"Physical man takes his nutriment from the earth; the sidereal man receives the states of his feelings and thoughts from the stars; hut the spirit has his wisdom from God. The heat of a fire passes through an iron stove, and likewise the astral influences, with all their qualities, pass through man. They penetrate him as rain penetrates the soil, and as the soil is made fruitful by the rain, likewise man's soul is made fruitful by them; but the principle of the supreme wisdom of the universe penetrates into the centre, illuminates it, and rules over all." — Paracelsus
"Man is a microcosm, or a little world, because he is an extract from all the stars and planets of the whole firmament, from the earth and the elements; and so he is their quintessence."
"Every body consists of three ingredients. The names of these are Sulphur, Mercury, and Salt."
"We do not know it because we are fooling away our time with outward and perishing things, and are asleep in regard to that which is real within ourself."
"In every human being there is a special heaven, whole and unbroken."
"All arts originate in divine wisdom, and no man ever invented anything through his own power. Man cannot accomplish even the most trifling thing without the power of the Will; but the will of man is not his product and does not belong to him; it belongs to God, and has merely been lent to man; he is permitted to use it, and he abuses it on account of his ignorance."
"All things come from God, the good as well as the evil ones; but while the former are His direct products, and in harmony with the Law, the latter are, so to say, His grandchildren which have become degenerated; for evil is good perverted. Those who put their trust in God – that is to say, in the power of Goodness, Wisdom, Justice, and Truth – will surely succeed; but those who, while they pretend to serve God, serve merely themselves, are the children of evil, and will perish with it."
"Natural man has no wisdom, but the wisdom of God may act through him as an instrument. God is greater than Nature, for Nature is His product; and the beginning of wisdom in man is therefore the beginning of his supernatural power."
"The kind of knowledge that man ought to possess is not derived from the earth, nor does it come from the stars; but it is derived from the Highest; and therefore the man who possesses the Highest may rule over the things of the earth, and over the stars."
— Paracelsus (1493-1541)
"If a man will be a philosopher without going astray, he must lay the foundations of his philosophy by making heaven and earth a microcosm, and not be wrong by a hair’s breadth. Therefore he who will lay the foundations of medicine must also guard against the slightest error, and must make from the microcosm the revolution of heaven and earth, so that the philosopher does not find anything in heaven and earth which he does not also find in man, and the physician does not find anything in man which heaven and earth do not have. And these two differ only in outward form, and yet the form on both sides is understood as pertaining to one thing." - Paracelsus, Das Buch Paragranum
Madame d'Urfé, beautiful though old, received me very nobly, with all the ease of the old court from the time of the Regency. [...] Mme d'Urfé affected only curiosity, but I saw clearly that she was eager to display her knowledge. [...] After dinner, La Tour d’Auvergne left us [...], and then Madame began to speak to me about chemistry, alchemy, magic, and everything that made up the substance of her madness. When we came to the subject of the Magnum Opus, and I had the simplicity to ask her whether she knew the prima materia, she did not burst out laughing, for that would have been impolite, but with a gracious smile she told me that she already possessed what is called the Philosopher’s Stone, and that she was well-versed in all the great operations. [...] Her favorite author was Paracelsus who, according to her, had been neither man nor woman, and who had had the misfortune of poisoning himself with too strong a dose of the universal medicine. She showed me a small manuscript in which the great process was explained in French in very clear terms. - Giacomo Casanova - Histoire de ma vie, II, p. 86–87
“the life of things is none other than a spiritual essence, an invisible and impalpable thing, a spirit and a spiritual thing.”- Paracelsus, Concerning the Life of Natural ThingsParacelsus, on the homunculi. He says that their inner virtue (power/quality) they resemble elemental spirits (wood‑sprites, nymphs) more than ordinary humans. Plants, animals, humans, and even metals are all generated from specific “seeds” or principles (the tria prima: mercury, sulphur, salt) under appropriate conditions:
"This we call a homunculus; and it should be afterwards educated with the greatest care and zeal, until it grows up and begins to display intelligence. Now, this is one of the greatest secrets which God has revealed to mortal and fallible man. It is a miracle and marvel of God, an arcanum above all arcana, and deserves to be kept secret until the last times, when there shall be nothing hidden, but all things shall be made manifest.And although up to this time it has not been known to men, it was, nevertheless, known to the wood-sprites and nymphs and giants long ago, because they themselves were sprung from this source;...As by Art they acquire their life, by Art acquire their body, flesh, bones and blood, and are born by Art, therefore Art is incorporated in them and born with them, and there is no need for them to learn, but others are compelled to learn from them, since they are sprung from Art and live by it, as a rose or a flower in a garden, and are called the children of the wood-sprites and the nymphs, because in their virtue they are not like men, but like spirits.Here, too, it would be necessary to speak about the generation of metals… Know, then, that all the seven metals are born from a threefold matter, namely, Mercury, Sulphur, and Salt…”- Book I, “Concerning the Generation of Natural Things
In his other work, known in English as “A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders, and on the Other Spirits”, Paracelsus lays out a whole taxonomy of elemental beings:
Nymphs/undines: beings of water
Sylphs: beings of air
Pygmies/gnomes: beings of earth
Salamanders: beings of fire
He insists these are real creatures, intermediate between humans and pure spirits, woven into a Christian cosmology rather than simply being devils.
Man is a thinker. He is that what he thinks. When he thinks fire he is fire. When he thinks war, he will create war. Everything depends if his entire imagination will be an entire sun, that is, that he will imagine himself completely that what he wants. — Paracelsus (source unknown?)
"The imagination is sun-like in its power... it can bring forth fruits from the earth, or it can wither them.” - Von den Ursachen der Bergkrankheit (c. 1535):
“The wisdom which man ought to have does not come from the earth, nor from the astral spirit, but from the fifth essence — the Spirit of Wisdom. Therefore man is superior to the stars and the constellation, provided he lives in the power of that superior wisdom. Such a person, being the master over heaven and earth, by means of his freewill, is called a Magus, and therefore Magic is not sorcery, but supreme wisdom.”
“The Magi in their wisdom asserted that all creatures might be brought to one unified substance, which substance they affirm may, by purifications and purgations, attain to so high a degree of subtlety, such divine nature and occult property, as to work wonderful results.
For they considered that by returning to the earth, and by a supreme magical separation, a certain perfect substance would come forth, which is at length, by many industrious and prolonged preparations, exalted and raised up above the range of vegetable substances into mineral, above mineral into metallic, and above perfect metallic substances into a perpetual and divine Quintessence, including in itself the essence of all celestial and terrestrial creatures.”
"One Thing (compared to the forces of our body) is an indestructible essence, drying up all the superfluities of our bodies, and has been philosophically called by the above-mentioned name. It is neither hot and dry like fire, nor cold and moist like water, nor warm and moist like air, nor dry and cold like earth. But it is a skilful, perfect equation of all the Elements, a right commingling of natural forces, a most particular union of spiritual virtues, an indissoluble uniting of body and soul. It is the purest and noblest substance of an indestructible body, which cannot be destroyed nor harmed by the Elements, and is produced by Art."
— Paracelsus
