electrostatic charge and crystals
Introduction
Quartz crystals were used by retired IBM scientist, Marcel Vogel, in experimental work that he conducted in his lab in San Jose, California, between the years of 1984 and 1991. This work included the use of these crystals in the structuring of water, the treatment of wine and fruit juices for enhanced flavor, and in treating chronic disease and the after effects of trauma and serious injuries. Almost all of the experimental work with quartz crystals involved living things and the molecules that make up their structures.
Various scientific measurements were made of the treated water, including spectrophotometry, surface tension, pH, and conductivity (resistivity). Many of these were inconclusive, however, the measure of the absorption of ultraviolet energy by the treated water (versus the untreated) consistently showed increases of from 1% to 3%. The repeatability of this result led to the acceptance of increased UV absorption as a standard for gauging the degree of structuring of the water.
The most dramatic results from the use of quartz crystals were those that were subjective in nature. Many times I observed the astonished looks of professional wine tasters who had sampled and compared wine that had been put through the Vogel structuring device, versus the same wine that had not been put through the device. In almost every experiment, the structured wine had a better taste than the unstructured wine. The experiments with wine led to the building of large structuring units that were commercially used to treat over 5,000 bottles of wine by the Sycamore Creek Winery in Gilroy, Cal.
In the several years of experimental work in the lab, no theory was ever developed that would account for the results of the quartz crystal experiments, at least in terms of the laws of classical physics. However, it seems that now a plausible theory can be proposed.
Subtle Energy Properties of Crystals
How does the quartz crystal affect water and other biological molecules? Since ancient times, there has been an awareness that there is some type of energy or energy field that is uniquely associated with living things. The Chinese called these energies “Chi.” In Western societies, the broader and more esoteric concept of the “etheric” has been proposed. In recent times, in parallel with the development of quantum theory, the term “subtle energies” has been proposed. The latter seems to be the most accurate, because the changes induced by a quartz crystal have very little energy associated with them, and in this sense can be called subtle.
There is at least one known physical phenomenon that occurs with the use of the quartz crystal. That is the electric field. Marcel “charged” his crystals with deep, pulsed breaths before using them. One of the effects of deep breathing is that the voltage gradient around the body increases, often dramatically, something that is easily measured with a sensitive volt meter. It was Marcel’s contention that breath charged the crystal with energy and information, but that it was the latter that was the most important, as it was what produced the changes observed and measured in his experiments.
Crystals cannot be charged with electrons, because the valence shells of the atoms that compose them are filled. There is, in short, no room for additional electrons inside a crystal. However, in piezoelectric crystals, such as quartz, the atoms are held in positions that produce electric fields. These internal fields can be charged by external electric fields, in which case strong forces are exerted on the crystal’s lattice structure. If the fields are pulsed with a frequency that is resonant to the crystal’s size, they will vibrate and produce sound waves. The properties of piezoelectric vibrations are at least one of the energetic components of subtle energies.
More important than energy, however, is the crystal’s ability to store information. While the concept of charging a crystal with electric field energy is known to modern physics, the theory of the storage of biologically-related information inside its lattice structure is beyond any of the existing sciences. Current thinking limits the storage of information to materials that are either magnetically or electrically sensitive, as in the integrated circuits that are used in computers. In addition, this type of information must be converted into a binary signal pattern so that it can be carried by electrons through the computer’s circuits. Although these may be components of subtle energy fields, it is unlikely that they describe them in their entirety.
Marcel’s theory as to how crystals were able to affect living things involved the concept of coherence. The crystal’s lattice structure, he said, imposed coherence on the energy and information that it contained. Coherence was also a feature of the orderly arrangement of molecules in cells, and it was this mutual compatibility that allowed for the transfer of information between them and the crystal. Coherence, however ill-defined, is another property of the subtle energy in crystals.
The principal reference material for this paper were articles written by Marcel Vogel, and published in the Psychic Research Newsletter by Psychic Research, Inc., San Jose, CA.
References:
- “The Finishing of Wine with Crystal Technology,” vol. 5, No. 1, 1988.
- “Information Transfer,” vol. 6, No. 1, 1989.
- “Records are Written in Bone,” vol. 6, No. 3, 1989.
- “Records are Written in Tissue,” vol. 6, No. 4, 1989.
- “Experiments Done in Essence Chemistry,” vol. 7, No. 4,1990.