phosphorus we have been led to a triad of functions each of which
expresses a specific interplay of levity and gravity. That we encounter
three such functions is not accidental or arbitrary. Rather is it based
on the fact that the interaction of forces emanating from a polarity of
the first order, produces a polarity of the second order, whose poles
establish between them a sphere of balance.

Through our study of levity and gravity in the matter-processes of the
earth, a perspective thus opens up into a structural principle of
nature which is actually not new to us. We encountered it at the very
beginning of this book when we discussed the threefold psycho-physical
order of man's being.

In the days of an older intuitive nature-wisdom man knew of a basic
triad of functions as well as he knew of the four elementary qualities.
We hear a last echo of this in the Middle Ages, when people striving
for a deeper understanding of nature spoke of the trinity of Salt,
Mercury and Sulphur. What the true alchemists, as these seekers of
knowledge called themselves, meant by this was precisely the same as
the conception we have here reached through our own way of studying
matter ('Salt' standing for 'functional phosphorus', 'Mercury' for
'functional carbon'). Only the alchemist's way was a different one.

This is not the place to enter into a full examination of the meaning
and value of alchemy in its original legitimate sense (which must not
be confused with activities that later on paraded under the same name).
Only this we will say - that genuine alchemy owes its origin to an
impulse which, at a time when the onlooker-consciousness first arose,
led to the foundation of a school for the development of an intuitive
relationship of the soul with the world of the senses. This was to