Magic Into Science: The Story of Paracelsus

Paracelsus was born Einsiedeln ,Switzerland. His father was a chemist and physician. As a youth he worked in mines as an analyst. At age 16 he studied medicine at the University of Basel, later getting his doctorate from the University of Ferrara. His wanderings as an itinerant physician and journeyman miner took him through Germany, France, Spain, Hungary, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Russia. He had a natural affinity with the Hermetic, neoplatonic, and Pythagorean philosophies. Astrology was an important part of his medicine, as was practicing astrology . He devoted several sections in his writings to the construction of astrological talismans for curing disease, providing talismans for maladies as well as using talismans for signs of the Zodiac. He invented the Alphabet of the Magi, for engraving angelic names upon talismans. He pioneered the use of chemicals and minerals in medicine. He used experimentation in learning about the body and developed laudanum, an opium tincture used until the 19th century. He believed in the Greek concept of the four elements, but introduced the idea that, on other levels, the cosmos is fashioned from three spiritual substances: the tria prima of Mercury, Sulfur and Salt. These substances were not the simple substances we recognize today, but were rather broad principles that gave every object both its inner essence and outward form. Mercury represented the transformative agent (fusibility and volatility); Sulfur represented the binding agent between substance and transformation (flammability); and Salt represented the solidifying/substantiating agent (fixity and noncombustibility).