Mars-Saturn Conjunction Experiments with Kolisko's Filter-Paper Method, 1949 to 1976

Nick Kollerstrom's web page pairs iron with Mars and lead with Saturn, the same correspondence that runs through the book discussed in Metal Power: The Soul Life of the Planets. It describes how a filter-paper technique devised by Kolisko was used to ask whether those two metals behave differently in solution when Mars and Saturn meet in the sky. The page covers several runs. Its account of Theodor Schwenk's 1949 series is second-hand: Kollerstrom describes photographs of that experiment as they were reproduced in Wilhelm Pelikan's book The Secrets of Metals. His accounts of his own 1970 attempt and of the month-long 1976 series by the chemist Michael Drummond are first-hand. He says he took part in the Drummond work and later analysed its filter papers chemically.

The method in brief

Metal-salt solutions are allowed to rise up filter paper standing in a small dish. As they climb they react, and the pattern of precipitate left on the paper is judged by eye for shape, colour and darkness. The page calls these papers steigbilds. For Schwenk's runs it gives 1% solutions of lead nitrate, iron sulphate and silver nitrate. Kollerstrom says the Mars-Saturn pairing has been tested more often than other pairings because iron and lead work well in Kolisko's arrangement. The 1970s British work used Agnes Fyfe's modified version of the method, with small dishes made by the Lukas Klinik in Arlesheim, Basel.

Earlier published work he lists includes Kolisko's Saturn und Blei (1952), Dr Karl Voss in Neue Aspekte (1964), and Rudolf Hauschka (1973) in Pelikan's The Secrets of Metals. Drummond published his series in the UK's Astrological Journal in 1977 as "Chemical Effects of a Mars-Saturn Conjunction".

What each run reportedly showed

Schwenk, November 1949. Working in the research laboratories of the Weleda company, Schwenk followed the conjunction of 30 November 1949, preparing papers at 4 p.m. each day. In Kollerstrom's reading of the photographs, the first paper looked normal. On the 29th the forms began to fade and a heavy darkness appeared. On the day of the conjunction and the day after, only small forms showed against the dark background. By 6 December the forms were normal again. Pelikan's description, quoted on the page, is that the "broad, heavy 'lead formations' become pointed and narrow and are reduced in number". Kollerstrom notes that the darkening comes from silver precipitating, even though it looks as if lead were responsible.

Kollerstrom, 15 March 1970. He calls this one of his first attempts. The surviving photographs are badly faded. According to him they show forms fading during the conjunction and reddish colours at midnight, with parallel papers run at 12.50, 13.38 and 18.30.

Drummond, May to June 1976. This is the series Kollerstrom presents as decisive: "If anyone wants concrete, conclusive proof, here it is." Drummond ran the experiment daily from 5 May to 5 June, with three filter papers set up each day at about 7 p.m. Reaction time and the amount of form on each paper were plotted as graphs. The conjunction fell at 3.46 p.m. on 12 May. The account reports that the forms were swamped on that day and darkened gradually up to 19 May, and that strong forms suddenly returned on 20 May. Kollerstrom reads the first graph as showing the conjunction's orb, or zone of influence, reaching about one degree before the exact conjunction and four or five degrees after it. A control series using only silver and iron showed no change, which he takes to mean that lead was needed to respond to a Saturn event.

Drummond's later aspects, 1976. Drummond also followed a Mars-Saturn square (1 November 1976), a trine and a sextile. Kollerstrom reports purplish colours and darkness without form, growing fainter as the aspect weakened, with the sextile giving the faintest result. He attributes the purple and red colours to metallic silver alone.

The lead analysis

The page's most concrete chemical claim concerns lead. When the solutions are mixed, Kollerstrom writes, normally about 99% of the lead should drop out in the dish as insoluble lead sulphate instead of climbing the paper. After Drummond had finished, Kollerstrom cut a small sliver from each paper and measured its metal content by atomic absorption spectrophotometry. He did this in the combustion-research laboratory of Dr Benbow at City University. Benbow had been asked by the BBC Horizon team to look into the Astrological Association's project. Kollerstrom reports a large excess of lead in the papers from the conjunction. He says the test tubes were randomised, and that a person he identifies only as R.M., then at the Government Chemist, helped with the protocol. For the square in November, he reports a much smaller share of unreacted lead climbing the paper, which he says fits a square being a weaker event than a conjunction.

He sums up his approach as having three parts: recording reaction time, rating how much form appeared, and measuring the metal in the papers afterwards. He judged that together these showed the metal-planet correspondence at work.

What the account does and does not establish

As a historical record the page is useful: it names people, places, dates and solutions, and the lead measurement is the only step described as an instrument reading of the papers' metal content. The evidence it offers for the claimed effect, however, leaves several gaps:

• Judgement by eye without blinding. Form, darkness and colour were scored by eye. Nothing indicates that whoever made or scored the papers was unaware of the dates. The randomised tubes applied only to the later lead analysis.
• No statistics. The graphs are described, but no measurement of day-to-day variation, error estimate or significance test is reported. That makes it impossible to tell whether the swings around 12 May are larger than ordinary noise.
• A single control. The only control mentioned leaves lead out altogether. No series kept lead in while varying anything else, and the page says nothing about temperature or humidity. Reagent condition is not tracked either, although Kollerstrom notes that the ferrous sulphate had to be kept frozen in ampoules because it deteriorated, turning brown.
• No predictions fixed in advance. The account does not describe any expectation being set down before the runs, such as how large the orb should be or how much weaker a square should prove. The orb is given as read from the graphs, and the smaller square effect is presented as what one would expect.
• Loose wording. The page describes the daily setup both as three sets and as one set of three papers. These most likely describe the same arrangement, but the wording is imprecise.

No independent replication is described. The page only labels a 2002 run by Guy Desbiolles, with no accompanying text.

Connections in this dossier

The experimenter in the 1949 run is the same Theodor Schwenk whose study of water forms is discussed in Sensitive Chaos: The Creation of Flowing Forms in Water and Air. The iron-Mars and lead-Saturn pairings that these runs set out to test belong to the framework of Alison Davidson's book, covered in Metal Power: The Soul Life of the Planets, where Pelikan appears as the authority on gold's cosmic properties. Guenther Wachsmuth's anthroposophical account of etheric formative forces, which treats Saturn as a warmth-ether body, is covered in Etheric Formative Forces in Cosmos, Earth and Man.