Paracelcus (1493-1541)

Paracelcus was born with the original name Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, probably the longest name I have ever heard.  He was a German-Swiss physician and during his life he was linked to botany, alchemy, astrology and the occults.  He took the name of Paracelcus, which meant 'equal to or greater than Celsus', Celsus being the 1st century Roman Aulus Cornelius Celsus, possibly a man to which Paracelsus was inspired by.

Paracelcus made vast contributions to toxicology, psychotherapy, medicine and philosophy and inspired such people as Jacob Boehme.  He traveled widely across Europe, Africa and Asia Minor with the goal of finding hidden knowledge.  Many rumours circulated about his knowledge, and he was highlighted as possibly being the true identity of a major alchemist Christian Rosenkreutz.

He published a number of manuscripts during his lifetime, most notably for me, was the manuscript called Prognostications in 1536 which depicts prophecies and cryptic images. However Paracelcus had a reputation for being arrogant, inciting anger by publicly burning medical books.

If you would like to read more about Prognostications CLICK HERE

Jacob Boehme (1575 - 1624)

Jacob Boehme was born in Poland, and was raised in a Christian family,as a young lad he became a shoemakers apprentice and stayed with the family who were not Christians, which opened his eyes to the world around him.  It is recorded that he regularly studied the Bible yet also took time to read works by visionaries such as Paracelcus.

Boehme had numerous mystical experiences, the highlight of which occurred in 1600 when he received a vision which revealed to him the spiritual structure of the world and gave him a great understanding of good and evil and the ongoing relationship between man and God.  It was not until twelve years after this that he started to write, but his writings gained mixed success, at one point he was even asked to leave his town.  But by the time of his death in 1624, he had written many documents of various subjects such as 'Of the Last times' (1620) , 'Answers to forty questions regarding the soul' (1620) and 'The Supersensual Life' (1624)

I came across references to Boehme made by the famous John Wesley and others during the 18th century who looked upon Boehme's writings as a great source of knowledge, and indeed he was considered as the original thinker in the Lutherian tradition and maintained many followers after his death who became known as Behmenists.  I am planning to get a hold of some translations of his writings and review them here at a later date.

Old Document Review 'Prognostications'

This fantastic document was originally published in 1536 A.D and was written by Paracelsus (d.1541). It contains 32 images with very cryptic statements to go with them. Paracelcus was originally born as Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim and was a German-Swiss, in his life time he was a physician, a botanist, an alchemist, astrologer and occultist. He was famous for many things, he gave zinc its name and contibuted greatly to the development of medicine.

The 32 predictions are of mundane events, ecclesiastical affairs and political upheavals, yet they are so cryptic that has made them almost impossible to interpret. The Past, Present and future are described as three separate entities yet there are the same. Like a Trinity of time itself, and Paracelsus claims that it is through divine intervention that he has been shown things, as nothing is impossible through the Trinity of God. He speaks many times of Magic, yet by magic he means divine power. Magic and Occultism at his time ran the risk of being tried for heresy, yet in reading extracts of his various writings, the only thing that comes clear is that he was a devout believer in God, a spiritual person with a great understanding of the nature of God.

An example of the text from the book;'What a thing is internally is shown by its outward sign. As Nature signs her own so does Magic. You have been signed as a devourer of all who have to do with them'

As you can see the text is very cryptic and quite hard to understand yet some scholars claim that several of the prophecies have been fulfilled. They interpret seperate words from the texts just as one would do with interpreting dreams, for example the bear is Russia, the lion is England and so on.

There are a couple of interesting things I found in the document; the first is a reference in Figure 26 to Sibyl, meaning the Sibylline Oracles perhaps, or maybe he had access to other writings from the Sibyls that is now lost to time. Secondly; In the third figure, the image contains beams of sunlight 6 on the left, 7 on the right, is this possibly a reference to the same beliefs that the Mayans had of the sevens days of existence (seven days and six nights) making the number thirteen.