A CZOCHRALSKI ANALOGY
"And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself."
John 12:32
On the rare occasion of ecstasy that my formal education connects profoundly to my informal and personal reading, I am reminded of my goal of uniting these two parts of my life into a synthetic unity (synthetic here does not mean “artificial”). And here, in the midst of a course I found extremely hard to get into, is an apt symbol for salvation if there ever was one.
The Czochralski (pronounced chokh-RAHL-skee) method is a method for growing single crystals from a melt. Now, the important elements in this setup are as follows (and this is important):
The heated Crucible that contains the melted material to be crystalized.
A “seed” crystal, to trigger the crystallization of the melt.
A pull rod.
Before your sleep off, the reason I am highlighting this is because together these elements form an image that is strangely familiar. Concerning the seed crystal:
…Noah's Ark of the great flood. This is itself another representation of the supreme centre, especially in the sense of preserving the tradition in a sort of veiled state
This state is comparable to the one represented by the 'Egg of the World', for the beginning of a cycle, containing in seed form all the possibilities which will develop during the cycle; in a similar way the Ark contains all the elements destined for the restoration of the world, which are thus the seeds of its future state. [1]
The Czochralski method works as follows:
… the charge material is contained in a crucible which is heated to a temperature above the melting point of the charge. A pull rod with a chuck containing a seed crystal at its lower end is positioned above the crucible. The seed crystal is dipped into the melt and the melt temperature is adjusted until a meniscus can be supported by the seed crystal. The pull rod is then slowly rotated and lifted and by carefully adjusting the power supplied to the melt, a crystal of the desired diameter can be grown. [2]
Basically, the seed is dipped into the molten “sea” and the crystal grows around it. Most of the molten charge can be made into a whole single crystal this way, of sometimes very large sizes. In words more accommodating to the symbol, the seed contains – virtually, in its structure and form – all the possibilities of the large crystal to be created. Symbolically, the seed crystal is the “Ark”, while the molten charge is the “Waters”. Another related symbol apt for this is the seed representing “Land” in opposition to the molten “Sea”. What these symbols represent is the same: The “seed” is a “Centre” (Land, Ark, Temple, Heart, Heaven, form, actuality, etc.), containing everything needed for the creation of the larger single crystal, the “Circle” (Holy Land, New World, Order, Laws, Ordered Cosmos, Stability etc.) out of an unstructured “liquid”, for the circle: an undefined Surface (Dark Waters, Potentiality, “The earth was formless and void”).
In all these words is a symbol apt for both creation and Salvation. In the Czochralksi method, solid crystal “land” rises from a “molten sea”, just as land rises from sea in Genesis. Before this happens however, we see a similar occurrence of the same reality in another symbol: The spirit (seed crystal) hovers over the waters (molten charge) and God says “let there be light”, and there was light. The connection between this “creation”, and Christ’s salvation is brought to light (pun intended) when Matthew quotes Isaiah: The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, And upon those who sat in the region and shadow of death Light has dawned.
The Spirit of light came as seed in order to turn “disordered darkness” into “ordered light”. Keep in mind that a crystal is symbolically “solid light”, and this confirms even more the analogy.
This limited case of crystal formation shows a pattern that is everywhere: how a “seed spark” makes a bigger “spark” (fire), how a small number of disintegrating atoms cause a rapid chain reaction of nuclear disintegration (atomic bombs), or closer to human realities, how one idea can shape a whole people in its image, lead to the formation of institutions – which can be called “social crystals” – and unite them in a common cause and unity greater than the constituent parts of its manifestation. Christ “draws all people to himself”, but just as the seed crystal is not the only instantiation of that crystalline pattern in matter, and can be repeated in various orientations and sizes, so to reduce Christ’s work to the historical is to betray and misunderstand the very salvation the history reveals.
This, as you might have guessed, is the perennialist thesis. The lamb is “slain before the foundation of the world”, and this eternal salvation has appeared throughout history, “crystallizing” into institutions and practices with the inevitable defects and advantages all “crystallization” – whether physical or metaphorical – have to some degree. These religions grow, stop growing, then begin to “wear and tear”, according to the way of manifested things. All things that have a beginning must have an end. There may be renewals, but there must be endings. Christianity, and many other religions, are in such a phase. There may be renewal, but there is always an end, only this time this end coincides with the end of history as we know it. That’s beside the point however, as the main thing is that this analogy shows us what our salvation is like. We are to become crystalline “liquid light” instantiating the divine humanity of Christ, to be raised with him above the disorder of a world mired in sin and death, beyond even the imperfect institutions, into the eternal reality our Lord instantiated in his person. This is salvation, from physical crystal to ideal crystal to the mind beyond crystals, the unspeakable reality that even heaven disappears into.
[1] Guenon R 2020 Lord of the World (Coombe Springs Press Ltd)
[2] Prameela K I S 2011 Studies on Cadmium Based Metal Organic Crystals (Manonmaniam Sundaranar University)
[3] Abrosimov N V., Kurlov V N and Rossolenko S N 2003 Automated control of czochralski and shaped crystal growth processes using weighing techniques Prog. Cryst. Growth Charact. Mater. 46 1–57