347

Living the Long Life: Physical and Spiritual Health in

Two Early Paracelsian Tracts

Thomas Willard
Abstract
Paracelsus wrote two early tracts on longevity, in which he discussed the
theory and practice of preserving human life beyond the normal limits.
They received considerable attention in the sixteenth century, but very
little afterward. Indeed, they have developed a reputation as incoherent
ramblings that are full of superstition, strange words, and coded messages
to disciples. However, they reward attention because they promote a ho-
listic or integrative approach to medicine, in which physical, mental, and
spiritual health are not to be separated. Here he has made use of many
traditions, including alchemy, astrology, herbology, folklore, neoplato-
nism, and biblical interpretation.

Paracelsus schrieb zwei frhe Traktate zur Langlebigkeit, in denen er die
Theorie und Praxis der Erhaltung menschlichen Lebens jenseits der nor-
malen Grenzen diskutierte. Sie lenkten im 16. Jahrhundert groe Auf-
merksamkeit auf sich, spter aber scheint man sie weitgehend ignoriert
bzw. missachtet zu haben. Genau betrachtet zogen sie sich den Ruf zu,
nichts als inkohrentes Geschwafel darzustellen und Texte zu sein, die voll
von Aberglauben, fremden Wrtern und verschlsselten Nachrichten an
Schler strotzten. Sie verdienen aber trotzdem unsere Beachtung, weil sie
einen ganzheitlichen oder integrativen Ansatz zur Medizin gefrdert ha-
ben, bei dem krperliche, seelische und geistige Gesundheit nicht vonei-
nander getrennt werden. Hier hat Paracelsus aus vielen Traditionen ge-
schpft, einschlielich Alchemie, Astrologie, Kruterkunde, Volkskunde,
neuplatonische Philosophie und biblische Interpretation.

Thomas Willard

348
Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (14931541) wrote two tracts
on long life (de vita longa). Dated 1526 and 1527,
1
they were completed
before he left his position as Basels city physician and before he began to
publish medical texts under the name Paracelsus. After they were post-
humously printed, between 1560 and 1570, they were recognized as integ-
ral texts in the Paracelsian canon texts that both deserved and needed
commentary. They were translated into English and other languages, but
neither has received much scholarly attention in the last century.
2
The lack
of interest is surprising, inasmuch as the tracts call for a unified approach
to physical and spiritual health and for a medical practice that would now
be termed integrative or holistic .
This essay offers an English-language perspective on these tracts and
on the Paracelsian approach to living a long life. After discussing their
sixteenth-century editions, it turns to English translations of the sevente-
enth and nineteenth centuries and to some twentieth-century comments
available to English readers. It ends with a textual analysis.
The 1526 tract was written in German as a single essay without chap-
ter and book divisions. The 1527 tract was dictated in German, in either
four or five books, but it survives in a Latin translation with only a few
fragments of the original German. The titles are remarkably similar. The
German text was first issued under the Latin title Liber de vita longa (or De
longa vita), while the Latin tract appeared as Libri quatuor de vita longa (Libri
quinque in the second edition). For convenience, I shall refer to the first by
its German title, Vom langen Leben, and to the second by its shorter Latin
title, De vita longa.
Vom langen Leben is the companion piece of a German treatise on re-
novation and restoration (De renovatione et restauratione). The two parts may
have reached their final version in 1526, when Paracelsus had a medical
practice in Straburg. They were clearly connected to his principal
teachings, which he called his archidoxa,
3
though the exact relationship
was not established. Meanwhile, De vita longa is just as clearly the sequel to
_____________
1 Approximate dates of composition are assigned in the standard edition: Paracelsus: Smtli-
che Werke, ed. by Karl Sudhoff and Wilhelm Matthiessen, Part 1: Medizinische, naturwis-
senschaftliche und philosophische Schriften, 14 vols., Munich 19221933. Hereafter Sud-
hoff. Complementing this edition, Karl Sudhoff: Bibliographia Paracelsica: Besprechung
der unter Theophrast von Hohenheim's 15271893 erschienen Druckschriften. Berlin
1894, remains the standard reference for early books by and about Paracelsus; I therefore
give Sudhoff item numbers in the bibliography.
2 For example, neither tract is mentioned in Charles Websters excellent Paracelsus: Medici-
ne, Magic and Mission at the End of Time. New Haven and London 2008. Meanwhile,
neither text is excerpted in the otherwise fine new anthology Paracelsus: Essential Rea-
dings, ed. by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. Berkeley, CA, 1999 (Essential Readings).
3 See The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. Oxford and New York 1989 (1st ed.1928),
archidoxis, on the words etymology and early uses by English readers of Paracelsus.
Living the Long Life
349
Vom langen Leben, for the first sentence promises a further comment on
the long life:
Since it is becoming to Theophrastus that he should philosophize further con-
cerning long life, it is necessary, in the first place, and worthy to be known, in my
judgment, what life is, especially immortal life . . .
4

[Si de vita longa Theophrastum philosophari fas est, necessarium primo scrituque
dignum, quid vita sit, existimo, maxime vero immortalis . . . ]
5

The opening sentence makes it clear that Paracelsus plans to go beyond
the first tract on long life, widening the scope to include immortal life.
6

The one question is why the full text survives only in Latin, and the ans-
wer is found in the edition prepared by Johann Huser. The text was com-
posed in German and then translated by the young Johann Oporinus (n
Herbst; 15071568), who assisted Paracelsus in Basel.
7
Huser, a physician
from Cologne, found German samples (Teutsche Exemplaria) in the as-
sistants papers and realized that Oporinus did not follow the authors
intention [Meinung] in several places.
8
In the 1550s, when Oporinus was
established as a Basel philologist, he wrote often-quoted accounts of a
drunken Paracelsus dictating new texts at all hours. For example:
wenn er besonders betrunken war, (er) nach Hause zurckgekehrt mir etwas von
seiner Philosophia zu diktieren, das so schn zusammenhngend zu sein schien,
da es der Nchternste offensichtlich nicht htte besser machen knnen. Ich war
dann beflissen, diese Diktate, so gut ich konnte, in die lateinsche Sprache zu be-
zertzen.
9

[When he was very drunk, he returned home to dictate to me some of his philo-
sophy, which seemed so coherent that not even the soberest, most enterprising
_____________
4 Paracelsus: The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings, ed. by Arthur Edward Waite, 2 vols.
London 1894, vol. 2, p. 323. Hereafter Waite.
5 Sudhoff, vol. 3, p. 249. When reproducing Latin quotations, I have modernized the spelling
somewhat and have expanded abbreviations; thus breuis becomes brevis, n becomes non,
and quinq; becomes qunique.
6 Paracelsus briefly touches on the subject in Vom langen Leben, calling it occult (verbor-
gen); see Waite, vol. 2, p. 116, and Sudhoff, vol. 3, p. 234. Here he paraphrases 1 Cor. 2:
13.
7 Gerard Dorn refers to Oporinus as the amanuensis of Paracelsus and the translator of this
tract. See his note to the reader in Paracelsus: Libri v De vita longa, brevi et sana. Frankfurt
a. M.: Christoff Rab, 1583, signature a4r. In book citations, the word signature is hereaf-
ter abbreviated sig.
8 Sechster Theil der Bcher und Schriften . . . Paracelsi, ed. by Johann Huser. Frankfurt:
Heirs of Johann Wechel, 1603 (1st ed. 1589), p. 105. The fragments cover pp. 105113 in
this edition and are reprinted in Sudhoff, vol. 3, pp. 293308.
9 Letter to Konrad Gessner, quoted in Udo Benzenhfer: Paracelsus. Reinbek bei Hamburg
1997, p. 65. Also see Oporinuss letter to Johann Weyer, dated Nov. 26, 1555, in Sepp
Domandl: Paracelsus, Weyrer, Oporin: Die Hintergrnde des Pamphlets von 1555. Para-
celsus Werk und Wirkung: Festgabe fr Kurt Goldammer zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. by Sepp
Domandl. Vienna 1975, pp. 5370, esp. pp. 5456.
Thomas Willard

350
fellow could have done better. I was then eager to translate these dictations, as
best I could, into the Latin language.]
It is tempting to imagine a yawning student aide trying to keep up with the
illuminated (or simply lit) physician, and there are sudden asides and
digressions in the text to support such a picture for example, Some
who have reached that age [i.e., 600 years] might be enumerated, did not
my pen [calamus] hasten in another direction.
10
Nevertheless, the use of
chapter divisions and topic sentences suggests a plan behind even this
farthest extension of the authors Archidoxa.
The first printings of Vom langen Leben and De vita longa were issued
during what Karl Sudhoff has called the third phase of Paracelsian publi-
cation. The first phase included works published during the authors
lifetime, and the second works reprinted after his death. The third phase,
which Sudhoff dates 15601588, was the time of the publication of ma-
nuscripts from Hohenheims estate in various special editions by Boden-
stein, Dorn, Toxites, and others (Die Zeit der Herausgabe des handschriftlichen
Nachlasses Hohenheims in zahlreichen Sonderausgaben von Bodenstein, Dorn, Toxi-
tes und Andern).
11
De vita longa appeared in 1560, the first of many Paracelsi-
an tracts collected by the Swiss physician Adam von Bodenstein (1528
1577) and published in Basel by Peter Perna (15221582).
12

Bodenstein was a member of the medical faculty in Basel, where Para-
celsus had lectured. He was the author of small books on gout and plague
as well as a commentary on the Rosarium philosophorum, one of the first
printed books of alchemy. He became interested in Paracelsus after he
recovered from a serious bout of tertian fever and credited his recovery to
a Paracelsian preparation. He considered himself the first doctor to
graduate from a university and take up the wholesome and honest doctri-
_____________
10 Waite, vol. 2, p. 345; cf. Sudhoff, vol. 3, p. 287. The word translated as pen (calamus) has
the literal meaning of reed and in other contexts could be translated panpipe.
11 Sudhoff: Bibliographia Paracelsica, p. 60. For information on Bodenstein, Dorn, and
Toxites, see Urs Leo Gantenbein: Der frhe Paracelsismus in der Schweiz. In: Nova
Acta Paracelsica 10 (1996), pp. 1446, esp. pp. 2733. Also see Philip Ball: The Devils
Doctor: Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science. New York 2006, pp.
346350.
12 Paracelsus: Libri quatuor De vita longa, ed. by Adam Bodenstein. Basel: Peter Perna,
1560. For information on Perna, a major publisher of medical and alchemical texts, see
Edwin Eliott Willoughby: Fifty Printers Marks. Berkeley, CA 1947, pp. 6162, and Frank
Hieronymus: Paracelsus-Druck in Basel. In: Heinz Schott and Ilana Zinguer, eds., Para-
celsus und seine internationale Rezeption in der frhen Neuzeit. Brill 1998 (Studies in In-
tellectual History, 86), pp. 3657, esp. pp. 3947. For a partial list of Pernas Paracelsian
publications see The Alchemy Website, Peter Perna, Basel,
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/printer_perna.html (last accessed on July 11, 2010).
Living the Long Life
351
nes of Theophrastus and publicly defend them.
13
For his efforts, he was
dismissed from the medical faculty, which gave him the leisure to collect
and edit some two dozen manuscripts left by Paracelsus. He died in
poverty, at an even younger age than his master.
The four-book De vita longa showed every sign of careful preparation,
including a preface by the mysterious Valentius of Rhaetia, who offered a
tempting overview of books by or about Paracelsus.
14
Valentius wrote that
Paracelsus left 361 books: 230 on philosophy, 46 on medicine, 12 on poli-
tics (republica), 7 on mathematics (i.e., astronomy), and 66 on more occult
and abstruse subjects. He added that Paracelsus is mentioned in three
other books, making a total of 364 almost one for every day of the year.
The obvious implication was that a trove of Paracelsian manuscripts was
out there, possibly in the canton of Graubnden, and that Bodenstein and
Perna had access to them.
Then, in 1562, Bodenstein brought out a second edition of De vita
longa, this one organized in five books. In the introduction to the longer
text, he explained:
Nos quidem anno 1560. quatuor libros de vita longa typis mandavimus, sed ad-
huc imperfectos: quia liber quartus totus defuit, ac multa capita primi & tertii lib.
ultissima, nunc autem perfectos, ac ex ore Paracelsi diligenter exceptos & recog-
nitos publicamus, quos spero tibi gravissimos, ac utilissimos fore in vita longa
producenda, qui pro aetate fortitus es a domino Deo corpus bonum & commo-
dum, quod arte vera in debita harmonia conservari potest.
15

[In 1560 we committed to print the four books of long life, but they remained
incomplete because the fourth book was entirely lacking plus many chapters of
the first and third books. However, they are now complete and diligently taken
from the mouth of Paracelsus, and I hope will be most weighty and useful to you
in promoting long life in a body both good and serviceable to God, a body which
can by art be conserved in true harmony.]
Bodenstein was not just touting the advantages of a new, improved editi-
on; he seemed dismayed to have brought a less reliable text to the public
and was convinced the new version preserved teachings that came out of
the mouth of Paracelsus. In addition to the new fourth book, the 1662
_____________
13 Paracelsus: Four Treatises of Theophrastus of Hohenheim Called Paracelsus, ed. and trans.
by Henry E. Siegrist et al. Baltimore 1941, p. 136. Bodenstein recounted the story in a de-
dication of 1567, translated on pp. 136141.
14 Paracelsus: Libri v. de Vita longa, ed. by Adam Bodenstein. Basel: Peter Perna, 1562, sig.
d3r-v. I have consulted a reprint to which Sudhoff has assigned the date 1566 (Sudhoff
number 503). Valentius prepared the text of Paracelsus, De tinctura physicorum included
in Paracelsus: Archidoxa Philippi Theophrasti Paracelsi . . . Zehen Bcher, ed. by Michael
Toxites. Straburg: Theodosius Rihel, 1570, pp. 323324.
15 Paracelsus: De vita longa, sig. d2r-v. Sudhoff discusses the evidence of that led Huser to
identify Oporinus as Bodensteins source for the additional material (Bibliographia Paracel-
sica, pp. 7172).
Thomas Willard

352
text had an extra chapter in book one, three extra chapters at the end of
book three, and four unnumbered sections added to book two. The final
book remained unchanged.
16
The phrase ex ore Paracelsi lent credence to
the belief which Huser took as fact that Paracelsus dictated the chap-
ters to Oporinus and that Oporinus gave Bodenstein passages from the
original dictation. Nevertheless, a heated dispute broke out between two
second-generation Paracelsians.
In 1567, the Parisian diplomat Jacques Gohorry brought out the first
anthology of Paracelsian writings to be made available in Latin. Gohorry
included a life of Paracelsus, an account of his medical philosophy, and a
selection of texts, featuring the four-book De vita longa.
17
He compared the
supposed fifth book to the spurious fourth book of Cornelius Agrippa,
and argued that De vita longa was difficult enough as it had first appeared.
18

He wrote an extensive commentary on the four-book version, devoting
three pages of his own analysis to each page of the original. His Compendi-
um proved sufficiently important that Perna agreed to publish a new editi-
on the following year. However, Pernas edition included a highly critical
appendix by the Belgian physician Gerard Dorn (c.1530c.1584).
Dorn had already written books on alchemy and Paracelsus when he
began to collaborate with Bodenstein. The two produced a Latin edition
of a text attributed to Paracelsus in 1568.
19
Dorn went on to be the prin-
cipal translator of Paracelsian texts into Latin, almost all of them publis-
hed by Perna. After reading through Gohorrys edition, he wrote a thirty-
page response to the venom that Leo Suavius (unknown to me) tried to
spew.
20
Dorns language was openly abusive, after the manner of con-
temporary pamphleteering. It was calculated, he said, to make the impos-
ter repent and come to his senses.
21
He wrote primarily to defend himself
against charges that he had made various errors of translation and inter-
pretation, replying to fifteen specific statements in Gohorrys Compendium.
Even Pernas printer got into the act with a six-page defense of Boden-
_____________
16 See Sudhoff: Bibliographia Paracelsica, p. 61, for a detailed comparison of the two texts.
17 Paracelsus Compendium, ex optimus quibusque eius libris, cum scholiis in libros IIII
eiusdem De vita longa, ed. by Leo Suavius (pseud. of Jacques Gohorry). Paris: Rovilius,
1567. For background on Gohorry and the compendium see Allen G. Debus: The Chemi-
cal Philosophy: Paracelsian Science and Medicine in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centu-
ries, 2 vols. continuously paginated. New York 1977, pp. 146148.
18 Paracelsus, Compendium, p. 304.
19 Paracelsus, Pyrophilia vexationumque, ed. and trans. by Adam Bodenstein and Gerard
Dorn. Basel: Peter Perna, 1568. Sudhoff places the work, also known as Coelum philoso-
phorum, with other spuria in vol. 14, pp. 405420. In his Bibliographia Paracelsica, he sug-
gested that Dorn may have been employed at Pernas firm (p. 174).
20 Paracelsus, Compendium, sig. zz. 7r.
21 Paracelsus, Compendium, sig. bb5v.
Living the Long Life
353
stein and the second edition of De vita longa, which Gohorry had dismissed
as a poor imitation of the work of Paracelsus.
22

Quite apart from the personal charges, Dorn had good reason to res-
pond. He wanted to clarify the teachings of Paracelsus at a time when the
medical establishment was beginning to debate their usefulness. Gohorry
was an amateur chemist and botanist, but not a physician. He was attrac-
ted to odd causes, such as alchemical allegories, and seemed to care more
about magic than medicine. He devoted considerable space to reflections
on commerce with spirits, and thus took Paracelsus backward into the
Middle Ages when Dorn and others hoped to move his ideas forward.
The Englishman Robert Burton was frankly amused by Gohorrys fascina-
tion with the spirit world and wrote in his famous Anatomy of Melancholy:
Leo Suavius [Gohorrys pseudonym], a Frenchman, (out of some Platonists) will
have the air to be as full of them [i.e., spirits] as snow falling in the skies and that
they may be seen, and withal sets down the means how men may see them; by
gazing steadfastly on the sun lighted by its brightest rays, &c., & saith moreover
he tried it, proved the dish before eating . . .
23

Gohorrys interest in spirits fanned the flames lit by medical traditionalists,
who accused Paracelsus of using illicit magic to achieve his ends.
24
Dorn
would soon respond to such charges by the Swiss physician and theologi-
an Thomas Erastus (15241583),
25
and we shall see that English champi-
ons of Paracelsus made similar efforts to play down the role of spirits in
medicine.
In due course, Dorn prepared his own commentary on the five-book
De vita longa, published the year after Pernas death.
26
His commentary on
the Archidoxa, including the shorter tract on long life, appeared the next
_____________
22 Paracelsus, Compendium, sigs bb62-bb8v. In Gohorrys defense it may be noted that
several books of doubtful authorship were printed under the name of Paracelsus during the
third period of Paracelsian publication, and that the work on which Bodenstein and
Dorn collaborated in 1568 was among the first of them; see note 19 above.
23 Robert Burton: Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. Floyd Dell and Paul Jordan-Smith. New York
1927, p. 160; part 1, section 2, member 1, subsection 2. It should be understood that the
English noun platonic was commonly applied to alchemists and other occultists; see
Oxford English Dictionary, platonic".
24 See the comments on Gohorry and Paracelsus in D. P. Walker: Spiritual and Demonic
Magic from Ficino to Campanella. London 1958, pp. 96106. Following the comments of
Gohorry, Walker treats the magic of Paracelsus as demonic, but he begins by saying Pa-
racelsus does not seem inteligible and shows no coherent patterns of thought.
25 The modest admonition appeared the prefatory pages of Gerard Dorn: De natura luce
physica. Frankfurt a. M.: [Christoph Corvin], 1583. or background on the charges of E-
rastus see Allen G. Debus: The English Paracelsians. New York 1965, pp. 3738.
26 Paracelsus: Libri v. De vita longa, brevi et sana, ed. by Gerard Dorn. Frankfurt: Christoff
Rab, 1583. A further response to Gohorry appears in the expositio following book 5, chap-
ter 1 (pp. 162164).
Thomas Willard

354
year and was among his last publications.
27
As Bodensteins edition of the
four-book De vita longa began a remarkable run of posthumous interest in
Paracelsian manuscripts, Dorns comments on the five-book version hel-
ped to mark the end of an era.
The publishing history of Vom langen Leben and its companion tract De
renovatio is much more complicated. Although not printed during the au-
thors lifetime, they seem to have survived in many manuscript copies. In
some, the two tracts were included with the books of the Archidoxa; in
others they appeared as adjunct texts. The evidence is complex,
28
but the
inference is simple. Early readers of Paracelsus regarded these two tracts
as books of secrets, rather like the books of the Archidoxa a work known
in Latin translations as one concerning the secrets of the mysteries of
nature.
29

Although written in German, the Archidoxa was first published in a
Latin translation printed in Cracow in 1569.
30
The volume showed signs
of careful preparation, with marginal notes and an index prepared by the
Polish physician Johannes Gregor Macer. It was arranged in ten parts, or
books, with the twin tracts on restoration and long life coming ninth and
tenth. The arrangement must have been based on a manuscript tradition,
for it was repeated in the first German edition of the Archidoxa, prepared
by the Swiss Paracelsian Michael Toxites (n Schtz; 15141581). Toxites
had his doubts about the arrangement and included a query at the end of
the book on long life, asking whether it was indeed the tenth book.
31
He
found some confirmation when Perna issued his own version of the Arch-
idoxa later in the year.
32
The Perna version had no editorial apparatus, but
may well have been typeset from a manuscript provided by Bodenstein. It
_____________
27 Gerard Dorn: Comentaria in Archidoxorum libros x. Frankfurt a.M.: [Christoph Corvinus],
1584.
28 Sudhof devotes much of his forword to the tracts of 15261527 to the problem of the
Archidoxa and related texts, including Vom langen Leben. See vol. 3, pp. v-li, esp. the first
twenty-five pages. Also see his earlier essay Ein Beitrag zur Bibliographie der Paracelsisten
im 16. Jahrhundert. In: Centralblatt fr Bibliothekeswesen 10 (1893), pp. 316326, 386
407.
29 Paracelsus, Archidoxorum Aureoli Ph. Theophrasti Paracelsi De secretis naturae mysteriis
libri decem, ed. and trans. by Gerard Dorn. Basel: Peter Perna, 1570.
30 Paracelsus: Archidoxae . . . Paracelsi . . . ac mysteriorum naturae scrutatoris & artificis
absolutissimi. Libri x, ed. by Adam Schrter. Cracow: Mathias Wirzibiet, 1569. Schrter al-
so prepared an edition of Paracelsus, De preparationibus, also published by Wirzibet in
1569 (Sudhoff item 107). Schrter states that he prepared the edition from a Latin text
given him by Count Albert Laski (15271605) and ostensibly edited by Paracelsus; see
Sudhoff, Bibliographia Paracelsica, pp. 168174.
31 Paracelsus: Archidoxa Philippi Theophrasti Paracelsi . . . Zehen Bcher, ed. by Michael
Toxites. Straburg: Theodosius Rihel, 1570, p. 322.
32 Paracelsus: Archidoxorum . . . X. Bcher. Basel: Peter Perna, 1570; Sudhoff item 116. I
have used Pernas reprint of 1572.
Living the Long Life
355
too treated the essay on long life as the tenth book; however, it placed the
companion book on restoration immediately after the opening book on
the microcosm. Toxites used Pernas sequence when his book was re-
printed in 1574.
33
(See Fig. 1.) The same sequence was used in Dorns
1570 translation, also published by Perna.
34

The ten-book sequence made good sense, for Paracelsus began with
promises of going beyond the ancients and introducing new medicines
and treatments. He referred to a final book concerning the uses of those
which precede it (vom dem brauch der andern all),
35
but he threatened to
suppress it so that it would not fall into the hands of idiots. He maintained
that his true disciples could deduce the applications of the first nine
books, and there is no more likely culmination of those books than in the
preservation of life. Partly because De vita longa is pervaded by same con-
cerns about going beyond the ancients and leaving a legacy to deserving
followers, it seems possible that the book Vom langen Leben was intended
as the tenth book of the Archidoxa, and the later De vita longa as the exten-
sion for those who were in on the secrets of Paracelsus.
Less than two weeks after Toxites signed his preface, another editor
completed the introduction to yet another version of the same text. On
the evidence of his portrait, Johann Albert Wimpfen was a thirty-year-old
physician and philosopher. He had written a reasoned book on the diffe-
rences between the ancient medicine of Galen and the modern medicine
of Paracelsus,
36
and he thought he had obtained a good manuscript of the
Archidoxa. Unlike the earlier editions, it had only eight books of the ten
books mentioned in the prologue, plus a placeholder for a ninth book
which had been planned but not written (sed non scriptus). (See Fig. 2.)
Compared to the Toxites edition, the Wimpfen edition shows fewer at-
tempts to modernize the spelling and punctuation. This may reflect either
his scholarly precision or the haste of his publisher, which is indicated by
the printers on the last page.
37
Wimpfen prepared only one other volume
of Paracelsian texts, a group of similar tracts based partly on a volume
_____________
33 Paracelsus: Archidoxa Philippi Theophrasti Paracelsi . . . Zehen Bcher, ed. by Michael
Toxites. Straburg: Christian Mller, 1574.
34 See note 29 above.
35 Waite, vol. 2, p. 5; Sudhoff, vol. 3, pp. 9596.
36 Johannes Albertus Wimpinaeus: De concordia Hippocraticorum et Paracelsistarum. Mu-
nich: Adam Berg, 1569. For a discussion of the book see Debus, The Chemical Philoso-
phy, pp. 135139.
37 Paracelsus: Archidoxa ex Theophrasia, ed. Johannes Albertus Wimpinaeus. Munich: Adam
Berg, 1570, sig. g4r. The printer does not provide an errata sheet but asks readers to advise
him of any errors they note.
Thomas Willard

356
published by Toxites.
38
His edition of the Archidoxa might have been over-
looked were it not for a singular claim. In a prefatory note, Wimpfen said
he presented the several works in the volume as Paracelsus has left them
in his own handwriting (wie sie Theophrastus in aigner handscirift verlassen
hat).
39
With these words, he implied that he used a manuscript prepared by
Paracelsus, and not simply that he had heard of one that omitted the
books on renovation and long life. It was a strong claim for the texts
priority, and a good selling point, but it was also an easy claim to make.
The title page of yet another edition of the Archidoxa, printed in Cologne
in the same year, said it followed a manuscript in the authors handwriting
(au des authors Handschrift) and gave the text as he himself ordered it (wie er
selbst ordiniert).
40
Similarly, a revised reprint of Dorns ten-book edition
included a title-page note that it was translated from the handwritten ma-
nuscript of Paracelsus himself (ex ipsius Paracelsus autographo),
41
although the
first edition made no such claim and the revision removed the two dispu-
ted books. Nor were the claims necessarily false. Paracelsus could have
prepared copies for several students, who in turn could have copied the
text in a hand very like his own.
Either Wimpfen decided the paired books were more important to the
Archidoxa than the eight-book structure admitted, or his publisher wanted
a greater claim on the book-buyers attention, for a reprint later that year
offered Twelve Books of Archidoxa divided into two parts.
42
The new
title page gave assurance that the twelve books were arranged in the order
indicated at the beginning of book 1 (wie die zu anfang des ersten Buchs nach
ordnung verzeichnet).
In any case, the claim in the Wimpfen edition made it attractive to
Huser as he worked through a manuscript that he thought was in the au-
thors handwriting (au Theophrast eigener Handschrift).
43
In an editorial note,
Huser explained that his manuscript had different chapter numbers. His
_____________
38 Paracelsus: Etliche tractetlein zur Archidoxa gehrig, ed. by Johannes Albertus Wimpi-
naeus. Munich: Adam Berg, 1570; cf. Paracelsus, Ettliche tractatus . . . Paracelsi, ed. by Mi-
chael Toxites. Straburg: Christian Mller, 1570.
39 Paracelsus: Archidoxa ex Theophrastia, sig. *4v.
40 Paracelsus: Archidoxorum Theophrastiae. Cologne: Heirs of Arnold Birkman, 1570. I have
not seen a copy of this edition, so cannot know how accurately it follows the Munich editi-
on prepared by Wimpinaeus. Sudhoff, Bibliographia Paracelsica, pp. 198203, suggests it
combines the text of Toxites with the arrangement of Wimpinaeus.
41 Title-page note in Paracelsus: Archidoxorum seu de secretis mysteriis, libri decem, trans. by
Gerard Dorn (Basel: Peter Perna, 1582).
42 Paracelsus: Arciodoxa D. Philippi Theophrasti Paracelsi. . . zwlf Bcher. Munich: Adam
Berg, 1570. The books on renovation and long life are preceded by tracts on antimony and
tinctures.
43 See Husers marginal note in the Register der Schriften (sig. *2v).
Living the Long Life
357
manuscript jumped from book 2 to 4, and he opted to create the missing
book 3 by shortening book 2 on the mystery of the elements and pla-
cing the practical notes on the separation of the elements in a separate
book.
44
This became the standard arrangement, preserved in almost all
subsequent editions.
Husers edition of the works of Paracelsus is regarded as the editio
princeps. Sudhoffs edition gives volume and page numbers from Huser,
much as scholary editions of Aristotle give Bekker numbers. From Huser
onward, editors have treated the two works on long life as pendants to the
Neun Bcher Archidoxa, rather than constituent parts.
45
Even Dorns Latin
translation was affected. The order was preserved throughout his lifeti-
me,
46
but it was altered afterward. The Munich editor and publisher Zach-
arias Palthen, who prepared the first comprehensive Latin edition of the
works of Paracelsus, followed Husers edition closely, but added new ma-
terial in the middle to get the ten books that Paracelsus promises in the
prologue.
47
Later still, the Geneva-based editor Fridericus Bitiskius deleted
the material that Palthen inserted, but added a key . . . from an old Ger-
man codex.
48
(See Fig. 3.) He explained his addition in a long prefatory
note to the reader. Like Huser, Palthenius and Bitiskius placed the books
on regeneration and long life immediately after the Archidoxa.
Bitiskius boasted that his translation was actually better than the origi-
nal texts,
49
and in one respect he was right. He gave the whole of Vom
langen Leben, as Dorn translated it, whereas Huser omitted the last para-
graph as it appeared in the editions of Wimpinaeus and others. Not only is
the longer ending more eloquent; it returns to the first book of the Arch-
idoxa and to concerns that Paracelsus voices there about keeping miracles
and marvels from idiots in the medical profession:
Hoc optaremus a Domino deo, nobis concedi videlicet, ut libere, contentuque si-
ne, de labore Sophiae liceret scribere (sic ut Idiotae non vilipenderent & intelli-
gerent) ea solum quae nos docuit experintia. Verum propter istos nobis tacendum
est cum patientia de miraculis, & magnalibus laboris, in quo terra sancta Sophiae
_____________
44 Huser, p. 5.
45 Compare the sequence of texts in Huser, pp. 1113 with that in Sudhoff, vol. 3, pp. 86
308. Waite generally follows the similar sequence in the Latin folio edited by Fredericus
Bitiskius: Paracelsus: Opera omnia, medico-chemico-chirurgica. Geneva: de Tournes, 1658,
vol. 2, pp. 173 (Sudhoff 381). This edition follows the first Latin folio .
46 Paracelsus: Operum Latine redditorum, vol. 1. Basel: Peter Perna, 1575.
47 Paracelsus: Opera medico chimicorum, 11 vols. in 4. Frankfurt a. M.: Palthenius, 1603
1605
48 Paracelsus: Opera omnia, medico-chemico-chirurgica, ed. by Fridericus Bitiskius. Geneva:
de Tournes, 1658, vol. 2, p. 35.
49 Isabel Pantin: The Role of Translations in European Scientific Exchanges in the Sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. In: Cultural Translation in Early Modern Europe. Ed. by Peter
Burke and R. Po-Chia Hsia. Cambridge, England, 2007, pp. 163179, esp. pp. 172173.
Thomas Willard

358
quintum esse reservatur. Cum igitur ea tacere nos oporteat, in animo nostro scri-
bere dum taxat volumus, ut in perpetuum nobiscum sepulta manenat absque
termino vitae. De vita longa dictum sit hactenus, utpote nostris ac illis, qui foelici
necnon subtili sun ingenio praediti.
50

[This we could wish conceded to us by the Lord God, that we might write freely,
without the contempt of idiots, what experience has taught us about this work of
wisdom. But, on account of those idiots, one has patiently to hold ones tongue
with regard to the miracles and marvels of that work of wisdom, wherein is re-
served the earth of the wise. Since, then, I must be silent about this, I determine
to describe it only among my secrets, that it may remain buried within me,
though without any end of life. Thus far have I written on the subject of Long
Life for our own and other disciples who are endowed by a happy and subtle in-
telligence.]51
The same remarks appeared in Wimpfens edition:
Und wer unser wunsch von Gott / das wir onverschmehung der Idioten sollten
schreiben vom labore Sophiae, was allein unsere experients au weist / so mssten
wir schweigen und dulden / das gro wunder laboris Sophiae, darinne terra Quintum
esse reserviert. Dieweil wir aber hie[r] schweigen mssen / wllen wirs inn unser
gemt unzerbrechlich einschreiben / ewig ohne end bey uns zubleiben / und uns
das leben o[h]ne ein Termin segen: darbey wir also de vita longa genug gesagt ha-
ben den unsern und den hhern / die da angezndt sein mit allen subtilieten.
52

Sixteenth-century readers of these final lines would have recognized as
Wimpfen did in his introduction that Vom langen Leben continues ideas
begun in the Archidoxa, ideas to be withheld from hoi poloi. Modern readers
can see that Paracelsus regarded some works like the Archidoxa as exoteric,
intended for the general reading public, and others as esoteric, meant only
for our own (unsern). Vom langen Leben belongs to the first category, De
vita longa to the second.
53

De vita longa represents a legacy buried within me, though without any
end of life. Vom langen Leben was translated into English in 1656 and
again in 1894. Most of De vita longa was also translated in 1894. The trans-
lations are fundamentally sound, but they reflect the prejudices of the
_____________
50 Paracelsus: Archidoxorum, trans. Dorn, pp. 247248; cf. Paracelsus: Opera omnia, ed.
Bitiskius, vol. 2, p. 53.
51 Waite, vol. 2, pp. 122123.
52 Archidoxis ex Theophrastia, sig. g4r-v; cf. Archidoxorum . . . X. Bcher. sig. h1v. Compare
Paracelsus, Sechster Theil der Bcher und Schriften, ed. by Huser, p. 80. At this point,
Pernas German edition is identical, while the Toxites edition has several textual variants.
53 Nevertheless, Vom langen Leben is a fine statement of esoteric medicine as the word
esotericism is now understood. A recent translation of the Sudhoff text into Spanish has a
full introduction and extensive annotations to this effect as well as numerous illustrations
from alchemical and other esoteric texts. See Paracelso: El Libro de la larga vida, ed. and
trans. by Hctor Avils Resina. Madrid 2007 (Colleccion Medicina Tradicional de Occiden-
te). The translator seems to be associated with the homeopathic Heliosar Spagyrica in
Toledo and its parent organization, the Sociedad de Estudios e Investigaciones Spagyricas.
Living the Long Life
359
translators and of the audiences for which they were intended. The seven-
teenth-century translation seems to follow the Huser text, as it omits the
final paragraph found in the other editions. The nineteenth-century trans-
lation explicitly follows the Bitiskius edition.
54

The 1656 translation was published as the appendix to excerpts from
Paracelsian books of surgery, the Grosse Wundartzney and Kleine Wundartz-
ney. The translator may have been a physician or chemist, for he made it
clear in the introductory note To the Reader that he was interested
mainly in the chemical remedies:
Paracelsus Opinion concerning Spirits and Ghosts, and many other his Philoso-
phick Opinions, which indeed are not ordinary; I do not approve them, nor will I
here refute them: his Physical [i.e., medical] Practice I do approve, and doubtless,
his cures and Physical Experiments which he hath left to us in his Writings (the
best part of which are in the following Treatises) are very good; as the experi-
ences of many since his death, who have tryed them, do testifie to us; (viz. Crolli-
us, Baptista Van-helmont, Dorneus, and many other famous Physicians, who ha-
ve followed his way altogether . . . .
55

A note on the title page says the tracts in the volume have been Faithfully
Englished, by W. D., who has been identified as one William Dugard.
56

However, the adverb selectively would be more appropriate, for he told
readers he abbreviated the second of three main tracts, giving you onely the
cures.
57
Moreover, he silently omitted whole sentences of Vom langen Le-
ben. At the same time, he added chapter divisions with explanatory hea-
dings and transitional sentences, all of which made the remaining material
more accessible.
Indeed, he presented Paracelsus as a reasonable man, expressing sur-
prise that some thought otherwise:
And certainly Basil, which is one of the most famous Universities of the World,
would never have chosen him to be their Publique Professor of Physick [i.e., me-
dicine], if he had been a Mountebank or a weak man: He was chosen to be their
Professor, when he was but thirty years of age, and there taught Physick publickly
_____________
54 Waite, vol. 1, p. xv. Hence the minor discrepancies between some German quotations in
this essay and their English translations.
55 Paracelsus His Dispensatory and Chirurgery, ed. and trans. by W. D. London: Philip
Chetwind, 1656, sigs. A6v-A7r. In addition to Gerard Dorn, the translator mentions
Oswald Croll and John Baptist Van Helmont, both familiar to English readers in sixteenth-
century translations.
56 Cf. Charles Webster: The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine and Reform, 16261660.
London 1975, p. 107. Also see Dugard, William (16061662). In: Dictionary of National
Biography. London 19211922, vol. 6, pp. 133134. The identification is uncertain, but I
shall use Dugards name for convenience sake.
57 Paracelsus His Dispensatory, sig. A8v.
Thomas Willard

360
many years, and many came thither to hear his Physick Lectures from all parts of
Germany, from Spain, Italy, France, Hungaria, Poland, Denmark, &c.
58

The error of this statement will be obvious to a modern reader, but may
simply reflect the general lack of information about the life of the Paracel-
sus.
Dugards translation appeared almost a century after the first refe-
rences to Paracelsus in English-language books of medicine and well after
the period covered by the late Allen G. Debus in The English Paracelsians
(1965). During that period, Paracelsian texts in English were characterized
by a compromise such as Dugard later made: the chemical medicines
were promoted but not the cosmology on which they were based.
59
By
1656, however, there was a new interest in esoteric ideas, and a new wave
of occult publication made possible by the breakdown of censorship
during the English Civil Wars. In the next 30 years a great many books on
alchemy and alchemical medicine were published in England. The Ca-
talogue of Chymicall Books prepared by the London publisher William
Cooper between 1673 and 1688 includes 15 Paracelsian volumes.
60
The
same period saw the translation and publication of many works by Jacob
Bhme, a professed follower of Paracelsus, thus promoting a new wave of
esoteric piety in authors like Jane Leade and William Law.
The second translation of Vom langen Leben was made in 1894, during
a second wave of occult publication in England. It appeared in an antho-
logy edited by the American-born occultist Arthur Edward Waite (1857
1942), a member of several Masonic and Rosicrucian societies. Waite was
working for an English lord who practiced alchemy and wanted access to
the writings of Paracelsus.
61
He himself regarded alchemy as a secret tradi-
tion of knowledge about the true nature of man and thus as spiritual sci-
ence rather than a physical one. He assumed that the exoteric medicine
of Paracelsus would be of inferior importance to the modern student,
compared to the esoteric practice.
62
He placed the book On Long Life
after the Archidoxa in a volume devoted to Hermetic Medicine and Her-
_____________
58 Paracelsus His Dispensatory, sigs. A7v-A8r.
59 Cf. Debus: The English Paracelsians. New York 1965, pp. 4985. Debus documents
English responses to Paracelsus from 1562 to 1640 and describes the official position of
the Royal College of Physicians as the Elizabethan Compromise.
60 William Coopers A Catalogue of Chymicall Books, 16731688: A Verified Edition, ed. by
Stanton J. Linden. New York 1987, pp. 7779. Linden does not accept the attribution to
Dugard.
61 R. A. Gilbert: A. E. Waite: Magician of Many Parts. Wellingborough, England 1987, pp.
9596. Gilbert identifies the likely translator as the Julius Kohn, an Austrian emigr whose
identity was unknown to Waite. Kohn also translated Solomon Trismosin: Splendor Solis.
London 1920.
62 Waite, vol. 1, p. xvi.
Living the Long Life
361
metic Philosophy, but for some reason he put it before the book on
Renovation and Restoration. His translation tends to be word for word,
whereas Dugards concentrates on the general sense. Where Dugard has
image, Waite gives homunculus. Where Dugard identifies witch-
craft, Waite has the literal incantations. Dugard gives uses the English
word unknown to translate the German verborgen, while Waite preserves
the Latin occult.
63
It would be tedious to quote whole paragraphs for
comparison; suffice it to say that the plain English of Dugard comes
across as more sane and lucid than the Latinate prose in Waite.
Waite had little regard for De vita longa and relegated it to an appendix,
explaining:
De vita longa shews Paracelsus at his darkest and, it may be added, at his worst.
From beginning to end it is not only unintelligible, but almost incapable of trans-
lation. . . . The present version has been reasonably compressed, but it can only
be affirmed that it interprets the original about as accurately as can be expected.
64

He preserved the additional section on nature spirits, which Gohorry had
rejected; however, he removed the book containing alchemical treatments
of 14 specific diseases, ranging from life-threatening ones to skin afflic-
tions. Waites remains the only translation available to readers of English,
it is unlike any version of the treatise in any other language. As Dugards
version of Vom langen Leben makes it appear more reasonable, Waites
version of De vita longa makes it seem less so. The removal of all exote-
ric material helps prove his point that the whole treatise resists translati-
on.
English scholarship on the two treatises is scarce and occasionally
misleading. Like the translations prepared by Dugard and Waite, they tend
to emphasize one side only of the body-soul equation. Walter Pagel
(18981983), a German-trained pulmonologist doing research at the Well-
come Institute in London, turned away from the medical ideas of Paracel-
sus when he came to De vita longa and emphasized some say overempha-
sized the Neoplatonic ideas that Paracelsus learned from Marsilio
Ficino.
65
Pagel openly differed with Kurt Goldammer on the extent of
Ficinos influence.
66
Meanwhile, he championed the insights of C. G. Jung
in what remains the longest essay on De vita longa since Dorns commenta-
_____________
63 Compare Waite, vol. 2, p. 116 and p. 120, respectively, to Paracelsus His Dispensatory, pp.
389 and pp. 400402.
64 Waite, vol. 2, p. 323 n.
65 Walter Pagel: Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the
Renaissance. 2nd ed. Basel 1982, pp. 218226.
66 Pagel: Paracelsus, pp. 226227.
Thomas Willard

362
ry, which Jung in turn championed.
67
Jungs essay became available to
English readers in 1967 with the publication of Alchemical Studies, volume
15 of his Collected Works, and it has influenced the view of Paracelsus
without attracting much interest to the tracts on long life.
68
Jungs in-
fluence is apparent, for example, in Charles Poncs preface to the paper-
back reprint of Waites edition an essay which Ponc later included in a
book of reflections on Jungian psychology.
69
In the preface he descri-
bed alchemy as a purely psychic science the archetypal language of the
soul and the product of the Soul Imagining.
70
Similarly, the American
Jungian James Hillman has declared that the astronomy of Paracelsus
the system of correspondences linking humans to the stars refers to the
imaginal realm.
71
These writers have simply confirmed the position that
Jung took a generation earlier. Jung acknowledged that Paracelsus owed a
debt to Ficino, as everyone had done since Bodenstein first presented the
work, but he devoted all his time to working out the authors secret doct-
rine (Geheimlehre) and made no attempt to evaluate the treatise as a who-
le.
72

Jungs pages on Dorns commentary have drawn attention to an im-
portant text. However, the whole essay promotes the view of Paracelsus
as an occasional and aphoristic thinker. The impression has been enforced
by the anthology that Jungs associate Jolande Jacobi prepared in the year
that Jung wrote the essay,
73
an anthology that remains the standard in the
English-speaking world and has been reissued in German with a new int-
roduction by Gerhart Wehr, author of several books on Jung.
74
The Eng-
_____________
67 Pagel: Paracelsus, p. 122 and n. 334. Jungs reading of Paracelsus has its detractors; see,
e.g., Andrew Cunningham: Paracelsus Fat and Thin: Thoughts on Reputations and Reali-
ties. In: Paracelsus: The Man and His Reputation, His Ideas and Their Transformation,
ed. by Ole Peter Grell. Leiden 1998 (Studies in the History of Christian Thought, 85), pp.
5377, esp. pp. 5764.
68 C. G. Jung: Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon. In: Alchemical Studies, trans. R. F. C.
Hull. Princeton 1967 (Bollingen Series, 20), pp. 109189; originally published as C. G.
Jung: Paracelsus als geistige Erscheinung. In: Paracelsica: Zwei Vorlesungen ber den
Arzt und Philosophen Theophrastus. Zurich 1942, pp. 43176.
69 Charles Ponc: Foreword: In Praise of Bombast. In: The Hermetic and Alchemical
Writings of Paracelsus, ed. by A. E. Waite; Boulder, CO ,1976, vol 1. 6 pages, unpaginated.
Reprinted in Charles Ponc: Working the Soul: Reflections on Jungian Psychology. Ber-
keley, CA 1988, pp. 1118.
70 Ponc: Foreword, vol. 1, p. 6.
71 James Hillman: A Blue Fire: Selected Writings by James Hillman, ed. by Thomas Moore.
New York 1991, p. 147.
72 Jung: Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon, p. 134 and n. 4.
73 Theophrastus Paracelsus: Lebendiges Erbe, ed. by Jolande Jacobi. Zurich: Rascher, 1942.
74 Paracelsus: Selected Writings, ed. by Jolande Jacobi, trans. by Norbert Gutermann, 2nd ed.
Princeton 1958 (Bollingen Series, 28); Paracelsus, Artz und Gottsucher an der Zeitenwen-
Living the Long Life
363
lish edition has even inspired a novel about Paracelsus, written in frag-
ments like those in Jacobis anthology.
75
Paracelsus is a highly quotable
writer, even in English translation. But he is also a systematic thinker
more systematic than any collection of fragments could suggest. I submit
that his writing on long life are not the incomprehensible jumble of ideas
that Waite has made it out to be. They two tracts develop according to
plans announced at the outset, and in keeping with the general plan of the
Archidoxa and other early work of Paracelsus. When we look at them more
closely, we may be surprised to see how they develop step by step from
the authors basic working principles. We may also find a better balance of
theory and practice, as well as medical and spiritual concerns, than the
studies just mentioned would suggest.
The tracts on long life make the most sense in the larger context of
the authors medical theory as articulated in the Archidoxa and later deve-
loped in the Paragranum and Paramirum. The Archidoxa grows from an ope-
ning essay on the microcosm of man to a long section on elixirs that can
preserve bodies far beyond their normal limits, so that they may abide
hundreds or thousands of years without corruption or change.
76
As we
have seen, some early editions, like that of Michael Toxites, included Vom
langen Leben as the final book, so that the Archidoxa concluded with the
conservation of human life. In similar fashion, the Paramirum starts with
the tria prima of salt, sulfur, and mercury; continues with treatment of
specific diseases; and ends with discussion of the spiritual body, created
out of the mouth of God.
77
In trying to equate the spiritual body of Ne-
oplatonism and the resurrected body of Christian Scripture, Paracelsus
retraces a path he took in the final pages of De vita longa.
We have seen that the earlier tract on long life is commonly paired
with a tract on regeneration as Die beiden Bcher De renovatione et restauratione
und Vom langen Leben. One editor has called Die beiden Bcher a two-faced
work, one face looking to Neoplatonism and the other to Hermeticism.
78

There is the dream of life prolonged through medicine, but also a theory
of matter and spirit very different from that of modern science. Even so,
there is a realization that the procedures of alchemy, though applicable to
the chemical medicine, have their limitations.
_____________
de: Eine Auswahl aus seinem Werk, ed. by Jolande Jacobi with an introduction by Gerhard
Wehr. Olten and Freiburg i. Br. 1991.
75 Evan S. Connell: The Alchymists Journal. London and New York 1992.
76 Waite, vol. 2, p. 69; cf. Sudhoff, vol. 3, p. 184.
77 See Paracelsus: Essential Theoretical Writings, ed. and trans. by Andrew Weeks. Leiden
2008, p. 495 (Paramirum, book 2, chapter 8).
78 Theophrastus Paracelsus Werke, ed. by Will-Erich Peuckert, vol. 1: Medizinische Schriften.
Basel 1965, p. 450.
Thomas Willard

364
In the first book of this pairing, Paracelsus explains that true renovation
cannot occur in a man in the way that it occurs in a metal. A metal can be
reduced to its primal substance, and recreated in an incorruptible body.
But a man cannot be similarly reduced:
die restauratio und renovatio sollent also in dem menschen verstanden werden,
das sein humor radicalis, den der spiritus vitae treibt und ubet, nit hinter sich ge-
zogen werde, sonder gesterkt und fr sich getriben. als ein baum, dem da gehol-
fen wird zu der ble und zu der frucht, und darnach, so das abfelt, widerumb ge-
frdert wird zu tun wie vor.
79

[restoration and renovation must be understood this way: that mans radical mo-
isture, acting upon and energizing the spirit of life, shall not be diminished or dri-
ven back, but rather shall be increased in its powers and pushed forward, as a tree
to which aid is given for the production of its flowers and fruits, so that when
these drop off and are done with others are again procreated as before.]
80

But while man himself cannot be restored to his Adamic state, his illnesses
can be restored to health in a sort of alchemical procedure:
aber zuverstan von der lepra ist also ein umbkeren in dem leib, das nit alein lepra,
sonder so ein sterkere krankheit, dan lepra ist, wer, verzert und ausgetriben wird.
nit in form, das lepra gescheiden werde vom leib, wie purum ab impuro, sonder
in den weg, das lepra sich convertirt in sanitatem, wie ein kupfer das golt wird,
oder ein eisen das kupfer wird, des sich dan niemants verwundern sol.
81

[concerning leprosy, or any more severe disease which may exist, it is well to
know that it undergoes transmutation in the body, not, indeed, that there is a se-
paration of the pure from the impure, but that the leprosy is converted into
health, as copper or iron are transmuted into gold.]
82

Paracelsus proceeds to list the things that restore health and sets down
four mysteries, concerning the first entities of minerals, gems, herbs,
and liquors. The related book on long life picks up here.
Paracelsus begins Vom langen Leben by saying that he will now show
how medicines can be used to prolong life. He will do so in two ways, first
by exploring the theory of extending life, then by discussing the practice
of preparing and prescribing medicines to this end. On the theoretical
side, he argues that disease does not necessarily result in death, for dise-
ases can be remedied and life can be conserved. Indeed, conservation is a key
word in the tract. Paracelsus regards life as a flame that requires fuel, a
burning and living fire that feeds on wood and reduces it to smoke and
ash.
83
Here we have the whole tria prima, with the principles of sulfur,
_____________
79 Sudhoff, vol. 3, p. 205.
80 Waite, vol. 2, p. 125.
81 Sudhoff, vol. 3, p. 208. For the transmutation of an illness into its corresponding form of
health see J.-M. Rietsch in the present volume.
82 Waite, vol. 2, p. 128.
83 Waite, vol. 2. p. 112; cf. Sudhoff, vol. 3, p. 228.
Living the Long Life
365
mercury, and salt represented in the flame, smoke, and ash, respectively.
84

Just as a wood fire can be kept going by adding logs to it and shielding it
from wind and rain, so a human life can be prolonged. Paracelsus notes
that there are different requirements at different times of life in youth,
and maturity, and old age and that very few have met all of them. The
poor cannot afford medical advice, and the rich lead irregular lives and
ignore the advice they get. Paracelsus nevertheless proceeds with the ad-
vice, admitting that others have given the obvious parts of it. The advice
concerns diet first, then environment, and finally matters of mental health.
He notes that physical and mental health alike are influenced by the
heavens, but leaves that aside as pertaining to astronomy rather than
medicine as such.
The term long life includes a reference to the first and most familiar
of the aphorisms of Hippocrates, commonly known by its first four
words: Life is short, art long (Vita brevis, ars longa). Paracelsus takes this
to mean that diseases progress faster in those who suffer than do the di-
agnoses, let alone the treatments. He concludes that such long an art
would not serve the brief life (das ein solche lange kunst nicht wol dient dem
kurzen leben), and he asserts that the art of Hippocrates must be supple-
mented with mysteries of nature, arcana, and other mighty works (mysterien
der natur, arcanen und andern magnalien).
85
With these mysteries, he moves
beyond what he calls the ancient medicine to something rather new. He
takes the title De vita longa from Marsilio Ficino, the Italian Neoplatonist,
who assigned it to the second of three books comprising his De triplici vita.
Ficino stated, Hippocrates was right in saying that art is long and that we
are unable to pursue it unless we have a long life (Quibus sane de causis,
artem esse longam una cum Hippocrate recte concludimus, nec posse nos
eam, nisi vitae longitudine consequi).
86

Ficino was a medical doctor as well as a scholar who translated Plato
and others under the patronage of Cosimo de Medici. He worked on the
ancient assumption that the body decayed as its constituent humors
became unbalanced. He proposed to help scholars prolong their lives by
soaking up healthful influences from the environment. He recommended
sunshine and wine, music and exercise, and much else that a naturally
_____________
84 Andrew Weeks: Paracelsus: Speculative Theory and the Crisis of the Early Reformation.
Albany, NY, 1997, p. 109.
85 Alia explicatio primi aphorismi Hippocratis, Sudhoff, vol. 4, p. 539. See Robert E. Sch-
leuter: The First Aphorism of Hippocrates as Explained by Paracelsus, Annals of Science
1.4 (Oct. 1936): pp. 453461. Dorn defines magnalia as the work of God (opus Dei); see
his Dictionarium Theophrasti Paracelsi. Frankfurt [Christoph Rab], 1583, p. 63.
86 Marsilio Ficino: The Book of Life, trans. Charles Boer. Woodstock, CT, 1994, p, 38; Marsi-
lio Ficino: De vita libri tres, ed. by Martin Plessner. Hildesheim and New York 1978, sig.
f1r.
Thomas Willard

366
melancholy scholar might ignore. He took seriously the possibility that
planets could influence humans for better or worse, and his approach was
later ridiculed as a sort of astrological medicine. Nevertheless, this was
Ficinos most popular treatise in the sixteenth century and almost the only
medical work that influenced Paracelsus. The latest edition to be publis-
hed before his death included Ficinos defense of astrological medicine
and a new treatise on its importance for a healthy life.
87

Paracelsus begins De vita longa with an opening nod to Hippocrates
and Ficino:
our life is long, for neither spirits nor the light of Nature affirm that it is short.
The life of the ignorant is short, with art it is long. What is shorter than art? What
is longer than life, at least among those who are not superstitious?
88

[praetera vita nostra vita nempe longa est, quam nec spiritus, nec lumen naturae
brevem esse aiunt. ignorantium vero brevis, cum arte longa. brevius arte quid? vi-
ta vero quid longius, inter mortales saltem non superstitiosos?]
89

He then goes beyond Hippocrates, even as Dantes pigrim goes beyond
Virgil (Inferno 4.150), noting that the ancient medicine lacked the light of
Christian revelation:
This was the mistake of Hippocrates throughout all his prescriptions, namely,
that he administered to the body instead of to the soul, and that he proposed to
preserve the mortal by means of the mortal. The body is a creature, but no so the
life, and it is indeed nothing but the daughter of death. Therefore, from Archa
descended that which is immortal. But you will say that the Hippocratic Muse is
not altogether to be referred to death. Be it so, but you will find a much easier
way to health, since the Magnale [great work of God] has descended from above.
For God gave unto Hippocrates only those things which are creatures, and
among these even the chief mysteries were not imparted in their fullness. To this
body God has added another body which is to be regarded as celestial, that, na-
mely, which exists in the body of life. Hereof I, Theophrastus, affirm that this is
the work and this the labour.
90

[atqui huc omnia sua excerpta retulit Hippocrates, corpusculumque illud per ma-
nibus sumere, tanquam subiectum longae vitae, et mortale mortali conservare de-
crevit, quum in eo nulla unquam fuerit vita, quae ex illius fonte manarit. corpus
enim creatura est at non vita, nihilque minus mortis filla. igitur ex archa ea
descendit, quae est immortalis. non prorsus referenda est, inquies, Hippocratica
musa ad mortalitatem. esto, at multo faciliorem viam ad sanitatem invenias,
quandoquidem e superis descendit magnale istud. nihil enim praeter ea, quae cre-
aturae sunt, Hippocrati tribuit deus, imo nec ei ea plene quae creaturae sunt in-
signia mysteria dedit: sed ad rem. huic corpori deus adiunxit aliud quoddam, puta
_____________
87 Marsilio Ficino: De vita libri tres. Basel: Barthlemy Westheymer, 1541. The new tract is
the work of Guilemus Insulanus (d. 1561).
88 Waite, vol. 2, p. 323.
89 Sudhoff, vol. 3, p. 249.
90 Waite, vol. 2, pp. 324325.
Living the Long Life
367
coeleste, id quod in corpore vitae existit, de quo Theophrastus ego, hoc opus, hic
labor est.]
91

With these last words, Paracelsus echoes the sybil in Virgils Aeneid
(6.129). It is easy to descend to the land of the dead, but difficult to return
to the land of the living. Hoc opus, hic labor est.
Paracelsus works on the ancient theory that the bodys health comes
from a balance of blood, choler, bile, and phlegm (the four humors from
which it was made). Paracelsus thinks that health requires a balance of fire,
air, earth, and water (the four elements from which the primal limbus ori-
ginated) but also a balance of salt, sulfur, and mercury (not the common
kitchen variety but the three principles, or tria prima, found in all complex
bodies). He also thinks that the mixture of elements in a body can be cor-
rupted by outside influences, which he likened to rust on iron in the ear-
lier tract on regeneration.
92
Hence his reputation as an early proponent of
the infectious theory of disease. Moreover, he suggests a weakened sub-
stance can be strengthened by exposure to a concentrated essence or
quintessence. Thus his reputation as the father of homeopathic medicine.
In fact, he is not a strict homeopath; he proposes to treat worms, scabies,
and syphillis with chemicals that will fight them off. But once he coveres
some allopathic cures in book 2 of De vita longa, he moves on to homeopa-
thic treatments.
This longer text is commonly considered not only difficult and confu-
sed, but disordered and deliberately obscured in the manner of many al-
chemical texts. Waite thought it almost unintelligible, as we have seen, and
Jung found it hard to understand (schwer verstndlich).
93
Even Jacques
Gohorry, throughout his exposition, implied that it makes sense only in
light of Ficinos earlier work a point that the intellectual historian D. P.
Walker has underscored.
94
All of this reinforces the image of a drunken
genius dictating to a weary amanuensis. Nevertheless, De vita longa has
signs of careful composition, including book and chapter divisions and
topic sentences like those that Dugard added to his rendering of Vom
langen Leben. What is more, there is evidence of schematic thinking.
In the earlier tract on long life, Paracelsus distinguishes three stages of
human life youth, maturity, and old age and discusses diseases com-
mon to each of them. In the later tract, he identifies three kinds of life:
mortal life, immortal life and, in between them, long life. Biblical tradition
sets the human life span at 70 years (Psalm 90: 10) or, the at most, 120
_____________
91 Sudhoff, vol. 3, pp. 250251.
92 Waite, vol. 2, p. 124.
93 See note 64 above and C. G. Jung: Paracelsica: Zwei Vorlesungen ber den Arzt und
Philosophen Theophrastus. Zrich 1942, p. 82.
94 See note 24 above.
Thomas Willard

368
years (Genesis 6: 3). Immortal life is by definition eternal. However, the
Bible tells of men who lived upwards of 900 years, including Adam, Noah
and, most famously, Noahs grandfather Methuselah. Meanwhile, Herme-
tic tradition maintains that Hermes Trismegistus was an Egyptian prince
who preserved his life by practicing what he preached. Citing such examp-
les, Paracelsus claims that life can be extended up to 900 years, and he
assigns a similar lifespan to the elemental beings of Alpensagen: the wild
people or people of fire, air, earth, and water. The number is not entirely
random; Plutarch gives a similar age for the nymphs of Classical myth.
95

Paracelsus is not especially interested in stories of his elemental beings
or in their legendary names. Indeed, he remarks that the names were given
to them by people who did not understand what they represented,
96
and
he invents still more names for them in De vita longa. The important thing
for him is that they can pass from a world of pure fire, air, earth, or water
into our world of mixed elements and can interact with humans on occa-
sion. They owe their long lives to the relative purity of their bodies, which
are not contaminated with other elements. But because they are not
descended from Adam they do not have souls breathed into them by God
and they can only hope for eternal life if they somehow receive Gods
grace.
Perhaps these elemental beings owe some of their appeal to a biblical
prophecy, found in the deuterocanonical book of Wisdom (19: 1821).
This prophecy is that the relations of the elements can be changed just as
a stringed instrument can be retuned, and that someday men may be able
to live in water or fire. Scholars think the prophecy shows the influence of
Stoic philosophy and the theory that the elements are connected by divine
breaths (pneumata), but the same prophecy had an obvious appeal to al-
chemists. Paracelsus and others maintain the legend of Elias Artista, a
master alchemist who will transform the world at the end of time.
97
He
takes comfort in the opening dialogue of the apocryphal Fourth Book of
Ezra, where the prophet is told that the age will end when there is a pre-
ordained number of people like himself.
98
Stories of encounters with sa-
lamanders and Melusines, who can live in fire or water, strike Paracelsus
as confirmation that the Millennium was fast approaching. Such stories
also hint that there are be other worlds than our own, perhaps the only
_____________
95 Plutarch, De defectu oraculorum, 11.
96 Paracelsus: A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders, and on the Other
Spirits. In: Paracelsus, Four Treatises of Paracelsus, p. 231.
97 See the treatise Nova disquisitio de Helias Artista, Theatrum Chemicum, vol. 4, pp. 214
246. The legend is developed in Connells Paracelsian novel, cited in note 75.
98 4 Esd. 2: 36 (in most Bibles 2 Esd. 4: 36). Paracelsus refers to this prophecy in the key
that Bitiskius inserts as the tenth book of the Archidoxa (trans. by Waite in vol. 2, p. 83).
Living the Long Life
369
possibility available in the pre-Copernican era. The alternate, or fairytale,
world of the elemental beings represents a threshold between mortal and
immortal life the promise of a prolonged, though still limited, lifespan.
99

The Old Testament tells of two men who do not die but are taken up
to heaven: Enoch before the Great Flood (Genesis 5: 22) and Elijah af-
terward (2 Kings 2: 11). Their names appear in various permutations in De
vita longa as Paracelsus discusses the Enochdiani, which Waite interprets
as belonging to the race of Enoch and Elias.
100
These creatures are
farther across the threshold than the elementals, closer to the world of the
immortals. In writing about them, Paracelsus arguably came closer to the
inner alchemy of Chinese medicine than any Western alchemist had
come. As the emphasis shifts from gold-making to soul-making, Paracel-
sus and his disciples enter a new concern with immortal adepts that conti-
nues into modern movements like the Theosophical Society.
101
The Taoist
classic Qing-Jing Jing, known as Cultivating Stillness in one translation and
Das Tao der Weisheit in another is specifically concerned with the attain-
ment of long life through the attunement of the earthly and heavenly bo-
dies, and it holds out the prospect of immortal life.
102
In the process,
heaven is born from earth, yang from ying, and the spirit is strengthened
with herbs and other medicines. As a Ming Dynasty commentator wrote:
If mortals in this world do not want to die,They must lengthen their lives, add oil
to the lamp, and preserve the great harmony.
103

In moving from mortal life to long life and immortal life, Paracelsus mo-
ves from one body to another: from the physical body to the astral body
and the spiritual body.

Mortal life Long life Immortal life
Physical health Purity Spiritual health
Human beings
(Psalm 90: 10)
Mythic beings and
Gods elect (e.g., Me-
thuselah)
Enoch, Elijah; the
redeemed (John 3:
15)
_____________
99 The fairytale quality of Paracelsuss life and work is well considered in Sergius Golowin,
Paracelsus im Mrchenland: Wanderer zwischen den Welten. Basel 1980.
100 Waite, vol. 2, pp. 346, 365.
101 For the influence of Paracelsus on Rosicrucian and other esoteric traditions see Thomas
Willard: Rosicrucian Sign Lore and the Origin of Language. In: Theorien vom Ursprung der
Sprache, ed. by Joachim Gessinger and Wolfert von Rahden, 2 vols. Berlin and New York
1989, vol. 1, pp. 133157.
102 Cultivating Stillness: A Taoist Manual for Transforming Body and Mind, ed. and trans. by Eva
Wong. Boston 1992; Das Tao der Weisheit, ed. and trans. by Hilmar Klaus. Aachen 2008.
103 Cultivating Stillness, p. 20.
Thomas Willard

370
Physical body (the
soma psychikon of
1Cor.15.44)
Astral body (the soma
epourania of 1Cor.15.40)
Spiritual body (the
soma pneumatikon of
1Cor.15.44)
Body Soul Spirit
Salt Sulfur Mercury
Sense Imagination (the star in
man)
Reason
Table 1. Varieties of Life
Like his older contemporary Cornelius Agrippa, he maintains that God
had created three worlds and not just one: the elemental world of nature;
the celestial world of the stars and planets; and the supernatural world of
the angels and archangels. The physical body is made from the elements
and belongs in the natural or sublunary world. The astral body originates
in the celestial world; and the spiritual body, created by the breath of God,
has its origin in the supercelestial world.
104
This does not mean that the
three bodies are necessarily separated, either in space or in time. The
apostle Paul wrote of different bodies, terrestrial and celestial, and of the
seed that grows into something new: It is sown a natural body; it is raised
a spiritual body (1 Corinthians 15: 44). However, Paracelsus maintains
that all men have two bodies, earthly and heavenly. He also claims that the
different bodies have different kinds of perception: sensory perception in
the physical body and imagination in the astral body.
105
By imaginati-
on he of course does not mean simple fantasy, or the chance association
of ideas formed on sensory impressions. He means extrasensory percep-
tion in the way the term was first used: perception by means that are
outside of the recognized senses.
106

Over the course of five books, Paracelsus proceeds from one body to
the next. In the first book he discusses life in general. In the second he
offers alchemical remedies for fourteen specific afflictions of the physical
body, and in the third he treats the preparation of elixirs to promote good
health by aligning the body with the planets and stars. The fourth book
continues the emphasis on astrological medicine, but adds the analogy of
_____________
104 The principal text on the bodies of man is the Astronomia Magna (Sudhoff, vol. 12, pp. 1
443). Also see Pagel: Paracelsus, pp. 6572 and Paracelsus, Philosophie der Grossen und
der Kleinen Welt: Aus der Astronomia Magna, ed. and trans. by Gunhild Prksen. Basel
2008.
105 Dorn glosses imaginatio as the star in man, the celestial and supercelestial body (astrum in
homine, coeleste & supercelestie corpus; Dictionarium, 56). The definition is reproduced in
Martin Ruland: Lexicon Alchemiae (Frankfurt: Johann Andrea, 1661), 264.
106 Oxford English Dictionary, extra-sensory.
Living the Long Life
371
the elemental beings who enjoy longer lives through their purer nature
and their freedom from the curse of Adam. Finally, the fifth and most
enigmatic book turns to the spiritual body. In the books final chapter,
Paracelsus states:
what shall I say in this place of those things which the sagacious muse embraces
in her canons together with the matrix of the four Scaiolae, which sleep in you,
and render your temples anodynic? I occasion so great an astonishment in you
that you shall come even to take heed of a poppy. But I confine myself to the
cosmographic life, where both the place and the body of Jesihach appear.
Further, the things I prescribe I do prescribe beyond the forces of the body and
the place. Whosoever understands these things the same has a lawful claim upon
the title of a spagyrist.
107

[quid dicam hoc de his, quae musa sagax in canonibus suis una cum matrice
quatuor scaiolarum complectitur, quae vobiscum indormiscunt, tymporaque in
vobis anodynica reddunt. et ego vos etiam atque etiam in tantum stuporem adu-
co, ut in notitiam papaveris redigamini, sed missa facio illa, et in hoc solum la-
boro, quod in superioribus libris hactenus monui, in cosmographica scilicet vita,
ubi cum locus tum corpus Iesihach apparent. porro etian quae praescribo, praeter
loci ac corporis vires, idque spagirice praescribo, hyrdomantice et pyrotechni-
cus.]
108

It is hard to know where to begin. The last of these neologisms, spagy-
rist, is also the best known. It refers to an alchemist who can dissolve
and coagulate matter, purifying and recombining substances after the me-
dieval motto solve et coagula.
109
Dorn identifies the Scaiolae as spiritual
powers of the mind and soul (spirituales mentis & animi vires), identifying
them with the four elements and drawing comparison to the rapture of
Elijah, the baptism of Christ, and the experience of Holy Communion.
110

Even Dorn is stumped by the place and body of Jesihach, of which he
can only say, It is supernatural.
111
But the whole chapter is captured in
the term cosmographic life. There is a point beyond which the life lived
on earth blends into the life of the cosmos, and beyond which even the
long life of nymphs and salamanders pales at the prospect of eternal
life.
112
When one realizes that the physician must tend to the soul as well
as the mind and body, and to the spirit as well as the soul, one sees that
_____________
107 Waite, vol. 2, p. 346. Waite omits the last two nouns, which may be translated hydro-
mancer and pyrotechnician.
108 Sudhoff, vol. 3. p. 289.
109 See Dorn: Dictionarium, p. 86; also Oxford English Dictionary, spagyric.
110 Dorn: Dictionarium, pp. 8384. They could well be sensation, imagination, understanding,
and will the four powers of the soul discussed by Ramon Lull, of whom Paracelsus has
just spoken, albeit slightingly.
111 Dorn: Dictionarium, p. 54.
112 See Dorns commentary on the chapter in Paracelsus, pp. 175179. Also see the commen-
tary in Gian Carlo Benelli: Storia di un altro occidente. Rome 2000, pp. 252254.
Thomas Willard

372
health extends to religion for Paracelsus, and that the physical body is
connected through the cosmos to the Creator. For this reason, Paracelsus
maintains that anatomy must go beyond dissection to include the study of
mans place in the cosmos and in the plan of Gods creation.
113
Although
he studied medicine in Padua, and knew about the innovations of Vesali-
us, he has little use for autopsy and dissection, which he calls the anatomy
of cadavers (anatomia cadaverum). He prefers to study and strengthen the
individual bodys place in the cosmos, in a process that Dorn terms spa-
gyric anatomy (anatomia spagirica).
114

Paracelsus refers to the celestial body as the inner body, and the phy-
sical body as the outer one, making them rather like nesting dolls, one
inside the other. They are comparable to the different koshas, or sheaths,
of Hinduism, moving ever inward from the physical body to the body of
bliss, with Brahma or God at the center. Just as in Hindu and Yogic tradi-
tion, the heart is the site of perception and imagination is the main faculty.
Paracelsus wrote the tracts on long life before the age of thirty-five,
the traditional midpoint in life, and he died before the age of fifty. His
critics were delighted to note that he could not preserve his own life, let
alone the lives of his patients. But he had a ready answer for them in the
pages of his Paragranum:
Ich will nach meinem Tode wider euch ausrichten als vorher. Ob ihr schon mei-
nen Leib fret, so habt ihr nur einen Dreck gefressen. Der Theophrastus wird
mit euch streiten ohne den Leib.
115

[I will oppose you more after my death than before. If you have eaten my body,
you have eaten crap. Theophrastus will argue with you without his body.]
Indeed, he left the considerable literary corpus that scholars are still edi-
ting, translating, and interpreting. In my own small contribution, I have
drawn attention to two little-studied works on longevity. I have suggested
that they develop more systematically than recent scholarship indicates
and have noted their significance in extending the ideas of the Archidoxa.
I have passed over neologisms that puzzled readers from Dorn to
Jung and beyond for example, the aquaster (literally the star water)
which Dorn identified with a vision of something that exists but not as a
thing a notion which Jung found to be, of all the ideas in Paracelsus,
_____________
113 See Thomas Willard: Donnes Anatomy Lesson: Vesalian or Paracelsian. In: John Donne
Journal , 3.1 (1984), pp. 3461.
114 Gerard Dorn: De Tenebris contra Naturam, et Vita Brevi. In: Theatrum Chemicum, vol.
1, p. 460.
115 Quoted with a comment in Sergius Golowin: Paracelsus: Mediziner, Heiler, Philosoph.
Munich 1991, p. 198. The same line is adapted in Pirmin Meier: Paracelsus: Arzt und Pro-
phet: Annherungen an Theophrastus von Hohenheim. Zrich and Munich 1998 (Pendo-
Pocket, 8), p. 361 (first published in 1993).
Living the Long Life
373
the closest to the modern concept of the unconscious.
116
Perhaps, like
the first English translator of Vom langen Leben, I have made Paracelsus
seem more rational than he really was. But I trust I have made the point
that he views life in a system that reaches beyond the health of the body
to the health of the soul and spirit and so connects his concerns with me-
dicine and religion. His message to the world is that one needs both religi-
on and medicine. Because we have met in the former setting of a sixte-
enth-century Dominican monastery, it may be worth noting that his voice
anticipates one in Gustav Meyrinks most esoteric novel. The young hero
of Der weie Dominikaner hears the voice in a dream:
Jegliches Geschehen, das in unser Leben tritt, hat seinen Zweck; Sinnloses gibt es
nicht; eine Krankheit, die den Menschen befllt, gibt ihm die Aufgabe: vertreibe
mich mit der Kraft des Geistes, damit die Kraft des Geistes erstarke und wieder
Herr werde ber die Stofflichkeit, wie sie es einst gewesen vor dem Sndenfall.
Wer das nicht will und sich mit Arzneien begngt, der hat den Sinn des Lebens
nicht erfat; er bleibt ein kleiner Junge, der die Schule schwnzt.
117

[Each event in our life has its purpose; it is not meaningless. A sickness that be-
falls a man gives him the message: Drive me away with the power of the spirit,
and thus reinforce the spirits strength and make it once more the Lord over the
material world as it was once before the Fall. Whoever is unwilling to do that,
and relies entirely on medicaments, has missed the meaning of life. He is still a
small boy skipping school.]
It sounds rather like the voice of Paracelsus and like his advice on living
the long, cosmographic life.


_____________
116 Dorn: Dictionarium, p. 17; Jung, Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon, p. 140.
117 Gustav Meyrink: Der Weie Dominikaner: Aus dem Tagebuch eines Unsichtbaren. Vienna
1921, pp. 5960.
Thomas Willard

374


Fig. 1. Arrangement of books in the Archidoxa as edited by Michael Toxites. Second edition,
Straburg: Christian Mller, 1574 (Sudhoff 158). Source: Mnchener Digitale Bibliothek (VD16
P 397).
Living the Long Life
375

Fig. 2. Arrangement of books in the Archidoxa as edited by Johannes Albertus Wimpenaeus.
Munich: Adam Berg, 1570 (Sudhoff 120). Source: Google Books.
Thomas Willard

376


Fig. 3. Arrangement of books in the Archidoxa as edited by Fridericus Bitiskius. Geneva: de
Tournes, 1658 (Sudhoff 381). Under the last title are included two different (varii) tracts on
long life. Source: Google Books.
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