for earthly eyes — primal being. So on Earth the substance, then ever more ethereal, ultimately airy in the area of the planets and near the fixed stars they have their primal form, but as a primal essence.

When you start reading in that old physiology, philosophy, physics, in the occult chemistry, then you also see that it is actually mainly four elements and not those large numbers of the periodic system. Here the researcher limits himself to four elements and that is also dizzying. For we know these elements on earth as the element solid, earth, then liquid, water, then gaseous, the air and then fire, the warmth. And in occult physiology there also exists a kind of periodic system and that is in the macrocosm as the fixed stars, as the zodiac. There you will find four substances related to earth, water, air and fire. That forms a cross in the clock you could say of the 12 signs. The earth sign is the scorpion or the eagle, the air sign is the Taurus, the life-sign is the Aquarius, and the fire-sign is the Lion. So, you actually see a twelve with in it a cross and the points of that cross, those four, that are known substances on earth. The substance that belongs to the scorpion is the earth substance, is the carbon. The substance that belongs to Aquarius, life, is oxygen; the substance that belongs to the Lion is the fire, that is the hydrogen, and with the Taurus belongs the nitrogen, the air.

So then, if you want to name them with the letters from the periodic table, we have carbon C, hydrogen H, oxygen O, and nitrogen N. And with that we have the basis of organic chemistry. The DNA also contains phosphorus, which is somewhat eccentric because it is the sign of the cancer. We then actually have the DNA in the basic elements also in the zodiac, namely in the combinations of the Eagle, the Scorpio, the Aquarius, the Lion, and the Taurus with this lateral deviation, I would say of the cross in the phosphorus, which belongs to the Cancer.

The DNA consists of the deoxyribonuclein, i.e. a carbon ring with oxygen and side branches with phosphorus, and also a side branch with the base, one after the other connected to the carbon rings. The bases carry nitrogen and are connected by hydrogen. See figure.

If we could look at it in such a way that the five points in the cosmic constellation that form the substances of the DNA, then this will make you dizzy as well. That is something dizzying because you get a presumption that in the DNA, in the cell nucleus of the human being and of all living creatures, that there is a cosmic constellation living there and of course it does not have exactly that structure, maybe it does, but it does not only have that structure. What is interesting is of course that it is a double helix, so you cannot escape the image of the Mercury staff. The staff with the snakes around it, that's what the DNA-molecule looks like in a certain sense and that's how you can find more correspondences, but the composition of the substance in the occult sense, in the macrocosmic sense, is dizzying in itself.

And if we start from these four elements, then this Agrippa von Nettesheim puts it this way:

'The four simple elements are followed by the four species of the perfect natural bodies, namely stones, metals, plants and animals. Although in order to create the individual objects, all the elements connect with each other, each element has its own preference. All stones are earthy, naturally heavy and sink to the bottom. They form such a dry mass that they cannot be melted. The metals are watery and can be melted. They have always been created, as the physicist admits and what the alchemists know from experience, from tough water or from aqueous mercury. The plants harmonise with the air in such a way that they only grow and thrive under the free sky. The fire is so related to the animals that they die immediately after it has been extinguished.

Each of these species is distinguished by the degrees of the elements. Among the stones there are those that are opaque and heavily earthy. There are watery ones, which are transparent and have also formed out of the water like the crystal Beryl and the pearls. Airy ones that swim on the water and are spongy, like the sponge, are also watery minerals. Then there are fiery ones, which are extracted from fire and are sometimes dissolved in the fire or created for the fire, like the meteor rock, the flint and the asbestos'.

It goes on like this, page after page. I don't know if you have that either, but when you read something like that, you get a tremendous desire to deepen that by meditation, so that you can get that which is actually obvious — but we don't think that way anymore — to get back in touch with it.

This Agrippa von Nettesheim also describes how all the solids that are fixed on earth, in the cosmos are becoming thinner and thinner and eventually fading away, in order to have, high up in the sky near the fixed stars, their actual invisible — at least for earthly eyes — primal being. So on Earth the substance, then ever more ethereal, ultimately airy around the planets and near the fixed stars they have their primal form, but as a primal essence.

So, conversely, you can think that carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus have their essence in the region of the fixed stars, and that this is where their true being is, the primal form of their being, and that on Earth there are densifications of it. And you get a notion of a cosmic music, which could be played with all these different tones, through which you could hear a DNA.

And so, you get into a kind of poetic mood with regard to something that has common meaning in ordinary life, namely that with DNA, for example, you can identify a certain criminal.

Then, of course, the question arises: what is it, then, this DNA and to what extent does DNA determine man, or is it the human being who determines DNA? That is, of course, a very big question, and it will not be possible to answer it definitively.

When you read the history of human development in the work of Rudolf Steiner, by which I mean the history after Christ, he describes that there has been a development in man's ability to know in such a way that he is increasingly learning to use what used to be cosmic knowledge himself. That is how it should be, but of course the human being is not as gifted as the angels, the archangels and even higher who also have a kind of mental world. If you see us awkwardly struggling to find the truth about certain things, if you see us busy in natural science, then on the one hand you can say that it is grandiose what is discovered and understood, that is also true, on the other hand it is of course plasterwork of the mind.

(Wikipedia DNA)