its practice the faculties of the physical body, and the celestial
Alchemy the energy of the spirit having become a power in the body of
man: so the practice of Alchemy in dealing with that which belongs
to the astral plane requires the evolution of consciousness and
perception in the astral organism of man; for in the majority of those
who live on the physical plane, the astral form is as unconscious of
its surroundings upon the plane to which it belongs, and as ignorant
of their nature, as a babe is ignorant of the meanings of things
in this world. It is, however, not our purpose to enter into this
subject, as this would bring us into the almost inexhaustible realm
of spiritism, hypnotism, witchcraft and sorcery: all of which things
are superstitions if believed in by those who know nothing about their
laws, but realities for those who know the laws by which such phenomena
take place.[28] The key to the understanding of these phenomena is in
the realization of the truth that the Universe is a manifestation of
power upon the three planes of existence. The spiritual plane has its
seven states of existence, representing self-conscious intelligent
powers, thrones and dominions, angels and archangels, all of these
being manifestations of the primordial cause called _God_. The physical
plane has its seven states of existence, represented as powers in which
consciousness is still latent. In the _middle region_, the astral
plane, we also find again seven states of existence in the form of
living forces attaining consciousness in the organization of man. There
the “seven planets” manifest themselves either for good or for evil
according to the nature of the person in whom they become manifest.
Thus, for instance, that universal element which is symbolized as
{symbol} will become manifested in man as universal love or as
selfishness according to his condition. If {symbol} rules his {symbol}
he will have self-control; but if his {symbol} rules his love, he will
give way to his lusts. If the element of {symbol} in him rules his
{symbol}, his intelligence will be of a terrestrial nature belonging
to the spirit of the earth; but if his intelligence is master over
his earthly elements, he will be capable of high aspirations. If the
element of {symbol} rules his {symbol}, he will employ his intellect
for the purpose of satisfying his greed, but if {symbol} is the master
of his {symbol} he will be of a noble character.
All this is merely said to hint at the sublimity of alchemical science
and call attention to the universal truth; that _every principle, in
whatever plane of existence it may exist, is not a product of the form
in which it develops and manifests itself; but that the form is the
field for its development and manifestation_; in the same sense as the
universal sunlight is not a product of the bodies upon which it shines,
but the bodies are instruments for the development and manifestation
of the qualities of light. Thus the life, consciousness, will, virtue,
passion, or any other spiritual, emotional, or physical state of a man
is not the product of his form, but a manifestation of a universal
life principle becoming manifested in him according to the conditions
presented by his constitution. Life is only one, manifesting itself in
animals as animal life, in plants as vegetable life, etc. Consciousness
is only one, manifesting itself as true self-consciousness in spiritual
beings, and as instincts in the lower animal kingdom. Love is only
one and universal, otherwise it could not manifest everywhere the
same qualities; it does not belong to one individual or one country;
it is born in heaven; but it becomes manifest upon the earth in men,
animals, plants and minerals, under different aspects according to
the conditions which it finds. Everything is a manifestation of one
primordial Unity revealing itself in a threefold aspect. Man himself is
nothing more than a manifestation of the universal power that called
him into existence and built up his bodily form. He is not his body nor
his mind; but the expression upon a lower plane of a higher individual
state of being; one of the letters that constitute the great alphabet
of humanity. Being continually deluded by the illusion caused by the
apparent isolation of his form and its separation from other forms of
existence, he imagines himself to be something essentially separated
from other beings, and thus he forgets his own universal nature. Only
when man begins to realise what he himself in reality is, can he begin
to attain real knowledge in regard to three kingdoms of Nature. The
object of science is said to be the recognition of truth, but it is
also self-evident that no true science can exist as long as the truth
is not recognised and even rejected; for nothing less than by the power
of truth in man can the truth be known. No man can have self-knowledge
of anything which is not within himself.
It will be clear that this subject is so vast as to render it
impossible, in a work of this kind, to do more than merely skim over
the surface, and a thousand things have to remain unsaid which ought to
be explained; but it is not our purpose to enter into the details of
the science of the _Astronomy of Life_ or the _Chemistry of Life_, or
to discuss at length the highest problems of _Occult Philosophy_. The
object of the present work is merely to remove existing misconceptions,
and to throw out seeds, which, if they fall upon a fruitful ground,
will grow and bear fruits, such as ripen not in the outer shell of
Nature, but within her inner temple, in the higher regions of thought.
IV. THE VIRTUE OF THE PHYSICIAN.
“Virtue” means _power_; it is said to be derived from _vir_, Man, and
means manly power, efficacy, strength. Man being somewhat more than a
physical body or an animal, it means a superior, spiritual, substantial
power, such as becomes manifested as nobility of character, purity
of heart, clearness of mind, strength of will, firmness of decision,
quickness of perception, penetration of thought, benevolence, kindness,
honesty, truthfulness, unselfishness, modesty. This virtue is something
infinitely superior to the common “virtuosity,” which consists in an
outward appearing of being virtuous and pious for fear of exposure
and dread of criticism, and it is also infinitely superior to what is
called “morality” by the moralists; a thing praised as the highest
attainable object; but being in fact nothing more than a conforming to
certain customs and views. There is not necessarily any self-sacrifice
in practising morals, but it is more often a means for gratifying one’s
vanity. The word “moral” comes from _mores_, manners. What is according
to the manners and customs in one country, and therefore regarded as
“_moral_” there, is immoral in another place where different manners
exist. A morality without spirituality is of no real value. The same
may be said of “ethics,” derived from _ēthos_, custom, and which
seems to be one of the terms that have been invented for the purpose
of creating confusion, and avoiding calling spiritual things by their
right names.
The _virtue_ which, according to Paracelsus, is the fourth pillar of
the temple of Medicine, has nothing to do with shams; it means _the
power resulting from being a man in the true sense of this term and
being in possession of not merely the theories regarding the treatment
of Disease but of the power to cure them oneself_.
There are at present thousands of medical practitioners, whose only
merit is and ever will be, that they have succeeded in passing an
examination and obtaining the title M.D.; but the title “doctor”
means merely an academical degree; the diploma merely certifies that
the examiners believe the student to have fulfilled all that the
regulations require, and although such a title may involve the right to
poison and kill without being punished for it, the conferring of such
a degree does not constitute a physician. The true physician as well
as the real priest is ordained by God. Paracelsus says in substance as
follows:—
“He who can cure disease is a physician. Neither emperors nor popes,
neither colleges nor high schools can create physicians. They can
confer privileges and cause a person who is not a physician to
appear as if he were one; they can give him permission to kill,
but they cannot give him the power to cure; they cannot make him a
real physician if he has not already been ordained by God. The true
physician does not brag about his cleverness or praise his medicines
or seek to monopolize the right of robbing the patient; for he knows
that the work must praise the master, and not the master the work.
There is a knowledge which is derived from man, and another knowledge
which is derived from God through the light of nature. He who has not
been born to be a physician will never succeed. A physician should
be faithful and charitable. He who loves only himself and his own
pocket will be of little benefit to the sick. Medicine is much more
an art than a science. To know the experience of others is useful
to a physician; but all the learning of books cannot make a man a
physician, unless he is one by nature. Medical wisdom is only given by
God.” (Comp. “Paragranum,” i. 4.)
This virtue which constitutes the true physician cannot be created by
colleges, nor can it be conferred by anyone personally upon himself.
No one can confer upon himself a thing which he does not possess, or
without the aid of any higher influence make himself better than
that which he is; because, as has been explained above, the power
exercised by any form is not the creation of the form, but an eternal
principle, entering into objective existence in forms and becoming
manifested in and through them by its own power. Neither truth nor
wisdom can be manufactured; they exist independently of all opinions,
observations, speculation, and logic; they may be hidden from our
sight like the sun on a rainy day; but as the sun is independent of
our being aware of his presence, so the truth exists eternally whether
or not it is acknowledged by us. If the whole generation of mankind at
present walking this earth should turn into idiots, the truth would not
therefore cease to be, but would become manifested again as wisdom in a
more enlightened age.
Nothing can rise to heaven but what has descended from it, we can
only by overcoming that which is false render ourselves receptive for
that which is true. _Eckhart_ says:—“Divine Wisdom is to God what the
sunlight is to the sun; it is one with Him, a necessary activity, a
never dying fountain, having its source in the heart of God.”
This brings us back again to a _religious_ basis (if we are permitted
to use this ill-treated and misunderstood term), and to the necessity
that he who makes it his profession to employ the laws of nature and
treat the body of man should know the position which man occupies in
nature and the position which nature occupies in regard to the origin
from which it originates.
This science requires not mere words, but self-knowledge. Wisdom can
only be taught by Wisdom itself; but a science based upon a recognition
of truth disperses the clouds which prevent the light of the truth from
entering into the heart and becoming incorporated and manifested in
man.
III.
THE FIVE CAUSES OF DISEASE.
If we inquire from modern medical science: What are the causes of
diseases? we shall probably be answered:
1. _Age._ 2. _Heredity._ 3. _Intermarriage._ 4. _Sex._ 5.
_Temperament._ 6. _Climate and locality._ 7. _Town or country._ 8.
_Hygienic conditions._ 9. _Occupation._ 10. _Air._ 11. _Previous
disease._ 12. _Mental and moral conditions._ 13. _External physical
conditions._ 14. _Poisons._ 15. _Temperature._ 16. _Diet._ 17.
_Epidemic disease, contagion, malaria, parasites and growths._[29]
We will forbear to pass any remarks upon this classification of the
causes of diseases, which merely enumerates certain conditions in which
diseases may arise, and we will pass on to the classification of the
causes of diseases given by Paracelsus; but as this subject has already
received attention in a previously published work on the doctrines of
Paracelsus[30], the following is intended merely to supply additional
food for thought.
Paracelsus says:
“_All diseases have a beginning in either of the three substances;[31]
Salt, Sulphur, or Mercury_; which means that they may take their
origin either within the kingdom of matter, within the realm of the
soul, or in the sphere of the spirit. If body, soul and mind are in
perfect harmony with each other, no disharmony exists; but if a cause
of discord arises in either one of these three planes, it communicates
itself to the rest.”
Before proceeding further we will inquire about the nature of these
_three Substances_:
SALT {symbol}, SULPHUR {symbol}, AND MERCURY {symbol}, which may be
translated as Matter, Energy and Intelligence. They are in fact not
three essentially different things, but only three modes of activity of
one and the same thing; for everything is substantial, each contains a
latent or active force, in each is the potentiality of consciousness,
if it has not already become manifested therein. Everything exists,
therefore, by reason of these “three substances,” and if we for the
sake of forming some idea of their nature look at the world as a
manifestation of _electricity_ (which must necessarily be substantial,
as there could be no force without substance), we may compare them as
follows:
{symbol} to electric resistance.
{symbol} to the tension of electromotive force.
{symbol} to the intensity of the current.
No one would ever think of these three measures as being separate
entities, which like “substance, energy and intelligence” are merely
three aspects or conceptions of one universal life; but these
distinctions are necessary for the purpose of forming a conception.
“Nothing can be thoroughly known without a knowledge of its beginning.
Man is placed into _three substances_, in each of which he has a
beginning; and each thing has its substance, its number and measure
(constituting their harmony). From (the state of) these three
substances originate all causes, origins, and also the understanding
of diseases. These three substances, _Sulphur_, _Mercurius_, _Sal_,
give to everything its corporeality, each substance having its own
qualities. If these qualities are good (in harmony with each other)
there will be no disease but if they enter into opposition to each
other, disease (disharmony) will be the result. (_Paracelsus_,
“Paramirum,” _Lib._ I., 1, 2, and 3).”
Within these three kingdoms disorders may arise from either of the
following _five causes of disease_:
1. From the _Ens astrale_; namely from surrounding conditions in
external nature.
2. From the _Ens veneni_; meaning from poisons and impurities.
3. From the _Ens naturæ_; including causes inherited from the parents.
4. From the _Ens spirituale_; especially those caused by an evil will
or morbid imagination.
5. From the _Ens Dei_; to which belong the ills arising from evil
_Karma_ acquired during this or a previous incarnation; in other words,
the result of _divine justice_.
We will now attempt to define the meaning of these five beginnings.
I.—ENS ASTRALE.[32]
_Diseases arising from external influences_; whether from physical
nature or from deeper causes; the planet upon which we live being
itself an _astrum_ (star), having a physical and ethereal body, a life,
a soul, a mind and a spirit.
“The stars on the sky do not form a man. Man grows out of two
beginnings; the _Ens seminis_ (the male sperm) and the _Ens virtutis_
(the reincarnating spiritual monad). He has therefore two natures, a
corporeal and a spiritual nature, and either of these two requires
its _digest_ (_matrix_ and nutriment). As the womb of the mother is
the world surrounding the child, from which the fœtus receives its
nutriment, so is terrestrial nature from which the terrestrial body of
man receives the influences acting in his organism. The _Ens astrale_
is a thing which we do not see, but which contains us and everything
that lives and has sensation. It is that which contains the air, and
from which and in which live all the elements, and which we symbolize
as M (_Mysterium_), (“Paramirum,” _Lib._ I.)
This _Ens Astrorum_ is therefore evidently the _Akâsa_, which forms
the basis of all material things in physical nature, and if the
close relation between man’s physical nature and the physical nature
surrounding him were better known, it would become more comprehensible
how the states of the all-penetrating ether, changes in temperature,
heat and cold, electric and magnetic conditions in nature, come to
affect the physical nature of man, acting internally by inducing
corresponding changes in his microcosm, even if he is protected against
the direct action of rain, storm, moisture, cold, heat, etc., etc. A
sudden change of conditions in the outside air can affect a patient
imprisoned in a room where no such change is perceptible, and a cloudy
day produce a melancholy effect even upon a blind person. There are no
end of diseases which for want of a better explanation are attributed
to “catching cold,” etc., while in fact it is the existence of certain
conditions in the all-pervading ether, which induces similar conditions
in the body of the patient. Thus, for instance, changes of the moon,
or the position of the moon, or the magnetic currents of the earth,
produce certain effects in certain persons, even if these persons know
nothing about these laws, for it is a fact well known to the ancients,
but which has almost been lost sight of by modern medicine, that man,
apart from the order in which his organs are arranged, is essentially
a counterpart of nature, an image of the world on a smaller scale, a
_microcosm_ within the macrocosm. An atmospheric pressure in outside
nature produces an atmospheric pressure in him; if nature rejoices in
the sunlight of spring, his heart rejoices with it; if storms rage on
the outside, similar storms may be aroused in him, etc., etc. He is,
in fact, only a laboratory in which the universal forces of nature are
performing their work. To this chapter also belong all miasmas and
contagious influences, with all the bacteriæ, microbes, amœbæ, bacilli,
etc., etc., which are the pride of modern discoverers, but whose
characteristics, if not the forms of their bodies, were well known to
Paracelsus, who describes them under the names of _Talpa_, _Matena_,
_Tortilleos_, _Permates_, etc. He says:
“God has caused living creatures to exist in all the elements, and
there is nothing empty of life. That which becomes manifested in the
visible kingdom has come into existence by being generated in the
upper regions. Without such a generation above, it could not have
become manifested below.” (“Lib. Meteorum,” I. 4.)
Since the modern discovery of the cholera, tubercle bacilli, and
other micro-organisms spreading contagious diseases, it has been
the opinion of many, that the presence of such microbes was the
only and fundamental cause of such diseases; but still more recent
investigations have shown such that the presence of these microbes
does not constitute the whole cause; for they have been with impunity
introduced into the human organism, and have also been found to
exist in persons who had fully recovered from such a disease. This
surely shows that there must be an influence causing the microbes to
come into existence, after which they can spread and multiply if the
conditions are favourable, and the fundamental cause of such epidemics
is therefore not the presence of the microbes, this being merely a
symptom, but the influences which cause them to come into existence,
producing _states_ of which the bodies of these organisms are a product
and expression and which appears to proceed from causes situated deeper
than visible physical nature, if we do not mistake the form for the
“spirit” of which the form is the symbol.
“Human science knows how to philosophize about the things that come
within its external observation; but Wisdom shows what is contained in
the _Prima Materia_, which is a greater and higher knowledge than that
of the _Ultima Materia_ (the physical plane).” (“Meteorum,” I. 4.)
This “higher region,” from which such injurious influences originate,
causing the growth of miasmas and microbes, is the “_astral plane_,”
or the soul of the world, and as the evil states in the soul of the
world are caused by the evil states of the human mind, it becomes
comprehensible how epidemic diseases, pestilence and plague, no less
than wars, are the ultimate results of disharmonies and depraved
spiritual states in the soul of humanity. The greatest truth if
seen through a perverted mind appears distorted as a caricature and
superstition; it can be seen in its own light, only if properly
understood.
The astral plane is the plane of desires, emotions, and passions;
that is to say, the plane of those influences (forms of the universal
will), which become manifested as desires, emotions, and passions in
the animal organism, and if we were to enter this subject, it would
bring us within the realm of the supersensual but nevertheless actual
kingdom of living elemental powers belonging to the soul of the world.
If our eyes were opened to the perception of thoughts, it would be seen
how a continual thought-transference is taking place among individual
minds, influencing and determining their actions, even if they are not
aware of it, causing not only individual moral diseases, insanities,
obsessions and crimes, but whole epidemics of such kinds. There is an
immense field for investigation for the psychologist; not for that kind
of “psychologists” who imagine that insanity is under all circumstances
a disturbance of the functions of the brain from physical causes,
but for those who can realise that the functions of the brain may be
disturbed by the disordered action of the mind; for although in many
cases of brain disease it is as difficult to determine whether the
disorder of the mind or that of the brain existed first, as it would
be to answer the question, which existed first, the hen or the egg?
nevertheless a lesion of the tissues of the brain does not take place
without a cause, and this cause in the majority of such cases comes
from the sphere of the emotions and thoughts.
If there is no mind, there can be no mental disease. If mind is
something (even if it were, as some imagine, the product of the
physiological function of the brain), it must be something substantial,
and being something substantial, it is able to produce substantial
effects; moreover, its actions show a certain order and harmony, which
go to prove that mind has an organisation. If this order and harmony
be disturbed, discord, disease, insanity will be the result. Without
the presence of mind nothing would come into existence; without
the consciousness in the All, no brain would be able to manifest
consciousness, and this is what Paracelsus means when he says:—
“Whatever exists upon this earth, also exists in the _firmament_
(space). God does not make clothes for men, but he gives them a
tailor. (Forms do not grow by accident; but they are the ultimate
result of the action of the constructive power in nature.) The essence
of things is hidden in space; existing invisibly in the _firmament_,
and impressing itself upon material substances, when it becomes
visible by entering within our sphere of perception.” (“Meteorum,” I.
4.)
Thus we have in the _Ens Astrale_ a field in which exist the causes
of numerous kinds of diseases; the thorough understanding of which
requires a still deeper penetration into the secrets of nature and a
higher conception of its constitution than is at present presented by
the natural sciences of this day.
II.—ENS VENENI.
_Diseases originating from poisonous actions and impurities_ in all
three planes of existence.
Nothing is poisonous or impure if it stands by itself, only if two
things whose natures are incompatible with each other come into
contact, can a poisonous action take place or an impure condition be
produced.
“Everything is in itself perfect and good. Only when it enters into
relation with another thing does relative good and evil come into
existence. If anything enters into the constitution of man, which is
not in harmony with its elements, the one is to the other an impurity,
and can become a poison.” (“Paramirum,” II. 1.)