Few Renaissance figures provoked reactions as strong as Paracelsus. To his followers he was a brilliant reformer of the knowledge of nature; to his opponents, an arrogant charlatan. Beyond the controversy, his work left a deep mark on the history of alchemy and European esotericism, introducing concepts that would be taken up for centuries, from the Rosicrucians to the natural philosophers of the seventeenth century.
A long name and a wandering life
His baptismal name was Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim. He was born in 1493 or 1494 in Einsiedeln, Switzerland, the son of a physician. The nickname "Paracelsus", which he adopted later, is often taken to mean "beyond Celsus", referring to the Latin author of a famous medical treatise, but its exact meaning is debated.
He studied in Italy, probably in Ferrara, and then travelled widely, in Europe and perhaps beyond, working among other things as a military surgeon. He took an interest in mines and metals, and in the experience of folk healers, midwives and miners, convinced that one could learn more from them than from books.
The Basel scandal
In 1527 Paracelsus was appointed city physician in Basel, with the right to teach at the university. He caused a scandal at once: he lectured in German instead of Latin and openly attacked the authority of Galen and Avicenna, the pillars of academic medicine. According to tradition, on the feast of St John he threw a work of traditional medicine into the bonfire as a gesture of rupture.
Conflicts with colleagues and city authorities forced him to leave Basel after little more than a year. He resumed his wandering life, writing a great deal but publishing little. He died in Salzburg in 1541.
The three principles
One of Paracelsus's most lasting contributions is the doctrine of the tria prima, the three principles. To the medieval theory of metals made of sulphur and mercury he added a third element, salt. Every body, in his view, is composed of:
- sulphur, the principle of what burns, of combustibility;
- mercury, the principle of what evaporates, of volatility;
- salt, the principle of what remains, of solidity and stability.
Paracelsus explained the idea with the example of burning wood: what burns is sulphur, the rising smoke is mercury, the remaining ash is salt. These principles do not coincide with the ordinary substances of the same name, but are fundamental qualities of matter.
The Archeus and nature as a laboratory
For Paracelsus nature is a great alchemist. In every living being an inner principle called the Archeus is at work, separating the useful from the harmful, like an alchemist distilling and purifying. Digestion, for example, was seen as an alchemical process.
This vision changed the role of alchemy: its main purpose was no longer to make gold, but to understand nature's processes and prepare useful substances. For this reason Paracelsus is regarded as a forerunner of iatrochemistry, the application of chemistry to medicine developed by his followers.
A frequently quoted principle also comes from him, formulated in the Septem defensiones: all things are poison, and only the dose makes a thing not a poison.
Macrocosm and microcosm
Paracelsus took up the ancient idea of the human being as a microcosm, a mirror of the macrocosm. Every part of the universe has its counterpart in man. But compared with his predecessors he gave the idea a more concrete stamp: to know the universe meant observing it directly, through experience and work, not only reading about it in ancient books.
His ideas were also deeply religious. Paracelsus wrote many theological texts, little known today, and saw the knowledge of nature as a way of reading God's work.
The elemental spirits
One of his most curious works is the Liber de nymphis, sylphis, pygmaeis et salamandris, the "book of nymphs, sylphs, pygmies and salamanders". In it he describes beings that inhabit the four elements:
- undines or nymphs in water;
- sylphs in air;
- pygmies or gnomes in earth;
- salamanders in fire.
Paracelsus considered them real creatures, intermediate between humans and spirits, lacking an immortal soul. This classification enjoyed huge literary and esoteric success: it reappears in the French novel Le Comte de Gabalis of 1670 and, later, in many occultist traditions.
The Paracelsians
Most of Paracelsus's works were published after his death. A major edition edited by Johann Huser appeared in Basel between 1589 and 1591. Meanwhile a current of followers had formed, the Paracelsians, who spread and developed his ideas, often in conflict with university medicine.
Paracelsianism influenced the Rosicrucian manifestos, philosophers such as Robert Fludd and Jan Baptist van Helmont, and a whole season of spiritual alchemy. Studio Esoterico Cornelio sees in Paracelsus an example of the synthesis between observation of nature and spiritual vision that marks the best of the Hermetic tradition.
In short
- Paracelsus (1493/94-1541) challenged the authority of Galen and Avicenna and lectured in German in Basel in 1527.
- He introduced the doctrine of the three principles: sulphur, mercury and salt.
- He saw nature as an inner alchemist, the Archeus, and paved the way for applying chemistry to medicine.
- He described the elemental spirits of water, air, earth and fire.
- His works, published mostly after his death, inspired the Paracelsians and the Rosicrucians.