The Rudolf Steiner Archive

20. Paracelsus

[ 1 ] Just as a person seeks like-minded individuals among his contemporaries for shared thoughts and feelings, so too does he find satisfaction in engaging with the great figures of intellectual life from times past. The theosophical worldview does not yet provide an opportunity for this—but people are beginning to engage with it nonetheless. It is still a young spiritual movement.

[ 2 ] One who comes as close as possible to theosophical views is Paracelsus. He lived in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and was a naturalist and physician. He embodied the wisdom and insights of his time and can still serve as a beacon and teacher today. He has been unjustly criticized and slandered; it has been claimed that he was a debauchee and found more pleasure in wine and taverns than in his profession. But anyone who takes the time to study him will recognize in him the wisest and most intrepid pioneer of a lofty spiritual tradition. He lived from 1493 to 1541—that is, during a time when the ideas of the Middle Ages were beginning to give way to the dawn of new perspectives. Modern science does not yet understand him; until now, it has followed a materialistic direction—which, too, has achieved great things. Humanity had to limit itself to the external aspects of the world. Today, as we are just beginning to move far beyond doubt and ignorance, things are different. He lived according to his motto: “No one should be another’s servant who can stand alone on his own.” Guided by this maxim, he explored everything accessible to him in his quest to uncover the spiritual foundations of things. But everything he discovered, he placed at the service of medicine and the health care of humanity. His aspiration was to be able to help.

[ 3 ] What was the state of medicine at that time? It was entirely under the influence of medieval pharmacology—Galen—and had degenerated. People sought to treat illness with trivial remedies, and he humorously describes how the physicians of that era knew only a few rules and applied them without understanding. So Paracelsus decided to bid farewell to all this bookish wisdom. He wanted only one great teacher, whom he would study thoroughly: Nature! She was to be his teacher, his doctrine. The teacher must pass the test of nature. In doing so, he carried out this way of life entirely in keeping with his motto. Solitary and independent, he went his own way and sought to learn wherever he could.

[ 4 ] The doctor of that time had become estranged from nature; yet he had an instinctive sense that there are secret connections between human beings and all of nature. He told himself: “When a person develops in a distorted way, they lose some of that intimate connection with nature.” When a cow seeks its food, it finds exactly what is good for it. It has a more intimate relationship with natural products—a bond—and it senses this. The more a person lives according to stereotypical concepts, the more he loses this connection. To sense something specific in every plant and every mineral is a gift. Human beings should not see only something shiny in gold, silver, and mercury.

[ 5 ] Paracelsus seeks to discover the relationship between all of these and human beings. Thus, his intuitive instinct distinguishes the power inherent in nature—and that is the healing power. We sense this power in the relationship between the sexes; it is something that draws two beings toward one another. Such an attraction must exist between human beings and all products of nature. This sympathy and antipathy cannot be taught through books; it comes only through the inner enlightenment of the soul.

[ 6 ] One becomes a doctor by transforming oneself into another human being and cultivating that power within oneself. Paracelsus gained this directly from nature; he wanted to understand the relationship that human beings have with plants, trees, shrubs, and nature itself—and he listened to what his heart and soul had to say. He traveled far and wide, to the south and the north, and he said of himself: “I have never shied away from learning, not even from vagabonds on the street.”

[ 7 ] There he gained a wealth of experience for his medical practice. That is why he was also filled with a certain pride—a pride that was well-founded, for he felt free and independent of his timid predecessors when he spoke these proud words: “Whoever seeks the truth must follow me.” This was his attitude toward the natural world around him. What had developed within him as a result was a knowledge of humanity that theosophy must now reclaim.

[ 8 ] What we call the physical body represents only a part—namely, the lowest part—of the human being. Theosophy calls the next higher aspect of human existence the etheric body. The same forces and substances found in the human body are also present in animals, plants, and minerals. Science is unaware of these finer forces, for they are not merely a product of chemical composition, nor does it realize that the etheric body exists prior to the physical body.

[ 9 ] Theosophy recognizes another body prior to the etheric body. Matter crystallizes the physical body from within itself, much as ice crystallizes from water. The etheric body is the fundamental template. A third member is the astral body; through its densification, it has formed the etheric body. The astral body is the outer form for desires and instincts. The physical is created from the spiritual and the soul.

[ 10 ] Even higher is the human “I,” which is connected to the Divine. The Divine is the Primordial, and this is also how Paracelsus views the world. He also speaks first of all of the physical body. This is the seat of the animal life force, which the theosophist calls the etheric body, while Paracelsus refers to it as the elemental body. Paracelsus had already used the term “astral body” to describe the third body; he also sometimes called it the sidereal body. He said: Within the physical body is the elemental body, within which is the sidereal body, and within that is the divine spark. As the outer human being, it is related to the elements: water, earth, air, and fire. Through its astral qualities, it is related to the worlds of the stars, and through its divine qualities, to the invisible divine world. — He used a parable: Imagine an apple and its core, and you will say that the core of the apple has been separated from the basic substance; the elemental body is in the flesh of the apple, the astral body is in the core, composed of the substance of the celestial world—and the innermost, divine part originates from the Divine.

[ 11 ] Paracelsus found three kinds of connections within himself; first, that with nature; furthermore, he had a subtle connection with the celestial bodies; he felt drawn to them by sympathy and repelled by antipathy, and through this he had a connection with the entire cosmos. Finally, he also felt divine connections to all that is divine in the vast expanse of the universe. He said: “The physical is built out of the spiritual; then it has separated itself from the spiritual. Do not seek the source of illness in the elemental, but in the sidereal. Where symptoms of illness exist, relationships are out of proper balance.” Understanding illness requires three things: first, anatomy; second, astrology; third, knowledge of the divine forces—theology. Only in the totality of these three—that is, in a comprehensive understanding of the world—is the foundation for understanding illness laid.

[ 12 ] When Paracelsus needed a foundation, he sought the spiritual, the invisible within the visible. When he observed the magnetic force in iron—how iron attracts or repels—he conceived of the magnet as composed of iron, attraction, and repulsion.

[ 13 ] He then discovered that there is something within the sidereal body that is like [a] magnet. Therefore, he investigated magnetic forces and applied magnets to people. Where forces within a person were disrupted, he sought to restore them through healing. Paracelsus demanded that physicians study the higher worlds. That is why he was also interested in the sleeping human being and the world of dreams, and he observed the changes that took place there. He presented a beautiful image: The sleeping human, with his physical and elemental bodies, is separated from his astral body, and there the astral body dwells with the entire world of the stars and engages in the balancing “conversation of the stars”; this is why it has such a revitalizing effect on the physical body. In this way, the astral body receives the influence of the forces in the world of the stars.

[ 14 ] Anyone who looks so deeply into the workings of nature can also provide spiritual remedies. He knew how to draw from the starry sky the things that had an effect on his patients. Today, one would speak of hypnotism in this context. However, it is a mistake to believe that every mental image has a healing effect; only certain mental images can have an effect; no abstract concepts have an effect on the soul. Paracelsus used the word “imagination” to mean the transformation of a concept into an image. He believed one should create entirely pictorial images and imbue them with very specific feelings. Then the image gains the power to affect a particular soul. Consider how magnificently Paracelsus, as a healer of the soul, influenced the physical realm! He did nothing other than what occult schools strive for. There, very specific exercises are performed in which certain geometric figures—which constitute a complete system—are presented to the human soul. Then the initiate must evoke a specific feeling using a specific figure, and from this arises what is called imagination.

[ 15 ] Paracelsus, in a truly theosophical way, formed a picture of how human beings relate to nature. If he found that a certain passion was alive within a person, he sought the counterpart for that entire spiritual being out in nature; thus, nature became a mirror image of the soul. Human passions—anger, rage, cunning—which are inner to the soul, are reflected in images from the animal world; and for everything the etheric body builds up, there is a counterpart in the plant world. Paracelsus found the healing power in that which is in harmony with the sick person. In nature, he saw, as it were, the human being laid out in sections. He uttered a magnificent statement: “All of nature consists of individual letters, and together these form the word ‘human.’ Regarding the mentally ill, he said: ‘The astral body is always healthy when it surrenders to the sidereal forces. But when the connection is clouded, then there are clouded rays.’ The soul of the mentally ill is always healthy; it merely shines through clouded rays.”

[ 16 ] With this, I have been able to give you only a brief sketch of his profound research. Goethe followed a similar path. He had recognized the relationship with nature. In *Faust*, where Faust encounters sublime nature, he has him say:

Sublime Spirit, you gave, you give me everything,
[Just as I asked. You did not in vain
Turn your face toward me in the fire.
You gave me the magnificent natural world as my kingdom,
The power to feel it, to enjoy it. You do not
Do you permit me only to gaze coldly in wonder,
But you grant me to look into its deep bosom,
As into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the procession of the living
Past me, and teach me to know my brothers
In the quiet bush, in air and water.]