3. The Attraction and
Repulsion of Opposites
The Sun as a fertilizing entity
We all know that sexual reproduction requires insemination of the
female by the male but, according to Viktor Schauberger, the Earth
works on the same principle. From Nature's point of view, this starts
with the Sun. Throughout nearly all of humanity's time on this planet,
the Earth has been regarded a sacred being, the Great Mother. The Sun
held an equally significant place in our forebears' worldview. Most of
the ancient cultures regarded the Sun as the primary, masculine deity,
fertilizing the Earth in order to create life. The eighteenth century
thinker, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe referred to Earth's creative spirit
as the 'Eternally Female' and the 'All-uplifting' (or levitating).
Viktor Schauberger uses explicit sexual terms to explain this vital
natural process. He talks of the Sun impregnating Mother Earth in
order to create the incalculable number of different life-forms that
inhabit this planet. The Sun behaves very much as a living body. It is
known to pulsate rhythmically, its surface expanding and contracting
3km (1.8 miles) every 160 minutes. Its life-giving energies warm the
atmosphere and penetrate deep into the ground to inseminate the
elements and substances of the Earth (the sleeping princess). The
beneficial UVc rays^1 which the ozone layer allows through, have to
decelerate in order to unite with the receptive and passive female
energies rising inside the Earth; these slower energies have to accel-
erate, for fertilization can take place only if the two resonate with a
sympathetic rate of vibration (see Chapter 4).
All of life, from the gross material to the ethereally subtle, evolves
through the interaction of male and female, positive and negative,
energies. Each polarity has a particular manner of expression, the
downwardly-radiating solar energy meeting the Earth at right angles
to the energies of the Earth ranged in a layer below the surface (see
Fig. 3.1). Their properties and potentialities are opposite, but comple-
mentary, to each other. The manner in which these polarized energies
- THE ATTRACTION AND REPULSION OF OPPOSITES