The Rigveda is an ancient Indian collection of hymns in Vedic Sanskrit. A song in its tenth book addresses the stones used to press plant stalks in the preparation of soma for sacrifice. This work has a recognizable sound. Bring one hard object down on another repeatedly and the ear can tell whether a stroke has landed firmly and when the next one starts. It is from this small experience that the poem sets out.
Let these speak loudly forth; let us speak out aloud: to the loud speaking Pressing-stones address the speech;
When, rich with Soma juice, Stones of the mountain, ye, united, swift to Indra bring the sound of praise.– Rigveda, Rigveda, 1897, p. 526.[1]
The roles change quickly in the opening stanza. The stones are to speak, then the people present are to speak as well, and speech is finally directed back towards the stones. Read aloud, the lines make it possible to hear one voice calling for another. What a matter-of-fact account might treat as the incidental noise of work acquires a place of its own in the proceedings. The stones mark a measure to which human voices can add their sound.
The objects receive praise while carrying out their ordinary work. They need no human shape or mouth to perform it. Their weight and hardness make it possible to bear down on the stalks, and their audible strokes tell a listener that the task is progressing. Imagine the singers and workers within earshot of one another and the passing of a phrase between them becomes quite intelligible. Attention moves from the finished offering towards those who bring it about. For the duration of the song the stones belong among their number.
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Believe one who has tried: you shall find a fuller satisfaction in the woods than in books. The trees and the rocks will teach you that which you cannot hear from masters.
Bernhard von Clairvaux (1090/91–1153)
English translation by Samuel J. Eales
Such stillness! Into the rocks sinks the voice of the cicadas.
The age of bodies lies in their rigidity. Every act of becoming solid is a process of time, of history.
Johann Wilhelm Ritter (1776–1810)
Fragmente aus dem Nachlasse eines jungen Physikers · p. 81
Our translation
A crystal grows together more deftly and regularly than a bee builds or a spider weaves.
Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803)
Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit · p. 163
Our translation
Give the crystal the power of forming ideas. Its highest plan for the world will be crystallisation, its divinity the most beautiful form a crystal can take.
The water of crystallisation that holds the structure together is the tear of a moment. Once it has dried up, the structure has fallen apart.
In blue crystal The pale man dwells, his cheek leaning against his stars; Or he bows his head in purple sleep.
But the earth’s shaping power does not confine itself to one figure. It knows the whole of geometry and is practised in it.
Johannes Kepler (1571–1630)
Strena seu de nive sexangula · 1611 · p. 23
Our translation from the Latin
Having rejected all these views, we say with Constantine and certain others that the power of a stone arises from its very kind and substantial form.
Albertus Magnus (c. 1200–1280)
De mineralibus · 1519 · unpaginated
Our translation from the Latin. Abbreviations in the source text expanded.
Many of those mineral crystallisations, such as clusters of spar, glass-head ore and flowers of iron, often yield forms as beautiful as art could ever conceive; and the glory in the cave of Antiparos is merely the product of water seeping through beds of gypsum.
Yet it does not ward off influence from without; warmth and light penetrate the impenetrable.
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