Rudolf Steiner wrote:
"The forming and fitting of the solid framework in the human organism takes place through continuous interaction between the forces of Magnesium and Fluorine respectively; in this interplay, the forces of Fluorine act plastically, moulding as a sculptor moulds, filling out contours and barring the way to the forces of radiation, while Magnesium acts as a radiating force and organizing the fibres of tissue, etc., into which the Calcium Phosphate and similar substances can arrange themselves. It is not a senseless phrase, but wholly in accord with the course of nature to say that a tooth is formed thus: It is shaped, as far as its outer form, its enamel and its interior substances (such as the cementum) is concerned, by the activity of the sculpting artist “Fluorine,” and Magnesium pours out into it the forces which have to be shaped to a plastic form...
This affords a direct glimpse into the formative process of man. Even in the earliest years of life, there is this interaction between Fluorine and Magnesium, that is an interaction in which the agents are of a decidedly extra-human character in the creation of their substance — for during the first years of life, man is really only a member of the external world. So Fluorine comes from the external world, to counteract the centrifugal radiance of the metal (Magnesium)." (GA 312, lecture 12, April 1, 1920 - translation altered slightly)
When one is approaching the concept and percept of Magnesium, the situation is quite complex. I would like to take a few minutes to hash out some of the issues at hand. First, it is not a matter of supposing that if I could somehow isolate a molecule that was only Magnesium, in a manner in which I could feel the 'atomic' electro-magnetic or even the quarks of this element in a physical way, that this experience would exhaust the reality of the situation of humans and Magnesium co-existing. We already possess a mental image of a particular configuration of protons, neutrons and electron rings from our education in Natural Science. But if we could touch such a tiny thing, it would not at that moment possess at all the intense qualities, the sensations, I would even say the individualized health-bringing properties of Magnesium in its sense-perceptible form. Furthermore, we, in our phase as human subjects possess a vast web of representations (which can be mere empty words or specific mental images) of the way in which we have been taught about Magnesium. The physicians and the engineers possess frozen images, words, and formulas about what effects Magnesium can bring about, what properties it has, how it crosses through cell boundaries, its use in the plant cell, its volatility, color, its low weight for the construction of engines, etc. We did not even know what Magnesium was until modern chemistry was developed in the 18th century, and indeed for a long time, Manganese and Magnesium were confused. What we call Magnesium was almost called Manganese. There were white and black forms produced by various forms of electrolysis. We see its extreme brightness when burned, and for this reason it was used in early flash photography (see the photo of the water skier above).
But, if we have perceived a piece of Magnesium, and have studied it thoroughly, we find that there is also a non-imagistic, flexible, open concept of its reality that is experienced in human thinking. Note the upbuilding force present in the form of Magnesium in the picture above. If our everyday mental pictures can be deactualized, so that the thinking activity itself is experienced as primary, and the old dead representations of subjectivity, inner vs. outer, object and subject are dropped away, then we can meet the concept of Magnesium, which is something that flows out of and interpenetrates the sensible components, but is invisible. In pure thinking, my I meets with the radiating and developing concept of an invisible substance. Of course one could also engage with the neurological and biochemical effects of Magnesium as it works in the body (in the liver, for example, where it seems to have a positive effect on fibromyalgia), or we could, in a spiritual scientific manner, investigate the effects that such a flexible concept has as it destroys the perceptible aspects in the neurological components of the human head. But for the time being, let us not focus on its effects on the body, but let us try to meet the true Being of Magnesium. Let us devote ourselves gently and humbly to the living spirit of Magnesium. Let us try to discover, in a spiritual scientific manner, following the lead of Rudolf Steiner and Yeshayahu Ben-Aharon, the gift of mother Magna-SEE-um.
First of all, Magnesium is everywhere on the earth. It is part of the flow of the Umwelt, and it also is working in the interior of our bodies. The skin does not separate us from the workings of Magnesium as a whole. She radiates inside my being, she radiates and weaves and organizes in the environment - but etherically and invisibly. How does Magnesium work in the spaces outside our skin, and in the spaces in our skin? Let the idea of the skin as a barrier disappear or melt. Rather there are two seas flowing and meeting one another. Magnesium lives in both Seas.
Furthermore, can we trace quite clearly the virtual aspects of supersensible force of Magnesium as it operates where the sensible qualities of Magnesium can be perceived? Can we, in contrast, distinguish carefully between the sense quality, where we take the sensible, metallic, reflective hardened form as the essence of Magnesium, while ignoring the active, virtual swarm of Magnesium, which because it is excluded from the frozen form, operates elsewhere? The light-filled glowing of Mother Magnesium is frozen and trapped in the shiny metallic crust. She experiences herself dying there. In its wholeness, Magnesium is a virtual-actual stream, a process which flows everywhere, and what is most important, it has different qualities, and different intensities and aspects, depending on whether it is perceived at what phase of its transitions. Can we trace the moment by moment growth in a spiritual scientific fashion - seeing how what is invisible becomes visible and what is visible becomes invisible? Can we see the moment in thinking when we know the interior of the Wisdom light that lives in the knowledge of the essence of Magnesium? It is a metamorphosing stream, partly visible, partly invisible. It partly lives inside human concepts, as virtual life, but when it lives there, it is destroyed elsewhere. It multiplies itself in fragments in the visible minerals in the stones and crystals beneath the Earth. It is still more alive in the bright crystals of Magnesite, and more dead in the mineral Dolomite. It precisely does its work in plants and human cells, but just in a way that it is actively leading the process in one place, and in other places only present as a waste factor. Its bright light in the sense world is accompanied by an intense darkness and spiritual warmth in the living Etheric world, which then can lead to another, inner light. Its great explosive flash is the mighty leap of the radiating force of the spiritual mother and her elemental creative offspring jumping out of their temporary prison of grey frozen metal. In addition, it is precisely because the mineral dead form of Magnesium can be spiritualized inside the human body, that the trapped mother can do her work again, to upbuild our teeth and regulate our blood pressure. The mother lives in the seeds of Pumpkins and Almonds.
If we can think along with the streaming process of Magnesium as a virtual-actual whole (a flexible open, intuitive spiritual and material organism), then in human thinking, feeling, sensation, and willing, we may be so lucky to meet and interweave and also create a unified lineage with the mother - we meet in a field of this elemental reality. Magnesium builds up the form for materialization - Fluorine annihilates matter (watch a video of the effects of Fluorine gas to see what I mean - it burns through metal like paper). If we can remain alive and in the middle between its dying and its living invisible nature, we can find the Aristotelian Todi Ti of Magnesium-Spirit. The human melts into Magnesium, the magnesium melts into the human. Thinking creates there; Magnesium dies there; Magnesium is reborn there, thinking casts away its old processes. My heart opens to the mother Magnesium, we live firmly in heaven and on earth - a single process unified in the human I AM.
Where can the Spirit of Magnesium come alive in real human community?
In addition to scientific, calculative reckoning about the hyle-morphic nature of Magnesium, or about how it functions in industry and medicine, we can ask about how it can be awakened in human community? How can the Mother meet and help us to meet one another as humans? How can we take one step forward in our social work, through the inspiration of the real spirit of virtual Magnesium? Can we meet this otherness with unbiased thinking, which is still impersonal? Can we meet the other person and meet the otherness of Magnesium? Can we remain on fire spiritually, casting our own light outwards, allowing the whole process of meeting with people to burn spiritually, in an active volatile way that cannot be put out by the earthly representations or by the old frozen deposits of our biological organism? Is it possible that the spirit of Magnesium can awaken in our social life itself, so that the real human other, our living sister, can be elevated and cured? Can her inspiration help us burn through the dross of our Ahrimanic and dead mental pictures? Can her gentle radiation remain on earth and not fly off into Luciferic realms of selfish use? If anthroposophical medicine has tried to describe the physical-etheric effects of the Hep-10 preparation as shining light into the liver, so that the whole body of virtual forces can be vitalized – is it not also the case that we can be healed by the real human other, shining as a vehicle for the forces of Virgo and the Kyriotetes from Jupiter (who according to Rudolf Steiner, have special relationships to the human liver). Notice the ease with which Magnesium combines with other chemicals and has the nature of clarity and shining, of purifying the earth, like the Virgo forces. It can even burn in ice and under water for a certain time. Let us remember that just because Magnesium acts one way in matter, this does not mean that She behaves the same way in her spiritual life. There is fallen Magnesium and redeemed Magnesium.
When we say that the Magn-EE-Zium is becoming human, this also indicates that we are meeting the future form of the mineral we call Magnesium when She reaches and manifests her ego stage on the future Vulcan. In the future, there will be a pure spiritual warmth, and the animal form of the spirit of light and fire from Venus, where Magnesium flies in the clouds. She will speak, she will swim down into the darkness, but also later on, light up like a fish in a (spiritual) gas ocean. The Sister of Magna-EE-Zion will unfold new Mysteries of her being. For us in our times, we note that the crystallized form of Magnesium (in Magnesite), is a memory of the separation of the sun from the earth on the Old Moon (where the purified ether was pulled away from the denser 'earthy' moon substance). Now She is slowly becoming a new plant, with a light growing at her center, eventually blooming on New Jupiter in the future. But let this be the end of our current pondering of the mystery of Mg.
