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reveals the theological dimensions of his alchemy. Contrasted against the independent
investigations of practical chemists practiced by both Paracelsus contemporary iatrochemists
as well as modern day scientific chemists the true Spagyrist would only dare to begin labor
once he had established a highly personal yet reverential relationship with God. God the Father
was seen as the ultimate source of wisdom, and therefore Him alone will we imitate. For
those who believe that they can learn anything without the assistance of God will fall into
222
Paracelsus as quoted by Hartmann, 312
223
Paracelsus, Concerning the Spirits of the Planets, trans. & ed. E.A. Waite, The Hermetic Writings Vol. 1, 72
105
idolatry, superstition, and error. 224 Finally, it is telling that Paracelsus envisions one of the
central aims of this sacred Art to be the attainment of the deepest joy and charity in our hearts.
This brief statement alone indicates that the achievement of the Philosopher s Stone was far
more than a material, or even sidereal, endeavor, and that the classic Christian virtues of charity,
love, and selflessness were considered to be absolutely critical, if not extraordinarily important,
for such a Work. The emphasis by many alchemists, not just Paracelsus, on the virtuosity and
piety of the Spagyrist suggests that they conceived of this Art as an aspect of the evolution of
their souls.
Again, for many alchemists, and not Paracelsus alone, there existed some form, if blurred
and vague, of a correlation between the spirit of Jesus Christ and the spirit of the Philosopher s
Stone. It is evident, Paracelsus explains,
that the philosophers called their Stone animal, because in their final operations the virtue
of this most excellent fiery mystery caused an obscure liquid to exude drop by drop from
the matter in their vessels. Hence they predicted that, in the last times, there should come
a most pure man upon the earth, by whom the redemption of the world should be brought
about; and that this man should send forth bloody drops of a red colour, by means of
which he should redeem the world from sin... Concerning this mystery Mercurius speaks
as follows to King Calid: - This mystery it is permitted only to the prophets of God to
know. Hence it comes to pass that this Stone is called animal, because in its blood a soul
lies hid. It is likewise composed of body, spirit, and soul. 225
The belief that in its [the Stone] blood a soul lies hid, can be extrapolated to demonstrate that
on another level, perhaps allegorically, such philosophers believed that the true redeeming
potency of Christ was hidden in potentia within his blood and therefore his soul that is, his
suffering and death upon the cross. In this sense, the true redemption of man by Christ would
have more to do with the symbolism of his suffering, death, and resurrection than with the blood
of his earthly incarnation.
224
Paracelsus as quoted by Hartmann, from De Funamento Sapientiae, 325-326
225
Paracelsus, The Aurora of the Philosophers, trans. & ed. E.A. Waite, The Hermetic Writings Vol. 1, 56
106
Yet at the same time we cannot risk reducing his theology to a purely theoretical one,
Paracelsian scholar Dane Thor Daniel reminds us, because even if such symbolism and analogy
are to be found in Scripture, Paracelsus, the physician and natural philosopher, makes the
eternal more concrete by emphasizing its natural dimensions. 226 Paracelsus treasures the solid
corporeality of earth, and thus talks about the generation, growth, and nourishment of the new
[ glorified ] body, and even discusses the eternal soil in which the eternal food grows and from
which comes the material of the new body. 227 Agreeing with this view of Paracelsus as a mystic
committed to the practical reality of elementary phenomena, Hartmut Rudolph argues that,
[T]he fullness and complexity of the forms of [Paracelsus ] argumentation& grows out of
the tension which consists on the one hand in the spiritual origin of this heavenly birth
and its nourishment (that is to say, its origin in the spirit of God) and, on the other hand,
in the attempt nonetheless to elucidate the mysterious happening of the birth and the
growth of the new creature from the limbus aeternus as a bodily process, indeed, to
explain it as a comprehensible process by forming an analogy with natural reason, with
natural-Adamic corporeality. Para sees himself quite expressly as a successor to the
apostle Thomas, who, so to speak, puts the heavenly-clarified body of Christ which has
appeared to him to the test: ein greiflich prob ( a tactile test ), i.e. proving by sensory
experience, is possible and necessary.228
By adamantly seeking to understand the corporeal nature of the super-celestial phenomena,
Paracelsus thus becomes a successor to the apostle Thomas. Indeed, if one of the central aims
of this process was to purify and thus elevate the primal matter of the earth, surely Paracelsus
envisioned a similar transmutation occurring in the alchemist himself; so also man must become
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