AULA LUCIS
fiat · lux

by · peter hochmeier

The terminology of Spagyrics is based largely on the traditional understanding of terms used in Paracelsian literature. Paracelsus Theophrastus von Hohenheim (1493-1541) was one of the most important proponents of Spagyrics in the Early Modern period, partly due to his poignant formulations and his writings in the German language, quite uncommon in his time. He was regarded in his day as a true adept, whose independent and authoritative insight allowed him to work from within the innermost core of this primeval and timeless healing tradition.

¶ In his writings (Archidoxes, Paragranum, Herbarius etc.) he summarised the fundamentals of the Spagyric tradition in a concise manner and centred it around a coherent and authentic perspective of Nature, as well as on the experience and attitude of the healer (“The physician comes through God and through Nature alone”). Johann Agricola notes in Chymische Medicin (1638): “Scarcely one man in a thousand knows any longer how to understand the right modum Paracelsi, for wherever he placed just a single dot, he meant something by it.” While Leonhard Thurneysser (1531-1595) declares the excellent quality of Paracelsian remedies thus: “When he separated the phlegm from the spirit, then only spirit was left and no phlegm at all. When he separated the faeces from the salt, he left all the dross behind. This is why his remedies achieved such fame.”

¶ While Paracelsus stood in a long line of adepts who came centuries before as well as after his time—some perhaps higher in standing and some lower than him—he made a most significant contribution to the preservation of the authentic tradition of the Art of Healing and Iatrochemistry in the Occident, even to this day. This was probably his greatest achievement and is regarded as such also by the proponents of the Eastern traditions, who—unlike their European counterparts—have not had to suffer the massive rupture in their heritage that probably began with the expansion of the Roman Empire and culminated in the Middle Ages, the consequences of which continue to reverberate until present times. For an Ayurvedic or Tibetan healer, the Paracelsian understanding of Nature and Medicine is self-evident, and this essential knowledge has been handed down, taught and applied for thousands of years, including the Five Elements, the Principles (Wind, Fire, Earth), the Planetary Forces, etc.

¶ Paracelsus defended this basic framework above all against the orthodox medicine of his time, which was bogged down in the dilemma of ‘humoral medicine’ and had thus shut itself off from a true understanding of Nature and Man. This rejection and forgetting of the fifth Element, the Quintessence, was an understandable consequence of the anti-spiritual processes that had developed in the Roman-occupied Europe and reached their climax in the times of the Inquisition. To divide the sphere of life into only four Elements, to force their inherently pentagrammatic expression into cuboids and cubes—such were the unconsciously experienced as well as consciously propagated phenomena of a forced alignment of Man with hopeless materialism, or—speaking hermetically—with a Saturnisation of culture, which was supported and promoted by the increasingly dark ‘religious’ hierarchies of the West and Orient of that time, both claiming ‘heaven’ for their respective sects and detesting the idea of the Ether as an all-connecting Element.

¶ During this Paracelsian epoch, fanatical Islamisation in India stretching right down to the old Southern Kingdoms set fire in its wake to countless books, manuscripts and practitioners alike, while looking towards Europe one is amazed that in the centuries after the ‘historical’ Inquisition there was still so much left to burn. Whereas in India, and especially in the Northern regions sheltered by the highest mountains, the true teachings were preserved, in Europe this was only possible to a small extent, often by employing great caution and cultivating secrecy amongst the practitioners of Iatrochemistry, Alchemy, Theosophy and the like.

¶ Paracelsus found himself in the midst of these circumstances, steadfastly fighting the “stooges, book asses and parroters” to whom the ‘teachings’ of Avicenna, Galen and their ilk served as a convenient shield to cover their own ignorance. He quarrelled with texts translated by Latin monks from Arabic into Greek and back again, watered down in the process or simply misunderstood, which were disseminated throughout the medieval Occident at the time. He wrangled with scriptural scholarship done for its own sake, taking a strong stand against all the conjectured or acquired ‘knowledge’ that has “no basis in Nature but comes instead alone from deluded brains.” His earnestness, profundity, veracity and authenticity have made him into a truly great and indomitable personality, whose teachings have helped to preserve what was left of the European tradition up to the present day. However, it is also because of this veracity and profundity that he is quoted often and with gusto, but much less enthusiastically read, thoroughly studied, analysed, or let alone understood. “Therefore, learn Spagyria, which is otherwise called Alchymia, which teaches to separate the true from the false.” This, according to Paracelsus, is the foundation of the Art of Healing.

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Therefore, learn Spagyria, which is otherwise called Alchymia, which teaches to separate the true from the false.

¶ What is Spagyrics? Spagyrics is synonymous with Alchemy, the former being a word of Greek origin and the latter probably of Central Asian origin (kimye was the name given in ancient China and Mongolia to both the “art” and one of its highest preparations, potable gold, or aurum potabile). “Alchemy—this is the art of the right handling of the works of Nature” says Paracelsus, which then naturally leads to the realization: “…but the highest work is Medicine.” And further: “A farmer, a baker, winemaker, weaver etc., who recognises the works of Nature in their essence and develops them by his art to where they are of use to mankind, that is an alchemist.” All this ‘handling’ is traditionally understood as art, and the end products as works of art. Paracelsus: “All the arts have advanced so far, only Medicine is in a sorry state…”. In this way Paracelsus describes a true knower of both Nature and Man, making it clear that Alchemy is not some invented, imagined or merely historical phenomenon limited to a specific subject matter, but rather a timeless concept pertaining to the artistry and knowledge of man who works for the benefit of others.

¶ All art in turn has a foundation, namely what we today commonly call the study of Signatures, the “art of understanding the character of things.” Ideally, this should also be self-evident. Paracelsus writes: “Ars Signaturae is the most important of them all—without it nothing is complete!” Ars Signaturae presupposes the understanding that in Man, Nature and the Cosmos, that which is active is always force, and that forces express themselves—incidentally, so to speak, or temporarily—in a material way. Thus, the very idea of an ‘active agent’ is regarded by the ancient traditions as an absurdity. For instance, a table in itself does not effect anything. It is the temporary manifestation of an idea (Quintessence) and of the active forces that can be recognised and found in its signature. This is also a proven physical fact which can only be ignored or forgotten due to a muddled worldview.

¶ Therefore, the procedures of spagyric or alchemical preparation are oriented towards separating the indwelling forces in the natural things (plants, minerals, etc.) from their material form of expression (i.e.: “…the principles of Sulphur, Mercury, and Salt are to be separated from their dross in the most exacting manner”), thereby to represent as purely as possible and to render usable the essential, the elixiric (the regenerative, the productive) or quintessential (the idea; in Paracelsus also: virtue). These correspondingly artful preparations may then be designated as Spagyric Essences, Quintessences, Elixirs etc., which in turn are presented in a material form (traditionally: liquid—tincture, solid—lapis). Paracelsus comments on this, i.e.: “Quintessence has colour and unctuousness.”

¶ Spagyrics has neither practically, philosophically, nor historically any essential common ground with homeopathy, which only came into being relatively recently and, in a way, as a “small—albeit often useful—branch of the great tree of the Healing Arts.” Rather, Spagyrics or Alchemy is understood in the traditional terms as the “root, trunk, or mother of the Healing Arts,” from which “…most other arts originate” (Michael Crügner, Chymischer Frühling, 1654, et al.), a notion which is perfectly understandable if one recognises the basis of the Ars Signaturae as the true understanding of the forces of Nature, their interconnections and workings within Man and the Cosmos, and therefore naturally as the most ancient knowledge of mankind.

¶ Trying to find the origin of these traditions in the Middle Ages, for example, will be just as futile as trying to view Paracelsus as the ‘inventor’ of something new. Hundreds of iatrochemical texts published since the invention of the printing press may superficially give a false impression that this was the case. However, upon closer examination this impression soon vanishes, and leads instead to the realisation that, in fact, quite the opposite is true. From generation to generation, the adepts have always spoken of “the ancients who understood this art far better;” but when the late medieval texts speak of the ‘ancients,’ they usually refer to the early medieval, late antique or antique experts (Democritus, Maria the Prophetess, Zosimos etc.). In the texts of those supposedly ‘ancient’ authors, the same view towards their ‘ancients’ is found (cf. Arislaeus, Turba Philosophorum), and one must finally turn to the Asian traditions if one wants to find any meaningful information about them, primarily to those of India and Tibet, where even today both the oral tradition (passed down verbatim) and practice are still considered essential, and the importance of the fundamentals is taken for granted.

¶ Iatrochemical texts with thousands of verses are an easy exercise even for the modern young post-graduate students of Ayurvedic Rasa Shastra (Alchemy, Iatrochemistry) at the universities of Mumbai, Jaipur, Delhi etc. It is generally believed that the ‘syncretic’ foundations of the understanding of Nature, the Art of Healing and Iatrochemistry / Alchemy were passed down almost exclusively orally for many millennia in the East and the West and only increasingly written down during the last 3,000 years or so. Often today, especially in the West, the diligent student is unable to come to a proper realisation, thinking instead that Alchemy was a kind of medieval predecessor of what is now called Chemistry. Even though both fields may appear to be related on account of the similarity between their respective names and some of their tools (crucibles, test tubes), Alchemy has nothing to do with Chemistry, not least because of the remarkably reductionist material orientation of the latter, which—in Paracelsian terms—“has no basis in Nature.” The term ‘medieval’ in connection with Alchemy should instead be replaced by ‘Stone Age’, which, however, would make the search for any roots of this art rather speculative and futile; as some adepts note: “The knowledge of the Art of Healing came into the world together with man in prehistoric times.” Paracelsus stood in this timeless tradition amidst countless others who came before and after him. Herein lies one reason for the importance of Spagyrics and Alchemy in the Art of Healing.

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The knowledge of the Art of Healing came into the world together with man in prehistoric times.

¶ Just as every man, according to his art and craft, takes from Nature what is his, the healer also searches in it and deals with it in his own way. But he must search deeper than others, for his craft is a great burden and his art is of the highest beauty. To the ancients, only those sages or philosophers who penetrated far into the essence of things, and who recognised and contemplated every single part as connected and interrelated with all other parts, were considered to be healers. They learned this from those who were instructed, and who studied in the great school of life and Nature. In Sudhoff’s complete edition of Paracelsus’ writings, one finds a note by a student taken during a lecture given by Paracelsus in Basel: “Spagyrics is: to derive certainty from one’s dealings with Nature.”

¶ There is a close relationship between the human body and the earth, which has prompted adepts across the ages to remark “as within so without,” and to compare the external and internal forms and processes of the body. This kinship exists in body and spirit and extends far beyond the Earth’s sphere into the Macrocosm of the planets and celestial bodies. For example, that which expresses itself in the spirit of man as purposeful will forms the face, warms the stomach and blood and works in the marrow of the bones. It is an aspect of the Sulphur principle, the Fire Element, which responds to a wide spectrum of natural forces and expresses itself in countless forms, shapes and situations. Paracelsus addresses this force when he points out: “The nettle is Mars. Iron is Mars. He who knows iron knows Mars” etc.

¶ That which makes things visible to us and allows us to experience them sensually is the planetary force of Venus. “Without Venus there would be no Arts,” says Paracelsus. There are many meanings to this sentence. Venus-force means that everything remains in its natural proportion. It is what makes the web of Nature possible in the first place. Without this component, a ‘thing’ simply cannot exist. The whole of Nature is a work of art. If there were no arts, then there would be no Nature—and vice versa. For in all of Man’s encounters with Nature, there is art, arising specifically from Nature’s requirements. In this way, Man can live in and with Nature, and there is no reason for any ‘opposition’ to it. The feeling of this harmony is completely inherent in Man. Even where Man calls something ‘disharmonious’, that same venereal force is at work—otherwise he would not be able to recognise anything at all, not even what he calls disharmony by virtue of his cultural consensus.

¶ From Nature’s point of view, harmony and proportion are incomparably more varied than in relative perception. Therefore, that venereal force is involved in the expressions of all other forces, simply because it enables the mixtures of forces to work here in Nature. The iatrochemist J. H. Cardilucio (16th century), who was himself well versed in signatures, speaks of the motus veneris as the work of the Great Polarity, which is a venereal type that participates in all natural works and processes in the same way as the Sun and the Moon. This motus veneris applies to herbs and parts of the body which belong to Mars just as it does to those which are predominantly Air-, Ether- or Water-signified, and is only differentiated by intensified solar or lunar aspects (i.e. aspects of the basic polarity). The dominance of that venereal force is shown in that which is felt to be particularly harmonious, well-proportioned and attractive. In the body, for example, these are the neck and throat, the loins, the kidneys, the proportions of the bones, muscles, tissues and more. Outside the body it is the green of Nature, gentle hills, water, apple trees, roses (all Rosaceae in fact), and delicious fruits. Thus we find perfectly coherent images comprehended by these traditional terms in their essential features. The even more finely differentiated aspects of those forces, with all their connections and various forms they assume, extend into the millionfold—and only in this way do they represent the true teachings of the ancient schools of Knowledge.

¶ All the forces of Nature participate in weaving the ever-changing manifestations of life in which there are countless similarities, but never sameness. The human body and mind are fixed components of this tapestry. The third part of the Body-Mind-Soul continuum, i.e. the Soul, has only a limited share in this nature, for it is of divine essence. Through it, mankind vivifies and ensouls the tapestry and imbues it with awareness. In the minerals this Soul sleeps, in the plants it dreams, and in the human body it begins to awaken. This awakening is what distinguishes Man, while at the same time making him a healing artist, a friend of all beings and natural things. Therefore, Nature adjusts itself according to Man, and the latter responsibly pulls it along with him—ever further in their common development—towards the fulfilment of the idea, towards the expression of the Quintessence.

¶ Now if Man wants to manifest his healing, ennobling potential, he must learn to understand the way of Nature and his position in it. He must recognise the signs and kinships which connect all natural things, such as herbs, trees, minerals and metals, both with the Great Nature—the Macrocosm of the heavenly bodies—and with the microcosm of the human body, with organs, tissues and fluids, down to the subtle membranes of the human mind. With this knowledge of Signatures he acquires the foundation of the Art of Healing, and is able therewith, in his Spagyric laboratory practice, to bring to fruition that which he has learned from Nature. In this way, the Art of Man follows Nature, and Nature in turn follows Man, helping him, where necessary, to experience healing. This is an essential part of life.
 

— peter hochmeier

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Every plant that issues from Nature, Nature marks for its proper good. Therefore, if one wishes to know what Nature has marked, one must recognise by its sign the virtue which is indicated. For every physician must know that all the powers which are in natural things are known by their signs … Let no one wonder that I discourse on the signs of things, for nothing is without a sign. That is to say, Nature lets nothing pass from it without designating that which is in it. You can find an example of this amongst men, who never fail to indicate the true character and nature of their hearts. And there is nothing so secret in man that is not indicated by a corresponding sign. The same doctrine of signatures has gone out of use and has been all but forgotten, and that is the cause of great error…

— Paracelsus, Von den Natürlichen Dingen

peter hochmeier has been involved in Spagyrics, Hermeticism, Alchemy and the science of Signatures for over forty years and is one of the foremost experts in the field. He is the author of several books on the subject, including a forthcoming Aula Lucis publication The Way of the Sun Spark: Alchemy, Spagyrics and the Art of Signatures. He is also a teacher, lecturer and the editor of the hermetic journal Der Tiegel, published in Austria.

¶ In his practice, anthropology, natural philosophy and practical laboratory work are always closely intertwined. He is especially dedicated to the synthesis of Western and Eastern traditions and promotes intensive exchange with representatives of Ayurvedic Alchemy and Iatrochemistry (Rasa Shastra).

¶ Most recently, Peter contributed an Introduction to Paracelsus’ seminal work De Natura Rerum (On the Nature of Things), published by Aula Lucis, which can be purchased below.

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