Kabbalah: Golem: Life from Clay

Golem: Life from clay theory

By R. Zucker

Did life actually evolve from earth rather than water? An evolving concept known as Life from Clay Theory is based on the idea that clay, as a substance with it transference properties, provides the necessary factor to spark life from organic matter.

The theory of the golem is based on the concept that life can be embedded into a solid substance, i.e. earth. In golem folklore, the body is formed from the earth.

According to an article in the "New York Times":

Scientists from California claim they support the emerging theory that life on Earth began in clay rather than the sea.

The discovery, announced at a symposium, showed that ordinary clay contains two basic properties essential to life: the capacities to store and transfer energy.

With such energy, coming from radioactive decay and other sources, the early clay could have acted as "chemical factories" for processing inorganic raw materials into the more complex molecules from which the first life arose some 4 billion years ago.

In their analysis of common ceramic clay, the scientists said they found evidence that "mistakes" made normally and repeatedly in the formation of clay crystals presumably create the condition by which the material traps energy and holds it for perhaps thousands of years.

Such defect in the clay microstructure could also be sites for storing information necessary to direct the chemical reactions and organize the eventual proto-organisms.

It would seem that an accumulation of chemical mistakes led to life on Earth.

The clay minerals appear to be able to store and transfer energy through the temporary capture of highly energetic electrons at sites of irregularities in the clay's interior structure. These may also explain the processes of clay catalysis and replication.

Clay has the ability to act as a catalyst in important chemical reactions and could even be capable of such lifelike attributes as self-replication.

Armin Weiss of Univ. of Munich reports observing the reproduction of clay crystal structures from a "parent" clay to several generations of "daughter" clays.

It is evocative of the biblical account in Genesis where it is written: And the Lord Gd formed man of dust and of the ground." In common usage this primordial dust is called clay.

Research was conducted by a team of scientists at the National Areonautics and Space Administration's Ames Research Center in Mountainview, Calif., where studies of the origin of life have been underway for years in part to learn how to search for life in other worlds. The leader was Dr. Lelia Coyne, research associate at Ames and San Jose Sate University.

The "primordial soup" theory by A.I. Oparin in the 1930's set forth that vast stores f compounds that contained carbon and hydrogen and some other chemicals accumulated particularly in the Earth's early waters. Energy from lightning and solar radiation then caused the compounds to evolve spontaneously into living matter."

Source: "New York Times" 4/3/85

The studies continue on how to evoke the spark of life, or energy, into inanimate objects. The golem is probably the only continuously reported experiences on how humans have figured out to put life into clay.

The discussion of "parent" and "daughter" clay is similar to the discussion in "Sefer Yetzirah" about the "mother" and "father" letters.

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