2i8 PARACELSUS 



or worse without any visible cause. A medicine that 

 will do good at one time will be useless at another, and a 

 system of medicine without understanding and without 

 true knowledge of natural laws will remain a system 

 of mere suppositions and superstitions, of passive obser- 

 vation and inactivity, and if it attempts to interfere with 

 the cause of a disease, the probability is that it will do 

 serious harm. Paracelsus says: "Our physicians pay 

 no attention to the position of the planets/ and there- 

 fore they kill more patients than they cure, because a 

 medicine that may do good at one time may be injurious 

 at another, according to the prevailing influence. That 

 which is active in medicines is their astral elements acting 

 upon the astral man, and they are produced by astral 

 influences, and it makes the greatest difference whether 

 a medicine is pervaded by one influence or by another " 

 {Be Cadiicis). 



It should always be remembered that astral influences 

 do not act directly upon the physical bodies of men and 

 animals, but upon their vital essence, in which all ele- 

 ments are contained. Love for a certain person may 

 be created by a word or a touch, by a breath or a kiss, 

 but only if the person who is touched or breathed upon 

 has in his soul the elements that are capable to manifest 

 that particular kind of love. The vehicle of life that 

 contains the life-essence in the body of man (the Mumia) 

 is the same as that which contains the universal life and 

 forms the astral body of the world ; but each energy 

 may exist in various states and modifications, differing 

 from each other. " Even the ignorant knows that man 

 has a heart and lungs, a brain and a liver and stomach ; 

 but he thinks that these organs are independent things, 

 that have nothing to do with each other ; and even our 

 most learned doctors are not aware of the fact that 

 these organs are only the material and bodily repre- 

 sentatives of invisible energies that pervade and circulate 



^ The quality of the influences acting upon the patient. 



