Proclus (412–485) was a Greek philosopher of late antiquity who taught in Athens. In a short work on priestly practice he asks how people can recognise a connection between things on earth and the heavenly bodies. His starting points are familiar to anyone who spends time outside. One flower follows the sun. Another opens when the moon comes up. For Proclus a person who notices these correspondences in time can see something of the distant luminary at work in a plant close at hand.
Even stones may be seen breathing in the emanations of the luminaries. […]
– Proclus, On the Hieratic Art, 1928, p. 149.[1]
A stone presents a harder case. It has no leaves to turn towards the light. Proclus describes it instead as drawing breath. The image makes the boundary of a solid body permeable. Something that comes to it from the heavens continues to act within it. Among his examples is the sunstone, whose golden rays resemble the rays of the visible sun. A small bright surface on earth thus gives the observer reason to think across an immense distance.
The sequence also explains why the essay proceeds from looking at things to using them in a religious act. For somebody choosing an offering or an object for a rite, resemblance has practical consequences. Different materials can belong together because each points towards the same heavenly power. A stone acquires a particular value when someone recognises that relationship. The glint seen in turning the sunstone towards the light has its place beside the flowers and celestial bodies with which Proclus began.
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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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