Do metals have a being or essence that is in tune with the power of a specific planet? We shall here re-examine this core alchemical concept.
Below: Info on Silver / the Moon, Quicksilver / Mercury, Copper / Venus, Gold / the Sun, Iron / Mars, Tin / Jupiter, and Lead / Saturn.
The Sevenfold Pattern
From antiquity up until the mid-eighteenth century, the number of metals known and recognised as such was seven. They were: lead, tin, iron, gold, copper, mercury and silver. Brass, made from copper, was used, but people didn’t realize it was an alloy that included zinc, until the latter half of the eighteenth century. The metal which finally broke the sevenfold spell of millennia (in 1752) and was called the ‘eighth metal’ was platinum, emerging from the gold mines of Columbia.
Belief in a linkage of these seven metals with the 'seven planets' reaches back into prehistory: there was no age in which silver was not associated with the Moon, nor gold with the Sun. These links defined the identities of the metals. Iron, used always for instruments of war, was associated with Mars, the soft, pliable metal copper was linked with Venus, and the chameleon metal mercury had the same name as its planet. Then, around the beginning of the 18th century these old, cosmic imaginations were swept away by the emerging science of chemistry. The characters of the metals were no longer explained in terms of their cosmic origins but instead in terms of an underlying atomic structure. New metals started to be discovered which made the old view appear limited.
Silver - Moon
Today, in the delicate chemistry of silver we may trace its Moon-nature. It is a metal which requires darkness for its reactions. A photographer needs darkness in his studio to work with this metal. Special bottles and pipettes made of dark glass are used for solutions of silver, and its salts are quickly spoilt by exposure to the light of day.
Silver and gold are the two metals which show an intimate connection with light in their chemistry, although in opposite ways. The Sun produces the different colours of day, whereas the Moon shining only by reflected light gives the black, white and grey tones of a moonlit scene. Gold itself produces the different colours, one feels its outgoing radiance, whereas silver receives light images passively, it is precipitated from solution by light. The silver images of photography are only in black white and grey, and for colour film salts other than silver must be used.
Astrologers associate the Moon with the faculty of imagination, of fantasy, as for example in imaginative writers or dreamy poets. The same property is seen in the way silver is able to create images. In photography it creates a memory-image of the past, in mirrors it gives an image of what is in present time before it. Today, most mirrors are made by coating glass with silver. When looking at a mirror we never feel we are looking at a sheet of silver. There is a certain receptiveness and passivity here, and similarly when looking at a photograph it never occurs to us that we are really looking at the differential precipitation of colloidal silver. We are not aware at all of the metal but only of the image it provides.
Silver is used by the cinema industry to form its 'images of the silver screen'. Silver has always been the staple metal used for making films, in colour as well as in black and white, and the film industry is a major drain on the world's silver reserves. From an astrological viewpoint, one can say that the dreams and fantasies which the cinema manufactures are somewhat lunar in nature, because the Moon is associated with dreams and the imagination. By its delicate and receptive Moon nature, the metal silver, in celluloid, will faithfully record light images.
Silver has a dynamic way of healing injured and damaged tissue. This was pioneered by Dr Robert Becker in “The Body electric” 1973. He found that by using silver electrodes he could stimulate bone-forming cells and stimulate healing of the skin and soft tissue.There is a resurgence of interest in colloidal silver for combatting colds and viruses, and it could well be that there is no more useful bottle to have available in the family medicine cupboard
Quicksilver - Mercury
'A mind like quicksilver'-how well this image applies to mental processes! It is hardly surprising that astrologers should associate the planet Mercury with mental agility: the shining globules of this liquid metal form and reform so quickly, as fast as thinking. The metal mercury is the one element that one normally sees in the three states of matter - as the fluorescent lamp overhead in the classroom, as the liquid in the thermometer and as calamine the skin lotion; as Hermes was the one deity who could come and go through the three worlds.
Alas, the nimble quicksilver intelligence can end up as the ‘mad hatter,’ whose mind is a-jumping all over the place - remembered in Alice’s immortal tea-party. This was a condition to which hatters were prone in Victorian times, due to using mercury metal to give a shine to top hats.
As Hermes was the messenger of the gods, so mercurial types make good link people. Likewise the metal mercury amalgamates: different metals can be brought together by dissolving them in mercury, it is a solvent for metals. The term 'amalgamate' is also used in commerce: different firms amalgamate together. This is a mercury-process, and Hermes was traditionally the god of commerce.
The orbit of this fastest-moving of planets was an enigma for a century. The plane of Mercury's orbit kept 'precessing' or shifting about in a way that defied explanation, and Newton’s theory could not account for it. Mercury resisted this materialistic world conception, and it was only explained in the 20th century by the Theory of Relativity. Likewise, the metal mercury resists the solid state. It is the secret, the mystery of quicksilver, that a metal of such enormous density can yet remain liquid. It is not difficult to see why the alchemists credited mercury with a very special inner mobility and vitality.
Ancient Indian texts tell of ‘Vimana’ which were fabulous flying craft (e.g. in the Mahabarata). These texts inform us that the craft were powered by mercury. Clearly, speedy mercury was just the stuff to power these mythic ancient craft! The commonest daily use for mercury sees it in constant motion - the thermometer. Hermes was traditionally the god of medicine, and Mercury was for long given an important role in medical practice. It was for centuries the staple remedy for syphilis, and even today it is still used for skin ointments-calomel-and the sublimate is used as a disinfectant. Mercury amalgams are used in dentistry, and mercurial aids such as the thermometer and blood pressure apparatus aid the doctor. Thus the different aspects of the Mercury-nature are expressed both by the metal and by the planet in the sly, in accordance with the Hermetic maxim, 'as above, so below.'
Mercury is always on the move, and nowadays it is coming out from circulation: from batteries, from tooth fillings, from gold amalgamation processes, etc, so that Euro- experts have a problem what to do with it. Thousands of tonnes of it might be placed carefully down one or two of the mines whence it was obtained! As Mercury is removed from large-scale use, we may be sure that other subtle properties of this mysterious and elusive element will
Copper - Venus
On average, women have about 20% higher copper serum than men and for iron it is the other way round, with men having a one-third higher iron level than women in their blood. The deep significance of this fact is entirely ignored by modern medicine. Iron and copper levels are sex-linked in exactly the way expected from the gender symbolism of their planets. The level of copper in human blood is critical, being around one part per million by weight, and normally it remains fairly steady around this value.
Copper in women's blood serum has a monthly cycle in tune with their menstrual period, peaking a week or so before the period arrives. This is because their serum copper exists chiefly as the protein, 'ceruloplasmin', whose metabolism is closely linked to the female sex hormone oestrogen. The Pill works by emulating conditions of pregnancy where oestrogen is high, and this has a drastic effect upon serum copper levels. During pregnancy, copper serum in the mother climbs up to double its normal level, reaching 1.9 parts per million. Conversely, iron in foetal blood also increases as the time of birth approaches, so a copper-iron polarity develops between mother and child. Insomnia, depression and changeable moods towards the end of pregnancy have been related to the raised copper levels. A woman taking the Pill has blocked off her monthly rhythm of serum copper, and instead retains a permanently high level corresponding to the ninth month of pregnancy. Evidence suggests that copper has a dynamic role in the reproductive process, rather than just being a by-product of the raised oestrogen.
In the early 1970s it was discovered that coil contraceptives using copper were much more successful than previous coil designs. The 'copper-7' coil became the most popular design and was marketed world-wide, used chiefly by women who have already had one child. Despite intensive research however, no-one had any idea as to the mechanism whereby copper in the coil helped prevent conception. Copper ions have a biological action on the inside of the uterus, preventing implantation of the fertilised ovum. Its modus operandi is thus quite unconnected with that of the Pill, where overall blood serum levels are raised. The sole connection is that in both situations a striking Venus-quality is shown by copper's behavior.
Having compared copper and iron in the blood, let’s compare them in other aspects - as their two planets are nearest to us, one within Earth’s orbit and the other outside it. Pure copper is a metal of reddish-pink hue, and has a warm, beneficial glow which contrasts with the cold glint of steel. With something made out of iron one may feel 'how strong' or 'how useful', whereas with something made out of copper, the first impression is more aesthetic. Whether it is a copper bowl, a trumpet, or a green-domed copper roof, it is the visual appearance rather than the utility of the metal which first strikes one. It is such a soft and pliable metal that it needs to be alloyed with other metals, into brass or bronze, before it can be used for a structural purpose.
In an exhibition of mineral ores those of copper first attract the attention, providing a joy to the eye as do those of no other metal. Look at the delicate green-blue hues of malachite or azurite- how different from the massive, solid forms of the iron ores, pyrites or haematite! The pyrite crystals form perfect cubes, expressing Martial power and strength. A contrast to this is the copper ore malachite, often cut and polished for decoration, to disclose its swirling patterns and sea-green hues. The names of the ores of copper point to gentle Venus qualities: azurite, malachite, turquoise, chalcopyrite and peacock ore.
Gold - Sun
Gold prices tend to rise in times of turbulence and uncertainty. Also, the price of gold has a seasonal trend, peaking in midwinter. Then, when sunlight is weakest, people show a greater desire for gold, the sun-metal. The graph shows the trendline I found over twenty years of daily London gold prices. I couldn’t find any other trends apart from this one. Is that worth trading on? Well, write and say!
Traditionally the noblest of the metals, gold expresses the splendour and radiance of the Sun. As the only metal which never tarnishes, it will resist the fiercest fire. Its sun-like nature is evident, for it needs to glitter in the sun to express itself, and has a unique relation to light and colour. The metal can be beaten out so thinly that it has hardly any solidity left, when it appears as gold by reflected light but green by transmitted light. Colloidal gold solutions, in dilutions of parts per 100 million, produce a wide variety of colours. From metallic gold one can obtain, so to speak, any colour under the sun: In gold we see the brilliance of the sun, but other rich colours are also seen in its colloidal solutions, ranging from greenish-blue, through reddish, violet-blue to pure rose – from the gold of a noonday sun to the radiant colours of sunset .’
The sun manifests the colour of gold at sunrise and at sunset. The latin word for gold, aurum (thus, the chemical symbol Au), derives from the Greek word Aurora - the golden goddess of the dawn. Rudolf Steiner gave ‘AU’ as the Sun-sound, so try intoning it. The word ‘aura’ comes from the same root, indicating the idea of radiance as associated with this metal.
Like sunlight through air, so is gold diffused through Earth's crust: ‘Gold is a remarkable substance. A description of its physical properties can leave one in awe, even disbelief. Gold is present everywhere on the Earth - in the seas, in the highest strata of the atmosphere and in the earth itself on every continent. It exists as the finest dust and dense nuggets. There are however no veins of gold as there are of other metals. The denser deposits are combined with silica, for example, or in iron or sulphur compounds, containing arsenic. Combined with silver, mercury, copper and antimony, however, gold is to be found finely distributed.’ This author described how the gold mines in South Africa descend thousands of metres, to mine gold present in maybe less than one part per hundred thousand of the ore - only to be reburied in bank vaults! The largest deposits of gold are found in Africa. In this continent, whose geography shows so many different sun-influences, and whose music expresses so powerfully the throbbing pulse of the heart, the greatest amounts of the sun-metal have condensed.
The Sun’s position in a birth-horoscope is said to express one's true being. To help get a grip on this, let’s consider why people spend more to have a pen with a gold nib. This isn’t just because it lasts longer than a steel-nib, but because of something not easy to express, that handwriting with a gold-nib pen better expresses one's ‘personality' or inner being than does a steel-nib pen.
Iron - Mars
Red storms rage across Mars. The soil of the ‘red planet’ is high in iron, and its dust, swirling up into the atmosphere, causes giant storms that last for weeks. They blot out all its surface features, even the huge mountains. This can be quite a problem for craft trying to land there. One feels that these storms well express the Mars-quality of anger. Mars has around fifteen percent of iron in its surface soil, thrice its average level here on Earth. There must once have been lots of oxygen around, as all the iron is in the red, highly-oxidised (ferric) form.
Mars has two rocky little moons, and one of them is destined to crash in the future, doomed to disitegrate, being too close to its parent planet. By meditating on these things one can experience the being of Mars. The archetype of Mars is fully expressed both in the red planet in the sky and in the metal iron under the ground. Thus, modern space discoveries have deepened our understanding of the primary Hermetic principle, as quoted above by Paracelsus.
Of the seven metals, iron is the ‘earthy’ one, having a stronger connection with the Earth than do the others – for a start, it’s the only one that aligns with the Earth’s magnetic field, in a compass. It’s present in far larger quantities in the earth’s crust than the other ‘classical’ metals. The others – lead, tin, gold, copper, mercury and silver – total no more than 0.01%, or one part in ten thousand of the Earth’s crust. They are in a sense little more than ‘visitors to the Earth’ (the phrase is Dr Steiner’s), although we use them so much nowadays that we forget their scarcity. Iron makes up about 5% of the crust, being the only one which has built itself solidly into the substance of the earth.
Reddish-looking soil means that iron is present, and, for the same reason, Mars is red. So the symbolism of Iron-Mars is direct and obvious, with nothing subtle about it. Mars has always been associated with blood and war because of this symbolism. But, let’s not forget that that symbolism is also physiological fact: the blood is red because of the iron in it! The main ore of iron is pyrites, ‘fool’s gold.’ Have some of its marvellous cubic-crystal structures on your mantelpiece! The other common ore is haematite, which has a quite different bulbous structure, and a dark reddish hue. ‘Haem’ means blood and ‘pyr’ means fire - blood and fire! These are indeed the Mars-attributes.
Tin - Jupiter
Tin metal seems only able to give us a poor expression of its Jupiter-nature. … the latter is however quite well-expressed by the planet in the sky: Jupiter’s rich, ‘psychedelic’ colouring derived from continuous lightning-flashes in its atmosphere, and it throws huge storms which reverberate around the solar system. Perhaps we should be content with that, and maybe in the future other relevant tin-properties will emerge.
Lead was the first metal to be extracted from ores some 9000 years ago. As the ‘basest’ of the traditional seven metals, lead’s ‘negative-Saturn’ properties are fairly evident. It has been used for bullets and tombs, and especially in England has a long tradition of poisoning the general populace. Wine and cider used to be drunk out of pewter goblets, and pewter then contained lead, and one dreads to think what effect this had. Nowadays lead still remains the one and only pollutant whose toxic levels overlap those found in the general population. For long the government showed a leaden inertia about investigating the problem.
‘Saturnism’ was one of the first industrial diseases to be recognized, so named because its symptoms – headaches, fatigue, irritability and depression – seemed reminiscent of a ‘saturnine’ humour. From brewing cider in pewter vessels, to using lead paint on houses, and lead solder in water supplies, the addition of lead to petrol was just one more link in a long tradition. In the 1970s, scientists finally became able to measure reliably the level of lead in the normal-population bloodstream, at around one or two-tenths of a part per million (That’s D7 in homeopathic terms). The idea that this could be impeding child intelligence and promoting hyperactivity seemed like science fiction.
Lead stores in the bone tissue. If you could see only that part of a person where lead was, you’d see – a skeleton. Saturn-Chronos as ‘old Father Time’ was traditionally a skeletal figure. It takes about thirty years to flush out bone lead, so it’s a fairly permanent affair. However one should not view this with ‘leaden-eyed despair.’ No other metal tends so much to form insoluble compounds. It is a heavy, dark, sluggish metal, and of the seven it is the slowest conductor of electricity and the least lustrous or resonant.
