Introducing the Biological Transmutation of Chemical Elements Research of Professor Dr. L.W.J. Holleman

In 1981 Professor L.W.J. Holleman privately circulated the preliminary results of experiments in which the element potassium, in a series of closed cultures of algae, was observed first to disappear, then later to reappear.

This result is one of many which over the past 200 years have indicated that living organisms may be able to transmutate one chemical element into another.

In 1789 Lavoisier presented as a fundamental principle that chemical elements could be neither created, transmuted, nor destroyed. One hundred years later though, with the discovery of radio-activity, it was observed that chemical elements could undergo nuclear transmutations. However, mainstream scientists today consider that this can only occur under exceptional circumstances, and certainly not reversibly under the control of either living organisms, or in any chemical reactions. Therefore, in biology, Lavoisier's Law is still considered to be as true today as it was when it was first proposed. The technical and scientific consequences of Lavoisier being proved wrong are today almost inconceivable.

For Holleman, his inspiration came from the fifth lecture of Rudolf Steiner's Agriculture Course:

There is something you must know in this connection. For the scientists of to-day, they will no longer argue that there is such entire confusion on our part as they would have done a short time ago. Are not they themselves already speaking frankly of a transmutation of the elements? Observation of several elements has tamed the materialistic lion in this respect, if I may say so. Processes, however, that are taking place around us all the time are as yet utterly unknown. If they were known, people would more readily believe such things as I have just explained.

I know quite well, those who have studied academic agriculture from the modern point of view will say: “You have still not told us how to improve the nitrogen-content of the manure.” On the contrary, I have been speaking of it all the time, namely, in speaking of yarrow, camomile and stinging nettle. For there is a hidden alchemy in the organic process. This hidden alchemy really transmutes the potash, for example, into nitrogen, provided only that the potash is working properly in the organic process. Nay more, it even transforms into nitrogen the limestone, the chalky nature, if it is working rightly...

Even externally, in a quantitative chemical analysis as it were, the relationship... might well be revealed. The fact is that under the influence of hydrogen, limestone and potash are constantly being transmuted into something very like nitrogen, and at length into actual nitrogen. And the nitrogen which is formed in this way is of the greatest benefit to plant-growth. We must enable it to be thus engendered by methods such as I have here described.

Holleman was also inspired by the scientific methods of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and the transmutation research of Albrecht Von Herzeele.

Is it possible that living organisms are capable of alchemy? On the balance of current scientific evidence, probably not. No conclusive evidence has yet been published in the scientific literature. However, there is no conclusive experimental evidence to prove that they cannot. Is there a way to come to an understanding of what really goes on inside living organisms?