Ambix

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Invisible Wombs: Rethinking Paracelsus's Concept

of Body and Matter

Dane T. Daniel

To cite this article: Dane T. Daniel (2006) Invisible Wombs: Rethinking Paracelsus's Concept of
Body and Matter, Ambix, 53:2, 129-142, DOI: 10.1179/174582306X117870

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AMBIX, Vol. 53, No. 2, July 2006, 129–142

Invisible Wombs: Rethinking Paracelsus’s

Concept of Body and Matter
DANE T. DANIEL
Wright State University–Lake Campus, Celina, Ohio

Paracelsus’s matter theory remains a puzzling subject, especially insofar as his division of
matter and the human being is concerned. Paracelsus’s early matter theory, as presented
in perhaps his most significant chemical work, the Archidoxis, was influenced by John
of Rupescissa and contained elements that the mature Paracelsus — greatly influenced by
theological concerns and his own unique biblical exegesis — would abandon due to their
nonconformity with scripture. The article stresses Paracelsus’s interpretation of Genesis 2:7,
and the author argues that the Paracelsus of the Astronomia Magna (1537–38) — somewhat
echoing the theories in his so-called “meterological writings” — held that the cosmos and
microcosm (man) consist of soul, sidereal body (also mortal spirit), elemental mortal matter
(a combination of seeds and the tria prima of salt, sulfur, and mercury as produced in the four
elemental mothers of air, earth, fire, and water), and eternal body (e.g. the resurrection
body). The focus in this article is on mortal matter; Paracelsus’s natural philosophy and
theology become much more accessible when one understands this quadripartite division.

Introduction1

Therefore know that God held such a love for the secrets of the stars that he created
the microcosm [i.e. the human] to reveal their secrets. This is so that humans,
through their work, may divulge not only what is hidden in the stars, but also all
the natural mysteries of the elements. This would not have been possible without
humans.2

1
Winner of the Partington Prize Competition, 2005. Much of this paper is derived from the disserta-
tion, Dane T. Daniel, “Paracelsus’ Astronomia Magna (1537/38): Bible-Based Science and the
Religious Roots of the Scientific Revolution,” PhD dissertation (Indiana University, Department
of History and Philosophy of Science, 2003).
2
Paracelsus (Theophrast von Hohenheim), Sämtliche Werke, I. Abteilung: Medizinische,
naturwissenschaftliche und philosophische Schriften, ed. Karl Sudhoff, vol. 12 (Munich and
Berlin: R. Oldenbourg, 1929), Astronomia Magna, 58–59. “Darauf wissent, das got zu eröfnen die
heimlikeit im gestirn, ein solche lieb darzu tregt, das er von wegen der selbigen den microcosmum
beschaffen hat, nicht alein in dem gestirn, das heimlich zu offenbaren durch des menschen werk,
sonder auch alle natürliche mysteria der elementen zu offenbaren, welches one den menschen nit
het mögen beschehen.” Karl Sudhoff divided the modern edition of Paracelsus’s collected works
into two parts. The first division is Paracelsus, Sämtliche Werk, I. Abteilung: Medizinische,
naturwissenschaftliche und philosophische Schriften, ed. Karl Sudhoff, 14 vols. (Munich and Berlin:
R. Oldenbourg, 1922–33). The first volume of the second division is Paracelsus, Sämtliche Werke,
II. Abteilung: Die theologischen und religionsphilosophischen Schriften, Erster Band, Philosophia

© Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry 2006 DOI 10.1179/174582306X117870
130 DANE T. DANIEL

Given the enormous influence of Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, or Paracelsus

(1493/4–1541), on the early Scientific Revolution, and given the scholarly interest in him, it
is astounding that there remains a great deal of misunderstanding with regard to the famous
and maligned medical practitioner, alchemist/natural philosopher, and lay theologian. One
of the most common misrepresentations regards Paracelsus’s theory of the four basic
ontological components that make up both the world and human being; these are the
“elemental body,” “sidereal body,” “immortal body,” and “soul.”3 Scholars often fail to
heed adequately this basic cosmological and anthropological division as it is spelled out in
the opening paragraphs of Paracelsus’s magnum opus, the Astronomia Magna (1537/8), in
which he summarises the order and types of creation as fashioned by God ex nihilo.4 Some
scholars conclude that Paracelsus advocates a tripartite — rather than quadripartite —
system of the world, one that consists of soul, spirit, and body.5 Other authors, who wish
to emphasise his ties to Gnosticism and Neo-Platonism, point to his supposed belief in
uncreated matter and immortal seeds, concepts that are irreconcilable with his Christian
cosmogony.6 My hope here is to bring a little more clarity to this prosaic topic, which

2
Continued
magna I, ed. Wilhelm Matthiessen (Munich: Otto Wilhelm Barth, 1923). Under the direction
of Kurt Goldammer, several more volumes of the second division were published between 1955 and
1986. Hereafter I will refer to works using the Roman numeral to denote the part of the collected
edition of the complete work of Paracelsus followed by the volume and page number, e.g., I,
12:58–59. Translations are mine unless indicated otherwise.
3
Another problem is that there exists a dearth of competently translated Paracelsus. It is also prob-
lematic that many people do not realise that half of his prolific literary output was explicitly theo-
logical and that he developed key aspects of his natural philosophy in these still largely unedited
works. Even the exegetical aspects of his well-known philosophical writings receive only marginal
attention, for scholars underestimate the extent to which his religious values influenced his science
and medicine. See Dane Thor Daniel, “Paracelsus on Baptism and the Acquiring of the Eternal
Body,” in Paracelsian Moments: Science, Medicine, and Astrology in Early Modern Europe, ed.
Gerhild Scholz Williams and Charles D. Gunnoe, Jr. (Kirksville, Miss.: Sixteenth Century Journal
Publishers, Inc., 2002), 116–34.
4
It is well known that biblical cosmogony is an essential tenet of Paracelsianism, but it remains
an underdeveloped topic in Paracelsus studies. Allen G. Debus discusses the subject in several
works, including The English Paracelsians (New York: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1966). With regard to
Paracelsus’s reliance on the Genesis account, and his biblical exegesis in general, the most thorough
explications are those of Kurt Goldammer. See Goldammer, Paracelsus in neuen Horizonten:
Gesammelte Aufsätze (Wien: Verband der wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaften Österreichs, Verlag,
1986). See also the relevant articles: Walter Pagel, “The Prime Matter of Paracelsus,” Ambix
9 (1961): 117–35; and Massimo Luigi Bianchi, “The Visible and the Invisible. From Alchemy to
Paracelsus,” in Alchemy and Chemistry in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed. Piyo Rattansi
and Antonio Clericuzio (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994), 17–50.
5
See H. C. Erik Midelfort, “The Anthropological Roots of Paracelsus’ Psychiatry,” in Kreatur und
Kosmos: Internationale Beiträge zur Paracelsusforschung, ed. Rosemarie Dilg-Frank (Stuttgart and
New York: Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1981.)
6
See Walter Pagel, Paracelsus: an Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renais-
sance, 2nd rev. ed. (Basel: Karger, 1982), 228–30; and Arthur Edward Waite, “Appendix III:
a Short Lexicon of Alchemy, Explaining the Chief Terms used by Paracelsus and other Hermetic
Philosophers,” in The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Aureolus Philippus Theophrastus
Bombast, of Hohenheim, called Paracelsus the Great, vol. II, ed. A. E. Waite (London: James Elliott
and Co., 1894), 372.
 INVISIBLE WOMBS 131

is among the themes that caused D. P. Walker to exclaim, “I shall say as little as possible
about Paracelsus’s theories ... I doubt whether Paracelsus’ philosophical writings are in fact
intelligible, that is, whether they contain any coherent patterns of thought.”7
Although a difficult task indeed, it is very important that we seek to comprehend
Paracelsus’s description and differentiation of the basic ontological classes that exist in the
cosmos, for they are fundamental to every aspect of his natural thought, from alchemy to
anthropology (the division of the human being), and from magic to mental illness. Even
Paracelsus’s classification of subjects is based on this differentiation. Philosophy, he writes,
is a subject that treats topics associated with elemental bodies or tangible corporeality, and
“astronomia” all facets associated with subtle “sidereal bodies,” i.e. the living “ethereal
bodies” pervading the natural world. The “immortal body” is a subject of theology, but also
of the untötliche Philosophei (immortal philosophy). This immortal body is a body created
by God the Son, or Christ. From this body arises Christ’s human body, the Eucharist, and
the Resurrection body that Christians receive upon baptism and nourishment through the
Eucharist.8
Below, in my clarification of Paracelsus’s division of the world and the human being —
in which I will focus on the elemental and sidereal bodies (and not the immortal body) —
I will illustrate that Paracelsus came to believe that the tangible objects of the natural world
are composed of mortal seeds (form), the tria prima (salt, sulfur, and mercury), and living
spirits (sidereal bodies). Thus, elemental body is a combination of seeds and the three prin-
ciples; it combines with sidereal body — which Paracelsus evokes to account for “mortal
spiritual life” — to create a tangible substance. Tangible substances thus consist of tangible
body, seeds, and life. Therefore, it is inadequate to explicate Paracelsus’s matter theory, as
do some scholars, merely in terms of the three chemical principles,9 or even under the rubric

7
D. P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic: From Ficino to Campanella (London: The Warburg
Institute, 1958), 96. Walker was influenced by his reading of the arch opponent of Paracelsianism
in the late sixteenth century, namely Thomas Erastus. Another historian of science, A. Rupert Hall,
remarks that the research of Paracelsus and other alchemists is a search for “the grain of real knowl-
edge ... concealed in a vast deal of esoteric chaff.” Hall, The Scientific Revolution, 1500–1800: the
Formation of the Modern Scientific Attitude, 2d ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1956), 307; quoted in
H. Floris Cohen, The Scientific Revolution: a Historiographical Inquiry (Chicago and London: The
University of Chicago Press, 1994), 116. I believe that it is problematic that many scholars simply
shirk the subject of Paracelsus’s natural philosophy, believing Paracelsus to be the inconsistent,
rambling quack that his enemies claimed him to be.
8
Paracelsus discussed “immortal matter” at length in dozens of his writings, including his eucharistic
tracts and the Astronomia Magna. For a discussion of Paracelsus’s classification of such subjects
as “philosophy” and the “immortal philosophy,” see Hartmut Rudolph, “Hohenheim’s Anthro-
pology in the Light of his Writings on the Eucharist,” in Paracelsus: the Man and His Reputation,
His Ideas and Their Transformation, ed. Ole Peter Grell (Leiden, Boston, Köln: Brill, 1998).
9
This tria prima of salt, sulfur, and mercury, mentioned by Pagel, is the topic that seems to have
drawn the most attention of historians of science. After all, scholars note that Paracelsus’s tria
prima were meant to replace the Aristotelian elements (fire, air, water, and earth) as the base
components of all bodily substances — scores of subsequent natural philosophers would develop
theories about matter that drew upon Paracelsus’s three principles. Historians of science also note,
however, that Paracelsus emphasised the importance of experiment. He proclaimed that one must
observe nature, either via travel or experiment in the alchemical kitchen, instead of relying on the
outmoded theories and irrelevant curriculum of the academics, who simply regurgitated nonsense.
132 DANE T. DANIEL

of hylozoism (matter–life theory).10 I will also note that although many alchemical and
Neo-Platonic influences surface in Paracelsus’s natural philosophy, it seems that over time
he shed a number of notions incommensurate with his idiosyncratic rendering of scripture,
with which he sought to conform the totality of his thought. Let us then turn to Paracelsus’s
division of the world and human, which is at the heart of his natural thought, and which
took on a relatively coherent form during the 1530s.

Elemental Body

One of the few elucidatory studies on Paracelsus’s theories of the elements is that of Reijer
Hooykaas in the 1930s. Hooykaas’s demarcation between the elemental theory of
Paracelsus’s formative chemical work, the Archidoxis, and that in his later works, has served
to inspire the present study in significant ways, both topically and methodologically.11
Hooykaas writes that in Paracelsus’s post-Archidoxis works, the chemical elements, mate-
rial components and true chemical substances are the three principles (the drei Ersten or
drey Substanzen) — Paracelsus’s employment of the term Substanz reveals that he accepts
the actual existence of the tria prima in combinations. In the Archidoxis of the mid-1520s, on
the other hand, Paracelsus accepts Aristotle’s four elements as the base material compo-
nents of substances, for he had not yet invented the three-principle theory. Hooykaas adds
that when the four elements are mentioned in Paracelsus’s more mature works, Paracelsus
always associates them with the “four elemental regions” of the cosmos, i.e. the water

9
Continued
Note how he rails against the establishment and its university curriculum in Das Buch Paragranum,
in I, 8:138: “Wie wird es euch cornuten anstehn, das Theophrastus der monarchei wird der fürst
sein? und ir calefactores? wie dünket euch, so ir warden in mein philosophei müssen und auf eueren
Plinium, Aristotelem scheissen, auf eureren Albertum, Thomam, Scotum etc. seichen und werden
sprechen: die konten wol und subtil liegen, wie grosse narren sind wir und unser vordern gewesen,
das sies und wir nie gemerkt haben. wie dunket euch, so ich euch den himel wird anrichten, das
drakenschwanz eueren Avicennam und Galenum wird fressen?”
10
On the term “hylozoism,” see Reijer Hooykaas, “Die chemische Verbindung bei Paracelsus,” in
Sudhoff’s Archiv für die Geschichte der Medizin und Naturwissenschaft, Band 32, Heft 3 (Sept. 1939):
167–75; 167–69. Hooykaas, although problematically relying on the probably spurius De natura
rerum, writes, “[Paracelsus] ist Hylozoist: er behauptet, dass auch die Mineralien belebt sind.
Sie wachsen im Berge durch die ‘vis mineralis’; der ‘Archeus terrae’, der Erdgeist, lenkt ihre
Entwicklung. Nicht nur dass der Archaeus als ein von aussen wirkendes lebensprinzip die
Entstehung der Mineralien fördert, auch in den Mineralien wird ein Lebensgeist angenommen. Aus
der Luft kommen die Lebensgeister und suchen sich mit Hilfe des Archaeus einen zu ihnen
passenden Körper. Umgekehrt nimmt der Leib nur an, was ‘ihm spiritualisch’ ist, wie der Wein den
Essig annimmt und ganz zu Essig wird.” As I will illustrate, although “hylozoism,” the idea of a life
force combined with matter within substances, does seem in part to be an adequate description
for the picture presented in the Astronomia Magna and Paracelsus’s other mature works, neverthe-
less “hylozoism” does not seem to capture the role of “form” that is present in Paracelsus’s matter–
life–form depiction of substance. [Note Hooykaas’s argument that “the Paracelsian theory of
chemical bonding is an attempt to destroy the firm bastion of Medieval speculation with the aid of
chemical knowledge.” (Die paracelsische Theorie der chemischen Verbindung ist ein Versuch, mit
Hilfe der chemischen Erfahrung die fest mauer der mittelalterlichen Spekulation zu zertrümmern.)]
11
R. Hooykaas, “Die Elementenlehre des Paracelsus,” Janus 39 (1935): 175–87.
 INVISIBLE WOMBS 133

sphere, earth sphere, fire sphere, and air sphere. Before examining these elemental regions or
“matrices” (wombs), it is helpful first to review a few facets of the matter theory with which
the younger Paracelsus experimented in the Archidoxis of the mid-1520s, for we will follow
these concepts into their later manifestations.
Within the vitalist matter theory of the Archidoxis, which reveals Paracelsus’s early
commitment to Rupescissan alchemy and its conceptual approach to matter, the “quintes-
sence” or “predestined element” combines with the four elements to mould a given
substance, and this predestined element is the predominant component.12 It is responsible
for an object’s form and qualities; for example, it lends an object its colour and/or curative
powers.13 And one may extract it, separating it from the body, like the soul from its body.14
It is a very subtle matter existing within all things in nature. This matter, which differs from
elemental matter, has been purged of all impurities and is immortal.15

12
Paracelsus’s discussion of the elemental virtues in the Archidoxis is partially rooted in the specula-
tions of John of Rupescissa’s (fl. 1340–50) Liber de consideratione quintae essentiae omnium rerum.
See Johannes de Rupescissa, Liber de consideratione quintae essentia omnum rerum, ed. and German
trans. Udo Benzenhöfer (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GmbH, 1989). Paracelsus’s
early approach to the quintessence may also have been influenced by the alchemical theories that
came to Paracelsus in Neo-Platonic guise via the syncretic systems of Ficino and/or Agrippa: Ficino
himself employed the alchemical “quintessence” in De vita coelitus comparanda, which is the third
book of his De vita libri tres. See Hiroshi Hirai, “Concepts of Seeds and Nature in Marsilio Ficino,”
in Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy, ed. Michael J. B. Allen and Valery
Rees (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 273. Ficino writes that the World-Soul is carried by the spiritus mundi,
which he also calls the “quintessence,” the “heavens” (coelum), and an “ethereal nature”; the quin-
tessence actively exists in every worldly body. Paracelsus’s concepts do occasionally bring to mind
Ficino’s “seeds” — related to the Lucretian “seeds of things” or the Stoic logoi spermatikoi.
13
Paracelsus, Archidoxis, in I, 3:121: “So ist nun das zu verstehen, <das> die quinta essentia die farb
gibt, gleich wie die tugent. und so das golt sein farb verloren hat, so ist im sein quinta essentia
hinweg.” Paracelsus uses several words to define it: “The quintessence is the nature, force, virtue,
and medicine, ... and the colors, the life, and the property of the thing.” Also, 118: “Das quinta
essentia ist alein die natur, kraft, tugent und arznei ... sei auch die farben, das leben und die
eigenschaft des dings.”
14
I, 3:121. “Also auch in anderen dingen allen ist das die quinta essentia die da heilet und gesunt
machet, tingirt den ganzen leib wie ein salz ein suppen recht und gut macht.” See also 120: “So nun
die quinta essentia von dem, das kein quinta essentia ist, gescheiden wird, wie ein sêl vom leib, ist
zuverstehen, was krankheit wolt im dan widerstehen?”
15
I, 3:118. “Quinta essentia ist ein materien, die da corporalischen wird ausgezogen aus allen
gewechsen und aus allem dem in dem das leben ist, gescheiden von aller unreinikeit und tötlikeit,
gesubtilt auf das aller reinigeste, gesondert von allen elementen.” (Like the spirit of life, the quintes-
sence is also a spirit. And this life-spirit in things is permanent.) Ibid. “Und [quinta essentia] ist ein
spiritus gleich dem spiritu vitae in der underscheit geteilt, das spiritus vitae des dings bleiblich ist
und des menschen tötlich. darumb als da ein verstant ist, das aus menschlichem fleisch oder blut
kein quinta essentia mag gezogen werden, dan das darumb das spiritus vitae, der dan auch spiritus
virtutum ist, stirbt und das leben in der sêl ist, das ist als da in re nit.” Thus, the most important part
of any thing is a living, immortal, spiritual, and separate material called the quintessence. Clearly,
this salient part of any substance does not map on to the “form” of Aristotelian matter–form theory
(hylomorphism); that is, this “hylozoism” is discordant with the Aristotelian notion that all objects
(or substances) of the terrestrial region are necessarily a combination of matter and form, the two
parts being inseparable.
134 DANE T. DANIEL

Interestingly, as we will see, the predestined element would survive into Paracelsus’s
mature philosophy under such modified guises as “arcana” and “ruler.” However, he would
partition its powers, associating some of its powers with elemental seeds, and others with
sidereal bodies. In addition, the “virtues” would shed their immortality, for Paracelsus —
wishing to present a truly Christian cosmos — came to insist on both the genesis and ulti-
mate eschatological annihilation of everything associated with the elemental and sidereal
bodies. Furthermore, one of the Archidoxis’s synonyms for the predestined element,
namely, the quintessence, would take on a radically new meaning in Paracelsus’s thought. I
will return to the subject of the quintessence when discussing how the sidereal and elemental
components combine with the soul in the human.
As Paracelsus embarked on his vast exegetical enterprise in the early 1530s, writing
over twenty tracts on the Eucharist alone,16 he also produced his so-called “meteorological
writings.” These cosmological speculations would culminate in the cosmosophical vision
of the Astronomia Magna’s Book I, which Paracelsus completed in 1537. Let us venture into
Paracelsus’s mature thought on the elements by noting Paracelsus’s cosmos of the meteoro-
logical writings, a vision which is greatly different from that of Aristotelian/Scholastic
cosmology.
Paracelsus begins the Philosophia de generationibus et fructibus quatuor elementorum
with a cosmogonical discussion. He writes that the yliaster — a theoretical concept that
Paracelsus would soon drop, perhaps owing to its divergence from scripture — produced the
four elements of air, fire, earth, and water. As noted above, these are not the tangible ele-
ments, but rather invisible wombs (matrices), or producers. This is a conceptual framework
that Paracelsus may have drawn from Trithemius, or from Gnostic or Cabbalist theories.17
There is an upper sphere consisting of air and fire, and a lower sphere, i.e. a “globe,” that
consists of the earth and water regions. To account for the corporeality that accompanies
these invisible elemental regions, Paracelsus, evoking one of his characteristic themes, writes

16
See Katharina Biegger’s listing of Paracelsus’s dozens of explicitly theological works in “De
Invocatione Beatae Mariae Virginis.” Paracelsus und die Marienverehrung (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner,
1990), 24–27. Included in this list are the following eucharistic writings: De coena domini prologus et
initium; De coena domini ad Clementem VII.; Quod sanguis et caro Christi sit; Coena domini declara-
tion; Von der Wiedergeburt des Menschen; Interpretationes ex Paulo; De coena domini ex cap. I., III.,
IV. et VI. Johannis; De coena domini ex auctoribus ceteris evangelii; Scholia über das Vaterunser; Ex
Paulo, I. Cor.; De coena domini ex S. Johannis epistola et S. Petri; De coena domini ex psalterio; Vom
Nachtmahl aus dem natürlichen Licht; Naturalis interpretation coenae dominicae; Von den Miraculn
und Zeichen des Brodes und Weines; Liber de usu coena Domini; Modus Missae (Summa Dei
sacramentorum); Von der Messe; Beschluss übers Nachtmahl; De sacramento corporis Christi; and
De sacramento corporis Christi (fragment).
17
See Pagel, Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine, 215, 218. Pagel, who dwelt on this
problem for decades, saw a link to the Cabbalist concept of the three primordial elements —
namely, ether, water, and air — which were called the three “mothers”: in the course of emanation,
these ideal and ethereal mothers became palpable elements. Fire evolved into visible heaven, water
into earth, and air into atmosphere. But Pagel also points to the early gnostic (ophitic) cosmogony,
in which the mother, or Sophia, became enmeshed in matter. Weighted down, she was hindered
from joining the father and the son, and their pure light. She was forced to serve as an intermediary
between light and dark, hence forming heaven and bringing forth a demiurge. The demiurge joined
with the planetary spirits to form a world of bodies and eventually to endow man with the spark of
divine light.
 INVISIBLE WOMBS 135

that God created “the body,” which consists of the tria prima of sulfur, salt, and mercury.
To account for the form of corporeal substances, Paracelsus adds to the mix his theory of
virtues or seeds. He writes that when God created the body (the tria prima), all of the virtues
lay in the three principles of salt, sulfur, and mercury. (The seeds are created!) The yliaster
then distributed the seeds, giving to each elemental mother a unique set. For example, the
element of earth (and not the elements of water, air, and fire) received all of the virtues of the
substances that would grow out of the earth to sustain animals, such as trees, herbs, fungi,
and other growing things. Likewise, the other elements received their virtues. All material
things of the universe spring forth from the four matrices — they are elemental fruits, con-
sisting of seeds and “the body.” The fruits of the element of water are stones, various types
of metal, and material water.18 The air matrix, the outermost sphere, produces material air
and chaos. The globe (earth and water spheres) and stars swim through this very subtle and
impalpable chaos like a chick in its albumen.19 The fire mother produces snow, hail, day and
night, wind, cold, and elemental fire.
One should be aware of the fact that Paracelsus’s matter theory differs from Aristote-
lian matter theory in crucial respects. For example, in order to explain the nature of
an individual star (a tangible star), Paracelsus invokes the language, but contradicts the
meaning, of the Aristotelian four qualities (hot, cold, wet, dry). He notes that as the earth
can produce a “hot” fruit, fire, in its turn, can have “cold” manifestations. Thus, fire can
bear a “cold” fruit such as snow or hail. Also, as Paracelsus writes in the Astronomia Magna,
the elemental bodies exist in both the globe and upper sphere; the heavens too have a
“bodily being.” (Of course, in the Aristotelian cosmos, the four elemental spheres, taken
together, are the sublunar terrestrial region, whereas the celestial region, possessing the
heavenly spheres and stars, is composed of ether or the quintessence; thus, according to the
Scholastic account, the heavens do not have elemental components.) Paracelsus thinks that
whereas the elemental mothers are confined to their particular spheres, each of the material
elements exists throughout the universe; hence the ability of the fire matrix to provide mois-
ture (a product of the water matrix) to the earth. The seeds of the elemental fire, however,
such as snow seeds, are specific to the fire matrix, which produces and unleashes snow fruit.
Paracelsus discusses the subject of material location explicitly in the Astronomia Magna
when making sure the reader knows that a “star,” unlike the firmament (gestirn), is also

18
Paracelsus, Philosophiae de Generationibus & Fructibus quatuor Elementorum, in Bücher und
Schriften, vol. IV, ed. Johannes Huser (Hildesheim and New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1972; origi-
nally published as vol. 8 in Basel by Conrad Waldkirch, 1590), 85–86. The seed for the element of
water comes from yle, which is clearly derived from the Greek hylem , meaning “matter”. This seed,
according to Paracelsus, has a “workshop,” namely, the earth; that is, the element of water brings
forth its fruit in another element (the earth), which then sustains it. Paracelsus writes, “[T]he tree of
the element of water, ... a flowing stream, distributed throughout the whole earth,” is sustained in
the earth. In fact, every element requires a body (elemental matter) in which its fruits can be sus-
tained. The element of chaos (air) maintains the “impressions,” which are the fruits of the element
of fire. The fruits of the element of earth are sustained by the element of fire (e.g., sunlight). The
element of water sustains the fruits of the air. Accounting for the origin of tangible material water,
Paracelsus speaks of the branches of the tree of elemental water — they fall down, descending into
the cavities of the earth, hence generating the element of water.
19
Paracelsus, Philosophiae de Generationibus & Fructibus quatuor Elementorum, 62–63. The outer air
matrix possesses the added function of being the outer shell or boundary for the cosmos.
136 DANE T. DANIEL

made up of elemental bodies. He writes, “The world has two bodies, visible and invisible.
The bodies pertaining to the four elements are visible, and there are eight categories of these:
earth and her fruit, water and its fruit, heaven and its fruits, and air and its fruits. Heaven
[from which invisible bodies come] is ‘das gestirn’ exclusively. The individual stars are
visible, but they themselves are not heaven.”20 Let us now unpack Paracelsus’s concept
of the firmament, that is, the invisible sidereal matter of the universe.

Sidereal Body

It is my honor [anmutung] to treat the lord who rules the bodies, and this ruler is called “the
stars” [das Gestirn], from which the whole astronomy flows.21
As the above passage illustrates, Paracelsus believed that das Gestirn, that is, the firmament,
rules all bodies, that is, tangible elemental objects. This is the topic of “astronomy.” The
“subtle bodies” play important roles in the natural world, and they do so in bodily form,
for they too are bodies; Paracelsus refers to them as “powder” and “star dust.”22 He uses
any number of synonyms to describe the ethereal matter of the universe: “invisible bodies,”
“sidereal bodies,” “ethereal bodies,” “spirits,” and “rulers.”
Heavenly bodies and their powers account not only for the human spirit, but also for
such faculties as human knowledge and animal senses — they constitute the “light of
nature,” hence instructing humans. In the context of natural magic, Paracelsus sees vast
potential in the employment of firmamental powers, such as simultaneous long-distance
communication or the ability to reach great speeds in a boat.23 There is also a strong astro-
logical component at work here, for the sidereal matter, originating in the heavenly bodies,
for example Mars or Saturn, will bring about effects that correspond to the bodies’ origins.
Mars can impress warrior qualities onto a human at conception: the alignment of the stars
at conception is thus very important.24

20
I, 12:38. “Die welt hat zwen leib, einen sichtbaren und einen unsichtbaren. der sichtbar, das sind die
corpora der elementen; die unsichtbarn der element seind viere, die erden und ir frucht, das wasser
und sein frucht, himel und sein frucht, der luft und sein frucht. Der himel ist alein das gestirn. Die
sternen sind sichtbar, sie sind aber der himel nit.”
21
1, 12:17. “Aber vom herscher, der die leib regirt, ist mein anmutung. und diser herscher heisst das
gestirn, aus welchem fleusst die ganz astronomei.”
22
I, 12:30–31. “The human is a dust, and the elements from which he is made are also dust. And his
wisdom from the natural light is also a dust as are the stars from which the wisdom comes. All arts
and talents (klugheit) depart (abgehen) with the dust.” (Der mensch ein staub ist und die elementa,
aus denen er gemacht ist, auch ein staub und sein weisheit des natürlichen liechts auch ein staub und
das gestirn, aus dem die weisheit komt, auch ein staub. Mit dem staub gehen alle künst und klugheit
ab.)
23
I, 12:84–85.
24
Via sidereal bodies, Paracelsus offers naturalistic explanations for a variety of phenomena consid-
ered to be “demonic” or “supernatural”; such is part of his attack on what he called the “supersti-
tions” fostered by the church and its ceremonies. For further discussion of Paracelsus’s approach
to strange phenomena, see Charles Webster, “Paracelsus Confronts the Saints: Miracles, Healing
and the Secularization of Magic,” Social History of Medicine (1995): 403–21; and “Paracelsus,
Paracelsianism, and the Secularization of the Worldview,” Science in Context (2002): 9–27.
 INVISIBLE WOMBS 137

Fittingly, while discussing the natural “gift” of soulless creatures (inanimata) in Chap-
ter 10 of the Astronomia Magna’s Book I, Paracelsus refers to heaven or the firmament
as the “father.” The mother earth and firmamental father come together to generate, for
example, monstrous beings.25 In addition, the mother and father each donate fruits to
humans: as Paracelsus notes in the Philosophia de generationibus, the human receives two
natural nutriments. The lower sphere provides to humans their physiological sustenance
through its fruits, and the upper sphere nourishes spiritually and invisibly.26 Paracelsus reit-
erates in the Astronomia Magna that each human possesses an inner magnet in his or
her senses that lures wisdom and knowledge from above, hence attracting subtle sidereal
bodies.27
There does seem to be a Ficinian aspect to Paracelsus’s concept of the sidereal body.
Ficino thought that the magus is one who can extract the living essence, the spiritus, from
things — an ethereal spirit lives in all things, and it brings generation and motion.28 Some-
what similarly, in Paracelsus’s system, the firmament rules every body of the material world,
providing internal motion and direction. Also, when discussing “adept philosophy,”
Paracelsus explicitly discusses firmamental virtues: “In addition to what they receive from
the elements, all earthly bodies carry a firmamental power and virtue.”29 According to
Paracelsus, a common philosopher and/or alchemist can describe the natural or elemental
power in plants, but the adept philosopher, skilled in the sidereal, can describe the
firmamental power. Thus, he can create sidereal curatives.30
Clearly, it is not merely the case that every substance takes its shape according to its
elemental body and seed: a “living spirit” brings about the effect of each body. Note
Paracelsus’s treatment in the Astronomia Magna:
First [God] created the elements, and the elements are nothing but a subject through which
something is accomplished: that is, they are the things in which the life is set. This movement
is that which rules the body; and so it is a ruler, a lord in the elements — this compels out of
them that which is in them. This coerces the fire, that it must burn, coerces the earth, that it
has to bear fruit, compels the water, so that it maintains fish, compels the air over the whole
earth, and it coerces sun, moon, and stars into their movements. This is the essence which

25
I, 12:248. “Die muter ist das element, der vater das firmament, aus den zweien wird ein solche
generatio.” See also 246, “die muter nympharum ist in elemento aquae, der vater im firmament. die
muter gnomorum ist in elemento terrae, der vater im firmament. die muter vulca nalium im feuer,
der vatter im firmament. die muter silvestrium in elemento aeris, auch gigantum, der beider vater im
firmament.”
26
Paracelsus, Philosophiae de Generationibus & Fructibus quatuor Elementorum, 57: “Zwo Nahrung
seind hie/Eine im Lufft und im Fewr/die ander in der Erden und im Wasser. Die obern zwey
nehrend uns als Geistlich/unsichtbarlich: die untern Meterialisch und Corporalisch.”
27
I, 12:39. “Also die vernunft des menschen hat einen magneten, der in sich zeucht vom gestirn die
sinn und gedanken.” Is it the case, then, that the upper sphere produces both material fruits, such as
heat and rain, as well as the universe’s subtle matter responsible for thought and senses? Are the fire
mother and firmamental father the same thing?
28
Hirai, 257–84; esp. 274–76.
29
I, 12:97. “So merkent ... das alle die irdische corpora uber das, das sie von elementen haben, ein
firmamentische kraft und tugent mit tragen.”
30
I, 12:97.
138 DANE T. DANIEL

coerces the body to bring forth its effect; and the essence will determine how the body is
utilised, in the manner reserved for art alone.31 (my emphases)
The firmament is the principal natural ruler — it donates a directive force to objects, which
accompanies their elemental bodies and seeds, and then heaven nourishes the objects.
In Paracelsus’s vitalist natural philosophy, each thing has its body, its seed, and its life.
Paracelsus sometimes refers to a sidereal living spirit as an “archeus,” i.e. a spirit that
directs, for example, digestion or the growth of minerals. Thus, the term “hylozoism,” as
Hooykaas labelled Paracelsus’s matter theory, seems in part an apt description. Hylozoism,
or matter–life theory, can be seen as an alternative to Aristotelian hylomorphism, which
combines the Greek hylem with morphem , matter and form respectively. As we have seen,
however, both elemental seeds and living spirits contribute to the form and activity of
substances. Perhaps a more fitting term for Paracelsus’s matter theory is “spiritual
hylomorphism,” a combination of the components and actions of sidereal and elemental
bodies.32

The Elemental, Sidereal and Soul in Humans

To understand how the soul and elemental and sidereal bodies are combined in humans,
one must again evoke Paracelsus’s exegesis of Genesis. Paracelsus’s interpretation of the

31
I, 12:14–15. “Erstlich seind geschaffen die elementa, und die elementa seind nichts dan ein
subiectum durch das etwas volbracht sol werden: das ist, sie seind die ding, in die das vivum gelegt
ist. Dise bewegung ist das da regirt den leib, also ist ein regirer und ein herscher in den elementen.
Der aus inen treibt, was in inen ist. Diser treibt das feuer das brennen muss, treibet die erden, das sie
frucht geben muss, treibet das wasser, das fisch muss erhalten, treibt den luft über die ganze erden,
treibt sonn und mon und alle sternen in irem lauf. Das ist das wesen, aus dem das corpus gehet in
sein wirkung und genötiget wird; und wie das wesen ist, also wird das corpus gebraucht, alein was
kunst vorbehalt.”
32
Hooykaas also relates this hylozoism to Stoic theories, as does Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, who
observes: “Dieser Herrscher meint das ‘Hegemonikon’ der stoischen Naturphilosophie und das
Entwicklungsziel des Seminalgrundes. Johann Baptist van Helmont wird es später ‘Archäus’
nennen.” See W. Schmidt-Biggemann, Philosophia perennis: Historische Umrisse abendlandischer
Spiritualität in Antike, Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Frankfurt am Main, 1998), 292–93;
Suhrkamp. One should note too that Paracelsus himself employed the term “archeus” in a similar
fashion; van Helmont merely inherited and expanded the concept. See also Johann Baptist
van Helmont: Ortus mediciniae (Amsterdam, 1648), 40 fols. See Hooykaas, “Die chemische
Verbindung,” 167–69.
Paracelsus employs the “archeus” as a living directive spirit and often refers to the archeus
as an internal alchemist that directs physiological functions, such as digestion. Summarising the
Labyrinthus medicorum errantium (1538), another work of Paracelsus’s later life, T. P. Sherlock
discusses the archeus and vulcanus in “The Chemical work of Paracelsus,” Ambix 3 (1948): 33–63,
on 41: “[N]othing is fully made, that is, nothing is made in the form of ultimate matter. Instead all
things are made as prime matter and subsequently the Vulcanus goes over it and makes it into
ultimate matter through the art of alchemy. The archeus, the inner vulcanus, proceeds in the same
way, for he knows how to circulate and prepare according to the pieces and the distribution, as the
art itself [alchemy] does with sublimation, distillation, reverberation, etc. For all these arts are in
men just as they are in the outer alchemy, which is the figure of them. Thus the vulcanus and the
archeus separate each other. That is alchemy, which brings to its end that which has not come to its
end, which extracts lead from its ore and works it up to lead, that is the task of alchemy.”
 INVISIBLE WOMBS 139

creation of Adam in Genesis 2:7 provides yet more insight into his concept of matter and
body. It shows, for example, not only how Paracelsus accounts for the interconnectedness
of the macrocosm and microcosm, but also how he came to understand the quintessence in
his later years, thus highlighting one aspect of his abandonment of Rupescissan alchemy.
Furthermore, his exegesis of Genesis 2:7 reveals conclusively that Paracelsus is less Gnostic
or Neo-Platonic than some scholars believe, i.e. that his science is to large extent scriptural
in its basis.
Let us begin this section by recalling Walter Pagel’s problematic staging of Paracelsus’s
sidereal body. Pagel, the trail-blazing, entertaining and very erudite historian of medicine,
surprisingly neglected Paracelsus’s theologica and hence overemphasised his connection
to such Renaissance Neo-Platonists as Ficino and Pico. To elucidate Paracelsus’s ethereal
(sidereal) body, Pagel explains that within Platonic philosophy, there existed a demarcation
between the heavenly realm of eternal ideas and that of matter. In turn, various Neo-
Platonists, beginning with Plotinus, emphasised a continuity descending from soul to
matter. All things emanate from one source, and each thing passes on its contents to the next
level. Everything in the universe is thus intimately related in one living whole. Nevertheless,
the Neo-Platonists sought to understand the interaction of immaterial soul and matter —
to explain the bridge between them. Thus, they gave the soul a “chariot” made of very subtle
matter. This Streitwagen, Pagel explains, is the “pneumatic-aethereal Ochema,” or chariot.33
The soul receives its chariot during the downward journey through the sidereal spheres; its
aethereal envelope, or ochem ma, comes from the stars; hence the term astral body. In Stoic
philosophy, the soul was — in contrast to the nonmaterial Neo-Platonic soul — a very fine
bodily substance, a “breath.” The Stoics considered it an animating power, whereas the
Neo-Platonists thought that “the body was [the soul’s] instrument, but the soul was not in
the body, rather the body in the soul.”34 Various Neo-Platonists, such as Plotinus, then
adopted pneuma, accepting its role in transporting souls in their round-trips between divin-
ity and earth. Moving towards matter, which is the lowest form in the universe, the astral
component thickens. In pure spirit, i.e. divinity, there is no envelope. In matter, the divine
spark has a very thick cover. Much as water hardens into ice, spirit condenses and becomes
materialised as it approaches corporeality.
Pagel has perhaps pointed to some of the sources for Paracelsus’s employment of
the term “astral body,” although one might note that the discussion of celestial bodies also
occurs among such notables as St. Paul and Erasmus, with whose writings Paracelsus
was familiar. The largest problem facing Pagel’s particular couching of Paracelsus’s anthro-
pology is that Paracelsus — as evidenced especially in his mature years — offered a novel
depiction of the sidereal body, one that substantially differs from the Neo-Platonic or
Gnostic picture discussed above. First, emanationism simply does not exist in Paracelsus’s
cosmology: Paracelsus does not hold the “spirit” or astral body to be an intermediary
between the soul and elemental body. Second, with regard to the soul, Paracelsus held that it

33
Ernst Wilhelm Kämmerer, Das Leib-Seele-Geist-Problem bei Paracelsus und einigen Autoren des 17.
Jahrhunderts (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1971), 32; Walter Pagel, Das Medizinische Weltbild
des Paracelsus. Seine Zusammernhänge mit Neuplatonismus und Gnosis (Franz Steiner Verlag,
Wiesbaden, 1962), 38–39, 49, 54, 116, 118.
34
Pagel, Das Medizinsche Weltbild des Paracelsus, 39.
140 DANE T. DANIEL

is a component created at conception and not a preexisting one. Third, as we have seen, in
Paracelsus’s schema the sidereal body does not even consist of the tangible matter of the
stars.
To elucidate Paracelsus’s understanding of the human composition, in which the
elemental and sidereal bodies are married, let us explore his reading of Genesis cosmogony.
In fact, in his marriage of ancient concepts with his idiosyncratic exegesis, he transforms the
microcosm–macrocosm analogy through his idiosyncratic rendering of Genesis 2:7, holding
that the natural parts of the human are extracted from the limus terrae, or quintessence, and
that to this “dust of the earth” was added a piece of the divine, that is, the breath of life
or soul;35 because the very essence of all natural substances — sidereal and elemental — exist
within the quintessence, it follows that the human, fashioned from this primordial composi-
tion, also contains the entirety of material reality. Paracelsus’s approach to the “fifth
essence” — which varies radically from the quintessence of the Archidoxis — has its termi-
nological and conceptual roots partially in alchemical and Neo-Platonic sources, but it
cannot be dissociated from Genesis 2:7, where God fashioned man from the dust of the
earth and blew life into him. Note Paracelsus’s creative discussion of Adam’s creation in
the Opus Paramirum (1530–31):
Because the limbus [i.e., limus terrae or quintessence] is the prime matter of the human, the
physician has to know what the limbus is. For the limbus is that which is also the human. He
who discerns the limbus knows what the human is ... Now, the limbus is the heaven and
earth, the upper and lower spheres, and the four elements and what is in them. Therefore it is
appropriate that [the human] has the name microcosm, for he is the whole world.36
One reason why a physician must understand the sidereal and elemental aspects of humans
— as H. C. Erik Midelfort has shown in a fascinating study on Paracelsus’s “psychiatry” —
is that mental illnesses are sometimes elemental, sometimes sidereal, and sometimes moral
diseases associated with the soul and divine matters.37
Concerning Adam’s descendents, Paracelsus adds in the Astronomia Magna that each
human who is conceived in the womb of a woman, and who stems from Adam (not all stem
from Adam), receives the corporeality that was used to create Adam. This means that
Adam’s offspring also possess the essence of all things of the universe. Thus every human
is a microcosm. To reiterate — it is in this way, and not through emanationism, that
Paracelsus explains the intimate interconnection between all things. All types of creation
(with the exception of God’s later creations) have existed together from the moment of cre-
ation, and all mortal corporeality, whether sidereal or elemental, exists together, stemming
from this initial “limus” of Genesis 2:7.

35
Genesis 2:7. “Formavit igitur Dominus Deus hominem de limo terrae et inspiravit in faciem eius
spiraculum vitae et factus est homo in animam veventem.” (And the Lord God formed man of the
dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.)
36
I, 9:193. “Dieweil nun der limbus ist prima materia des menschen, so muss der arzt wissen was der
limbus sei. dan was der limbus ist das ist auch der mensch. der den limbus erkent, der weiss was der
mensch ist. Also sol der arzt geboren werden. Nun ist der limbus himel und erden, ober und under
sphaer, die vier element und was in ir ist, darumb er bilich den namen hat microcosmus, denn er ist
die ganze welt.”
37
Midelfort, “The Anthropological Roots of Paracelsus’ Psychiatry.”
 INVISIBLE WOMBS 141

TABLE 1
Paracelsus’s quadripartite cosmology and anthropology.

Creation Human acquisition Other biblical Teleology, eschatology

bases

Elemental body Genesis 1:7, Conception 1. Cor. Dissolution

and its (nourished daily by 15:38–39 in the earth at
incorporation elemental fruits) death (Gen. 3:19)
into the Adamic Ultimate obliteration
body in in the conflagration
Genesis 2:7 (2 Pet. 3:12)
Sidereal body Genesis 1:7, Conception 1 Cor. |Dissolution in the
and its (nourished daily 15:40 stars Conflagration
incorporation by stars’ fruits)
into the Adamic
body in
Genesis 2:7
Mortal ‘F
Divine “E
Divine soul Spiraculum Creation via Paradise (e.g., Rev.
(origin in God vitae added God’s world 3:12, 21:2) or Hell
and the Father) to the Adamic at the moment (e.g., Matt. 13:42,
body in of conception 50, Matt. 25:41,
Genesis 2:7 Rev. 10:20, 14)
Eternal body Individual Baptism 1 Cor. 15, Paradise (see
(origin in God human bodies (nourished by Job 19:26 above) or Hell(!
and the Son) created when the fruits of the
Christ broke eternal limus)
the bread at
the Last Supper

Conclusion

On the basis of Paracelsus’s depiction of the origins and constitution of the natural universe,
we have seen that both the macrocosm and microcosm possess elemental and sidereal
components. The elemental body donates seeds and the tria prima, and the sidereal body
provides any given object its movement, i.e., life — it is a “spiritual hylomorphism.” Also, as
I have shown by means of Paracelsus’s explication of Genesis 2:7, the soul is an additional
component — not to be confused with the sidereal body — that is common to both God and
the microcosm. Furthermore, as mentioned in the introduction to this paper, immortal body
is a component of the world that is pervasive in Paracelsus’s writings. It, too, should not be
conflated with the other bodies in Paracelsus’s natural philosophical system. In summary,
table 1 shows Paracelsus’s quadripartite division of the world and human being as he depicts
it in such post-1530 works as the Astronomia Magna.
142 DANE T. DANIEL

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to the following scholars and institutions for their indispensable and generous
help and support on this project: William R. Newman, Hartmut Rudolph, Andrew Weeks,
Jole Shackelford, the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology, and the
Chemical Heritage Foundation.

Notes on Contributor

Dane T. Daniel received his Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana
University in 2003. From 2003 to 2005, he worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Dibner
Institute for the History of Science and Technology (MIT). Currently, Daniel is an assistant
professor in history at Wright State University–Lake Campus in Celina, Ohio. His publica-
tions include “Paracelsus on Baptism and the Acquiring of the Eternal Body,” in Paracel-
sian Moments: Science, Medicine, and Astrology in Early Modern Europe, ed. Gerhild Scholz
Williams and Charles D. Gunnoe, Jr. (Kirksville, Missouri: Sixteenth Century Journal
Publishers, Inc., 2002); and “Paracelsus on the Lord’s Supper: Coena Dominj nostrj Jhesus
Christj Declaratio. A Transcription of the Leiden Codex Voss. Chym. Fol. 24, f. 12r–29v1,”
Nova Acta Paracelsica N.F. 16 (2002): 141–62. Address: Wright State University–Lake
Campus, 7600 State Route 703, Celina, OH 45885, USA; Email: dane.daniel@wright.edu.