Paracelsus, a Transmutational Alchemist

Abstract

A scholarly consensus has long held that in redefining alchemy, Paracelsus rejected metallic transmutation. I show here, however, that for most of his career Paracelsus believed that it was possible to change one metal into another, and even late in his short life he did not break with that view. Furthermore, in certain places in his works he also represented himself, occasionally directly and more often obliquely, as a practical transmutationist. Because Paracelsus not only acknowledged that metallic transmutations were theoretically possible but also claimed to have carried them out in practice, we must regard him as (among other things) a transmutational alchemist. As such, he had more in common than historians have generally admitted with both his medieval predecessors and his posthumous followers. The Paracelsian alchemists of the late-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were not wrong to situate Paracelsus within the alchemical tradition, nor to connect their own goldmaking interests to his.

Acknowledgements

For their assistance and encouragement I owe thanks to many, but especially to Dane Daniel, Urs Leo Gantenbein, Hiro Hirai, Didier Kahn, Sy Mauskopf, Bruce Moran, Bill Newman, Tara Nummedal, James A. Palmer, Kathrin Pfister, Alisha Rankin, Jenny Rampling, and the late Ron Witt, as well as an anonymous referee for this journal. I am also thankful for the support that I have received from the University of Nevada, Reno; the Fondation des Treilles; and the Université de Paris Sorbonne.

Note on contributor

Andrew Sparling is an historian of science, medicine, and religion. His current research focuses on the intersection of laboratory work and religious devotion among sixteenth- and seventeenth-century alchemists. He lives in Lincoln, Rhode Island. Email: [email protected].

Notes

1 Georg Korn, “Medizinische Chemie,” in Handbuch der Geschichte der Medizin, ed. Max Neuburger and Julius Pagel (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1903), vol. 2, 457–72 (on 458). To save space I omit the original-language versions of quotations. Translations are mine unless indicated otherwise. See also Karl Sudhoff, Kurzes Handbuch der Geschichte der Medizin (Berlin: S. Karger, 1922), 241–42; Henry E. Sigerist, “Paracelsus in the Light of Four Hundred Years,” in The March of Medicine (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941), 28–51 (on 47); Walter Pagel, Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance (Basel and New York: S. Karger, 1958), 272–73; and W. Pagel, Das medizinische Weltbild des Paracelsus: Seine Zusammenhänge mit Neuplatonismus und Gnosis (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1962), 26.

2 J. R. Partington, A History of Chemistry, 4 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1961–1970), vol. 2, 138–40; and Hermann Kopp, Die Alchemie in älterer und neuerer Zeit: Ein Beitrag zur Culturgeschichte, 2 vols. (Heidelberg: Carl Winters Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1886), vol. 2, 33–40.

3 Pagel, Das Medizinische Weltbild, 26.

4 Didier Kahn, Le Fixe et le volatil: chimie et alchimie, de Paracelse à Lavoisier (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2016), 49; Lawrence M. Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 128; Antonio Clericuzio, “‘Sooty Empiricks’ and Natural Philosophers: The Status of Chemistry in the Seventeenth Century,” Science in Context 23 (2010): 329–50 (on 332); Charles Webster, Paracelsus: Medicine, Magic, and Mission at the End of Time (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 139; Didier Kahn, Alchimie et Paracelsisme en France à la fin de la Renaissance (1567–1625) (Geneva: Droz, 2007), 16–17; Urs Leo Gantenbein, “Separatio puri ab impuro: Die Alchemie des Paracelsus,” Nova Acta Paracelsica, n.s., 11 (1997): 3–59; and Joachim Telle, “Paracelsus als Alchemiker,” in Paracelsus und Salzburg, ed. Heinz Dopsch and Peter F. Kramml (Salzburg: Gesellschaft für Salzburger Landeskunde, 1994), 157–72 (on 159). Already by 2011, however, Gantenbein had reversed his position: Gantenbein, “Paracelsus und die Quellen seiner medizinischen Alchemie,” in Religion und Gesundheit: Der heilkundliche Diskurs im 16. Jahrhundert, ed. Albrecht Classen (Berlin and Boston: de Gruyter, 2011), 113–63. See now also Gantenbein, “Cross and Crucible: Alchemy in the Theology of Paracelsus,” Ambix 67 (2020): this issue.

5 See also Andrew W. Sparling, “Providence and Alchemy: Paracelsus on How Knowledge Unfolded, Matter Developed, and Bodies Might Be Perfected,” Ph.D. diss. in history (University of Nevada, Reno, 2018).

6 Paracelsus, Bücher und Schrifften, ed. Johannes Huser, 10 vols. (Basel: Conrad Waldkirch, 1589–1590), abbreviated as Huser 1–10. See Huser 2:212–15 and 219.

7 Paracelsus, Paragranum, in Paracelsus, Essential Theoretical Writings, trans. Andrew Weeks (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008), abbreviated as Weeks 210–57 (Huser 2:61–80).

8 Weeks, 220–21 (Huser 2:65).

9 In a rare autobiographical passage, Paracelsus said a little about the training in alchemy that he had received: Paracelsus, Die grosse Wundartzney, 2 vols. (Augsburg: Heinrich Steiner, 1536), vol. 2, tract 3, chap. 1, fol. 40r–v.

10 Wilhelm Ganzenmüller, “Paracelsus und die Alchemie des Mittelalters,” Angewandte Chemie 54 (1941): 427–31. Cf. Sudhoff, Kurzes Handbuch, 241–42.

11 Paracelsus, Von mineralibus, das ist, Von Früchten des Wassers, in Ettliche tractatus, ed. Michael Toxites (Strasbourg: the heirs of Christian Müller, 1570), 392–457, reprinted in Huser 8:334–63; Joachim Telle, “‘Vom Stein der Weisen:’ Ein alchemoparacelsistische Lehrdichtung des 16. Jahrhunderts,” in Analecta Paracelsica: Studien zum Nachleben Theophrast von Hohenheims in deutschen Kulturgebiet der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Joachim Telle (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1994), 167–212 (on 177–78). Telle evinces some skepticism about whether the Von mineralibus is authentic: 177 n. 27.

12 Sparling, “Providence and Alchemy,” 290–91.

13 Sparling, “Paracelsus’s Denial of Metallic Transmutation: A Reappraisal” (forthcoming).

14 And see Sparling, “Providence and Alchemy,” 284–360.

15 Huser 6:401 (note to the reader); Paracelsus, Medizinische, naturwissenschaftliche und philosophische Schriften, part 1 of Sämtliche Werke, ed. Karl Sudhoff (Munich and Berlin: R. Oldenbourg, 1922–1933), abbreviated as Sudhoff, 3:xiv.

16 Huser 6:401; but compare 418: in Paracelsus’s ms. the chapter title appeared after “book ten” but was designated, like “On Cements,” also as “book nine.”

17 Huser 6:402–17. For a general assessment, see Udo Benzenhöfer, Studien zum Frühwerk des Paracelsus im Bereich Medizin und Naturkunde (Münster: Klemm und Oelschläger, 2005), 126–28. The two chapters first appeared in print, as separate works, in a Latin translation: Paracelsus, Archidoxorum […] De secretis naturae mysteriis libri decem, ed. Gerhard Dorn (Basel: Peter Perna, 1570), 433–46 (“De cementis compendiolum”) and 447–60 (“Metallorum gradationes”); see Karl Sudhoff, Bibliographia Paracelsica (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1894), 206–7. Versions of the works then appeared in German the following year, as Paracelsus, De gradationibus, in Paracelsus and ps.-Paracelsus, De spiritibus planetarum sive metallorum (Basel: [Peter Perna], 1571), sigs. f2v–g3v; see Sudhoff, Bibliographia Paracelsica, 225.

18 Cf. George Starkey, Alchemical Laboratory Notebooks and Correspondence, ed. William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).

19 Huser 6:402–10: “De cementis”; Huser 6:411–17: “De gradationibus.”

20 Ursula Klein, Verbindung und Affinität: Die Grundlegung der neuzeitlichen Chemie an der Wende vom 17. zum 18. Jahrhundert (Basel and Boston: Birkhäuser, 1994), 253, s.v. “Erhöhen.”

21 Martin Ruland the younger, Lexicon alchemiæ, sive, Dictionarium alchemisticum (Frankfurt a.M.: Zacharias Palthenius, 1612), 245, s.v. “Gradation.”

22 Christoph Fahrner, Widerlegung, oder vilmehr Warnung, vor der groß prallenden Explicatio miraculi mundi und der betriegerischen genandten Wolfahrt Teutschlands Johann Rudolph Glaubers (Stuttgart: Johann Weyrich Rößlin the younger, 1656), 28–29. In quotations translated from the German I use italics to indicate words or parts of words that were set in roman type (rather than Fraktur) in the original.

23 Ruland, Lexicon, 57, s.vv. “Cementare” and “Cementatio.”

24 John Nicholson, The Operative Mechanic and British Machinist (London: Knight and Lacey, 1825), 767; Encyclopædia Britannica, or, A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature, ed. Colin Macfarquhar and George Gleig, 3rd ed., 18 vols. (Edinburgh: Andrew Bell and Colin Macfarquhar, 1788–1789), s.v. “parting.”

25 William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe, Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 42–43.

26 Paracelsus, De transmutationibus, chap. 9, in Huser 6:402.

27 Huser 6:402.

28 Huser 6:402.

29 Huser 6:407.

30 Huser 6:410.

31 As Walter Pagel remarks, “in the description of procedure Paracelsus often deliberately omits an important link” (Pagel, Paracelsus, 274).

32 Cf. Friedrich Dobler, “Die chemische Arzneibereitung bei Theophrastus Paracelsus am Beispiel seiner Antimonpräparate,” Pharmaceutica acta Helvetiae 32 (1957): 181–93 and 226–52, here 236. Dobler claims to find in a recipe in another Paracelsian text, in an instruction to heat a mixture “usque ad quartum gradum,” not a reference to a temperature but instead to the procedure in the fourth gradatio of the De transmutationibus. I have not evaluated Dobler’s claim.

33 De transmutationibus, chap. 10, in Huser 6:411.

34 Huser 6:411.

35 Huser 6:411.

36 Huser 6:411. In his writings as a whole the use of the authorial plural was not common.

37 Dietlinde Goltz, Studien zur Geschichte der Mineralnamen in Pharmazie, Chemie und Medizin von den Anfängen bis Paracelsus (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1972), 371–72.

38 De transmutationibus, chap. 9 [cement 1], in Huser 6:403–4.

39 Huser 6:403.

40 Sudhoff, Bibliographia Paracelsica, 393. Italics in the translation here render Sudhoff’s use of wide spacing for emphasis.

41 De transmutationibus metallorum, in Sudhoff 3:65–88.

42 Sudhoff 3:xvi. The word Archidoxa was an invented Greek term, perhaps meaning either (a) Principal Opinion or (b) (Secrets) of Chief Fame: Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “archidoxis”; C. A. M. Fennell, ed., The Stanford Dictionary of Anglicised Words and Phrases (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1892), s.v. “Archidoxa.” The Greek word δόξα was a feminine singular noun, which Paracelsus latinised with the Latin feminine sing. Archidoxis. As Udo Benzenhöfer remarks, though, “Paracelsus does not at any rate appear to have thought through the declension of the made-up word very thoroughly”: Benzenhöfer, Studien zum Frühwerk, 130.

43 Archidoxa, books 4–6, in Huser 6:24–69.

44 Huser 6:48–51.

45 Here I follow Archidoxa, ed. Michael Toxites, 2nd ed. (Strasbourg: Christian Müller the younger, 1574), 149. In place of Grübler, Huser gives Geübter (proficient person): Huser 6:48.

46 Huser 6:48.

47 Massimo Luigi Bianchi takes Paracelsus at face value here: Bianchi, “The Visible and the Invisible: From Alchemy to Paracelsus,” in Alchemy and Chemistry in the 16th and 17th Centuries, ed. Pyarali M. Rattansi and Antonio Clericuzio (Dordrecht and Boston: Kluwer, 1994), 17–50 (on 24).

48 Paracelsus, Archidoxae […] libri X, trans. Adam Schröter (Kraków: Maciej Wirzbięta, 1569), 86.

49 Paracelsus, Archidoxorum […] X. Bücher, ed. Peter Perna (Basel: Peter Perna, 1570), 54v.

50 Paracelsus, Archidoxa […], Von heymligkeyten der Natur, ed. Michael Toxites (Strasbourg: Theodosius Rihel, 1570), sig. j3r; Paracelsus, Archidoxorum […] pars prima, libri novem, De misteriis naturae (Cologne: Arnold Birckmann’s heirs, 1570), 30r [really 31r] = sig. h2r; Paracelsus, Archidoxa ex Theophrastia, ed. Johannes Albertus (Munich: Adam Berg, 1570), sig. j2r; and Paracelsus, Archidoxorum […] De secretis naturae mysteriis libri decem, trans. Gerhard Dorn (Basel: Peter Perna, 1570), 121.

51 Andrew Weeks, Paracelsus: Speculative Theory and the Crisis of the Early Reformation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 41; Reijer Hooykaas, “Die Elementenlehre des Paracelsus,” Janus (Leiden) 39 (1935): 175–87 (on 177).

52 Urs Leo Gantenbein, “The Virgin Mary and the Universal Reformation of Paracelsus,” forthcoming in Daphnis 48 (2020).

53 Huser 6:a)2v: “Alles zum fleissigsten Corrigiert auß Theophrasti eignen Handschrifften.” In the address to the reader in front of the Archidoxa, Huser specified that the autograph was in possession of Johannes Montanus Scultetus, in Hirschberg (Upper Silesia). It is now lost.

54 Huser 6:50–51. A copy of the autograph happens to be preserved in Halle, Marienbibliothek, ms. 70. It was made by an unidentified “P. G. A. T.” It is dated 1569 and expressly states on its title page that it was copied from the very autograph of Paracelsus. In this ms. the key phrase, preceded by the Latin abbreviation for “recipe” (“take”), looks like this: (reproduced with permission of Halle, Marienbibliothek). The woodcut words match the Halle ms. (in other similar cases, however, the Halle ms. does not match the woodcuts of Huser).

55 I thank Jennifer Rampling for pointing this out to me.

56 William R. Newman, The Summa perfectionis of Pseudo-Geber: A Critical Edition, Translation and Study (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 385–90 (Latin), 691–93 (English trans.); Robert P. Multhauf, “John of Rupescissa and the Origin of Medical Chemistry,” Isis 45 (1954): 359–67 (on 361–62).

57 Philosophia de generationibus & fructibus, book 4, tract 1, chap. 7, in Huser 8:135.

58 Huser 8:135.

59 Cf. Christoph Meinel, “Early Seventeenth-Century Atomism: Theory, Epistemology, and the Insufficiency of Experiment,” Isis 79 (1988): 68–103 (on 95).

60 Von den natürlichen Dingen, chap. 8, in Huser 7:[184]–85 (quoting 185) and 198–200. Sudhoff gives the date of composition as “1525?” (Sudhoff 2:59). Will-Erich Peuckert, however, locates the work shortly after 1527/1528: Paracelsus, Werke, ed. Will-Erich Peuckert, 5 vols. (Basel and Stuttgart: Schwabe, 1965–1968), vol. 1, 1. Weeks hints that Von den natürlichen Dingen is propaedeutic to the Paragranum and Opus Paramirum, the major texts that Paracelsus produced in 1530–1531 (Weeks, 9 n. 12).

61 Otília Lintnerová, Peter Šottnik and Stanislav Šoltés, “Abandoned Smolník Mine (Slovakia) – A Catchment Area Affected by Mining Activities,” Estonian Journal of Earth Sciences 57 (2008): 104–10 (on 104). Richard Beck claims that the mine was established in the thirteenth century: Beck, Lehre von den Erzlagerstätten, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (Berlin: Gebrüder Borntraeger, 1909), vol. 2, 97.

62 Andrea Slesarova et al., “An Overview of Occurrence and Evolution of Acid Mine Drainage in the Slovak Republic,” Proceedings of the Annual International Conference on Soils, Sediments, Water, and Energy 12 (2007): 11–18 (on 16) (measurements taken in May 2006).

63 Anton Friedrich Büsching, “Ungarn, mit den einverleibten Ländern und Siebenbürgen,” in his Erdbeschreibung (Hamburg: C.E. Bohn, 1788), vol. 2, 529.

64 I.e. the position that he adopted in the Von mineralibus – and only in the Von mineralibus.

65 Von den natürlichen Dingen, chap. 8 (“Vom Vitriol”), in Huser 7:198.

66 Huser 7:198.

67 Von den natürlichen Dingen, chap. 7 (“Vom Schweffel”), in Huser 7:164.

68 Von den natürlichen Dingen, chap. 8 (“Vom Vitriol”), in Huser 7:198; Christiane Wanzeck, Zur Etymologie Lexikalisierter Farbwortverbindungen: Untersuchungen anhand der Farben Rot, Gelb, Grün und Blau (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2003), 214–25; Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch, 33 vols. (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1854–1971), abbreviated as Grimm, s.v. “blau,” sense 1. Among the authors whom the Grimms cite is Paracelsus, who used the phrase blaue Enten (blue ducks) to mean tall tales.

69 Ganzenmüller, “Paracelsus und die Alchemie,” 429.

70 Von den natürlichen Dingen, chap. 9 (“Vom Arsenico”), in Huser 7:207.

71 Vladimír Karpenko, “The Chemistry and Metallurgy of Transmutation,” Ambix 39 (1992): 47–62 (on 57), gives orpiment (As₂S₃) rather than realgar. See, however, Robert Halleux, Les Alchimistes grecs: Papyrus de Leyde, Papyrus de Stockholm, fragments de recettes (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1981), 90, §22; 172 n. 5.

72 Huser 7:207–208, quoting 207.

73 Huser 7:208.

74 Huser 7:207.

75 Von den natürlichen Dingen, chap. 7 (“Vom Schweffel”), in Huser 7:178.

76 Huser 7:178–79.

77 Huser 7:178–79.

78 On “stars,” see Sparling, “Providence and Alchemy,” 144–45, 147, 166, 196–98, 210–11, and 220–26.

79 Huser 7:178.

80 Huser 7:178.

81 Huser 7:179. In the next century, Johann Rudolph Glauber, a transmutationist who regarded Paracelsus as a great authority, quoted the passage verbatim: Glauber, Von den dreyen Anfangen der Metallen (Amsterdam: Johannes Jansson van Waesberge and the Widow of Elizeus Weyerstraet, 1666), 7. The epithet scharfes Schermesser is from Psalm 51:4/52:2. Goats in Christian Europe were traditionally regarded as given to concupiscence, but the aspersion here would appear to be a sin of pride. I have not found an attestation of the proverb in a reference source.

82 Cf. e.g. Rechter Gebrauch d[er] Alchimei (Frankfurt a.M.: Christian Egenolff the elder, 1531), 38.

83 Cf. William R. Newman, Gehennical Fire: The Lives of George Starkey, an American Alchemist in the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 254, quoting a manuscript of Robert Boyle’s: “Excuses of Philaletha.”

84 D. Zecaire, Opuscule tres-eccelent de la vraye philosophie naturelle des metaulx [ca. 1560], ed. Renan Crouvizier (Paris and Milan: SEHA-Archè, 1999), 123–24 and 166, notes 115 to 117, quoting especially Petrus Bonus, Margarita pretiosa novella, in Theatrum chemicum (Strasbourg: Eberhard Zetzner’s Heirs, 1622), 5:567–794, here chap. 8, 658–59. I thank Didier Kahn for these references.

85 Von den natürlichen Dingen, chap. 8 (“Vom Vitriol”), in Huser 7:198.

86 Huser 7:198.

87 Grimm, s.v. “vierling,” sense 2b. But cf. sense 2c: As a measure of volume, either dry or liquid, a Vierling can equal a Maß.

88 Huser 7:198–99.

89 Huser 7:199.

90 Huser 7:199: “Amalgama.” Cf. Vladimír Karpenko, “Fe(s) + Cu(II)(aq) → Fe(II)(aq) + Cu(s): Fifteen Centuries of Search,” Journal of Chemical Education 72 (1995): 1095–1098 (on 1096).

91 Huser 7:199. The recipe was successful enough that Libavius as well as Glauber quoted it: Andreas Libavius, Alchemia, book 2, tract 1 (Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Kopff, 1597), 134; Johann Rudolph Glauber, Miraculi mundi ander Theil, oder, Dessen vorlängst geprophezeiten Eliæ Artistæ triumphirlicher Ein Ritt, und auch, Was der Elias Artista für einer sey? (Amsterdam: Jan Janszoon the younger, 1660), 92–93. Where Paracelsus gave simply “dasselbige Amalgam laß abriechen,” and Glauber quoted him verbatim, Christopher Packe, Glauber’s English translator, expanded the instructions: “Suffer that Amalgama to expire by Vulcanick Heat”: Glauber, Miraculum mundi, part 2, in Glauber, Works, trans. C. Packe, 3 vols. (London: Thomas Milbourn, 1689), vol. 1, 240b.

92 Huser 7:199.

93 The procedure is described in M. Goetling, “To Separate Copper from Silver,” The Emporium of Arts and Sciences, n.s., 3 (1814): 125–27.

94 Huser 7:199.

95 Huser 7:199.

96 Cf. Paracelsus, De mineralibus, in Huser 8:353, where the author mentioned refinement “im Regal” as one of three methods for refining gold, alongside quartation and the use of antimony. Cf. also Paracelsus, De viribus membrorum, book 2, chap. 2, in Huser 3:6; Paracelsus, Von der Bergsucht, book 2, tract 3, chap. 4, in Huser 5:42; and Glauber, Works, trans. C. Packe, vol. 1, 240b, where Packe translated “im Regal” (or the Latin equivalent, in regali) as “in Regal Cement.”

97 Huser 7:199.

98 In the same chapter Paracelsus also referred in passing to another instance of artificial metallic transmutation: there was “also a power in nature,” he asserted, thanks to which “borax water makes a living quicksilver out of lead” (Huser 7:[184]). Muriel West conjectures that here Paracelsus may have been making a reference to the use of borax as a flux in glassmaking: West, “Notes on the Importance of Alchemy to Modern Science in the Writings of Francis Bacon and Robert Boyle,” Ambix 9 (1961): 102–14 (on 111). A reconsideration of the passage is probably overdue.

99 Gerhard Eis, “Von der Rede und dem Schweigen der Alchemisten,” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 25 (1951): 415–35.

100 Kopp, Alchemie, vol. 1, 40.

101 Huser 7:198.

102 Cf. Amadeo Murase, “Paracelsismus und Chiliasmus im deutschsprachigen Raum um 1600,” Inauguraldiss. in history (Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, 2013); and Walter Pagel, “The Paracelsian Elias Artista and the Alchemical Tradition,” Medizinhistorisches Journal 16 (1981): 6–19.

103 Astronomia magna, ed. Michael Toxites (Frankfurt a.M.: Sigmund Feyerabend, 1571), book 2, chap. 4, 121v.

104 Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 212.

105 E.g. Martin Luther, Vom Abendmahl Christi, Bekenntnis, in his Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Abteilung Werke, 73 vols. (Weimar: Hermann Böhlau and his successors, 1883–2009), vol. 26, 328–29; Ulrich Zwingli, Eine klare Unterrichtung vom Nachtmahl Christi, in his Sämtliche Werke, ed. Emil Egli et al., vol. 4 (Corpus Reformatorum, vol. 91) (Leipzig: M. Heinsius Nachfolger, 1927), article 2, 834–36; John 20:19 and 20:26; Matt. 28:1–10.

106 Astronomia magna, ed. Toxites, book 2, 100r–150r. On “celestial magic,” see Dane T. Daniel, “Paracelsus' Astronomia magna (1537/38): Bible-Based Science and the Religious Roots of the Scientific Revolution,” Ph.D. diss. in history (Indiana University, 2003), 230–36 and 244; and Kurt Goldammer, Der göttliche Magier und die Magierin Natur (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1991), 50–51.

107 Astronomia magna, ed. Toxites, book 2, preface, 100r–103r. Daniel plausibly suggests a reminiscence of Eph. 3:16: Daniel, “Paracelsus' Astronomia magna,” 230 n. 69.

108 Astronomia magna, ed. Toxites, book 2, preface, 100rv; and book 2, chap. 6, 136r–137r. These were not the natural “stars” that every human being’s body contained but rather their divine counterparts, which only the chosen few’s heavenly bodies contained.

109 Book 2, preface, 100rv; and book 2, chap. 6, 136v–137r, quoting 137r.

110 Confusingly, Paracelsus referred to this branch of celestial magic as “natural magic”: book 2, chap. 4, 121v. This celestial “natural” magic, like natural magic simpliciter, worked effects on nature. Unlike natural magic simpliciter, though, celestial “natural” magic operated supernaturally (by virtue of illumination emanating directly from God).

111 Book 2, chap. 4, 121v. Pagel, “The Paracelsian Elias Artista,” 7, alludes to this passage.

112 Matteo Martelli, ed., The Four Books of Pseudo-Democritus (Leeds: Maney Publishing, 2013) (Ambix, Vol. 60, Supplement 1), sections §3 and §5.

113 Andrew Walsh, “The Commodification of Fetishes: Telling the Difference between Natural and Synthetic Sapphires,” American Ethnologist 37 (2010): 98–114 (on 100b); Encyclopædia Britannica, ed. Hugh Chisholm, 11th ed., 29 vols. (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1910–1911), s.v. “sapphire.”

114 William R. Newman, Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 55–59.

115 Jane P. Davidson, “Wolves, Witches, and Werewolves: Lycanthropy and Witchcraft from 1423 to 1700,” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 2 (1990): 47–68 (on 52–60).

116 Robin Briggs, Witches and Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft (New York: Penguin, 1996), 87.

117 Astronomia magna, ed. Toxites, book 2, chap. 4, 121v. Cf. Matt. 17:2 and Mark 9:2–3.

118 See e.g. the editor’s introduction in Johann Rudolph Glauber, Opera chymica, Bücher und Schrifften, ed. Johann Mackele, 2 vols. (Frankfurt a. M.: Thomas Matthäus Götze, 1658–1659), vol. 2, Vorrede. See also Robert Halleux, “Helmontiana II: le prologue de l'Eisagoge, la conversion de Van Helmont au paracelsisme, et les songes de Descartes,” Academiæ Analecta: Mededelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Klasse der Wetenschappen, 49, no. 2 (1987): 18–36.

119 Cf. Carlos Gilly, “Theophrastia sancta: Der Paracelsismus als Religion im Streit mit den offiziellen Kirchen,” in Analecta Paracelsica, ed. Joachim Telle (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1994), 425–88.

120 This was true in their own ways of, among others, Heinrich Khunrath, Benedictus Figulus, Joseph Du Chesne, Anna Zieglerin, and of course Glauber. See the writings of Carlos Gilly on Khunrath, Bruce Moran and Joachim Telle on Figulus, Hiro Hirai and Didier Kahn on Du Chesne, and Tara Nummedal on Zieglerin.