The Etheric Formative Forces and the Earth-Grid

The "Red Sea" in the caption above this detail from the Ripley Scroll was a well-known code name for the divine mercurial water and its tincturing power. Here it is depicted as the blood pouring from the heart of the "Serpent of Arabia". It brings happiness to whomsoever finds it, and flows, round as a ball, to every place in the world, Ripley writes.

-from The Hermetic Museum: Alchemy and Mysticism by Alexander Roob (Taschen 1997)

What is expressed by the Tau is a driving force which can only be set in motion by the power of selfless love. It will be possible to use this power to drive machines, which will, however, cease to function if egoistical people make use of them. It is perhaps known to you that Keely invented a motor which would only go if he himself were present. He was not deceiving people about this: for he had in him that driving force originating in the soul, which can set machines in motion. A driving force which can only be moral, that is the idea of the future; a most important force with which culture must be innoculated, if it is not to fall back on itself. The mechanical and moral must interpenetrate each other, because the mechanical is nothing without the moral. Today we stand hard on this frontier. In the future machines will be driven not only be water and steam, but by spiritual force, by spiritual morality. This power is symbolised by the Tau sign and was indeed poetically symbolised by the Holy Grail."

- Rudolf Steiner The Temple Legend