Marbod of Rennes (c. 1035–1123), a French poet and bishop, discusses rock crystal in his Latin poem about precious stones. His entry opens with a disagreement. Some take crystal to be the product of intense cold. Others point out that it is found in lands where a severe winter would be an unlikely explanation. When Marbod turns to its next property, his tone changes. Here he thinks he can appeal to something that can actually be shown.
[…] that this stone, placed in the sun, takes fire and with it will kindle tinder fungus brought up close.
– Marbod of Rennes, Liber lapidum, 1799, p. 70–71.[1]
Three things must occupy the right positions. Sunlight has to reach the stone, and tinder must be brought close enough to catch fire. The Latin verb for receiving briefly makes the crystal an agent. It takes a place between the distant sun and an inconspicuous piece of tinder. By the end of the process a visible change has occurred in that small object. The short lines bring the long journey of the light and the tiny site of its effect unusually close together.
Marbod puts particular weight on different degrees of certainty. Nobody can describe the origin of an individual crystal as an eyewitness to its formation. With a suitable specimen, a clear day and combustible material, however, an observer can repeat an event. The account turns on that distinction. The stone whose name and supposed origin had called up the image of ice becomes recognizable to the reader through its ability to produce fire.
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Here all the little blades of grass and wood and stone and all things are one.
Meister Eckhart (um 1260–vor 1329)
Meister Eckharts mystische Schriften. In unsere Sprache übertragen von Gustav Landauer · p. 126
Our translation from Gustav Landauer’s German rendering
The great mother is the earth. The stones in the earth’s body, I think, are what is meant by her bones. These are what we are told to throw behind our backs.
Publius Ovidius Naso (43 BCE–17/18 CE)
Metamorphoses · 1951 · p. 30–31
Our translation from the Latin
Perhaps this block of marble is only a heap of infinitely many living bodies, or like a lake full of fish, although the eye can ordinarily distinguish these animals only in bodies that have partly decayed.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716)
Brief an Antoine Arnauld vom 30. April 1687 · 1846 · p. 96–97
Our translation
When you bend down towards all this activity, it is almost as if you could overhear the hidden history of how plants grow and the quiet beating of the mountain’s heart.
Very little. One makes marble out of flesh, and flesh out of marble.
Denis Diderot (1713–1784)
Œuvres complètes de Diderot, tome II. Philosophie · p. 105
Our translation
The fleeting sunbeam has been captured and enclosed in your mysterious core.
Friedrich Hebbel (1813–1863)
Excerpt. Our translation from the German edition of 1904
I thank you, silent stone, and bend down towards you: I owe you my life as a plant.
The precious stones which are the foundations denote truths Divine shining through in the ultimate of order.
Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772)
Arcana Coelestia · 1938 · p. 318
Clause from the cited English edition. Initial capital supplied.
The finest artist has no conception that a single block of marble does not enclose within its excess. Only the hand that obeys the intellect can reach it.
And he the bard, a crystal soul Sphered and concentric with the whole.
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