Something that we all should be familiar with, red liquid. Our veins are filled with it, and it circulates throughout our system, dealing with pressure, cleaning, carrying instructions and a range of other functions to maximise our ability to not just live or survive, but to thrive. But there is another red liquid that seems to be mentioned now and again, and is they say completely mythical. I just presumed it was because of thermometers. That little blob of red mercury that sits there, being the gauge for you. Expanding as the temperature rises, increasing its height to reach its marker, and contracting again as it gets colder. But it turns out that is just dye added to the mixture to make it appear red, so it is possible that there is something you can mix with mercury to create that legendary red mercury, I wonder.
I have already done a couple of articles along the lines of the colour red being fairly important in certain areas, Seeing Red and A Trail of Blood. But the idea that there is something quite extraordinary yet natural, is an intriguing idea.
Teeth Mercury – we all know they put mercury in teeth (not the red liquid kind), and that at some point it was decided it wasn’t a good thing after all, and we changed to another substance for dentistry. But there are a few ways of looking at it from my view, firstly, that it was a simple project to slowly poison people or dull them enough so that they wouldn’t ‘act out’ as it seems fluoride is used for today. Secondly, it actually did improve capability and mental function in very small low doses, not enough to make you a genius, but enough to ‘bring you up to standard’ maybe in the overview – or that was a consequence that was not foreseen perhaps. Or thirdly, by having some kind of metal within the teeth, made it easier to ‘connect’ to people or control certain ones maybe as industrialisation swept through. I think of the bit on 12 Monkeys, where it is through the fillings in the teeth that messages are getting through. Just a thought.
Mummies – They say the myth of red mercury existing persists around mummies, as it’s known that cinnabar was used as colour for clothing and textiles, which contains mercury and therefore you would sometimes have a red liquid, or red still showing on clothing from it. And because it had mercury in it, it was still highly toxic after being sealed in a contained sarcophagus or box. I guess you can see where the stories and myths came about, but sometimes I wonder if they have a small shred of truth to them, and that we have just diluted and horrified the stories to deceive and distract. You never know.
Blade 2 – although in the movie it is blood shown as the red liquid needed to pour into the labyrinth to activate it, that could just be the inverted bit, and because we are so taken with the idea of vampires, we choose to think it’s blood that’s needed for something like that.
Star Trek (2009) – that red liquid featured in the storyline being called Red Matter, and had the capacity to create black holes.
The Philosopher’s Stone – that sought after piece from the very first Harry Potter series, the red gem stone, the elixir of life, looking very much a solid version of liquid red mercury, as do rubies and garnets and other red gemstones. But many have sought it over the centuries it appears, the first ancient Emperor Qin Shi Huang, the first to rule over a unified China, and the first it seems to be noted as possibly dying from mercury poisoning. Believing that if you ingested it, it would give you immortality. Maybe that was because he only drank normal liquid mercury, and was not in possession of the ‘good stuff’ kept and hidden away by the alchemists of the time. Or, if it’s as easy as just adding red dye to fabricate the appearance of it, well, some opportunists might just do that. If their head was on the line perhaps.
But either way, flowing red liquid seems to be a feature of what keeps it all going. Within us, and inside the planet with flowing lava and molten rock, almost as if that is the blood of the planet while we have a more refined, and cooler version. And just like our own biological form appears to have an end, and we chase the mythical red liquid to extend our own personal existence, maybe there is an elixir for Earth as well, something that can renew and revive it to give it what we might call ‘a new lease of life’. And I guess that because the myth remains of there being such a substance, maybe the search continues…
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