Page 30 - Paracelsus Three Books of Philosophy

the help of the earth. As for example, the water’s earth contributes nothing to its
proper essence; nor the earth’s water to it. So it is with the air. But it is not sufficient
that every world doth solitarily or of itself subsist in its element; but rather that the light
from heaven is as a kind of extract of the four elements, most excellent in a full and
perfect propriety. But let none think that the Sun or planets did receive their lustre or
motion from the element of fire, but rather from the Mystery. The brightness of the
firmament that doth irradiate the world, did not flow from the element of fire, but from
the Mystery. The earth bring Trine, the water Ture, the air Samies. T hese proceed not
from the element, but from the Mystery, yet are in the element. Thus the four worlds
that came out of the Mystery do agree to help each other, to nourish and sustain one
another: not from the nature of elements, for they themselves are elements.

It is not from the elements that man does live, see, hear, etc., but from the
mysteries, or rather from the monarchy; And so all things else. The elementary thing is
but an inn and a repast. Know also that whatsoever is eternal cometh from the
Mystery, and is the same thing. Dogs die, but their mystery doth not: Man dies, but his
mystery survives, and much more his soul whereby he is by so many degrees more
excellent than a dog; The same may be said of all things that grow. Hence is that
mistake, that all creatures that ever were shall not appear essentially as they do now,
but mystically in the last Great Mystery. We say not that the Mystery is an essence like
that which is immortal, but that it is perfectly a mystery. The element of fire hath a
mystery in it, from which the other three have their light, lustre, influence, growth, and
not from the element. Those mysteries also may subsist without an element, as an
element may without a mystery. Observe further, that the element of air hath a
mystery in it, by which all the other three, and itself too, are nourished; Not
elementarily of itself, but mystically by the element. The element of earth hath in it a
mystery of mansion and fixation, by vertue whereof the other continue and increase,
that nothing perish. The element of water hath a mystery of sustentation for all the
rest, and preserves all that is in them from destruction. In this respect there is
difference between an element and a mystery: one is mortal and corruptible from the
elements; the other is durable in the last Great Mystery, wherein all things shall be
renewed, but nothing made that was not before.

We conclude then that all the elements cannot be joined together; but that they be
solitarily and unmixedly altogether either airy, or fiery, or earthy, or watery. We have
also dispatched this, that every element maintained itself, and that which doth come
from it, as its own world. Therefore a medicine of the element water will do no good
to those things that are of the element of earth, or of any other element, but only to the

25