Page 16 - A critical exposition of Jung's theory of alchemy

Paracelsus also denied the ancient theory that disease came from
imbalance of the humours, and argued that disease came from outside.
He also prescribed alchemically prepared metallic medicines as well as
alchemically prepared herbal medicines4. Both the human and the
universe functioned alchemically. He wrote that “Anyone who would
become a physician must lean the book of Alchemy thoroughly by
heart” (Paracelsus 1894: 165). Alchemy “separates what is impure and
draws out what is pure”, it is “such an art... as separates the useless from
the useful and reduces it to its ultimate matter or nature” (ibid: 167).

This attack on physicians gave apothecaries, surgeons and other
practitioners a language and a medical repertory with which to define
their independence from the physicians, and to legitimate their own
practices without the same costly and lengthy training. It started a
struggle which changed medicine for ever. Together with the invention
of printing, this movement drove the distribution of texts and the
exchange of recipes. We find in the 17th century that alchemists were to
become more organised and able to exchange relatively uncoded
formulations. Jung recognises that many alchemist were loners (CW 12:
314), but does not seem to realise that this pattern changed over time,
and it is probably connected to changes in alchemy.

Paracelsus held that the physician themselves could enter into the
pattern of the disease by inspiration, and control it through the
imagination which was a product of the astral spirit distributed through
nature and which generated things (Pagel 1982a: 109-12, 120-3). To
Paracelsus knowledge arose out of a kind of union between the astral
spirits present in humans and in Nature. Scientia was the knowledge
inside the natural object which allowed it to function. A pear tree had
the scientia to produce pears, for example, and it was this that Paracelsus
wanted to uncover and internalise to gain the true understanding of the
nature of the object’s essence. Such “overhearing” was not a matter of
sensual perception but of deeper union, an overcoming of apparent
boundaries between experimenter and object (Pagel 1982a: 50-1, 59-61,
Hannaway 1975: 25-6, 31). The language necessary to convey this

4. You may often hear new age therapists talking about alchemy as restoring
internal balance and as using natural medicines, this is quite inaccurate - if we
are going to do comparisons we could much more readily claim that alchemy
overthrew traditional western medicines of harmony and lead to modern
synthetic medicines.

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