The Rudolf Steiner Archive

4. Agrippa of Nettesheim and Theophrastus Paracelsus

[ 1 ] Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1487-1535) and Theophrastus Paracelsus (1493-1541) followed the path indicated by Nicolaus of Cusa's way of thinking. They immersed themselves in nature and sought to explore its laws with all the means available to them in their time, and as comprehensively as possible. In this knowledge of nature they also see the true basis for all higher knowledge. They seek to develop this from natural science itself by allowing it to be reborn in the spirit.

[ 2 ] Agrippa von Nettesheim led a varied life. He came from a noble family and was born in Cologne. He studied medicine and law at an early age and sought to educate himself about natural processes in the way that was customary at the time within certain circles and societies, or even with individual researchers who carefully kept their knowledge of nature secret. He repeatedly went to Paris, Italy and England for such purposes, and also visited the famous Abbot Trithem von Sponheim in Würzburg. He taught at various times in scientific institutions and here and there entered the service of rich and noble people, to whom he put his statesmanlike and scientific skills at their disposal. If his biographers describe the services he rendered as not always impeccable, if it is said that he acquired money by pretending to understand the secret arts and to benefit people through them, this is contrasted with his unmistakable, restless drive to acquire all the knowledge of his time in an honest way and to deepen this knowledge in the sense of a higher understanding of the world. His efforts to gain a clear position on natural science on the one hand and higher knowledge on the other are clearly evident. Such a position can only be attained by those who have an insight into the paths by which one arrives at the one and the other knowledge. As true as it is that natural science must ultimately be lifted up into the region of the spirit if it is to pass over into higher knowledge, it is also true that it must first remain in its own field if it is to provide the right foundation for a higher level. The "spirit in nature" is only there for the spirit. As certainly as nature is spiritual in this sense, so certainly nothing in nature is directly spiritual that is perceived by bodily organs. There is nothing spiritual that can appear to my eye as spiritual. I must not look for the spirit as such in nature. I do this when I interpret a process of the external world directly spiritually, for example when I attribute a soul to the plant that is only remotely analogous to the human soul. I also do this when I attribute a spatial or temporal existence to the spirit or the soul itself, for example when I say of the eternal human soul that it lives on in time without the body, but nevertheless in the manner of a body, instead of as a pure spirit. Or if I even believe that the spirit of a deceased person can show itself in any sensually perceptible events. Spiritism, which commits this error, only shows that it has not penetrated to the true conception of the spirit, but wants to look directly at the spirit in a gross sensuality. It misjudges both the nature of the sensible and that of the spirit. He rejects the ordinary sensual, which takes place before our eyes hour after hour, in order to address something rare, surprising and unusual directly as spirit. He does not understand that what lives as "spirit in nature" reveals itself, for example, when two elastic spheres collide, to those who are able to see spirit; and not only in processes that are astonishing in their rarity and that are not immediately comprehensible in their natural context. But the spiritualist also pulls the spirit down into a lower sphere. Instead of explaining something that takes place in space and that he perceives with his senses through forces and beings that are only spatially and sensually perceptible, he resorts to "spirits", which he thus equates completely with the sensually perceptible. This type of conception is based on a lack of spiritual comprehension. One is not able to look at the spiritual in a spiritual way; therefore one satisfies one's need for the presence of the spirit with mere sensory beings. The spirit shows no spirit to such people; therefore they seek it with the senses. Just as they see clouds flying through the air, they would also like to see spirits rushing along.

[ 3 ] Agrippa von Nettesheim fights for a genuine natural science, which does not want to explain the phenomena of nature through spiritual beings that haunt the sensory world, but which wants to see only the natural in nature and only the spiritual in the mind. - Of course, Agrippa will be completely misunderstood if one compares his natural science with that of later centuries, which has completely different experiences. With such a comparison, it could easily appear that he is still referring to the direct effects of spirits, which is only based on natural connections or false experience. Moritz Carriere does him such an injustice when he says - though not in a malicious sense: "Agrippa gives a large register of things that belong to the sun, the moon, the planets or fixed stars and receive influences from them; e.g. fire, blood, laurel, gold, chrysolite are related to the sun; they bestow the gift of the sun: courage, cheerfulness, light... Animals have a sense of nature that approaches the spirit of prophecy more sublimely than the human mind... People can be bound to love and hate, to sickness and health. Thus thieves are bound so that they cannot steal anywhere, merchants so that they cannot trade, ships and mills so that they cannot go, lightning so that they cannot strike. It is done by potions, ointments, images, rings, enchantments; the blood of hyenas or basilisks is suitable for such use - it is reminiscent of Shakespeare's witches' cauldron." No, it is not reminiscent of that, if you understand Agrippa correctly. He naturally believed in facts that people in his time thought they could not doubt. But we still do today in the face of what is currently considered "factual". Or do we think that future centuries will not throw some of what we present as undoubted fact into the dustbin of "blind" superstition? I am, however, convinced that real progress is being made in human knowledge of facts. Once the "fact" that the earth is round was discovered, all previous assumptions were relegated to the realm of "superstition". So it is with certain truths of astronomy, the science of life, etc. The doctrine of natural descent is an advance on all earlier "creation hypotheses", just as the realization that the earth is round is an advance on all previous assumptions about its shape. Nevertheless, I am aware that our learned scientific works and treatises contain many a "fact" that will appear to future centuries to be just as little a fact as some of what Agrippa and Paracelsus claim today. What matters is not what they regarded as "fact", but the spirit in which they interpreted these facts. - In Agrippa's time, however, there was little understanding for the "natural magic" he advocated, which sought the natural in nature - and the spiritual only in the mind; people were attached to "supernatural magic", which sought the spiritual in the realm of the sensual, and which Agrippa fought against. For this reason, Abbot Trithem of Sponheim was allowed to advise him to communicate his views as a secret doctrine only to a select few, who could rise to a similar idea about nature and spirit, because "even the oxen are only given hay and not sugar like the songbirds". Agrippa himself perhaps has this abbot to thank for the correct point of view. In his "Steganography", Trithemius wrote a work in which he treated with the most hidden irony the way of thinking that confuses nature with the spirit. In the book he seems to speak of nothing but supernatural processes. Anyone who reads it as it stands must believe that the author is talking about conjuring spirits, spirits flying through the air, etc. If, however, certain words and letters of the text are ignored, then - as Wolfgang Ernst Heidel proved in 1676 - letters remain which, when put together to form words, represent purely natural processes. (In one case, for example, the first and last word of an incantation must be omitted entirely, then the second, fourth, sixth, etc. of the remaining words must be deleted. In the remaining words one must again delete the first, third, fifth, etc. letters. What then remains is put together to form words; and the incantation is transformed into a purely natural message.)

[ 4 ] The difficulty Agrippa had in working himself out of the prejudices of his time and elevating himself to a pure view is demonstrated by the fact that he did not allow his "Secret Philosophy" (philosophia occulta), written as early as 1510, to appear before 1531 because he considered it immature. Furthermore, his writing "On the Vanity of the Sciences" (De vanitate scientiarum), in which he speaks with bitterness about the scientific and other activities of his time, bears witness to this. He states quite clearly that he has had great difficulty in freeing himself from the delusion of those who see immediate spiritual processes in external activities, prophetic indications of the future in external facts, and so on. Agrippa progresses to higher knowledge in three stages. As the first stage, he treats the world as it is given to the senses with its substances, its physical, chemical and other forces. He calls nature, insofar as it is considered at this level, elementary. At the second level, the world is considered as a whole in its natural context, as it organizes its things according to measure, number, weight, harmony, etc. The first stage arranges one thing after another. It looks for the causes of a process in its immediate surroundings. The second stage considers a single process in connection with the whole universe. It develops the idea that each thing is under the influence of all other things in the world as a whole. Before it, this whole of the world appears as a great harmony in which each individual is a member. Agrippa describes the world from this point of view as astral or celestial. The third stage of cognition is that in which the spirit, by deepening into itself, directly beholds the spiritual, the primordial being of the world. Agrippa speaks here of the spiritual-soul world.

[ 5 ] The views that Agrippa develops about the world and man's relationship to it are found in Theophrastus Paracelsus in a similar, only more perfect way. It is therefore better to consider them with him.

[ 6 ] Paracelsus characterizes himself by writing below his portrait: "No one should be the servant of another who can remain alone for himself." His entire position on knowledge is given in these words. He wants to go back everywhere to the foundations of natural knowledge itself in order to ascend to the highest regions of knowledge through his own strength. As a physician, he does not want, like his contemporaries, to simply accept what the old researchers, e.g. Galen or Avicenna, who were regarded as authorities at the time, had claimed in the past; he wants to read directly in the Book of Nature himself. "The physician must go through the examinations of nature, which is the world and all its beginnings. And that which nature teaches him, he must command to his wisdom, but seek nothing in his wisdom, but only in the light of nature." He spares nothing to get to know nature and its effects from all sides. To this end, he traveled to Sweden, Hungary, Spain, Portugal and the Orient. He can say of himself: "I have pursued the art at the risk of my life and have not been ashamed to learn from overland travelers, teachers and shepherds. My teaching was tried sharper than silver in poverty, fears, wars and hardships." What has been handed down by old authorities has no value for him; for he believes that he can only arrive at the right view if he experiences the ascent from natural knowledge to the highest knowledge himself. This self-experience puts the proud saying into his mouth: "Whoever wants to follow the truth must enter my monarchy... Follow me; I do not follow you, Avicenna, Rhases, Galen, Mesur! After me and not you, you of Paris, you of Montpellier, you of Swabia, you of Meissen, you of Cologne, you of Vienna, and what lies along the Danube and the Rhine; you islands in the sea, you Italy, you Dalmatia, you Athens, you Greek, you Arab, you Israelite; after me and not you! Mine is the monarchy!" - It is easy to misjudge Paracelsus because of his rough exterior, which sometimes hides deep seriousness behind jesting. He himself says: "I was not subtly spun by nature, nor was I brought up with figs and wheat bread, but with cheese, milk and honeydew, which is why I am probably rough on the feline and the superfine; for those who are brought up in soft clothes and we who are brought up in pine cones do not understand each other well. So even if I think I am kind to myself, I must be considered rude. How can I not be strange to one who has never walked in the sun?"

[ 7 ] Goethe described man's relationship to nature (in his book on Winckelmann) with the beautiful sentences: "If man's healthy nature acts as a whole, if he feels himself in the world as part of a great, beautiful, worthy and valuable whole, if harmonious pleasure grants him a pure, free delight: then the Weltall, if it could feel itself as having reached its goal, would exult, and admire the peak of its own becoming and being. " Paracelsus was deeply imbued with the sentiment expressed in such sentences. For him, the riddle of man is formed out of this feeling. Let us see how this happens in the sense of Paracelsus. The path that nature has taken to reach its peak is initially concealed from human comprehension. It has reached this summit; but this summit does not say: I feel myself as the whole of nature; this summit says: I feel myself as this individual human being. What is in reality an act of the whole world feels itself as a single, solitary being standing for itself. Yes, that is precisely the true nature of man, that he must feel himself to be something other than he ultimately is. And if this is a contradiction, then man may be called a contradiction come to life. Man is the world in his own way. He sees his harmony with the world as a duality. He is the same as the world; but he is it as a repetition, as a single being. This is the contrast that Paracelsus perceives as microcosm (man) and macrocosm (universe). For him, man is the world in miniature. What makes man view his relationship to the world in this way is his spirit. This spirit appears to be bound to a single being, to a single organism. This organism belongs, in its whole being, to the great stream of the universe. It is a link in it, which only exists in connection with all the others. The spirit, however, appears as a result of this single organism. At first it only sees itself connected to this organism. It tears this organism free from the mother soil from which it has grown. Thus, for Paracelsus, a deep connection between man and the whole universe lies hidden in the natural basis of being, which is concealed by the existence of the spirit. The spirit, which leads us to higher knowledge by imparting knowledge to us and allowing this knowledge to be reborn at a higher level, initially has the consequence for us humans that it conceals our own connection with the universe. Thus, for Paracelsus, human nature initially separates into three parts: into our sensual-bodily nature, our organism, which appears to us as a natural being among other natural beings and is exactly the same as all other natural beings; into our veiled nature, which is a link in the chain of the whole world, which is therefore not determined within our organism, but which sends out and receives the effects of forces from the whole universe; and into the highest nature: our spirit, which only lives itself out in a spiritual way. Paracelsus calls the first member of human nature the elemental body; the second the etheric-celestial or astral body, the third member he calls soul. - Paracelsus thus sees the "astral" phenomena as an intermediate stage between the purely physical and the actual soul phenomena. They will therefore become visible when the spirit, which veils the natural basis of our being, ceases its activity. We have the simplest manifestation of this area before us in the dream world. The images that surround us in our dreams, with their strangely meaningful connection with events in our surroundings and with states of our own inner being, are products of our natural basis, which are obscured by the brighter light of the soul. If a chair falls over beside my bed, and I dream a whole drama ending with a gunshot caused by a duel, or if I have palpitations and I dream of a boiling stove, then natural effects appear, meaningful and significant, revealing a life that lies between the purely organic functions and the imagination carried out in the bright consciousness of the spirit. All phenomena belonging to the field of hypnotism and suggestion are connected with this area. In suggestion we can see an influence of man upon man which points to a connection of beings in nature which is concealed by the higher activity of the spirit. This opens up the possibility of understanding what Paracelsus interprets as the "astral" body. It is the sum of natural effects under whose influence we are or can be influenced by special circumstances; which emanate from us without our soul coming into consideration; and which nevertheless do not fall under the concept of purely physical phenomena. The fact that Paracelsus enumerates facts in this field which we doubt today is out of the question from the point of view I have already mentioned above (cf. pp. 103f.). - On the basis of such views of human nature, Paracelsus divided it into seven parts. These are the same as those we find in the wisdom of the ancient Egyptians, the Neoplatonists and the Kabbalah. Man is first of all a physical-bodily being, thus subject to the same laws to which every body is subject. He is therefore, in this respect, a purely elemental body. The purely physical-physical laws are subdivided into the organic life process. Paracelsus calls organic lawfulness "archaeus" or "spiritus vitae"; the organic rises to spirit-like phenomena that are not yet spirit. These are the "astral" phenomena. The functions of the "animal spirit" emerge from the "astral" processes. The human being is a sensory being. He connects the sensory impressions through his mind. The "mind soul" therefore comes to life in him. He immerses himself in his own spiritual products, he learns to recognize the spirit as spirit. He has thus risen to the level of the "spirit soul". Finally, he recognizes that in this spirit soul he experiences the deepest foundation of world existence; the spirit soul ceases to be an individual, single one. The realization occurs that Eckhart spoke of when he no longer felt himself in himself, but the primordial being speaking in him. The state has occurred in which the All-Spirit in man looks at himself. Paracelsus expressed the feeling of this state in the simple words: "And this is a great thing for you to consider: there is nothing in heaven or on earth that is not in man. And God, who is in heaven, is in man." - Paracelsus wants to express nothing else with these seven basic parts of human nature than facts of outer and inner experience. The fact that there is a unity in higher reality, which for human experience is a multiplicity of seven parts, remains unchallenged. But this is precisely what higher cognition is for: to show the unity in everything that appears to man as a multiplicity in his immediate experience because of his physical and spiritual organization. At the level of highest knowledge, Paracelsus definitely strives to merge the unified primordial being of the world with his spirit in a living way. He knows, however, that man can only recognize nature in its spirituality if he enters into direct contact with it. Man does not understand nature by populating it with arbitrarily assumed spiritual entities, but by accepting and appreciating it as it is as nature. Paracelsus therefore does not seek God or the spirit in nature; rather, nature as it appears before his eyes is quite directly divine to him. Must one first attribute a soul to the plant in the manner of the human soul in order to find the spiritual? That is why Paracelsus explains the development of things, as far as this is possible with the scientific means of his time, in such a way that he understands this development as a sensual natural process. He lets all things emerge from the primordial matter, the primordial water (Yliaster). And he regards the separation of primordial matter (which he also calls the great limbo) into the four elements as a further natural process: Water, Earth, Fire and Air. When he says that the "divine word" created the multiplicity of beings from primordial matter, this is also only to be understood in the same way as the relationship of force to matter is understood in modern natural science. A "spirit" in the actual sense is not yet present at this stage. This "spirit" is not an actual cause of the natural process, but an actual result of this process. This spirit does not create nature, but develops from it. Some of Paracelsus' words could be interpreted in the opposite sense. For example, when he says: "Nothing is corporeal if it does not also have a spirit hidden within it and is alive. Nor does it only have that life which moves and moves, as man, the animals, the worms of the earth, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the water, but also all corporeal and essential things." But with such statements Paracelsus only wants to warn against the superficial view of nature, which believes to exhaust the essence of a thing with a few "pinned down" terms (according to Goethe's apt expression). He does not want to put an imaginary essence into things, but to set all the forces of man in motion in order to bring out what actually lies in the thing. - It is important not to be seduced by the fact that Paracelsus expresses himself in the spirit of his time. It is rather a matter of recognizing what he has in mind when, looking at nature, he expresses his ideas in the forms of expression of his time. For example, he attributes to man a twofold flesh, i.e. a twofold physical constitution. "The flesh must therefore be understood to be of two kinds, namely the flesh that comes from Adam and the flesh that does not come from Adam. The flesh of Adam is coarse flesh, for it is earthly and otherwise nothing but flesh that can be bound and grasped like wood and stone. The other flesh is not of Adam, it is a subtle flesh and not to be bound or grasped, for it is not made of earth." What is the flesh that is of Adam? It is all that which man has inherited through his natural development, that which has been passed on to him. In addition, there is what man has acquired in the course of time through his interaction with the environment. The modern scientific ideas of inherited and acquired characteristics through adaptation are detached from Paracelsus' ideas. The "subtle flesh" that enables man to perform his spiritual tasks was not in man from the beginning. He was "coarse flesh" like the animal, in flesh that "can be bound and grasped like wood and stone". In the scientific sense, therefore, the soul is also an acquired property of "coarse flesh". What the natural scientist of the nineteenth century has in mind when he speaks of the heirlooms from the animal world, Paracelsus has in mind when he uses the word, the "flesh originating from Adam". Of course, such statements are not intended to blur the difference between a naturalist of the sixteenth century and one of the nineteenth century. It was only the latter century that was able to see the phenomena of living beings in the full scientific sense in such a context that their natural relationship and actual descent up to man became apparent. Natural science sees only a natural process, whereas Linné in the eighteenth century still saw a spiritual process and characterized it with the words: "Species of living beings number as many as different forms have been created in principle." Whereas in Linné's work the spirit must still be transferred to the spatial world and assigned the task of spiritually generating, "creating" life forms, nineteenth-century natural science was able to give to nature what is nature's and to spirit what is spirit's. Nature itself is assigned the task of explaining its creations; and the spirit can immerse itself where it alone can be found, within the human being. - But even if Paracelsus, in a certain sense, thinks entirely in the spirit of his time, he nevertheless grasped the relationship of man to nature in a profound way, especially with regard to the idea of development, of becoming. He did not see in the primordial being of the world something that is somehow present as something completed, but he grasped the divine in becoming. This enabled him to ascribe to man a truly self-creative activity. If the divine primordial being is present once and for all, then there can be no question of man's true creation. It is not man who creates, who lives in time, but God who creates, who is from eternity. But for Paracelsus, no such God is eternal. For him, there is only an eternal event, and man is a member of this eternal event. What man creates was not there before in any way. What man creates, as he creates, is an original creation. If it is to be called divine, it can only be called so in the sense that it is a human creation. This is why Paracelsus can assign man a role in the construction of the world that makes him a co-master builder of this creation. The divine primordial being is not what it is with man without man. "For nature brings nothing to light that is complete in its place, but man must complete it." Paracelsus calls this self-creative activity of man in the construction of nature alchymy. "This completion is alchymy. Thus the alchymist is the baker who bakes bread, the vine-dresser who makes wine, the weaver who makes cloth." Paracelsus wants to be an alchymist in his field, as a physician. "Therefore, I may write this much about alchemy here, so that you may recognize it well and learn what it is and how it should be understood: not to take offence at the fact that neither gold nor silver should come from it. But therefore consider that the arcana (remedies) are opened to you... The third pillar of medicine is alchymy, for the preparation of medicines cannot be done without it, because nature cannot be used without art."

[ 8 ] In the strictest sense, the eyes of Paracelsus are directed towards nature in order to eavesdrop on what it has to say about its productions. He wanted to investigate the laws of chemistry in order to act as an alchemist in his own sense. He imagines all bodies to be composed of three basic substances: salt, sulphur and mercury. Of course, what he calls by this name does not correspond to what later chemistry calls by this name, just as what Paracelsus considers to be a basic substance is not a basic substance in the sense of later chemistry. Different things are called by the same names at different times. We still have what the ancients called the four elements: earth, water, air and fire. We no longer call these four "elements" "elements", but states of matter and have the following names for them: solid, liquid, gaseous, ethereal. The earth, for example, was not earth to the ancients, but the "solid". We also recognize the three basic substances of Paracelsus in contemporary terms, but not in their contemporary names. For Paracelsus, dissolution in a liquid and combustion are the two important chemical processes that he uses. If a body is dissolved or burnt, it disintegrates into its parts. Something remains as a residue; something dissolves or burns. The residue is salt-like to him, the soluble (liquid) mercury-like; the combustible he calls sulphurous.

[ 9 ] Those who do not see beyond such natural processes may leave them cold as sober material things; those who want to grasp the spirit with their senses will populate these processes with all kinds of soul beings. But he who, like Paracelsus, knows how to look at them in connection with the universe, which reveals its mystery within man, accepts them as they present themselves to the senses; he does not first reinterpret them; for as the natural processes stand before us in their sensual reality, they reveal the mystery of existence in their own way. What they have to reveal out of the soul of man through this sensual reality is higher to him who strives for the light of higher knowledge than all supernatural miracles that man may conceive or allow to be revealed to him through their alleged "spirit". There is no "spirit of nature" that is capable of expressing more sublime truths than the great works of nature itself, if our soul connects with this nature in friendship and listens to the revelations of its secrets in confidential intercourse. Paracelsus sought such friendship with nature.