4 PARACELSUS 



sciences led him to enter the laboratory of the rich 

 Sigismund Fugger, at Schwatz, in Tyrol, who, like the 

 abbot, was a celebrated alchemist, and able to teach to 

 his disciple many a valuable secret. 



Later on, Paracelsus travelled a great deal. He 

 visited Germany, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Den- 

 mark, Sweden, and Russia, and it is said that he even 

 went to India, because he was taken prisoner by the 

 Tartars and brought to the Khan, whose son he after- 

 wards accompanied to Constantinople. Every reader of 

 the works of Paracelsus who is also accquainted with the 

 recent revelations made by the Eastern Adepts, cannot 

 fail to notice the similarity of the two systems, which in 

 many respects are almost identical, and it is therefore 

 quite probable that Paracelsus during his captivity in 

 Tartary was instructed in the secret doctrine by the 

 teachers of occultism in the East. The information 

 given by Paracelsus in regard to the sevenfold principles 

 of man, the qualities of the astral body, the earth-bound 

 elementaries, &c., was then entirely unknown in the 

 West ; but this information is almost the same as the 

 one given in " Isis Unveiled," " Esoteric Buddhism," and 

 other books recently published, and declared to have been 

 given by some Eastern Adepts. Paracelsus, moreover, 

 wrote a great deal about the Elementals, or spirits of 

 Nature, but in his description of them he substituted for 

 the Eastern terms such as were more in harmony with 

 the German mythological conceptions of the same, for the 

 purpose of bringing these subjects more to the under- 

 standing of his countrymen, who were used to the 

 Western method of thought. It is probable that Para- 

 celsus stayed among the Tartars between 1 5 1 3 ai^d 

 I 5 2 1 , because, according to Van Helmont's account, he 

 came to Constantinople during the latter year,^ and 

 received there the Philosopher's Stone. 



The Adept from whom Paracelsus received this stone 



1 Van Helmont, "Tartari Historia," § 3. 



