A Quote by Sam Kean
Medieval alchemists, despite their lust for gold, considered mercury the most potent and poetic substance in the universe. As a child, I would have agreed with them.
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Most people who have encountered mercury have done so after breaking a mercury thermometer. And many of us who saw the liquid balls of mercury scatter across a floor or countertop considered the element the most beautiful on the periodic table.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines crucible as "a place, time, or situation characterized by the confluence of powerful intellectual, social, economic, or political forces; a severe test of patience or belief; a vessel for melting material at high temperatures." A crucible was the vessel in which medieval alchemists attempted to turn base metals into gold. That the alchemists inevitably failed in their audacious attempts doesn't denigrate the power of the crucible as a metaphor for the circumstances that cause an individual to be utterly transformed.
The lust of gold succeeds the rage of conquest; The lust of gold, unfeeling and remorseless! The last corruption of degenerate man.
Despite all the silver of Diana and Mercury, their images will be found on the lake. For the sculptor looking for new clay, he and his people will be flooded with gold.
She should have remembered her past experiences in the relationship wars and not let herself get so excited. Evidently her hormones had overruled her common sense and she had become drunk on ovarian wine, the most potent, sanity- destroying substance in the universe.
The child awakens to a universe. The mind of the child to a world of meaning. Imagination to a world of beauty. Emotions to a world of intimacy. It takes a universe to make a child both in outer form and inner spirit. It takes a universe to educate a child. A universe to fulfill a child.
My treasure chest is filled with gold.
Gold . . . gold . . . gold . . .
Vagabond's gold and drifter's gold . . .
Worthless, priceless, dreamer's gold . . .
Gold of the sunset . . . gold of the dawn . . .Gold of the showertrees on my lawn . . .
Poet's gold and artist's gold . . .
Gold that can not be bought or sold -
Gold.
Perfect alchemists I keep who can transmute substances without end, and thus the corner of my garden is an inexhaustible treasure-chest. Here you can dig, not gold, but the value which gold merely represents; and there is no Signor Blitz about it.
When first presented with the jumble of the periodic table, I scanned for mercury and couldn't find it. It is there - between gold, which is also dense and soft, and thallium, which is also poisonous. But the symbol for mercury, Hg, consists of two letters that don't even appear in its name.
Before they became Americans, most white inhabitants of the 13 colonies considered themselves British. It was predictable, therefore, that they would lust after empire, because this was exactly what their counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic also did.
As for mercury, a child will almost certainly get more mercury exposure from her immediate environment than from vaccination. This is true, too, of the aluminum that is often used as an adjuvant in vaccines to intensify the immune response.
Nor can they understand why a totally useless substance like gold should now, all over the world, be considered far more important than human beings, who gave it such value as it has, purely for their own convenience.
The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.
The most potent muse of all is our own inner child.
One of my favourite things to think about is, if you could be invisible and go back in time, where would you go? I've always said ancient Egypt. I would love to see them building the pyramids, and I've always had a real fascination with medieval time and monarchy in medieval times.
Fears that formaldehyde from vaccines may cause cancer are similar to fears of mercury and aluminum, in that they coalesce around miniscule amounts of the substance in question, amounts considerably smaller than amounts from other common sources of exposure to the same substance.
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