64 PARACELSUS 



"There are creatures having within themselves the 

 seed for their propagation, such as minerals and plants, 

 and all that has no self-consciousness; and there are 

 others endowed with consciousness and life, without any 

 seed in them, namely, animals and human beings."^ 



Man is made out of three substances, or seeds, or 

 " mothers." His spiritual seed is from God, and God 

 is his mother; his astral elements are developed under 

 the influences of the constellation (the astral plane), and 

 his mother is, therefore, the soul of the world ; his 

 visible body is formed and born out of the elements of 

 the visible world, and thus the terrestrial world is its 

 mother. 



" If the whole man were made only out of the seed 

 of his parents, he would resemble his parents in every 

 respect. A chestnut-tree bears chestnuts, and from each 

 of its fruits can grow nothing else but a chestnut-tree; 

 but the mixture of seeds is the cause that a son may be 

 very unlike his father. The seed {tincture) from the 

 brain of the father and that from the brain of the 

 mother make only one brain in the child, but that 

 tincture among the two which is the strongest will pre- 

 dominate and characterise the child." 



Man receives his spirit and body not from his father 

 and mother, but from God and from nature, acting 

 through the instrumentality of his parents. His soul 

 and body are formed in his mother, but do not originate 

 in her. The three substances or elements which go to 

 make up the constitution of man are universal ; man is 

 merely a centre or focus through which they act. 



There are beings who live exclusively in only one of 

 these elements, while man exists in all three. Each of 

 these elements is visible and tangible to the beings 



^ It is taught that primordial man also had within himself the power 

 to propagate his own species, while he was in an ethereal state ; but when 

 he became more material the female element became partly separated from 

 bim and woman came into existence, 



