Guenther Wachsmuth

The Etheric Formative Forces in Cosmos, Earth and Man.
- A path of investigation into the world of the living.
Dr. Guenther Wachsmuth.
Anthroposophical Publishing Company, Vol I., 1932. London.
Anthroposophic Press, New York.

German edition: Die Atherischen Bildekrafte in Kosmos, Erde und Mensch. Trans. from 2nd German ed.
"The powers of knowledge for the mechanical are awake in themselves; those for the higher forms of reality must be awakened." Rudolf Steiner, Autobiography.
P. Lenard, the distinguished investigator of the ether, says in "Uber Ather und Materie," Heidelberg, 1911--- "In his conflict with the theory of Einstein, which would deprive the ether of every mechanical property..." p. 13
Chap. 1. Fundamentals of a new theory of motion.
lenard rejects the theory of "ether continuous through spce and moved as a continuum" and would substitute "ether moved not as a continuum in space," yet immobility is just the one mechanical characteristic which H.A. Lorentz would still attribute to ether; whereas to Einstein, "the whole change in the conception of ether the theory of relativity brought about, consisted in taking away its last mechanical quality, namely, its immobility."
From: Sidelights on Ether and Relativity, London, 1922; p. 11.
p. 36: etheric formative forces are not merely to be understood mechanically, as with lenard, or in the negation of all mechanical characteristics, as with Einstein -- but as active supersensible principles that come to living expression in the phenomenal world and call forth phenomena of motion which may be partially and only up to a certain point understood mechanically. Linked with spiritual/qualitative characteristics.
Chap. II. The etheric formative forces.
p. 39: "...there are altogether seven etheric primal forces, formative forces, active in the cosmos; of these, however, only four reveal themselves in the space-and-time processes of our present phenomenal world."
Warmth ether
Light ether
Chemical ether (sound ether)
Life ether
-distinguished from each other in the wave lengths they call forth in the world of substance. But this is only an elementary and quantitative observation. In actuality they proceed out of each other in dynamic metamorphosis."
[Note: the interesting contrast with chain-reaction. See entry on Radium.]
Warmth ether------------light ether----------chemical ether------life ether.
p. 39: "The mutual relation between the etheric forces is such that the later ether, more highly evolved, always contains in itself the attributes of the earlier, yet always develops as a new entity, an activity clearly distinguishable from that of the other."
EXPANSIVE: warmth/light/light
CONTRACTIVE: chemical/life
This polarity is an ultimate elemental principle lying at the basis of all natural phenomena. "Heat" processes are a transition stage from the purely etheric to the "substantial."
WARMTH ETHER TENDS TOWARD THE SPHERICAL FORM.
LIGHT ETHER TENDS TO THE TRIANGULAR FORM. Light = a transverse wave motion.
Lenard: "... in a beam of light and perpendicular to its direction - never merely backward and forward displacements in the same direction with the beam, as is the case with sound waves --- there are present periodically shifting states."
Wachsmuth: "We may say, then, than an oscillation, a form which is caused by light ether in a substance-medium, takes the shape of a triangle."
Chemical ether/sound ether:
p. 42: "... its forces transmit to us the tones perceptible to the senses... For it is tone which causes the uniting together, the orders and forms, of substance and bodies of substance."
CHEMICAL ETHER has a "tone-and-sound nature of which sensible sound, or tone heard by the physical ear, is only an outward expression: that is, an expression which has passed through air as medium." Its characteristic form: the half-moon.
LIFE ETHER: phylogenetically the most highly evolved, rayed out to us from the sun and modified in its action by the earth's atmosphere. Characteristic form: square.
Four States of Aggregation:
heat..........warmth ether
gaseous...............light ether
fluid..............chemical ether
solid................life ether
p. 78: The nature of gravitation and terrestrial magnetism
gravitation: "nothing other than the effect of the suctional activity of life ether centralized in the sold earth"
magnetism and gravitation are forms of expression of life-ether
p. 97: etheric structure of Saturn is the reverse of the earth
p. 98: "The etheric structure of the earth is a complete reversal, a turning upside down, of the etheric structure of Saturn. That which is 'without' for the heavenly body oldest in its nature is for the earth 'within,' and that which is 'within' for Saturn is 'without' for the Earth."
And: "But the inversion which puts the inside out and the outside in is a fundamental law of all evolution, which we can discover again and again at decisive evolutionary turning points..."
Plassmann, Himmelskunde: "The ring is distinctly brighter than the planet. It shines with a golden yellow color while Saturn is leaden gray." And: "diminution of the brightness of the ring is from without inward."
p. 99: "The formative force which was first in phylogenetic evolution, the warmth ether, forms the body of Saturn, while the genetically more highly evolved formative forces, light ether, chemical ether, and life ether, are radiated down upon the planet from its environment, the ring."
Ibid: "In the case of the earth, the formative force which is genetically most highly evolved, life ether, forms in absolute contrast to this, the inner part of the planet; while the least evolved, the warmth ether, forms the outer part, and enters the inner part of the earth in form modified by the life ether. The sun, between Saturn and the earth, is filled exclusively by the formative force genetically the most highly evolved, life ether."
p. 130: shining without burning - discovery of phosphorus by von Brandt (1669) - a cool light
Radioactivity
p. 149: the most intensely dissolving substances are similar in nature to lead - products of the radioactive dissolution series are isotopes of lead
Oldest state of the cosmic system -- the "Saturn state"
"Modern research has now established quite indisputably and quantitatively this relation between lead and the most complicated element of substance, most subject to dissolution."