"]! PARACELSUS 



the lower elements. This semen, however, is not the 

 sperma or the visible seminal fluid of man, but rather a 

 semi-material principle contained in the sperma, or the 

 aura seminalis, to which the sperma serves as a vehicle.^ 

 The physical sperma is a secretion of the physical organs, 

 but the aura seminalis is a product (or emanation) of 

 the liquor vitas. It is developed by the latter in the 

 same sense as fire is produced out of wood, in which 

 there is actually no fire, but out of which heat and fire 

 may proceed. This emanation or separation takes place 

 by a kind of digestion, and by means of an interior heat, 

 which during the time of virility becomes produced in 

 man by the proximity of woman, by his thoughts of her, 

 or by his contact with her, in the same manner as a 

 piece of wood exposed to the concentrated rays of the 

 sun can be made to burn. All the organs of the human 

 system, and all their powers and activities, contribute 

 alike to the formation of semen ; and the essences of all 

 are contained in the liquor vitae, whose quintessence is 

 the aura seminalis, and these organs and physiological 

 activities are reproduced in the foetus out of this liquor. 

 They are, therefore, germinally contained in the seminal 

 fluid that is necessary for the reproduction of the human 

 organism. The spiritual semen is, so to say, the essence 

 of the human body, containing all the organs of the 

 latter in an ideal form." Furthermore, Paracelsus makes 

 a distinction between Sperma cagastricum and Sperma 

 iliastricum, of which the former is the product of the 

 imagination (thought), and the latter is attracted directly 

 from the Mysterium magnum} 



^ That which Paracelsus calls the semen, or seed of man, is not that 

 which is known as semen to modern physiologists, but a semi-spiritual 

 principle to which the sperma merely serves as a vehicle and instrument 

 for propagation ; or, to express it in other words, the fructifying principle 

 does not exist in the sperma, but in the spirit (the will and imagination) 

 of man, or what is also called "<Ae tincture.*^ The sperma merely serves 

 as a vehicle, in the same sense as the body of a man is a vehicle for the 

 manifestution of his interior spirit. (See De Gener. Horn.) 



^ The universal matrix, into which the spiritual monad, having passed 



