At the end of the eighteenth century, scientists for the first time
demonstrated what medieval and renaissance alchemists had long
suspected; ice is not lifeless but vital, a crystalline revelation of
vigorous powers. Studied in esoteric and exoterical representations of
frozen phenomena, several Romantic figures - including Coleridge and
Poe, Percy and Mary Shelley, Emerson and Thoreau - challenged
traditional notions of ice as waste and instead celebrated crystals,
glaciers, and the poles as special disclosures of a holistic principle
of being. The Spiritual History of Ice explores this ecology of frozen
shapes in fascinating detail, revealing not only a neglected current of
the Romantic age but also a secret history and psychology of ice.