Occultists & mystics of all ages

The embattled forces of conservative orthodoxy are so strong that one is sometimes tempted to wonder how it is that the world ever goes round at all; how it is that the forward movement of progress succeeds, as it apparently does, in getting the better of so many retrograde tendencies, so much prejudice, so strong a clinging to the stereotyped conditions of the day. After all, the more one thinks about it, the more one becomes convinced that the whole progress of the world is the work of the very, very few; that the positive and progressive intellect is the rare exception, and that if democratic conditions really prevailed (as of course they never do) all civilisation would go backwards and gradually revert once more to chaos. What a mockery, after all, Democracy is! And how hopelessly the modern world is deluded in thinking that anywhere or at any time Democracy has in reality held sway! As a matter of fact, the many have never ruled, have never wished to rule; they have merely asked for some strong man to lead them. Where was ever the flock of sheep that did not follow the bell-wether? Here and there we meet with a master mind that—for good or evil—leads the multitude—or, if he does not lead, at least points the way where others will eventually follow. Side by side with him we see the multitude either drifting or being led. “Work!” said Voltaire, that most popular of writers, “work for the little public!” Voltaire knew, as all great leaders have known, before and after, that it is the “little public” that ever dominates the situation. It is the “little leaven that leaveneth the whole lump.” “It is a sight beloved of the gods,” says the old saying, “to see a good man struggling against adversity.” But is it not a finer sight still, to see a strong man battling with the forces of orthodoxy, and refusing to yield his ground? A man of such a mould was Philip Bombast of Hohenheim, better known by his assumed name of Paracelsus. Never was there any one to whom Shelley’s celebrated line

was more absolutely appropriate. The hostility and venomous antagonism of his own profession, with a few notable exceptions, followed and persecuted him throughout his entire medical career. The boldness and independence of his medical attitude galled the leaders as well as the rank and file of the profession. But what was still more galling to them than his lack of orthodoxy, was the fact that his novel methods, as they must have appeared to the doctors of that day, were so immeasurably more successful than their own. Paracelsus, indeed, never gave nor asked for quarter. John the Baptist denouncing the Pharisees who came to him as “a generation of vipers” was no bad parallel to Paracelsus’s stinging invective on the ignorance and tradition-loving proclivities of his own profession.

Many to whom the name of Paracelsus is familiar are accustomed to look upon him as little more than a singularly successful quack who revived the traditions of an earlier school of Occultism in defiance of the more scientific methods of his own time. As a matter of fact, the doctors of his day were, in the vast majority of cases, merely theorists with little real practical experience, but with a fair store of book-learning of a very indifferent kind. It was Paracelsus whose medical knowledge was derived from experiment and experience, and who had acquired the greater part of his medical and surgical skill from wide and varied travelling and visiting more countries and more different nationalities than any other medical expert of his day, and who had learnt by actual association with all sorts and conditions of men in different climes, far more than any book-learning had ever taught him.

The period of Paracelsus’s career coincided with the Reformation of Luther, and with the wider and more general Renaissance movement. This latter development had brought back in its train the study of classical learning and classical ideals which had fallen into discredit about the period of the first triumph of Christianity and its establishment as a world-religion. The attitude of the earlier Christians, who looked upon the Pagan deities as devils, and Greek and Roman classical writers as apologists for devil-worship, had passed away; and the highest dignitaries of the Church were now often noted for their classical erudition and ripe scholarship. With the return of classical ideals came back also into favour in a number of unexpected quarters the doctrines of Neoplatonism. When Hypatia perished at Alexandria, orthodox Christianity set its foot on Plotinus and all his works. The struggle at the end had been one rather between Christianity and the later Greek philosophers with their Neoplatonic conceptions than between Christianity and Pagan Rome. The gods of Rome were dead already. Pan was dead past resurrecting. The danger that threatened Christianity was the triumph of such Emperors as Julian the Apostate—Julian, whose master was Plotinus, and whose religion was Neoplatonism merely dressed in an old Roman garb. To the thinkers and philosophers of that time the triumph of Christianity seemed like the victory of exoteric religion over the inner esoteric truths. Back, now, with all that was best of the scholarship and art of Greece and Rome, came the mystic doctrines of the Alexandrian philosophers—back, not in triumph, but daring once more to reassert themselves in the face of a hostile world that had long even forgotten their existence. A thousand years separated Hypatia from Cornelius Agrippa—a thousand years which, in the realm of thought, might well be characterised as the Dark Ages. Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim was born at Cologne in 1486. Seven years later, on 10th November 1493, at Einsiedeln, near Zurich, a son was born to Dr Wilhelm Bombast von Hohenheim, and was christened Theophrastus, in honour of Theophrastus Tyrtamos, a Greek physician, philosopher, and follower of Aristotle. This child was subsequently to be known to fame and held up to obloquy under the title of Paracelsus.

It was a period in which the world was in labour with great events. Only a year before Columbus had landed on American soil. In the same year, or the previous one, passed away a man whose life was destined to create as great a revolution in the history of the human race as that of Columbus himself—William Caxton. Returning from a long sojourn in the Netherlands in or about 1474, Caxton established his printing press in the precincts of Westminster Abbey, and before his death at least sixty-four books are known to have been issued from this first English Printing House. Ten years exactly before Paracelsus’s birth, a third of these great makers of revolutions had seen the light. On 10th November 1483, Martin Luther was born at Eisleben in Lower Saxony, and when the subject of these notes was twenty-four years old, Luther nailed his ninety-five theses against the Doctrine of Indulgences on the church door at Wittenberg. Paracelsus, when occasion offered, did not attempt to disguise his sympathy with this bold reformer, though he took no actual part in the movement, and he was accused by his enemies of being a medical Luther, a charge which he took pains to show that he did not in any way resent. Another noteworthy character in the realm of History and Literature, Lorenzo de Medici, had passed away a year before our hero’s birth. In England the Wars of the Roses were over, and Henry VII. was busy establishing monarchy on a firm basis, the people, worn out by incessant struggles, being glad to accept the Tudor rule, sympathetic as it always was to the middle and commercial classes. In Europe there was no Austrian Emperor, and Italy was still fated, for centuries to come, to remain a geographical expression. The Holy Roman Empire extended from the German Ocean and the Baltic Sea on the North to the Adriatic on the South. Poland and Lithuania extended far along its Eastern border, and the outmost limit of the realm of the Muscovite was still 500 miles east of the site where a century later Peter the Great was to found and give his name to the capital of the Russian Empire. The conquering Turk was thundering at the gates of Christendom. Ferdinand and Isabella, patrons of Columbus, reigned at Madrid. Everywhere throughout the civilised world vast changes were impending, everywhere the horizon was widening, and men’s minds were being directed into new channels and to fresh fields of enterprise and of opinion.

There has been much discussion as to what exactly is connoted by the name “Paracelsus,” and how it came to be first adopted. What seems clear is that von Hohenheim adopted the name himself, and was not, as some have held, given it by his admirers. It was a usual practice in those days to write books under some Latin nom de plume, frequently some adaptation into Latin of the name of the writer. In all probability the last two syllables of the name, “celsus,” were suggested by “Hohen” (or “high”), “Hohenheim” being literally translated as “high home.” With regard to the first two syllables it is noticeable that these were occasionally employed by Paracelsus in giving name to his medical treatises. There is thus one treatise called “Paramirum,” and another “Paragranum.” This word “para” seems to have been used in the sense of giving the word to which it was prefixed a superlative value. Thus “Paramirum” would mean “extremely wonderful.” The whole word is doubtless a polyglot hotchpotch, the first part being Greek and the second Latin; but mediæval writers had little scruple in adapting the classical tongues to their own requirements.

To follow the writings of Paracelsus it is necessary to understand his phraseology, his jargon, as we should call it in the slang of to-day. Without this he is as incomprehensible as is the dog Latin of a scientific textbook to one who is not a scientific specialist—or, to give another example, as the language of Astrology is to one who is not an Astrologer. Paracelsus held that there were three basic substances necessary to the existence of all bodies. These he called Sulphur, Mercury, and Salt. Sulphur corresponds to fire, or rather to the principle of inflammability; Mercury to water, or fluidity; and Salt to earth, or solidity. For a full glossary of the terms which he employed, readers are referred to the volume on The Life and Philosophy of Paracelsus, by the late Dr Franz Hartmann. In this terminology Azoth stands for the creative principle in Nature, or the spiritual vitalising force; the Ilech Primum is the causative force; Cherio, the essence of the thing, the “fifth principle,” which constitutes what we call its essential qualities; the Evestrum is man’s astral body, his ethereal counterpart, that may act to him as guardian angel and warn him of dangers; the Elementaries are the astral corpses of the dead, and must not be confused with the Elementals, or Nature Spirits—Sylphs, Salamanders, Undines, and Gnomes; Magic is the conscious employment of spiritual powers to act on external Nature. Many of these expressions have been adopted by the Theosophists of the present day and by students of Occultism.

It is clear, though Paracelsus long antedated Hahnemann, the founder of Homœopathy, that much of his medical teaching is what we should now call Homœopathic. Hahnemann, in fact, borrowed extensively from Paracelsus. Take, for instance, Paracelsus’s teaching with regard to the quintessence or virtue of each substance. This, he taught, though infinitesimal in quantity, even in large bodies, had none the less the power to affect the mass through and through, as a single drop of gall embitters, or a few grains of saffron colour a large quantity of water. The application of homœopathic cures by those ignorant of homœopathic principles has frequently led to mistakes in this connection; as, for instance, the administration of doses many times in excess of what the complaint requires, the result being the entire failure of the medicine to produce the intended effect.

“There are wide differences,” says Paracelsus, striking again a very homœopathic note, “between what the ancient doctors taught and what we here teach, and therefore our healing art differs widely from theirs. For we teach that what heals a man also wounds him, and what wounded will also heal him. For the nettle can be so changed that it cannot burn, the flame so that it does not scorch, and the chelidony so that it does not cicatrize. Thus similars are good in healing, such and such a salt to such and such a sore. And the things which heal a wound in Nature heal the same sort of wound in man.”

“Many kinds of rust,” says Paracelsus again, “occur in the minerals; for each mineral has its own peculiar nature.” This rust is in the form of a disease, and iron has one disease, while copper has another. In a similar way a man has a sore and it is healed by treatment. The metal, too, has a sore, and can be healed by treatment. “Metallic bodies,” says Paracelsus, long antedating the discoveries of the present day, “are as liable to death as the others, for their salt is arsenic.” The whole earth is linked together, and the life that passes through the bodies of men passes also through the bodies of minerals. Paracelsus had no patience with those who taught of a panacea that would heal all diseases. He described them as people who “rode all horses with one saddle,” through whom more harm than good was effected. He maintained that a doctor must know the sick and all matters appertaining to their state “just as a carpenter knows his wood.” He mentions six essential qualifications for the practical physician.

(1) A doctor (he says) must know how many kinds of tissue there are in the body, and how each kind stands in relation to the man.

(2) He must know all the bones, such as the ribs and their coverings, the difference between one and another, their relations to each other and their articulations.

(3) He must know all the blood-vessels, the nerves, the cartilages and how they are held together.

(4) He must know the length, number, form, condition, and purpose of each member of the body, its particular flesh, marrow, and all other details.

(5) He must know where all emunctoria lie and how they are to be averted; also what is in every cavity of the body, and everything about the intestines.

(6) He must with all his might and being seek to understand about life and death, what the chief organs in man mean, and what each member can and may suffer.

If we look to Paracelsus as the real founder of Homœopathy, so also must we regard him as the pioneer of magnetism and magnetic healing. Man, he maintained, is nourished through the magnetic power which resides in all Nature and by which each individual being draws its specific nourishment to itself. He called this magnetic force Mumia in his special phraseology, and he laid great stress on the healing power which resided in this Mumia. “Just as the power of the lily breaks forth in perfume which is invisible, so,” he writes, “the invisible body sends forth its healing influence. Just as in the visible body are wonderful activities which the senses can perceive, so, too, lie powers in the invisible body which can work great wonders.” To him the whole universe was one, and knit together by indissoluble bonds.

“The astral currents created by the imagination of the Macrocosmos,” he writes, “act upon the Microcosmos, and produce certain states in the latter, and likewise the astral currents produced by the imagination and will of man produce certain states in external Nature; and these currents may reach far, because the power of the imagination reaches as far as thought can go. The physiological processes taking place in the body of living beings are caused by their astral currents, and the physiological and meteorological processes taking place in the great organism of Nature are caused by the astral currents of Nature as a whole. The astral currents of either act upon the other, either consciously or unconsciously; and if this fact is properly understood it will cease to appear incredible that the mind of man may produce changes in the universal mind, which may cause changes in the atmosphere—winds and rains, storm, hail and lightning—or that evil may be changed into good by the power of Faith. Heaven is a field into which the imagination of man throws the seeds.”

Here, in a single paragraph, is the philosophy of Astrology, and the justification for the efficacy of prayer.

I have said that Paracelsus was the father of Homœopathy, and the father also of that later school of animal magnetism which was founded in France in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and the inception of which is always associated with the name of Mesmer. Unfortunately, Mesmer had neither the knowledge nor the experience, nor yet the intuitive faculties of his master, Paracelsus. But, resurrected as it was under somewhat unfavourable conditions, there is reason to believe that magnetic healing is destined to play a far greater part in the future of medical art than it has ever done in the past. Not only was Paracelsus a pioneer in Homœopathy and animal magnetism, he was also one of the first, as well as one of the greatest, of all Faith-healers. “Faith,” he says, “has a great deal more power than the physical body.” “All magical processes are based upon Faith.” “The power of Faith overcomes all spirits of Nature, because it is a spiritual power, and Spirit is higher than Nature.” “Whatever is grown in the realm of Nature may be changed by the power of Faith.” “Anything we may accomplish which surpasses Nature is accomplished by Faith, and by Faith diseases may be cured.” “Imagination,” he says again, “is the cause of many diseases. Faith is the cure for all.” “If we cannot cure a disease by Faith, it is because our Faith is too weak. But our Faith is weak on account of our want of knowledge. If we were conscious of the power of God within ourselves, we should never fail.” “The power of amulets does not rest so much in the material of which they are made as in the Faith with which they are worn.” Paracelsus’s chosen motto was:

Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest—

“Let him not belong to another who has the power to be his own”—who can, in short, be master of his own soul. Paracelsus declined to follow any leader, but formed his own conclusions from his own experience. For him the Codex Naturæ was a system which led straight to exact knowledge, and he rejected whatever could not be verified by research. He laid the foundations of a new system, built on evidence rather than on the outworn traditions of the medicine of his day. This system comprised within itself at once a practical guide to the medical art and a spiritual philosophy of life. The fatal error of divorcing the physical from the spiritual, and treating the physical as a thing apart, which has rendered abortive so much of the medical research of recent generations, would undoubtedly have been obviated, had the modern exponent of the medical art realised that in Paracelsus was to be found a pioneer who brought the life-giving genius of his intellect to bear on old truths in their relation to modern problems, rather than a quack and mountebank who deluded his contemporaries—none so easy a task—into the idea that he had accomplished marvellous cures where the medical faculty of his day could show nothing but a record of failures.