The Life and Teachings of Paracelsus, by Franz Hartmann

Franz Hartmann · Buddhas and Initiates Series · 198 pages

The complete text of Franz Hartmann's study of the life and the substance of the teachings of Paracelsus, at 198 pages the fullest treatment of the Swiss physician in this series and the natural companion to Blavatsky's shorter essay The noble genius of Paracelsus, listed beside it. Hartmann was both compiler and translator, and his preface sets out the difficulty of the task; the first chapter covers the life, and includes a classified survey of the writings under five heads — works on medicine, alchemy, various writings, natural history and philosophy, and magic.

The remaining chapters are systematic. Chapter two defines the terms Paracelsus used, without which the rest is hard going. Chapter three gives his cosmology and chapter four his anthropology — the generation of man, woman and marriage, the constitution of man, death, and a table of the semi-exoteric constitution of man. Chapter five treats pneumatology, chapter six magic and sorcery, and chapter seven medicine at length: the virtues of a physician, the four pillars of medicine, the Archæus, the Mumia, sympathetic cures, the occult properties of plants, and the magnet. The material on sympathetic cures is extracted and treated separately in Paracelsus on sympathetic remedies and cures, also in this section.

Read the full text (PDF, 2.8 MB, 198 pages)