[NoraSpinnor]

At the end of The Secret of Light, Walter Russell describes the cube–sphere relationship as fundamental to form. One of the clearest examples of this, he says, is in the geometry of carbon. Russell explicitly states, “Carbon alone crystallizes in true cube, with all of the qualities of the true cube and sphere fully exemplified” (p. 279).

For Russell, carbon’s “cuboidal geometry” means carbon sits at a special balance point in his wave/pressure model where cube-like crystallization becomes “true” (stable, symmetric, balanced). He adds that other elements that form cubic crystals are “octave extensions” of carbon and that these occupy what he calls the “four-zero-four” position at wave amplitude (p. 279).

In his system, “4-0-4” is a balance node where opposing pressures cancel. Russell calls it “the position of rest where any action must end its half cycle and begin its other half” (p. 281). Carbon is “primary” in his explanation because carbon is the cleanest “balanced node” where the cube-sphere becomes structurally manifest.

Russell says carbon is the conceptual backbone of matter itself: “Carbon alone expresses the idea of matter,” and “All the nine octaves of the elements are stages of unfoldment and refoldment of carbon” (p. 278). Carbon is the clearest place where the universe’s push–pull rhythm sits still enough to reveal its “unit cell.”

The sphere comes into relation when you consider packing. Russell gives an image of a pile of tennis balls pressed into a compact space. If you press them enough, they will morph into cubes, flattening where they meet until the pressure points “even out” into cuboidal symmetry. “Tennis balls crushed together become cubes,” he writes, “by gradually flattening where they meet at six points on curved surfaces” (p. 237). This compaction and release imagery translates to compression and expansion in Russell’s cosmology.

Russell compares the cube and the sphere as two positions of the same underlying structure, alternating form. “The cube and sphere are one, being two opposite phases of the same thing. The cube is the sphere extended to black coldness while the sphere is the cube contracted to white incandescence” (p. 239).

• Sphere = a contracted phase (incandescent, compressed, “inbreathed”).
• Cube = an expanded phase (cold, extended, “outbreathed”).

Russell reasons that if you try to fill space with expanding spheres, contact forces carve planes. As spheres press outward and meet each other, curved surfaces flatten into planes, and the outward thrust “flatten[s] into the six planes of cubes” (p. 237). This inhalation/exhalation circuit is fundamental to Russell’s cosmology.
Russell points to radiation and gravitation as the physical expression of this exchange. “The generative process of Nature is gravitation… The degenerative process of Nature is radiation” (p. 242). When waves compress, they form into matter; when they decompress, they radiate out into space. Matter, then, is only a temporary expression of a larger cosmic breath.

Carbon, for Russell, is the most stable breath-turning point. It’s where the inward and outward tendencies balance cleanly enough that the cube-sphere archetype appears as a “true cube.” This means carbon functions like a hinge in the wave cycle, where the pattern is poised so evenly that it can flip from winding-up to unwinding without losing its symmetry. When that pivot is clean, Russell expects the surrounding field to “square itself,” showing up as cubic order rather than warped, partial, or lopsided approximations.

Russell treats the cube as a spatial field container. He writes, “Complex bodies are multiples of spheres of matter surrounded by multiples of cubes of space in multiples of wave fields” (p. 240). A “true cube” is the signature of a wave field whose boundary conditions have become especially regular. In that condition, crystallization is less like “random matter clumping” and more like a geometric echo of a balanced field.

A large subset of elements and compounds crystallize in the cubic system. Familiar examples include table salt (NaCl), diamond (a carbon crystal), many common metals (copper, aluminum, nickel, silver, gold), and high-symmetry ionic crystals such as cesium chloride (CsCl), zinc blende–type (cubic) compounds (the ZnS family), and fluorite-type compounds (the CaF₂ family). The shared feature is cubic symmetry at the level of the repeating unit: the unit cell.

For Russell, it is no accident that life is carbon-based. In his framework, carbon represents the archetypal cubic crystallizer; it is the clearest and simplest expression of cubical order in matter. In modern chemistry, carbon does not have one single geometry, but it very often takes on a tetrahedral bonding geometry (especially in sp³ bonding). A cube’s eight corners can be partitioned into two interpenetrating tetrahedra, each using four alternating cube vertices. Together, they map the cube’s full set of corner directions. This is not a physical cube, but a cuboidal expression of directional organization, phase-locked and coherent.

This type of bonding arrangement is structurally powerful in diamond. Diamond is a continuous three-dimensional network of carbon–carbon covalent bonds. Each carbon atom anchors four bonds in a tetrahedral arrangement, and that repeating tetrahedral coordination is compatible with a globally cubic lattice (the diamond cubic crystal structure). The result is extreme hardness, high wear resistance, and very high thermal conductivity. That is why diamond-impregnated saw blades and cutting tools are used for granite, marble, concrete, asphalt, ceramics, engineered stone, as well as precision work on glass and semiconductor wafers: the material’s internal geometry resists deformation at the cutting edge.

Life uses the same carbon geometry more fluidly. Carbon toggles between bonding modes that build chains, rings, sheets, and three-dimensional scaffolds. Tetrahedral bonding builds volumetric frameworks and stable backbones. Trigonal planar bonding builds aromatic rings and electron-delocalized sheets. Linear bonding builds stiff segments and reactive sites. This versatility produces molecules that carry structure, flexibility, and reactivity in controllable proportions. In Russell’s framing, carbon’s role as a breath-turning point reads as a structural reason for biology. It is a pivot element that supports both persistence and transformation.

Russell describes space as filled with wave motion and organized into bounded wave fields. A carbon-based framework, whether crystalline like diamond or molecular like proteins and nucleic acids, can be read as a tuned geometry inside a larger field. The cube expresses regular boundary conditions and repeatable cells, and the sphere expresses centering potentials and concentrated activity. Carbon-based structures become the “hardware” that lets cyclic exchange localize, repeat, and scale.

A “true cube,” in this view, is a signature of a field state where interchange is balanced enough to stabilize form. Carbon, whether as hard diamond or soft biological chemistry, enables coherent patterns of energy exchange to persist long enough to build complexity. Coherence, in Netism’s model, is fundamental to consciousness. Without coherence, lasting form cannot hold.

Plato spoke about a world of forms; Russell’s contribution is to suggest how “form” can present itself physically. He treats form as the stable geometry of an ongoing oscillation. He tracks patterns of balance that repeat across space, lock into symmetry, and then dissolve back into the field. He names gravitation and radiation as two expressions of cyclical motion, where gravitation winds light waves into solids, and radiation unwinds dense solids back into space (p. 242). The cube and the sphere, therefore, are two expressions of the same whole.

Sources:
Walter Russell, Secret of Light
Callister & Rethwisch, Materials Science and Engineering: An Introduction (diamond structure, bonding, properties)

View the article with images from Russell on Substack here:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-184442422

[IonianCode]

Russell saw everything in terms of compression and expansion and I have to say, he was pretty accurate.

[CosmicNomad42]

love Russell but he is hard to understand sometimes so this post helps. didnt start really getting what he was saying until I started meditating. then I started to see it. guys a genius.

[Quantumnomicon33]

While Carbon isn’t really a true cube, he still makes a valid argument. Wave forms is where the focus should be.

[Author]

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