De Tenebris contra Naturam, et Vita Brevi - On the shadows that are against Nature, and on the brevity of life

Written by Gerhard Dorn

Transcription with corrections and translation of the text from Theatrum Chemicum (1659-1661) by Paul Ferguson

'Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?' – Genesis 3:1. In our previous treatise on the Meditative Philosophy we discussed the integral nature and how it can be reformed so that it once again enjoys longevity. Now we need to say something about just how corrupt that nature was following the Fall of Man, as well as how it degenerated so that its lifespan became shorter. We also need to discuss those remedies that seem to have the power to renew it and to even cure it of its afflictions.

If it is indeed true that the disease that afflicts nature was introduced by the cunning serpent then we need to seek a remedy for the lethal wound that he inflicted. This is something that our Pious Parent may teach us to do, for did not God our merciful creator say to Adam, now experiencing death, 'Where art thou?' (Genesis 3:9). In these words alone we can find the origin of every cure both of the mind and of the body.

Remedies for the mind are dependent upon the word of God and are effected through the Meditative Philosophy which we discussed in the previous treatise. It is in this philosophy that the supernatural should be sought.

As for a cure that is suitable for the body, we need to search for it simultaneously in the word of God and in nature, but not only in corrupted nature but, as we have referred to above, in nature restored to a semblance of its primitive and uncorrupted state. How that restoration may be achieved may be deduced from the previous treatise.

First we need to define in general terms what we mean by a 'sickness against nature'. This is nothing other than a deficiency in the balsam of the natural life caused either by a shortage of fomentation {fomentum} or by an excess of it. In the treatise on the Meditative Philosophy we defined the balsam of life as a just proportioning of the natural heat and its radical moisture. As we have also said, the life of the world is the light of nature and the celestial sulphur, the subject of which is a firmamental ethereal humour and heat, like the sun and moon. Similarly, in the Spagyric Art we need to consider the life of all natural things as the light of those things, which ideally should be shining unhindered within their firmament. This light is however prevented from shining freely and clearly by the shadows of its elements for as long as the latter violently and in a manner that is contrary to nature penetrate the firmament of things, especially within the human body, and mingle with one another within the light in obfuscation thereof.

From what we have said previously we have learned that we must be cautious when dealing with the divine order, lest the shadows subsequently mingle even more with the light of nature. We have learned also that the firmament is interposed in this arrangement because it separates the shadows of the lower waters and keeps them within their bounds.

We are recommended to deal in the same way with the microcosm.

We certainly need to ensure that, within the microcosm, that which serves as an obstacle does not become the order of nature, so we must first restore the firmament of the microcosm, as this restrains the shadows of its elements and compels them to remain in their place, so that if at some time they have perhaps been thoroughly mixed in the light they will be expelled once their corrupted waters have been separated from the uncorrupted superior ones. How that may be done we have explained with sufficient clarity in the previous treatise.

It is obvious that this medium of division and control must be strengthened and renewed by something that is similar to itself, i.e. the uncorrupted medium must be taken up and separated by some eminently suitable and appropriate natural body after the impure elements have been cast utterly away along with their shadows.

This is not to say that those things that are thrown away are entirely useless, but it does mean that they are less suitable than they could or should be unless, that is, they have undergone more extensive and consummate preparation along with other things, and are intended for internal use.

In the case of external use, the remedies, after they have been most thoroughly cleansed of even their own shadows, are more suitable than any other form of surgery, as they obey the natural order of similitude, which teaches us that 'like should everywhere be applied to like', i.e. corporeal things should always be applied to corporeal things, and externally to more sensual things, just as vital things should be applied to external and more vital things.

If, therefore, the disease of life is a successive dissolution caused by a corruption of the elements, then who shall dispute that life alone is of use for preserving life, and that life cannot be preserved by those things which, because they very readily allow corruption, can equally deprive one of one's life, as those elements can?

Once therefore these things have been divided by separation, the resulting pure agent, now free of all corruption, will also be able to liberally exercise its strength and act uninhibitedly in any body into which it has been introduced.

In order, however, that those who have up to now so atrociously vented their rage on the Spagyric Art may see more and more by what reasoning that Art is able to achieve its effects – even if it can be readily understood from the foregoing, but assuming that they have not understood due to the obscurity of the discussions that take place in this subject, and are complaining that they have not really made any inroads into it – we have decided to open this first treasure-chest of nature, from which the Spagyric Art once came forth into the light after beseeching God that He share the key that opens it only with those whom He shall have thought worthy of learning the secrets of His daughter Nature.

The more sincere type of men and those of good will, men who are at peace with themselves and with all their fellow-men in God and who are illuminated by a supernatural light, have grasped the essence of natural philosophy through their meditations, which they conducted as follows. First they used the narrative provided by Moses to study the order and progress of the divine work. Eventually, with the afflatus of the divine spirit which helps all the pious efforts of men, they all joined together in service of the human race to imitate that divine work as far as has been permitted. Before doing so however, they made many direct imprecations to God, and it was only after they had finally acquired firm proof that they would not be committing treason against His Divine Majesty by working on a divine matter that they were able to proceed more serenely and to work to the honour and glory of Him for Whom alone they had assembled, praising Him in the highest.

From any of the treasure-chests of nature therefore, but especially from that which seemed to be the most excellent for perfecting the work that they had in hand, they separated the lower waters from the higher, i.e. the elemental from the firmamental. They accomplished this as much through the ministry of the exterior fire as through the instrumental medium. Indeed they were able to get those things to assume the nature of the celestial firmament by the digestive heat of rotation until, if anything remained of the elemental things, that divided part could be added again to its elements, so that in that the most pure light of its firmament might appear, having assumed the nature of unity and simplicity.

They used this technique everywhere to produce the most excellent, the purest and the simplest cure for every ailment that can be found under the heavens. So great is its power that it can regulate all the imbalances in the human body, and force them to re-assume their just proportions. This causes everyone to see it as a miracle. But what is so remarkable about it?

The power of heaven and the firmament, as we have quite frequently described above, is naturally grafted onto things from the beginning of their creation when they have received their specific form, which nonetheless continues under the universal power.

What is more, they gathered the lower waters remaining from the said division into one place by what they call its 'distillation', so that the dry land might appear. By this artifice they separated the sea-waters from their earth. And so beneath these two elements another two elements lie hidden, namely air beneath the water, and fire beneath the earth. And beneath all these things lie the shadows, which they also removed through a process of separation, in the following manner. First they exposed to fire the earth that needed to be burned. Then they exposed the earth that needed to be purified to its own slag, which had also been purged again by fire, or to some other foreign matter, for as long as was necessary until the four things that are called the elements were fused into one clear and diaphanous body, utterly purged again of its shadows. Paracelsus called this body the alcali rerum.

The older school of Spagyric doctors used this technique most often in the surgical treatment of ulcers of any kind and also of wounds, and with very great success too, for it seems to have surpassed all other techniques. However, it was not at that time considered suitable for internal use unless it had been attenuated, through intense labour, with other things of the same kind. Finally, in due time, it emerged again as the pharmacists' most excellent drink, a vitalising potion that closely resembles the divine nectar.

They say that this is the greatest secret in nature and the supreme natural wisdom, and something to which every physician should aspire after abandoning all the dreams and figments of the imagination of the heathen Greeks. For, indeed, only the Spagyric Art can unlock the door to those most happy places, for it is that Art which teaches us how to fashion the key with which we can undo all the locks of nature and all the treasurechests both general and specific without which nothing noble or worthwhile in the art of natural wisdom, i.e. in true natural philosophy, can ever reach perfection.

Those who are ignorant of the Spagyric Art do not therefore deserve the name of natural philosophers, nor indeed that of doctors. How much less worthy of these names are those who attack the Spagyric Art with sophistry, and who hatefully and with much envy persecute its true professors. Of what benefit is it to them to know natural things only superficially, unless they equally learn not only to know but also to experience that which lies concealed within those things, and from the very centre outwards?

Up to now the various medical schools have been very proud of their anatomising of cadavers. But why have they not also taught the anatomy of natural bodies by the Spagyric Art, which uses fire rather than a scalpel, since that form of anatomy is far more useful and, indeed, more necessary for the human race? And what exactly are people searching for in a cadaver, except death? In Spagyric Anatomy on the other hand we find nothing except life.

The locations, situs and interconnections of the various parts of the human body must, of course, still be correctly and thoroughly known, but even though (as we confess) it may be hard work for the physician it will be far more rewarding for him to replace a defective life with a long and healthy one than to simply pop back into its rightful place some dislocated limb or other. We feel that the heathen err in this matter by ignoring the most important and instead concentrating on the most trivial: although it might not have been at all fitting for them to ignore one aspect, they should certainly not have been unmindful of another aspect which seemed to be absolutely essential.

To sum up, what person with any intelligence or wisdom can fail to see that the Spagyric Art proceeds from the innermost parts of nature through contemplation of the divine works described in Genesis, and not from the fallacious opinions of humans? If it is also possible to deduce from that same Book of Genesis the natural philosophy of the heathen schools in the form in which it has been openly and publicly professed up to now, then surely what we ourselves profess must also appear worthy of being assigned a place of honour? But if that is not the case, then why should we Christians be expected to be mindful of the profane more than of the divine?

Up to now we have spoken about the origin of diseases and medicines rather cursorily. This is an opportune moment to show some concern for the memories and abilities of our readers by recapitulating these matters rather more extensively and with greater clarity, for this subject is quite complex unless it is revised quite frequently.

We said above that the cunning serpent brought disease to the healthy and uncorrupted nature as far as the point of death and that, before the Fall, Adam was not troubled by any disease at all. It follows from this that disease is contrary to nature, and that its goal or exit-point is also the death of natural things. For we gather from the sacred book of Genesis that the serpent introduced into the first parent the natural pretext for a double death, i.e. the death both of mind and body, and although Adam did not die immediately from the sin that he had committed, he was made no less liable to both. Just as his sin was not followed by death on the spot, so also the beginning of the death of the body was not rapidly apparent in the transgressors. Even so, Adam eventually made his exit at the appointed time. And we can certainly see from his progeny how the strength of the life-force has progressively declined, so that the tens of tens of years that were usual in the life-spans of men in the early years of the world now hardly reach the tens. Indeed, hardly anyone is born today who completes the denaries of his life. And how many actually outlive the centenarian patriarchs of ancient times? Should this progressive weakness not be seen as a hereditary disease in the context of the problem of human longevity?

And, indeed, that cunning calumniator the serpent did not cease his efforts right at the beginning.

Even now he is still tempting people, with the greatest vehemence, towards every kind of irregularity of life. As a result parents, who themselves have been made progressively weaker, are producing children that are just like themselves and of an increased infirmity. They have also subsequently (no doubt each one from his own wantonness of life) created the opportunity for irresponsible breeding, so that from one life to the other what was formerly a long and healthy existence has gradually, by successive increments, turned into a very short and corrupted one.

We should not think that the serpent introduced death into both the lives of men, i.e. both the spiritual and the physical life, by any other form of venom than by the inculcating of a petulant and provoking disobedience, as a result of which men have struggled to obey the divine precepts and, similarly, the laws of nature. This is the most powerful root which sets the shadows of the elements in motion and arms them with the external shadows to enable them to wage war in the firmamental light of nature so that they might thereby introduce a thorough mixing forbidden by God, followed by intemperance, disease, and eventually death.

So that we can maintain a satisfactory resistance to the serpent's machinations we need the external firmament, because it contains within its boundaries the shadows of the elements of our body, and protects the light of the body from harm. We have already explained what and of what kind the remedy for this might be, and by what artifice it should be prepared. But it needs to be sought in the inner workings of nature, for without the appropriate key the treasure-chests of nature, and especially those of minerals and metals, cannot be opened. For, as our adversaries themselves point out, nature binds those things together with a bond of admirable strength. This is especially true of gold, on the handling of which of course the Spagyric Art prides itself, for gold does not seem to yield to any fire and, indeed, is made livelier and stronger by flame. So it is hard to understand why the chemists promise themselves (as they themselves have told us) that fire is the key to unlocking gold, when they themselves experience this as a rather weak expedient. We may subscribe to their opinion for as long as is required to make them believe, falsely, that we are succumbing to these frivolous arguments. Soon after however we shall bring them back under our control, which will cause them to completely abandon their vain hopes.

We have already said that the more superficial kind of natural philosophers understand nothing except what is right in front of their eyes.

This means that the only type of fire that they are aware of is the kind that yokels and children can also see, i.e. the sort of fire that craftsmen, mechanics and people of that kind use everywhere.

We want to make it quite clear at this point that we are not beholden to any sort of elemental fire or flame. On the contrary, we state that our fire is very similar to the artificial fire of the chemists, and seeks nothing more in nature than that same fire, into which it also transfers and converts itself with the greatest readiness and without resistance. And indeed gold is wholly fire, and, just like fire, is dissolved by fire not into a mercurial liquor (as some think), nor by aqua fortis (as our enemies incorrectly insist) but into and through that sappy, transparent and fluid substance that most closely resembles the celestial dew.

Since therefore this key is able to open up such a tightly compacted body by perfectly natural means we shall not need to open the remaining treasure-chests of nature in any other way. The structure of this key will be found everywhere in almost all the books of the Philosophers, so we do not need to wax eloquent here about its manufacture; indeed, we might then be accused of saying ad nauseam what is already said too often. Why discuss this subject at length, for it could not be more obvious if we hung it from your nostrils and dropped it into your mouth?

Let me repeat this more clearly. Unity places the unary in nature.

Through the removal of the binary the unary then brings its ternary to the nature of unity. Only then does it acquire the power to open every treasurechest.

I am rather concerned that these matters may still be rather obscure to you. If I am to state it as comprehensibly as I can, we first need to define what we mean by the binary, and to provide a different definition than we used before otherwise you would not understand it properly, so kindly prick up your pious ears!

You need to know that the binary is dual in character, i.e. it is natural and yet it is also contra-natural, i.e. against the order of nature.

The natural binary arose from God through the separation, mentioned in Genesis, of the superior from the inferior. This binary, confined under the bond of unity, produces the ternary, at which point it becomes suitable for reversion to unity.

The binary indeed is completely against nature. And not only is it strongly inimical to nature it is also first and foremost inimical to God, for it once tried to destroy the whole of creation. It is the root of all diseases, and is ruination, given that it is not held together by any bond. Indeed, it is essentially the first separation, anxiously seeking to dissolve the nexus of peace and harmony, more especially in supernatural things but also in the natural creatures of Almighty God, the creator of all things, as will be apparent from what follows.

After Almighty God had created His angels and the ministers of His glory under the union of His peace and harmony there arose among the first creatures by an accessory incident {casus accessorius} scarcely comprehensible to the human mind a confusion between twofoldness (binio) and duality (dualitas), a confusion which is inimical to God and which, through the multitude of dissensions thus created, and with the support of evil, enticed an image of the unary which had been created in the ternary into the condition of the binary, i.e. into the most wretched condition of all.

This binary, a devil and calumniator who had transformed himself from an angel, had just one thought, i.e. he would make himself into a monarch that was equal to God or even greater than Him.

But no sooner had the binary conceived this crime of lèse-majesté against God than he was cast out of heaven. Together with his coconspirators he fell beyond the light into the external shadows, there to suffer the punishment of perpetual death without an end to his torments.

To explain this idea to you rather more clearly we shall develop the metaphor of a pair of compasses. Imagine that one foot of the compasses is positioned at the centre to serve, as it were, as the foundation of the structure, while the other foot, the foot of circumference, serves for delineations and to circumscribe the whole mechanism. When the fallen angel tried to imitate the supreme creator God in His creation of the universe he, as it were, constructed his own compasses for himself within his perverse mind. But he was forced to create another centre, because two centres cannot coincide in the same monarchy, and nor can two circumferences. For this reason the binary is appropriately named, because the Devil tried to push unity and the centre of truth (the monarchy) towards the multiplicity of number. Once the centre of falsehood had been selected, he dragged the circumference as far as the mid-point. When it reached the mid-point, the foot of the circumference was fixed at a different centre. He then delineated with another intersection another circumference similar to the previous one but which did not enclose any middle at all: this resembled an interrupted figure of falsehood. From this are derived the various images of the brute beast and of the coiled and duplicitous serpent, raising four horns heavenwards and creeping slowly towards the monarchy of truth. Once this crime had been committed by the root of all evils and vices, that kingdom fell, divided within itself, along with its prince, Lucifer, and all his legions.

We should not be surprised therefore if God, in creating the world, did not say on the second day of Genesis, as He did also on the other five days: 'He saw that it was good'. This refers to the primeval origin of number, from which multiplicity acquired the origin of confusion, division and controversy against God and nature through the binary.

As we said above, we are not saying that two is always to be condemned, but rather that two can only persist in a state of union in the form of two things in one flesh. As often as they are divided into a state of twofoldness {binio}, i.e. whenever they wish to twice achieve union against the nature of the monarchy, they are to be rejected along with the binary, together with its quaternary offspring of the Duel {monomachia}, or rather with the quaternary itself, or the variegated four-horned one who has been generated from the bivariate.

As long as two or more things observe the peace within the truth of the unity we refer to them as a well-constituted binary {duernio}, and not as a duality. We should not think the same way about twofoldness or the twice-in-union {bis unione}, because there should not and cannot ever be two unions, but only one, as nothing except God is one, Who is not several things and not fewer things.

We are also reluctant for the ternary to be interpreted simply as a ternary, since it is the offspring and foetus of the unary, which has never varied from unity, and which was made by the binary.

Now finally let us take a closer look at our recent statements. You heard just now that this divided binary, which is the Duel, erected four horns created by the birth of the binary. The heathen sages have taken these as the basis of their medical system, thus shattering and tearing into four pieces the curative union, and in doing so actually doubly outdoing the Devil, since he had tried (and failed) to divide and separate the union into just two parts.

It is obvious from this example that, starting from the single humour that God desired to create and which He wanted there to be, they have unfortunately established four humours to delude the incautious and the insane. We wonder why there should be only four humours rather than four drynesses, four moistnesses, four warmnesses and four coldnesses, as well as four earths, four fires, four waters, and four airs – and therefore four worlds! For this is the most marvellous and absurd confusion by which the heathen, wretches that they are, being ignorant of the whole truth, try to ensnare us Christians, who are champions of the truth, into following them in their insanity.

Surely they could see that what they had focused on could bring them nothing except disquiet of the mind (as many of them have even confessed), and have created nothing that is certain, true and stable? As the Apostle St. Paul said, they are 'ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth' (2 Timothy 3:7), because there is no unity in their studies, and they see everything as contrary to the facts.

According to the argument that forms the basic tenet of their medical system they teach that contraries must be cured by contraries. Is this not simply an admission that they themselves were born of the binary of falsehood, which is the root of every evil {contrarietas}? And what do they think of the way that the Devil, who is the father of contraries, acts against himself? For was it not he who introduced contrariety, i.e. evil, into nature? By what reasoning do those learned doctors think that the Devil was created as such a great friend of nature that he ultimately sought to remove from it what he would rather, with the greatest effort, seek to increase through his own creative powers {conditio}? Surely that idea is just as stupid as those who teach it? For the guile {prudentia} of the serpent is expressed in the form of evil and not in that of good, so that even if he had wanted to benefit mankind he could never have done so. If indeed Almighty God did not want men to be healed through the Devil, but through truth and virtue, then why in this matter did He store that cure in natural things which have been brought together in union, i.e. in the Medicine? For the false doctrines are the human doctrines, which teach that we should combat war with war and extinguish fire with fire, and drive out the Devil with the Devil. But those statements themselves seem to conflict with the heathen philosophy, because these things are not contraries but are entirely similar.

An astute observer might point out that this is exactly what the Spagyric doctors say, i.e. that 'like cures like'. But surely you must understand the difference between cure and expulsion? For it is not the illnesses that are cured, but the subjects of those illnesses, which by their very nature were healthy before the disease took hold. If, therefore, they need to be made well again then one must find a healthy simulacrum. If however the disease has to be expelled from the body then a simulacrum will be of no use to us, for it might simply add an increment to the original disease. Obviously only a healthy contrary would be effective. A person who tries to argue that contraries must be cured with other contraries is therefore a fool. He would have sounded more sane and sensible if he had argued that 'like cures like' and that 'contraries expel contraries'. Such people have simply not used their brains to see that it is not the diseases that are cured, but the diseased parts, which by their very nature are not diseased until the precise moment when disease besets them.

We must therefore conclude that heathen doctors of this kind have constructed their doctrine on the basis of the binary of falsehood. In doing so they have also given birth, at the urging of the four-horned binary, to the four-horned beast of the humours, the names of whose horns are ambition, brutality, calumny and separation.

We would like to explain this point to you in greater detail, along with an interpretation worthy of it, but we see that we need to move on quickly to other things. However, ignoring the requirements of brevity, we are reserving a time and a place especially for it, because I can see, on account of these and many other things, that I need to put up a fight, since I have touched on the Devil and his own and have opened up the ulcer of evil. In the interim therefore we shall make a start on this, because we are fighting on behalf of nothing less than the physical and Spagyric truth.

When, therefore, God the supreme creator saw that the angels that He had created had rebelled from unity He decided, in His providence and goodness, to create the ternary or the microcosm as His final creation and to substitute it for the binary which had been cast out of heaven for being an apostate and the author of falsehood. The wretched Devil perceived this and, seeing that there was now someone in view who might one day occupy the seat of beatitude from which he had himself been ejected, with a certain innate envy and using sophistical arguments, attacked the weaker (feminine) part of man and hurled the forbidden fruit and the root of disobedience into that man's monarchy. In this way he diverted a monarchy which was only fractured (but not entirely divided as it was still connected in the middle) to the broad way of death under the guise of the omega, and distributed the fruit of perdition in the form of bread, divided into two parts, in an attempt to seduce both the woman and the man.

We should note with what marvellous cunning that calumniator, the serpent, effected an entry into the human monarchy and insinuated himself. Being full of every deceit, he knew that he should not approach Adam first, for Adam was marked with the unary, and he obviously doubted that he could achieve anything for himself. By the same token however he did not know that Eve had been divided from her man as a natural binary from the unary of their ternary. Hence, armed by a certain similitude of binary to binary, and multiplicity to multiplicity, he attacked the woman.

For all the even numbers are feminine, the first of which is two, i.e. that which is peculiar to Eve herself and the first number, while all the odd numbers are masculine, and their fount and origin is the ternary that is peculiar to Adam. This ternary could not receive any number or multiplicity by the first and immediate attack of the Devil because it is the offspring of the unary. This is why the Devil, the contra-natural binary, attacked the natural binary first.

Now at last we can see where all the errors in medicine and corruptions in other branches of philosophy have originated. No one of sound mind would deny that the serpent was able to use some bread and a morsel of the forbidden fruit to insinuate the binary of falsehood into the microcosm or ternary.

Disease cannot therefore be removed from the ternary through the binary, nor through its progeny the quaternary, but only through the unary calling the ternary back to its simplicity and union once the inimical binary has been cast out and expelled. And although the Devil will have carved out a monarchy of ternary from one rejected part of the fruit yet he has in no way ensured that it is torn into two parts entirely separated from each other. In any case, unless he had restored that coherence of parts by that part by which calumny was shut off from the other horns there was a danger of a desperate reconciliation with God Himself. For if only the calumniator had been able to draw the man Adam into committing an act of calumny against his creator, which he himself was accustomed to using against God and His court, then he would certainly have considered acting against the man.

Indeed, the merciful Lord did not want to render Adam so inimical to Him that, although deprived of all reason and true wisdom, he might still have fallen into such great ingratitude. But Adam merely fled from the face of the Lord, imbued as he was with a certain brutality, as he thought that he could escape the gaze of Him who is present everywhere. However, he immediately admitted his error and then, orally, acknowledged his nakedness in the presence of the Lord. This was evidently an example of the first repentance.

Not that Adam sought mercy on account of this, for he had not yet heard the sweet-sounding words of the Lord to the serpent: 'And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel' (Genesis 3:15). What, I ask, is the purpose of all these things other than to suggest to the eyes of our mind the mercy of God towards man, so that we may meditate upon that mercy for days and nights, directing our attention to Him beforehand, Who enables us to penetrate all the art and wisdom to be found in everything?

After the Fall therefore God sought to confirm, through this first promise of all things from His own mouth whatever His prophets would promise in the future and whatever would subsequently come to pass in His Son. From that moment on therefore Adam, freed and emancipated by the Lord, was rescued from servitude to the Devil and allowed to rejoin His monarchy, except however for a small residue of the root of the forbidden fruit. It is due to that residue that we have had to cope with the Duel for such a long time while we tarry in this corruptible domicile of the Earth.

To acquire a clearer understanding of what this residual fruit actually is, let us examine in more detail those imaginary binary compasses that we mentioned above.

You have just heard that this imaginary instrument, along with the fallen angel who made it, was cast out of heaven into the external shadows. Ever since that time, the calumniator has never ceased to take the compasses into his hands from day to day in order to cruelly insinuate the Duel into our imaginations to attack both God and ourselves in such a way that there is nothing that does not cause us anxiety. Whenever something good or pleasant occurs that causes us to wish to meditate upon the life of the reformer, the Devil will surely come along and mix some darnel into it, deprive us of every good and fruitful thought, and surround us with thoughts of hopelessness. This is the effect of the residue of the forbidden fruit within us, and it is that with which the binary of falsehood disturbs us with his Duel.

However, he does so entirely in vain, for the unvanquished and insuperable power of God, against which no violence or tyranny can prevail, strengthens our minds with the power of His divine spirit. It arms, protects and defends us lest we succumb at any time and become entangled in the cogs of the binary compasses. For every time the machinator of falsehood and the architect of impurity, together with his instruments, strive to direct his arts and crafts against our monarchy by insinuating imaginings into our minds and prefiguring that instrument of evil, namely the compasses of falsehood, God casts him far from our mind, and banishes him to that pit of eternal confusion and perdition which he has dug for himself.

However, the Devil knows that, because of the Fall into which he himself dragged us, there was inflicted upon us the punishment of work and of the sweat of our brows in order to obtain bread and the other things that we need for our everyday use and sustenance. This provides him with the opportunity he is seeking, and so he tries to draw us into his nefarious arts which we might use to obtain things that are in no way necessary to us.

God did however place instruments in our hands which He wants us to use to acquire our daily bread through our skills and ingenuity. When God the supreme creator brought the world into being, He did not need any instruments to get the work of His hands into some sort of order, for He could achieve anything He wished with just a single nod and gesture.

However, He has wanted up to now to teach us how to use those things that He himself has used, namely number, measure and weight, among which we may arrange our single timely actions and establish norms for the arts and sciences, and so be able to renounce the instruments and imaginary compasses of the calumniator of the binary.

It remains for us to consider in what way or with what instruments the fractured monarchy of our ternary should be restored to the pristine integrity of the unity and sanity of the long life.

First we shall look at the uncreated centre of truth and the centre of the created universe in which number, measure, weight and all wisdom lie concealed. For the true Medicine with which the fractured monarchy of our ternary (which is concerned with the spirit) has been repaired is the centre of truth, just as the Medicine of the body is the created centre of the universe.

These are not however two separate centres, but one only, just as a man is both the spirit and the body of that man. They are just one centre, but they are seen from different perspectives due solely to various things by which they are taken up and which need to be discerned with the mind.

They thus form, as it were, an uncreated centre and a created centre, which God has enclosed under union. We need therefore to reject that imaginary centre of twofoldness {binio} that the calumniator has posited, and do so in such a way that the ternary is led to the true centre of the unary and to the previous monarchy, free from the Duel, now that his redeemer has proved victorious. For we have already said that there cannot be more than one centre within a single monarchy unless they are made one under union, and nor can a single space be enclosed by more than one circumference.

So much for the Medicine for the treatment of spiritual diseases.

Now we need to look at the corporeal and physical aspect, so that the body's quaternary, along with its ternary, can, through the bond of union, both meet simultaneously in the septenary. For the quaternary is counted as a binary of matter on account of the four elements that display the universal matter of nature, just as heaven provides it with all the form and action in that matter.

A disease is therefore an impression of evil created by the placement of a false centre into a body in order to cause suffering that is similar to the action. A Medicine on the other hand is a repression of evil through the placement into the body of a true and universal centre which renders the body capable of allowing an action of this kind.

Since therefore every disease arises from one and the same root, every medicine also has its origin in just one root, just as a disease both of mind and body is insinuated into the monarchy from the binary of confusion and the origin of the discord of multiplicity: conversely, every Medicine arises from the unary of simplicity.

What, I ask, can the One generate from itself other than that sole ternary which is susceptible to union, to every right proportion and to simplicity, into which no multiplicity ever intrudes and, therefore, no contrariety? And how fatuous it is for the heathen to think that the Medicine must have a quaternary basis, when its progeny is binary. The way the heathen talk anyone would think that there can be more than one principle in nature.

Now we shall return to the subject of how the monarchy became fractured in the first place.

So great is the efficacy of the highest virtue and the immense goodness of the invisible and indivisible centre that it attracts to itself everything that is in conformity with it in terms of simplicity and rotundity.

Accordingly when man, who from the beginning was created according to a likeness although he has not remained so for a good while, wishes to recover his lost health of body and mind, he tries to acquire a precise understanding and knowledge of the centre. He betakes himself wholly to that centre, and the centre will then be freed from all imperfections and diseases so that it is restored to the condition of the previous monarchy.

The four horns, both mental and physical, will have been removed and destroyed.

To understand rather better these four horns of the binary we should explain that the Devil, after deciding to set up those horns in heaven and having been cast out of there as a result, nonetheless tried subsequently to implant into the human mind the qualities that they represented, namely ambition, brutality, calumny and separation.

The Devil was however frustrated in his hopes for calumny, which he was unable to insinuate into Adam, and he therefore insinuated only three things with lethal effect, and then under altered names: intellectual ambition was described as ardour of diseases of the body; brutality as the boiling of the body's liquors; and separation as the dissolution of the just proportions of the aforementioned.

Initially the Devil wanted to insinuate calumny into every use and application of those things, but he was not allowed to divert nature from its just proportions. Indeed no other proportioning has ever been accepted except in three forms, namely natural heat, which is the organ of life; radical moisture, which is the nourishment {fomentum} of life; and the light of nature, which ensures a long and temperate life for both those things.

Paracelsus, who was himself illuminated by the supernatural light of nature, learned from experience that these three forms could be described as follows: natural heat he called sulphur and the light of corporeal nature; the radical moisture he called the Mercury of the life of the body; and the body he called the balsam of corporeal life and the lucid and diaphanous salt. When however they had been polluted by the binary in the manner explained above he called them by the following names when they introduced diseases through that binary, thus leading to a distortion of their just proportions which was attributed to the horn of separation: natural heat receding from its just proportions he called sulphur or the scorching desert {urens adustum} consuming and devouring other things, these being the most conspicuous phenomena that the diseases give rise to; radical moisture, when it similarly deviated from the just proportions of the union, he characterised as a congealed or sublimed Mercury {Mercurius congelatus or Mercurius sublimatus}; finally, in the same way, he called the balsam of life, when it did not persist in its natural state, the resolved salt {sal resolutum}.

The causes of the dissolution of the just proportions and hence the emergence of disease will have to be discussed elsewhere. We can however make room at this point for a brief discussion of the horns of the binary, using one of the maxims of the heathen as our basis, by saying that they cannot withdraw anywhere except into the elements. In the higher, more ethereal parts of nature there is no room for such things, as we have also shown with sufficient clarity in our treatise on the Meditative Philosophy. When therefore, at each end, we raise the fractured monarchy of our ternary – distorted into the shape of an omega (denoting the end of life), its three horns having been removed – into the shape of an alpha, which denotes the beginning of a restored longevity in the place of eternal life, we may turn to Him Who said: 'I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last' (Revelation 22:13), for He will show us a better way of driving out all disease from our bodies both natural and supernatural than wandering about in the labyrinths of the heathen, for He has neither beginning nor end. He wanted us only to understand these words in our doctrine as they pertain to us and everything that He has created and made on our behalf, so that in Him alone we might recognise the beginning and the end of the health and happiness in our life, to His glory in the first instance and subsequently to prolong the health of all of us.

For even if the monarchy was restored to us through Christ to the status that it had at the beginning, in order however that we might never be unmindful of His great blessing the Devil would still be seen intersecting our monarchy and fighting his Duel with us both in mind and body, while we would still be regarded as being in a fallen state, as is revealed to us by the letter alpha, in which the arc intersects the circle, just as the semicircle intersects the whole.

The Medicine of the ternary of the rational soul or mind is therefore an uncreated unity produced from the uncreated centre of truth, while the Medicine of the body is a created unity produced from the centre of the created universe. Unity however does not need a Medicine at all, since it is itself health. Duality on the other hand is disease, and cannot in any way rescue the Medicine, since in attempting to do so it would be mercilessly condemned to perpetual death in the binary of falsehood. The ternary alone is that into which the Medicine falls through the unary, because it is deemed worthy of grace through Him Who alone is one and merciful.

We cannot understand therefore why the heathen assign the Medicine to the quaternary, for the quaternary is condemned along with its binary root from which it was generated, whose parents are of the same condition and nature, for good fruit never comes from a bad tree.

And so the heathen continue to build their edifice on sand, protecting it with a so-called roof that is exposed to all the winds and lightning of Jupiter, while we ourselves are building with solid stone.

In brief, this is the basis of our medicine. To ensure that God gives us a long and healthy life through unity that longevity and health need to be sought through that same unity and never otherwise. In the same way, every disease associated with a shortened life has its origins solely in duality.

You will remember that above I said that the tree of a long and healthy life was planted by the ternary: it remains for us to examine what was once planted by the natural binary and was then replaced by the binary of falsehood with the sophism, 'Ye shall not (i.e. never) surely die' (Genesis 3:4).

The four elements in our body – earth, water, air and fire – of which our body is composed, correspond to the more imperfect planets in the heavens, namely Saturn, Mercury, Venus and Mars, and our body gets sick because of the imbalance of the parts. And so the tree is planted on the basis of these planets, its roots being assigned to Saturn, through which roots that fickle Mercury and Venus produce the trunk and the ascending branches, leaves, and fruit-bearing flowers for Mars.

This is actually the point of maximum disagreement between the Spagyrics and the heathen doctors. We state it here to enable the latter to see the opinion of the former. They should examine things accurately enough and look at things from every perspective, and if they find anything with the authority of the light of nature that is able to undermine our opinion then they render Hermes Trismegistus, along with his supporters, a disciple of Hippocrates and Galen, but if not then they themselves should become disciples of Hermes. There is no reason for either of the factions to introduce their favourite authors to support their respective doctrines, for if they do they will find themselves locked in a never-ending dispute, for they should take nature as the sole author and judge of the Medicine. Even if however they use medical authorities that are deduced solely from the light of nature they will still fight among themselves.

Meanwhile I shall discuss the opinions of both factions to the best of my ability in terms of the substitution which we referred to above, which was introduced, through the agency of the binary of falsehood, by elements and just as much as by ethereal things, as well as with reference to the expression 'Ye shall not surely die'.

The opinion of the heathen doctors is that there are four humours in the human body. They call these black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm, and they claim that the physical body is constituted from them. They are obviously guided by this reasoning when they state that, for human blood from a vein or some other place undergoing treatment, they can see water floating on top, which they call phlegm {pituita}, and say that it has a yellow admixture, and a bit of black in it as well, and they therefore decide on that basis that the four elements must consist of four humours and that it is from those humours that the human body is itself composed, even though, from the unique humour which was that of the lower waters, God separated the elements not into four distinct humours but into one only, the remaining three being very different and with a form entirely different from that of a humour. Why do the heathen find this idea so strange? The reason is because they are only interested in the manifest nature, and are ignorant of the hidden nature, and they can only judge such matters superficially. The answer lies in more secret things than they thought.

Surely they can see that the body and blood are two different bodies?

Whereas the former is nourished and was produced from a seed, the latter – deriving as it does from external things – itself provides nourishment with food and drink. Therefore their judgement lies in a nourishing and external body, but not in that which is prone to accidents and susceptible to disease. They will therefore try to cure it with food and drink converted into blood and excrement rather than treating a sick natural, accidental and excremental body. In the same way they say that there is no difference between sperm and blood, arguing that the former is a superfluity generated from the latter.

We challenge these assertions, especially the idea that the blood adhering in the veins or elsewhere is the origin of sperm, for that leads to the absurd conclusion that the human body is generated from liquids alone, and not from residual and more solid members also, and that the whole body of the procreated man is bloody, and not also fleshy, bony etc.

We do however accept that nature can transmute blood into nourishment for the individual members of the body, but in that case it would no longer be blood nor have its form, but would be an abundant nutriment transformed into flesh and bone before it is able to receive the form of sperm. In the same way it is also not detached from any superfluity but from the most potent and maximally necessary substance of the individual members of the body, otherwise the foetus would not be complete with all its members.

Human blood is not therefore the prime matter of sperm nor even the proximate matter, nor even the most remote cause, but is a formless matter of all members and parts or faculties congregated into one intense centre for the extension of its form. On the other hand, the purest blood, separated from the other three humours of bile and phlegm which we have mentioned, contains within itself four clean and purer elements which are those which appear above the blood.

But hitherto the tree of the elements has been supplanted by the binary of falsehood. We restore it to its rightful place as follows. Its roots and all the more solid parts are Saturnine. All the sap which rises through the roots into the trunk, the branches, the leaves, the flowers and the fruit is Mercurial. The heat and fire which draws the sap of this kind through suction is partly Martial and partly Venusian. Venus cannot be separated from Mars, no more than air can be separated from fire, because between those two things there is an indissoluble bond, for no air is devoid of fire, and no fire can exert its power without air. This is why the two should be regarded as one and the same, as a natural sulphur.

From those three things just mentioned the heathens have most consistently taught that all the diseases in the physical body (which the true Spagyric doctors have said is made of sperm and not of food) are impressed by three very general genera, assigning also to each genus its various species. Just as therefore the roots in the earth, as also the branches above the earth, are enlarged through the trunk into the various extremities, the physical and afflicted Saturn impresses its various diseases into the earth of the human body, that is to say into all its more solid parts.

Mercury, also afflicted, infuses his diseases into the human liquor through the trunk and all the branches. Unfortunately, healthy Mars, together with his physical Venus, fans the human fire in various ways.

The challenge is to assign to each of these three genera their appropriate species, so that conversely the tree of a short and unhealthy life can be transmuted into the tree of a long and healthy life to which we have referred above.