"Be Humble for you are made of Earth,

be Noble for you are made of Stardust."

Serbian Proverb



Chinese character for earth



Chinese charater for air


Chinese charater for fire

technologies of fire

"At least 72,000 years ago and perhaps much earlier, modern humans had an understanding of how fire and heat could transform the materials around them to suit their needs." - Kyle Brown

"Modern society is based on the technologies of fire.

Fire powers our automobiles and airplanes at supra-biological speeds; fire enables us to smelt metal and etch silicon; fire powers our communication systems and electrical grid; fire allows us to distill or synthesize chemicals that do not exist in nature; fire powers the quarrying of limestone and the crushing of rock to build roads and skyscrapers.



As soon as fire-based technology gains ascendency, such projects as clearcutting become not just technologically feasible but conceivable, as the Epic of Gilgamesh testifies to as far back as the time of ancient Sumer.

Water is the nemesis of control.

Seeking out the tiniest crack, nothing can hold it in.

As waves in the ocean, it destroys any bulwark.

Whereas fire burns clean and purifies what it touches, water makes a mess.

Hence the key to preserving anything - houses, books, food, clothes, metal - is to keep it dry.

Water, with its cycles and flows, its unruliness and its ubiquity on earth, could be called the essence of nature.

To keep everything dry, and therefore outside the cycle of decay, transformation, and renewal, is a concrete expression of our separation from nature.

Our dependence on water - the fact that we are made mostly of water - denies the primary conceit of civilization, that we are separation from nature or even nature's master.

No more nature's master are we, than we are the master of water!" - Charles Eisenstein



Chinese charater for water

"Water is an individual, an animal, and is alive, remove the hydrogen and it is an animal and is alive; the remaining oxygen is also an individual, an animal, and is alive.

Recapitulation: the two individuals combined, constitute a third individual - and yet each continues to be an individual - here was mute Nature explaining the sublime Mystery of the Trinity so luminously that even the commonest understanding could comprehend it, whereas many a trained master of words had labored to do it with speech and failed." - Mark Twain

Mark Twain



chart of periodic elements

iron blood
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