Al-Kindi, Everything Emits Rays

For alchemists, De Radiis Stellarum was a “consultation text of natural magic”. A characteristic that also gave it the aura of a scientific text. In fact, Al-Kindi wrote numerous books of natural philosophy, as the science of the medieval era was called. Of course, for us today it is unusual to find a science book that also talks about enchantments. Unless it is a book of quantum physics, of course.

Today, when we talk about light, we immediately refer to the photon, which we will certainly do later, but here I would instead like to focus on Al-Kindi’s more traditional aspect, namely that movement arises from stellar rays. More specifically, for Al-Kindi, every star emits rays in every direction, In fact, the total movement arises from stellar rays. Everything arises and exists through the rays.

It is recalled that alchemists have no general theory of their subject. In fact, most of them can’t even provide a “scientific” explanation for what they’re doing. They simply copy their master. At most, they refer to the ancient philosophers of nature, such as Al-Kindi. But, to answer your question, I’d like to ask an astronomer what the difference is between a change in state of matter here on Earth and the life of a star in the sidereal universe. I’m a layperson, but I think there might be some similarities.

In fact, this is the foundation of Al-Kindiʼs thought: if the stars are the source, all bodies touched in a certain sense “resonate”. From Al- Kindiʼs De Radiis Stellarum: “The collision of bodies produces sound, which spreads everywhere thanks to the rays… therefore because words are believed by men to contain an effect of motion, taking up this opinion again, we said that sound produced in actuality make rays just like other actual things, and by their rays work in the world of the elements just as other individual things do”.

As for the billiard table, it seems to me that this is also an old concept in today’s physics: don’t they build accelerators to make particles collide?

I think I’ve already said that alchemists are unaware of the forces involved in their work. I understand that for today’s physics this is damned primitive and unscientific, but let’s try to immerse ourselves in Al-Kindi’s philosophical physics, according to which everything creates everything. But let’s go back to the strangeness that a body hit by a star beam resonates like a bell. In fact, this is the foundation of Al-Kindiʼs thought: if the stars are the source, all bodies touched in a certain sense “resonate”. From Al- Kindiʼs De Radiis Stellarum: “The collision of bodies produces sound, which spreads everywhere thanks to the rays… therefore because words are believed by men to contain an effect of motion, taking up this opinion again, we said that sound produced in actuality make rays just like other actual things, and by their rays work in the world of the elements just as other individual things do”. And, please, just take it for granted.

Not only does every body struck by stellar rays in turn emit rays, but it also becomes a “source” of rays. Which is also a source of movement.

Al-Kindi solves the enigma of the diversity of things, and therefore of information, by merging everything into one and thereby varying the contents of all places. In every different place, the content of the rays is different, but it derives from the total harmony of the stars.

Every place in the world contains the rays of all things existing in Act, yet things differ from one another, so the rays differ not in causes but ineffects.

True change and transmission is not in the sequence of links in a chain, but rather in the places of contact between the links or conjunctions. So, every existing form is matter of the next that “passes” in it.

The first Latin translator uses the word exemplum which in Latin also means seed as well as example. When Al-Kindi says that we contain an example of the stars he could also mean what we mean by “seed” today.

In fact, the rays differ from the effects and not from the cause. Everything receives a form, sown in advance through movement (which the Latin translator calls motus). The stellar rays dispense a movement-motus in the material, called the Body of the Son. The cause influences the childʼs body through movement.

Al-Kindi says: “Every existing form is the matter of a thing that closely imitates it, and the form passes into it by the action of rays” that “imprint” the form. This property is more properly attributed by the alchemists to air. When Al-Kindi speaks of the movement of the stellar rays which dominate and of different matters which receive through the movement a different form, we cannot but think back to what he said about sound. 

A modern physicist might read this “shape-imprinting” feature not only as impressions in the air, but also as packets of information that the photon seems to be able to carry. 

Back to sound: “… Therefore, since men believe that words contain an effect of motion, taking up this opinion, we said that the sound actually produced creates rays just like other real things, and with their rays operates in the world of elements just as other individual things do”.

All sounds have an ffect, but unless thee ffect reaches a certain threshold of power, no one takes any notice and uses the effect, and no one gains the benefit of the effect.

Manual operations harmonize the elementary elements with the effect of movement. The writing of characters and figures done manually and with intention and in a ceremonial way has an effect of motion on external things. And this is because every form impressed in matter produces rays that cause motion in all things. And every figure has its own nature different from the others, just as their forms are different. And it causes motion in the bodies placed outside through the rays that it emits.

We have seen how, through manual work, effects of movement are produced on things. Celestial harmony informs the image thus created through the projection of its rays. Therefore, even images, figures drawn manually emit rays into matter.

Death by the hand of man alters the normal course of harmony. Here the responsibility is tremendous and can hardly take into account all the “deviations” of emanated rays.

We have seen that, for Al-Kindi, every star emits rays in every direction, whose diversity, fused into one, varies the contents of all places. In fact, in every different place, the content of the rays is different, which derives from the total harmony of the stars. For Al- Kindi rays are like straight lines, the straighter they are the more powerful they are. The ray that hits the center of the earth is very powerful, gradually weaker depending on the angle of incidence, unless the influence of another star intervenes. Since the stars are not all the same, so the rays coming from each star are different. Each star has its own position in the world machine.

Well, no. We discover that Al-Kindi does not mean the Earthʼs surface but the very abyssal center of the Earthʼs sphere. The sidereal rays penetrate the earthʼs crust and powerfully reach its hidden centre, where they do not remain but rise to the surface.

 A line does not simply join two distant points, but places two points exactly opposite each other. In this way, stellar emissions become straight rays, point by point.

 The surface represents everything that has an extension, with the added property of altering and rippling.

Not only the forms can travel, but the previous form becomes matter for the next. A concept that is a bit difficult to understand if one does not admit that, for Al-Kindi, form and matter are not very distant concepts.

Al-Kindi: “The eye cannot see except along straight lines. Therefore it is necessary that, from all the points which are on the surface of the thing seen, it is possible to draw some straight lines to all the points on the surface of the eye: which is nothing more than to send and receive rays”.

Al-Kindi: “First, after having conceived the image of the thing, you have to imagine the shape of the thing that you wish to impress upon the matter through your work. This may cause a difference in the rays which proceed from any individual onto things near or remote, and, therefore, the projection of the will in human endeavor adds something to the effect.”Al-Kindi tells us that the “gaze” comes not from the will, but from the heart. And we know that in ancient times when one spoke of the heart one meant the seat of “memory” not of the will. Al-Kindiʼs idea that the rays come from the gaze does not seem too bizarre to a modern physicist when investigating photons hitting the eye, as we have already seen in Alchemy and Modern Physics.