The life of Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim, known by the name of Paracelsus : and the substance of his teachings concerning cosmology, anthropology, pneumatology, magic and sorcery, medicine, alchemy and astrology, philosophy and theosophy / extracted and translated from his rare and extensive works and from some unpublished manuscripts by Franz Hartmann.

  • Hartmann, Franz, 1838-1912.
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The life of Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim, known by the name of Paracelsus : and the substance of his teachings concerning cosmology, anthropology, pneumatology, magic and sorcery, medicine, alchemy and astrology, philosophy and theosophy / extracted and translated from his rare and extensive works and from some unpublished manuscripts by Franz Hartmann. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    grow and become manifest to you ; but if your faith is not in your heart, but in forms and ceremonies, and if you cling to these forms you may know that your heart is evil; because, although the forms and the ceremonies cause you to weep and to sigh, this sighing and weeping is worthless, because your sentiment comes from those images, and to those images will it return. All things return finally to the place from whence they took their origin, and as these things are perishable, the sentiments which they excite will perish with them. God only de- sires the heart and not the ceremonies. If you do not require the ceremonies, they will be useless in matters of faith as well as in the art of magic. It is foolish to refuse to be guided by the church as long as one is not able to find one's own way; but to be thus guided is not the object of existence; we should strive to learn how to govern ourselves, instead of being continually dependent upon the help of another. I do not say that images should not be made, and that the suffering of Christ should not be represented in pictures. Such things are good to move the mind of man to the practice of piety, virtue, and veneration, and to those who are unable to read they are very useful and better than many a sermon. I am not speaking against the use of a thing, but against its misuses. Such things are useful if we know their true meaning and under- stand their effects (De Imaginibus, iii.).1 The saints are in heaven, and not in the wood out of which an image is carved. Each man is himself nearest to his own god. I contradict your old fathers because they wrote for the body and not for the soul; they wrote poetry, but not theosophy; they spoke flat- teries instead of telling the truth. They were teachers of fashions and usages, not teachers of eternal life. The 1 Thus it would also be better for our modern would-be theosophists if, instead of running after external Mahatmas and seeking salvation from them, each one were to strive after knowing the real Mahatma existing Within his own soul.