Pine Pollen – The pollen that connects you with the cosmos?
When you look at pine or Scots pine pollen, the first thing that strikes you is its astonishing resemblance to elemental sulfur powder. Is that a coincidence? – I don’t think so. Sulfur is highly flammable, which is why it is also used to make gunpowder. Elemental sulfur is particularly common in volcanic regions. What is a volcano? It is liquid, extremely lively Earth.
For us, the Earth is generally solid. Just as our ideas, concepts, feelings, and thoughts are usually experienced as “solid.” The most solid thing about us is our sense of self. In medieval alchemy, this was referred to as the “salt principle.” Salt as a principle—not table salt—is what allows us to become solid, rigid, and take on form.
In plants, the “salt principle” can best be studied in root formation. This is where the plant connects with the solid Earth. There is nothing wrong with that, as long as the “salt principle”—that is, the principle that creates form and embodiment—remains in living exchange with its opposite pole, the “sulfur principle.”
We observe the sulfur principle, combustion, in plants as the process of flowering. When a plant flowers, it takes a full risk: it opens itself to the cosmos. During the brief window of pollination and fertilization, “the new” can enter the world. If the plant did not flower, it could reproduce only as a kind of clone, purely vegetatively; nothing new would ever happen.
Only generative reproduction through sexual propagation ensures that transformation and development can occur. Where do we find this principle at work in humans? – For the alchemists, “sulfur” was the spirit: the fiery, burning, ever-changing spirit as the energetic opposite of the crystalline, solid form pole of salt. The mediating principle was called “mercury” by the alchemists.
The “sulfur principle” works in humans wherever they “burn,” wherever they are “fire and flame,” wherever energy is converted. We do not find the spirit in the formed brain, which, with its billions of neurons, is practically the embodiment of solidity, insofar as it conjures up the “solid” reality of the senses for us. No, the spirit is “in action.” “Sulfur” works in humans wherever they work, wherever they burn oxygen and glucose…
Is this why Pine Pollen could influence the life expectancy of mitochondria, as suggested by the study “Effect of pine pollen on kidney mitochondria DNA deletion mutation in senile mice“ in senile mice https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22994004/? Quote:
„Conclusion: Pine pollen can inhibit deletion mutation of mtDNA in senile mice, suggesting that pine pollen can reduce oxidative damage of mtDNA and protect mtDNA. Accordingly, it provides a possible mechanism of anti-aging effect of pine pollen at the molecular level.“
“Conclusion: Pine pollen can inhibit deletion mutations in mtDNA in senile mice, suggesting that pine pollen may reduce oxidative damage to mtDNA and protect mtDNA. Accordingly, this provides a possible mechanism for the anti-aging effect of pine pollen at the molecular level.”
Whether any of this can be extrapolated to humans remains an open question—mice are famously not small furry people.
More about Pine Pollen in our comprehensive overview, and more details about the mitochondrial study in Pine Pollen, Mitochondria, and Midichlorians.