Paracelsus 2
The Natural Light
Referring to the example of Fermi’s discovery, the “light from nature” is, in contrast to the elemental light, his intuition contrary to conscious expectation to put paraffin in place of lead. Simply put, it is intuition from a source other than the ego.[1] This concept has deep implications and C. G. Jung has delved into them in great detail in his articles “On the nature of the psyche” and “Paracelsus as a spiritual phenomenon”. The following exposition cannot in any way come close to Jung’s masterful investigation, it is just my own attempt to understand Paracelsus.
(Photo of Enrico Fermi . ID badge photo from Los Alamos, image in public domain)
The concept of the light of nature in divination
Jung and von Franz traced the first mention of the term “light of nature” as “light” and not just a sensus naturae [2] to Agrippa von Nettesheim’s De Occulta Philosophica.[3] In chapter 55 of the “First Book” of the 1533 revision of his famous compendium of esoteric knowledge, he states that omens and auguries read from prophecying animals and birds:
…are based on the light of natural sense [German: Licht des Natursinnes, Latin: luminositas sensus naturae]; it is namely as if a certain light of prophecy comes down to the four-footed creatures, the birds, and other creatures, through which we people can tell the future …But this feeling for nature [Naturgefühl] goes, as Wilhelm of Paris said, beyond every human concept, and is similar to and stands in close relationship to the gift of prophecy.[4]
Paracelsus also described a similar relationship between divination and the light of nature[5] and may have been the first to use the term in this form:
It is therefore also to be known that the auguries of the birds are caused by these innate spirits, as when cocks foretell future weather and peacocks the death of their master and other such things with their crowing. All this comes from the innate spirit and is the Light of Nature. Just as it is present in animals and is natural, so also it dwells within man and he brought it into the world with himself.[6]
Image of Paracelsus on the homepage is a modern Illustration after an etching by A. Hirschvogel from 1540. Source: http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/paracelsus/index.html
M.-L. von Franz says of this use of the term “light of nature”:
The “light of nature” was taken, from the Middle Ages on, as a second source of knowledge, along with the Christian revelation…an unconscious, instinctive supernatural knowledge possessed by animals as well as by human beings.[7]
and:
Nobody thought of nature or of matter as something dead. For these people, it was animated by a spirit of its own kind, or a light which they generally called a lumen naturae, and which was, as it were, the living spirit manifesting in natural phenomena.[8]
Paracelsus clearly does not intend this relation to a spirit in nature to remain one of passive oracular use only. He points out that it is there for a purpose, and man should make use of the light of nature.
Paracelsus writes:
| The herbs, spices, seeds, trees, fruits, etc. and all the gemstones that are on the Earth, and the four elements, these are nothing but letters[9] that contain something within them. But no one knows what these letters really harbor. Now the herbs and the seeds cannot talk with us, they cannot tell us: “Such-and-such is in me.” They just stand there: silent and still. How can we find out what is in them? Man should and must know…[10] | Die Kräutter, Wurtzen, Sahmen, Bäum, Früchte, etc. und alles Edelgestein, das auff Erden ist, unnd in den vier Element, die seindt nicht anderst dann als Buchstaben, die etwas in ihnen haben und vermögen, niemands weiss aber nit, was dieselbigen Buchstaben in ihnen begreiffen. Nuhn können die Kreutter und Sahmen mit uns nicht reden, also dass sie selbs sagten, das und das ist in mir, sondern sie stehen still da, und reden und regen sich nicht: Wie soll man nuhn erfahren, was doch in ihnen sei? Dan der Mensch soll und muss wissen… [11] |
| For God has given his Power to the herbs, He has laid it in the stones, He has hidden it in the seeds. Into these things we should look and from them take. The angels have it in themselves but man does not. For man, wisdom lies in nature and there he should seek it out. For nature is the harvest; through nature man opens his power and receives the heritage of wisdom and the arts from his Father. | Dann Gott hatt sein Macht in Kreutern geben, in Stein gelegt, in den Sahmen verborgen, in denselbigen sollen wirs nemen und suchen. Die Engel habens bey inen selbs, der Mensch aber nicht: Er hats in der Nature, bey derselbigen soll ers suchen. Dann also ist die Natur die Erndt, durch die Natur eröffnet der Mensch sein Macht und Erb seins Vatters der Weisheit und der Künsten.[12] |
And:
| Rather God wants us to be awakened in his great natural things that he has given [us], based on which the Devil will recognize that we belong to God and are angels…
Thus things are created in such a way that man should find understanding in them… |
Sonder [Gott] will uns haben erweckt in sein grossen Natürlichen dingen, die er geben hatt, auff dass der Teuffel sehe, dass wir Gottes sind, und Engel sind….
…Dann die ding sind darumb so beschaffen, das wir Menschen darinn ein erkanntnuss sollen haben…[13] |
Harvey: “What the modern scientist takes from nature is a kind of quantitative wisdom but not the kind of qualitative wisdom that Paracelsus refers to here.”
Ash: Too many modern scientists take technology for nature (geology- hydrocarbon exploration-gasoline for cars, etc.), instead of deep understanding (how was oil created over millions of years?). They just take for their ego purposes (to get around in cars). They do not take for inner purposes as Paracelsus here is referring to. This is the all-important difference.”
The light of nature as man’s gift of reason
Paracelsus was one of the few natural scientists to combine the rational and irrational sides that so trouble T. B. and Harvey. But to the modern scientist Paracelsus smoothed over some ugly sharp corners that allowed him to remain true to natural science and at the same time to his psychological insight.
Harriet: “Not necessarily, maybe your feeling function is just weak. His was strong and he knew not to let himself get caught up in collective. He was actually reacting from a more instinctual and whole place. Thus he was not unconscious, rather he consciously realized that to split himself was not only dangerous, but wrong from the feeling standpoint. Therefore he clearly placed priorities so that he did not let himself remain split like you. It would have been schizophrenic. He made a clear feeling evaluation and placed the Self (as the eternal light) above rational science (as the light of nature).
Paracelsus said:
| That of which we now tell is called lumen naturae and is eternal.[14] God hath given it to the inner body, that it may be ruled by the inner body and in accordance with reason. Therefore all that Man does and should do, should be done from the light of nature. For the light of nature is reason and nothing else… | Das, so wir jetzt erzehlet, heist Lumen Natur, und ist Ewig, dasselbige hat Gott gegeben den inwendingen Leib, das er durch den inwendigen Leib geregiert werde, und das nach d’Vernunfft. So dann alles das, so der Mensch thut, und thun soll er thun auss dem Liecht der Natur. Dann das Liecht der Natur ist allein die Vernunfft, und nichts anders… |
| Therefore he who would be a proper doctor must believe and practice from his reason, that is, out of the light of nature and not without the light of nature. Because the light is that which produces belief. And Christ desireth that you believe with your conscience and not without it. | Darumb der da will ein gerechter Artzet sein, muss aus seiner Vernunfft, das ist, auss dem Liecht der Natur glauben und Artzneyen, und nit ohne das Liecht. Dann das Liecht ist das, dass den Glauben gibt. Dann Christus will, dass du mit deinem Gewissen glaubet, und nicht ohne dasselbig…[15] |
J. Jacobi, in her glossary of Paracelsus’ terms give the following definition of the light of nature:
Intuitive knowledge gained by the experience of nature and implicit in all beings at their birth, in contrast to the knowledge given by revelation [i.e., the light of the Holy Ghost]…In a cosmological sense, it is a secret radiation of nature and makes possible the discovery of the natural mysteries. In an anthropological sense, it is man’s active intelligence (Paracelsus also calls it “reason”), a kind of knowledge guided by intuition and developed by experience. The light of nature belongs to the sphere of creation and operates only within it; it originates in the spirit of God. As Paracelsus says: “the light of nature was kindled by the Holy Ghost.” But although the natural light is inseperably bound to the Holy Ghost, it constitutes an independent source of knowledge.[16]
Paracelsus also associates the light of nature (as the “temporal light”) with the body.
| Note further that two lights were reported, an eternal and a temporal: the eternal brings to completion its transformations in the soul, the temporal in the body. The temporal light manifests in the natural light, the eternal in the eternal [light]. | Weither so merckendt, wie zwei Liecht gemeldet werden, ein Ewigs und ein Tödlichs: das Ewig in der Seelen sein wandlung volbringt, das Tödlich in dem Leib: das Tödlich Liecht wirckt im Natürlichen Liecht, das Ewig in dem Ewigen.[17] |
Perhaps Paracelsus saw the light of nature in the body’s ability to heal itself without conscious intervention, herbs, chemicals, or magic. This explanation however does not do justice to Paracelsus’ deeper train of thought. As stated in the first quote of this chapter, Paracelsus identified the light of nature with the stars, the sidereal light.
Lumen naturæ as “Sidereal Reason”
Paracelsus emphasizes that the light of nature is something more complex than the potential healing powers of nature.
| Not of flesh and blood, but of the stars in the flesh and blood, that is the treasure, the natural “Greatest Good”. | Nicht aus Fleisch unnd Blutt, sondern aus dem Gestirn in Fleisch unnd Blutt, das ist der Schatz, das natürlich Summum Bonum. [18] |
As this quote shows, he held that the light of nature was not in the physical body or in physical nature but in an inward body.[19]
| Everything that the Natural Light instructs in mankind comes from the nature of the stars. Note the point that all natural arts and wisdom is given to man from the stars, excluding nothing… | Dann alles das, so das Natürlich Liecht den Menschen underweiset, kompt von der Natur des Gestirns. Dann merckent auff den Punct, dass alle Natürliche Künst und Weisheit von dem Gestirn dem Menschen geben werden, und nichts ist ausgenommen.[20] |
And:
| …man can do nothing that is not given to him from the light of nature, and what is in the light of nature, that is the effect of the stars…. | …dass nichts im Menschen sein möge, es sei ihm dann vom Liecht der Natur gegeben: und was im Liecht der Natur ist, das ist die wirckung des Gestirns… |
| …So the stars teach us all the arts that are on Earth … but not only the arts, all the ways of war, governing, and everything that can be achieved throught the mind, takes its instructions from the stars, for ever and ever. | …Also lernen uns die Sternen alle Künst, die auff Erden sind…nit allein die Künst, sonder auch die Kriegsläuff, Regierung, und alles das, das durch das Hirn vollbracht wirt, nimpt sein underweisung auss dem Gestirn, und also für und für.[21] |
Although he probably used the symbol of stars for his own particular meaning, Paracelsus’ ideas resemble similar attempts to “grasp the ungraspable”[22] as found in older religious-philosophic traditions. Concerning Paracelsus’ use of neologisms and unconscious parallels to the Gnostics, Jung said: “Paracelsus was not reaching back into the past, he was using the old remnants to give new form to a renewed archetypal experience.”[23] However, to help understand the archetypal role of the stars, I will mention some of these earlier attitudes from the vast pool of the collective unconscious from which Paracelsus unconsciously drew his ideas.
Assyro-Babylonian and Greco-Roman astrologies Paracelsus’ stars were akin to the Greco-Roman gods and their Assyro-Babylonian astrological counterparts.[24] Babylonian astrology developed out of highly sophisticated astronomical observations into a codified dogma. To get a feeling for this, I can imagine living every night without city lights, under the vast night sky. The twinkling lights of the stars with their apparent patterns that change slowly and evoke an indescribable feeling in me. I am suddenly a minute creature in an infinite vastness. It would not be difficult to imagine that something up there controlled my fate down here, that one of those patterns of lights in the dark sky contained a consciousness beyond my human scope[25] which controlled my nighttime personality (my soul) just as my ego controls my daytime activities and consciousness. Putting myself in ancient Babylonia I could imagine that those who understood the patterns and the meaning of the structure of the heavens could, in this way, understand my human fate. In a culture just evolving out of the total dominion of Tiamat (the Great Mother, submersion in the collective unconscious), any form of conscious knowledge must have been numinous. Even if you did not understand, you knew that the stars oversaw the eternal part of your soul. It follows that the stars exercised absolute control over the fate of all individuals on Earth. Thus the stars could also take on a sinister aspect.
Psychologically, the (Assyro-Babylonian) stars symbolize consciousness in the unconscious; lights in the dark sky. Not the clear and bright light of the sun, but the guardians of the night world, the unconscious. The movements of the planets were far more complex, the patterns of the fixed stars more unchangeable and grandiose, than the simple path of the sun. In addition their light did not warm nor help create life. Indeed, we are usually under the power of unconscious complexes and drives in this night light. I experience the sinister aspect of the stars as my parental complexes. For instance:
Negative father complex: “You don’t deserve this, you should be ashamed for being so weak…”
and the combination punch:
Positive mother complex: “You are something very special. You are wonderful as you are, there is no need to develop (Heh, NOW I’ve got him!)”
No matter what I do, I cannot seem to shake these “influences”, dominating my life since childhood.
Jung says that the “Gods are personifications of unconscious contents, for they reveal themselves to us through the unconscious activity of the psyche.”[26] They not only inspire – they can also possess and blind consciousness. Jung puts it succinctly, bringing the gods down to earth:
We are still as possessed by our autonomous psychic contents as if they were gods. Today they are called phobias, compulsions, and so forth, or in a word, neurotic symptoms. The gods have become diseases; Zeus no longer rules Olympus but the solar plexus, and creates specimens for the physician’s consulting room, or disturbs the brains of the politicians and journalists who then unwittingly unleash mental epidemics.[27]
Platonic philosophy During the Hellenistic blossoming of humanitarian philosophy a change occurred. The Platonic and Neoplatonic attitude to the stars, was (in my oversimplified interpretation) that the superb symmetry and patterns witnessed in the movements of the heavenly bodies was a manifestation of the highest form of the idea of order and harmony. The planetary control over man was not seen as something negative, but as an expression of the ideal of harmony pervading the universe.
Psychologically the platonic view of the stars emphasized them as a symbol of the supramundane patterning and ordering function that is inherent in the unconscious. Jung called this specific ordering factor of the collective unconscious, the Self. An experience of being a part of the cosmic order is at the same time an experience of that order: this is emotionally equivalent to experiencing God. Thus the Self imparts to man deep sense of life by placing him in his cosmic setting. It provides the pattern and meaning that connects one to something far beyond the ordinary mundane world. Although T.B. experiences fragments of this, I remain split.
T.B.: “Wait, to be honest I must admit that I did not really believe, so I turned to hallucinogens to prove to myself by experience that a meaning, that some symmetry in the universe, that God existed. Now I search through the ruins of my life to find evidence that there is a purpose. I can understand Harvey when he turns to physics, to the outer world – without hallucinogens – to prove to himself that there is a structure, a meaning, and a purpose to life.”
Harvey: “Right, what good do your visions do me? I understand no more, I do not know how to bring them down to Earth, I wake up feeling terribly depressed and lost. But I also must confess that there is the nagging question whether the discoveries of modern physics, including those that give me the feeling there is a meaning and purpose, are not projections of some psychic structure. I am beginning to think that you and I have exchanged places, we are becoming our own opposites.”
Gnostic Archons Historically a later change in attitude was expressed by the Gnostics. They reacted to older attitudes that did not adequately express their own experience of evil in this world and molded the older themes to better fit their psychological needs. They had to find a way to express the dualism they experienced in the existence of evil, the dark side of God and nature. For the Gnostics the seven “stars” were the “Archons,” or the “Authorities,” inherently evil characters, themselves blind and binding man to matter; i.e., to an earthly, unconscious, and unenlightened existence. Although they symbolized the patterns of the universe woven into the individual’s life, they kept man from seeing his own acosmic inner self.[28]
Hans Jonas empathetically describes their attitude
We can imagine with what feelings gnostic men must have looked up to the starry sky. How evil its brilliance must have looked to them, how alarming its vastness and the rigid immutability of its courses, how cruel its muteness! The music of the spheres was no longer heard, and the admiration for the perfect spherical form gave place to the terror of so much perfection directed at the enslavement of man. The pious wonderment with which earlier man had looked up to the higher regions of the universe became a feeling of oppression by the iron vault which keeps man exiled from his home beyond.[29]
The home beyond is the realm of the Self within the collective unconscious. Another gnostic connection between man and the stars is provided by Arnobius, a Christian and early church defender who wrote in A.D. 304-310 against the Hermetic Gnostics. He certainly misrepresented the Gnostic attitude, but his account[30] provides a rough sketch of what the Hermeticists probably believed. He states that they felt that the soul is of divine origin, it is immortal and superior to the sun and stars; in respect of its reason it is superior to the animals. As the soul descends through the spheres it acquires certain qualities from the “stars.” Another report states that
“As the souls descend, they draw with them the torpor of Saturn, the wrathfulness of Mars, the concupiscence of Venus, the greed for gain of Mercury, the lust for power of Jupiter “[31]
Arnobius says that the Gnostics believed that it is necessary to placate these powers (the Archons) lest the soul be prevented from returning to the paternal seat. Eventually the soul returns to heaven, to its Father’s seat. The parallels here between Gnostic ideas about the fallible stars being lesser “lights” than the heavenly light and Paracelsus’ ideas are clearly evident although Paracelus attached a slightly different meaning to the stars than did the Hermetic Gnostics. In addition, Paracelsus believed that the ultimate goal of man’s development was also to return to the Father for which his term was “in the eternal light.”
Psychologically the Gnostic attitude attempts to differentiate and balance the polarized views of the Babylon and the Platonics. The Gnostics played up negative aspects of the collective unconscious as exemplified by overemphasis on the physical world, material wealth, sexual pleasure, and worldly power, all aspects of Roman life at that time. In addition, the Gnostic emphasized the psychic realm as being the ultimate home and seat of life. Thus they were searching for a concept, now provided by the psychology of Jung, which places the crucial role on man’s development of a differentiated attitude to the powers in his unconscious.
Hermetic Philosphy Hermetic philosophy was a neoplatonic movement closely associated with the Gnostics. Although there are many parallels between Paracelsus and the writing of the Corpus Hermeticum, I have not read that Paracelsus actually knew of them. It is written therein that
There are seven wandering stars which circle at the threshhold of Olympus, and among them ever revolves unending Time. The seven are these; night-shining Moon, and sullen Kronos [Saturn], and glad Sun, and the … Lady of Paphos [Venus], and bold Ares, and swift-winged Hermes, and Zeus [Jupiter], first author of all births from whom Nature has sprung. To those same stars is assigned the race of men; and we have in us Moon, Zeus, Ares, the Lady of Paphos, Kronos, Sun, and Hermes. Wherefore it is our lot to draw from the aetherial life-breath tears, laughter, wrath, birth, speech, sleep, desire. Tears are Kronos; birth is Zeus; speech is Hermes; anger is Ares; the Moon is sleep; Aphrodite is desire; and the Sun is laughter, for by him [by reason of his radiance] laugh all mortal minds, and the boundless universe.[32]
Thus in the third century A.D. a step had been made towards clarifying the inner nature of what had been previously projected onto the stars.
The stars in Paracelsus Now the same “stars” regarded by the Gnostics as Archons and harbingers of blindness were credited by Paracelsus as being sources of light, the light of Nature. However, Paracelsus clearly states that he is not referring to the physical, outer stars, but “the stars in the flesh and blood”. He appears to be striving to unify the one-sided Christian and (i.e. anti-material) Gnostic dogma and the more instinctive, earth-bound attitude of natural man. He also relates the “stars” to the Greco-Roman gods in the classical tradition. As if to demonstrate his statement that the stars teach mankind the arts, Paracelsus gives an example recalling that of the hermetic philosophers quoted above. He writes:
| …Were there no Venus, music would not have been discovered; were there no Mars, there would be no trades, commerce, or industry. | …Were die Venus nit gewesen, es weren die Musica nit erfunden worden: Also auch were Mars nit gewesen, es weren die Fabrilia nit erfunden worden.[33] |
As a doctor of the soul as well as the body, Paracelsus was intuitively sensing what Jung later formulated in psychological language. The psychological equivalent of stars in the flesh and blood are autonomous psychic contents that manifest in the individual as complexes appearing as intuitions, emotions, affects, passions, and inspirations; in short, as spontaneous mental phenomena that are not associated with the ego. Jung has given the name “archetypes” to these a priori agents that structure psychic experience. Archetypes are represented in symbols, words, and images, describing psychic experiences which appear in similar form among various cultures and break into awareness with an emotional as well as imagic charge. The “sidereal light” is, in psychological language, the consciousness emanating from these archetypes. Paracelsus, says Jung
…beholds the darksome psyche as a star-strewn night sky, whose planets and fixed constellations represent the archetypes in all their luminosity and numinosity. The starry vault of heaven is in truth the open book of cosmic projection, in which are reflected the mythologems, i.e. the archetypes.[34]
But Paracelsus, following the Gnostics, views a crucial element of man’s freedom in relation to the stars. He indicates that the ego must not simply follow unconscious desires and whims, but work together to form a dynamic balance. He wrote:
The stars are subject to the philosopher, they must follow him and not he them.[35]
…[Man] carries the stars within himself, … he is the microcosm and thus carries in him the whole firmament and its influences.[36]
Therefore the stars must obey man and be subject to him, not he to the stars.[37]
In interpreting a dream which had stars as a theme, M.-L. von Franz expresses the relationship of the individual to the stars within the perspective of one’s whole life:
But if we look within and we look at the stars, then we come to realize that within that cosmic infinity we have a unique task to fulfill which we generally experience as what we call the meaning of our life.[38]
The relationship of the individual to the Self is illuminated by Paracelsus’ third light, the “eternal light”, which shines from God or the Self, the central, supraindividual core of the personality. Paracelsus’ attitude to this third light is crucial to understanding his convictions about how rational man should attend to the light of nature.
[1] At the time of this experiment, there was no rational reason for using paraffin. Only later did Fermi understand why paraffin slowed the neutrons down.
[2] Cf. M.-L. von Franz, C.G. Jung: His myth in our time, Little, Brown and Co., Boston, Toronto, 1975, p. 31-2. ( Von Franz suggests that a more exhaustive search of the history of this term would be valuable.)
[3] Agrippa was born in Cologne in 1486, printed the first edition of his compendium on magic in 1503. He denounced occultism in 1530 but despite this oversaw the printing of the second edition of his book in 1533. He died in 1535 in Grenoble.
[4] Agrippa von Nettesheim, Die Magische Werke, p. 32 (my translation from the German).
[5] C. G. Jung (in footnote 11 of Paracelsus) says that Paracelsus was much indebted to Agrippa’s De Occulta Philosophia.
[6] Parcelsus, Caput de morbis somnii, [Quoted in C. G. Jung, Paracelsus, p. 114. The text is in the edition of Paracelsus’ Work by Sudhoff and Mattheissen, vol. IX, p. 361. I could not find it in the Huser edition.] Note the last sentence, how did man bring it into the world? By being conscious of it.
[7] M.-L. von Franz, C. G. Jung, His myth in our time, p. 31. As will be shown in the sequel, Paracelsus probably associates this “supernatural” natural light with a kind of “sixth sense” and not with a “supernatural” god-like knowledge. Recent experimental work has demonstrated the existence of an “unconscious” seeing: blind people can detect images on a television screen. The researchers postulate a sensory perception, possibly in the skin, operating through a non-cerebral area of the brain and call it “the unconscious mind” in complete oblivion to Jung’s work (Margie Patlak in the Los Angeles Times, August 21, 1989 Part II page 3).
[8] M.-L. von Franz, Interpretation of Fairytales, Spring Publications, Zürich, 1968, p. 169.
[9] This idea is similar to the cabbalistic teaching that the letters of the Hebrew alphabet contain immense psychic power. What is the psychological meaning of this? Possibly (as von Franz shows in her Number and Time), that the letters as numbers are the structure ordering our psychological experience of reality. But, being letters rather than numbers, perhaps they signify a higher cultural level of development.
[10] Note especially the last sentence: Paracelsus says “Man should and must know,” a point to which I will return in Part III.
[11] Paracelsus, Astronomia Magna…, Liber Primus: “Probatio in scientiam Philosophia Adeptae, (Huser X, Olms V), p. 173.
[12] Paracelsus, Vom Fundament der Weisheit und Künsten, Huser 9, (Olms IV), p. 429.
[13] Ibid. p. 428.
[14] This translation was partly based on the translation in C.G. Jung, On the nature of the psyche, Coll. Works, vol. IX, paragraph 390. Note that at the beginning of this quote Paracelsus says lumen naturae is eternal when he otherwise insists that it is temporal, an example of his supreme ability to handle paradoxical statements or to be exasperatingly undifferentiated. Strictly speaking, lumen naturae is both eternal and temporal as will be discussed later.
[15] Paracelsus, Liber de generation hominis, Huser VIII [Olms V], p. 171.
[16] Paracelsus: selected writings, edited with an introduction by Jolande Jacobi, translated by Norbert Guterman, Bollingen Series XXVII, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 289 pp (hereafter called Jacobi, Paracelsus). This quote is from page 255.
[17] Paracelsus, Vored Huser X [Olms V], p 7.
[18] Ibid., p. 5.
[19] M.-L. von Franz,C. G. Jung, His myth in our time, p. 32.
[20] Paracelsus, Vored Huser X [Olms V], p 5-6.
[21] Paracelsus, Astronomia Magna, Liber Primus, Huser X [Olms V), p. 19.
[22] C. G. Jung, Paracelsus, p. 186.
[23] Ibid., p. 186.
[24] These “stars” are the sun and moon and the five planets: Mercury (Hermes), Mars (Ares), Venus (Aphrodite), Jupiter (Zeus), and Saturn (Kronos).
[25] Psychologically it is aspects of the human psyche that are projected upon the patterns of the stars. The contrast is between the (relatively miniscule) individual psyche and the (vast) collective psyche.
[26] C. G. Jung, A psychological approach to the Trinity, Collected Works vol 11, p. 163.
[27] C. G. Jung in his Commentary in R. Wilhelm, The secret , p. 113.
[28] See Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, Beacon Press, 1963, pp. 358, passim.
[29] Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, p. 260.
[30] Rewritten from A. S. Ferguson in Scott, Hermetica, vol. 4, p. 475-6.
[31] Servius, In. Aen. VI. 714, quoted in H. Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, p. 157. (This astral pessimism is closely connected to the dualism of good and evil.)
32] Scott, Hermetica, Vol. 1 Excerpts from Isis to Horus, p. 531-2.
[33] Paracelsus, Astronomia Magna, Liber Primus, (Huser X, Olms 5), p. 19.
[34] C. G. Jung, On the Nature of the Psyche, Collected Works vol. 8, p. 195. Jung goes on to say: “It strikes me as significant, particularly in regard to the hypothesis of multiple consciousness and its phenomena, that the characteristic alchemical vision of sparks scintillating in the blackness of the arcane substance should, for Paracelsus, change into the spectacle of the “interior firmament” and its stars. ”
[35] Paracelsus, De Natura Rerum, quoted in Jacobi, p. 154.
[36] Ibid., p. 154.
[37] Ibid., p. 155.
[38] M.-L. von Franz/Fraser Boa, The way of the dream, Windrose films, Toronto, 1988, p. 180.