Ice the Great Magician

Dear Readers,

As an addendum to the recent blog entry on water and karma I have the following:

There was a time when Helena Blavatsky was shunned by some in the Theosophical Society. She still had little study meetings in London with stalwart fans. These are published as Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge. Here is an excerpt of relevance to our subject:

From H.P.Blavatsky, Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge:

Q. When Tyndall* took a large block of ice and threw a powerful ray upon it and thence on to a screen, there were to be seen the forms of ferns and plants in it. What is the reason for this?
*(Professor John Tyndall b. 1820)

A. .......Occultism would explain it by saying either that the ray helped to show the astral shapes which were preparing to form future ferns and plants, or that the ice had preserved the reflection of actual ferns and plants that had been reflected in it. Ice is a great magician, whose occult properties are as little known as those of Ether. .....This is well known to the learned Yogis who dwell on the eternal ice of Bodrinath and the Himalayas.

 At any rate, ice has certainly the property of retaining images of things impressed on its surface under certain conditions of light, images which it preserves until it is melted. .... in decomposing the ice with heat you deal with the forces and the that were impressed on it, then you find that it throws off these images and the forms appear. It is but one link leading to another link.

Rudolf Steiner also noted this marvel:

When Steiner noted that the icy crystals that form in winter on the panes of windows are different on a flower shop from those appearing on the windows of a butcher shop, he suggested to Pfeiffer and to another of his early followers, Lily Kolisko, that they experiment in the lab with the formation of crystals as a means of demonstrating what he called the "formative forces" in nature.

- Secrets of the Soil, Tompkins and Bird, 1989

In recent years the late Masuro Emoto has been known for his work in demonstrating the responsive nature of water to human thoughts and emotions.