Crystal Clear Persuasion

Amazing power, sparkling crystals heal

Infirm body, crumpled soul softly lift,

Draws attention with its mass appeal.

In meditation room quartz crystals exude gift

Of loving, crystalline energy programmed

To farthest reach within meditation group,

Positive field of metaphysic power dammed,

Yet flows through each in bonding loop.

Great film star (name recognition’d win),

Positions quartz crystals at corners of bath,

Wondrous benefits receives through skin,

As radiance courses intravenous path.

Others, feeling flu’s contagious effects,

Fondle quartz crystal, visualize light,

Yellow, radiating vivid crystalline dissects,

Plop into water jug, tomorrow’s delight:

Cup at two-hour intervals, amazing relief.

So now consider worth of doing the same,

Without the crystals or trappings of belief.

Irrigation is flu’s unique remedy of fame!

And a bath’s purpose remains the same:

Remove dirt, spirit and purpose freshen —

  In no way is enhanced by crystalline frame.

Crystal proximity during meditation session,

Adds zero to positives gained from rap.

The subject could as well be homeopathy,

Angels, quantum healing, dowsing a map,

Channeling, “star signs” or blind telepathy,

Limits to human gullibility not yet plumbed,

We’re eager victims of charlatan or quack,

Who grow rich and leave our minds numbed,

Prostitute language as science they attack.

Crystal gazing, birthstones, ley lines, the lot —

Isn’t it all just harmless, truly innocent fun?

If they want to believe in nonsense, why not?

It’s just sad what they miss. Nobility undone.

As Einstein says, there’s so much true wonder,

Universe is mysterious enough, needs no assist

From psychics, warlocks or shaman thunder —

Soul-sapping, or at worst, dangerous to enlist.

Understood in a proper way, the real world

Is a thing of beauty, of deeply keen interest,

Worth honest effort to see mysteries unfurled,

Science urges thoughtful probative quest.

Look no farther than crystals themselves!

Patterns of identical carbon atoms repeat

In diamond, like toy soldiers on shelves,

But no alignment can so precisely treat.

More than all who ever lived or ever will,

Atomic soldiers in a diamond are arrayed,

Imagine shrinking, to unitary position fill,

Single uniform soldier in gigantic parade.

But a different formation, three dimensions,

Perhaps enormous fish school is better image.

Each fish one carbon atom, hovering in tension,

Holding angle, distance with invisible gauge

That scientists understand. As a fish school,

To scale, would fill Pacific Ocean sized space,

Average diamond, sight along any row in pool,

Hundreds of millions of soldier/fish to face.

Carbon takes other crystalline lattice form,

Soldiers, alternative drill orders inspire.

Graphite (pencil ‘lead’) has strange norm,

Sheets of hexagons, like chicken wire,

Loosely bonded to those above and below,

But with impurities present can’t get a grip.

Against each other, crystals slide to and fro,

As lubrication it easily allows objects to slip.

Of course, idea of diamond lubricant is trite,

To the toughest materials is quite abrasive,

Atoms are identical to those of graphite,

But for grinding away, far more persuasive.

If you could easily program atoms in graphite

Drill rules of diamond crystals to possess,

Great wealth on you would squarely alight,

Profound wisdom you could loudly profess,

For colossal pressures, high temps required,

Same conditions the deep churning earth

Assembles when natural diamonds are fired,

Into atomic structure that bestows their worth.

Hexagonal pattern in flat sheets graphite makes,

For each twenty, intersperse twelve pentagons

And a buckling curve the sheet fairly takes,

To form complete spheres of icosahedrons —

The pattern of sewing seams on a football,

Buckminsterfullerene shapes, or buckyballs,

Into which carbon atoms might spontaneously fall,

Brought Nobel Prize to Kroto of Sussex U’s halls,

Honor to Buckminster Fuller, American architect.

Like tiny ball bearings, Buckyballs lubricate,

But are only special case of ‘fullerenes’ effect.

Can combine into larger crystals that escalate

Into Aladdin’s cave of crystalline fascination,

Adding more gem sparkle to nature’s treasure,

Another aspect of carbon’s unique assignation

As the fundamental element of life’s measure.

Carbon’s great talent for joining atomic duplicates

Not shared by all other crystal forming atoms.

In some crystals are elements of various weights,

Alternating in elegant patterns their symptoms.

Quartz crystals have atoms of oxygen and silicon,

While electrically charged sodium and chlorine,

Precipitate common salt’s crystalline replication.

Break lines betray underlying regiment screen,

Salt is square, diamond has diamond lines,

Crystals ‘self-assemble’ under local mappings.

Component atoms float free in liquid confines,

Spontaneously plug into surface gappings

For an exact fit. So a crystal may precipitate

From tiny ‘seed’ — perhaps an impure miniscule,

Like sand in an oyster pearl can irritate,

And start process of accruing the molecule.

There’s no grand design of buckyballs, it’s true ,

Of quartz crystals, diamonds or other things.

Self-assembly exists in living structure, too,

It’s the inherent rule local environment brings.

Think of DNA, the genetic molecule of life.

One long, crystal spiral of protein beads,

From available materials pool, variety rife,

Double helix in self-assembly, feeds.

Scientists watch as a virus self-assembles

Like an elaborate crystal-cluster complex.

T4 virus infects bacteria, its head resembles

Very closely a single crystal simplex.

Look at any museum mineral collection.

Check New Age shops, crystals on display,

Mumbo-jumbo and con-trickery section.

You’ll get no response as you overtly pray

Or ‘program’ them for selfless meditation.

Or with warm, loving thoughts you caress,

Won’t cure a thing, have no ‘dedication’

To ‘inner peace’, no ‘psychic energy’ possess.

But many have great beauty, one can enhance

By understanding that crystalline machination,

Facet angles, rainbow colors flash dance,

Have glorious precise scientific explanation

In the atomic lattice-work pattern inherent.

Crystals don’t vibrate energy, loving, mystical,

But even more interesting and coherent,

Some have electric charge that’s physical,

And changes when stressed crystal deforms.

Piezo-electric phonograph crystal pick up

Detects change produced in electric norms

By record groove’s ‘programmed hiccups’.

Or in some microphones sound waves in the air

Deform crystal, cause reverse piezo-electric effect

So when a crystal of appropriate type is there

It converts perturbations, modulations we detect.

If held in an electric field sufficiently well laced,

The crystal deforms itself with such regularity

That as pendulum or balance wheel it’s paced

To drive quartz watch nearly without parity.

We’ve seen what some crystals are good for,

So we’ll look again at diamond’s conformity

Through the military drill formation metaphor,

Soldiers arrayed in three-dimension uniformity.

Their formation spacing interval, without fail,

We would think of as perhaps a meter or more,

But interstitial gap in crystal atoms, to scale,

A kilometer above, below, aft and fore.

So crystal’s interior is mostly empty space.

Neutrinos are smaller than electron particle,

They pass through earth, out its other face,

Go through us each second without a tickle.

So why don’t we see solid things as hollow?

How can diamond be hard but such a void?

Answer found if our evolution we follow.

Sense organs of us and cousins anthropoid

Were shaped by Darwinian natural selection

Over countless generations, us to endow

Useful world image, a survival collection

Of faculties to help us with here and now.

What sense organs do is assist our brain,

Construct a useful model, a virtual reality,

Simulation of real world to keep us sane,

We don’t go through rocks with impunity.

In the same way we find much of the universe

As science discovers it, difficult to understand.

Einstein’s relativity, quantum concepts we nurse,

Black holes, big bang, observe cosmos expand,

Geological time’s glacial inching creep —

These concepts are very hard to embrace.

No wonder it leaves some a quivering heap,

But science explains why it’s hard to face:

We’re jumped-up apes with brains designed

To survive in stone-age African savannah.

May not fare well in today’s world with mind

Still tuned to scrounge daily for manna.

So, crystals, you see, from a scientific approach,

Are far more illuminating, uplifting, and strange

Than New Age gurus or preachers broach

 With wildest dreams or imagination range.

And, no matter what their message may be,

Or how blinded, their following looks inward,

Their dreams and visions you can plainly see

Are quite uninspiring — by scientific standard!

The title of Mr. Dawkins’ article is Crystalline Truth and Crystal Balls.