The first, semi-divine, pure and spiritual Race of Humanity had the “truths of God,” and lived up to them, and their ideals. They preserved them, so long as there was hardly any evil, and hence scarcely a possible abuse of that knowledge and those truths. But evolution and the gradual fall into materiality is also one of the “truths” and also one of the laws of “God.” And as mankind progressed, and became with every generation more of the earth, earthly, the individuality of each temporary Ego began to assert itself. It is personal selfishness that develops and urges man on to abuse of his knowledge and power. And selfishness is a human building, whose windows and doors are ever wide open for every kind of iniquity to enter into man’s soul. Few were the men during the early adolescence of mankind, and fewer still are they now, who feel disposed to put into practice Pope’s forcible declaration that he would tear out his own heart, if it had no better disposition than to love only himself, and laugh at all his neighbours. Hence the necessity of gradually taking away from man the divine knowledge and power, which became with every new human cycle more dangerous as a double-edged weapon, whose evil side was ever threatening one’s neighbour, and whose power for good was lavished freely only upon self. Those few “elect” whose inner natures had remained unaffected by their outward physical growth, thus became in time the sole guardians of the mysteries revealed, passing the knowledge to those most fit to receive it, and keeping it inaccessible to others. Reject this explanation from the Secret Teachings, and the very name of Religion will become synonymous with deception and fraud.

Paracelsus was the most wondrous intellect of his age and original thinker. Bold creator of chemical medicines, founder of courageous parties, ever victorious in controversy. He belonged to those great minds who have created a new mode of thinking on the natural existence of things. More than one pathologist, chemist, homœopathist, and magnetist has quenched his thirst for knowledge in his books. Alkahest, a Paracelsian term for which there is no end to the assumed explanations, is Chaos, i.e., primordial undifferentiated substance, containing within itself the essence of all that goes to make up man, including the “breath of life” itself in a latent state, ready to be awakened. Chaos is another name for Æther, the celestial virgin and spiritual mother of every form and being in the manifested world. Alkahest was used by Paracelsus to denote the menstruum or universal solvent that is capable of reducing all things. But the real alkahest is the all-pervading Divine Spirit of the higher Initiate, not the all-geist of the inferior Alchemist. Paracelsus was the greatest chemist of his age and peer of modern scientists. But he exhausted his ingenuity in endless transpositions of letters and abbreviations of words and sentences. For example, when he wrote sutratur he meant tartar; and by mutrin, nitrum! By mercurius vitæ, he meant the living spirit or aura of silver, not the quicksilver. Paracelsus declared that the affinity between stars and man is due to their identical composition. Embodied existence is the outcome of reciprocal sympathies and antipathies between the starry sky and man. Our body comes from terrestrial elements; the thinking principle, from the stars. It is not the spirits of heaven and hell that are the masters of nature but the Spirit of Man which is concealed in him, as the fire is concealed in the flint. Every living being possesses his own celestial power and is closely allied with heaven. The fact that everyone affects another and all, mutually and reciprocally, is evidence of the universal sympathy and antipathy that exists between everyone and everything. Éliphas Lévi quotes approvingly the doctrine of Paracelsus that every man, animal, and plant bears external and internal evidence of the influences dominant at the moment of germinal development. Pure magic stems from the imperial will of man. Will is neither spirit nor substance but everlasting ideation. Determined will is the beginning of all magical operations. Paracelsus is the father of modern magic and proponent of the occult physics of the Kabbalah and Magnetism. True Magic is occult wisdom; reason, the folly of man. No armour can protect against Black Magic, for it injures the inward spirit of life. But there is a divine power in every man, which is to rule his life, and which no one can influence for evil, not even the greatest magician. Let men bring their lives under its guidance, and they have nothing to fear from man or devil. The great Adept removed disease by applying a healthy organism to the afflicted part. Watch out! A would-be healer, who is physically or morally ill, not only fails to heal but often imparts his illness to his patient, thus robbing him of what strength he may have. The divine spirit is a great thing, so great that no one can fully express its greatness. It requires no conjuration or ceremonies. Circle-making and incense burning are all tomfoolery and temptation by which only evil spirits are attracted, says Paracelsus. If we only knew the power of the heart, nothing would be impossible for us. The whole world is one living organism and outcome of a single creative effort. There is no death and nothing “dead” throughout nature. Neither the form of man, nor that of any animal, plant or stone has ever been “created,” and it is only on this plane of ours that it commenced becoming, by expanding from within without, from the most sublimated and supersensuous essence into its grossest appearance in the abyss of matter. According to the Hermetico-Kabbalistic philosophy of Paracelsus, it is Yliaster that evolved out of its “chaotic” self a new Kosmos. Yliaster is the universal matrix of Kosmos, the Father-Mother within. It is beyond space, time, and intellectual comprehension. Yliaster is Anima Mundi, the noumenon of Astral Light, and a cosmic veil between earth and the waters of Space that sprang out of Chaos. The Swiss-German Adept rediscovered some of the lost secrets of the Phrygian priests and the Asclepieia. He was a learned Theosophist and a far-famed physician-Occultist. He taught that Fire, i.e., the Spirit of the Flame, is the highest God. The Hermetic Fire is a ray of the One eternal and infinite Flame that starts from, and is immediately reabsorbed into, the parent essence. The Spirit of the Flame is invisible to all except to the eyes of another immortal Spirit. The occult properties of medicinal plants and minerals, and of the curative powers of certain things in nature, are far more important and useful than metaphysical and psychological Occultism or Theophany.

The compound term Theophania (from theos, “God,” and phainesthai, “to appear”) does not simply mean the appearance of God in man but the actual presence of a God in man, a divine incarnation.

The acquisition of the highest knowledge and power requires not only many years of the severest study enlightened by a superior intelligence and an audacity bent by no peril; but also as many years of retreat in comparative solitude, and association with but students pursuing the same object, in a locality where nature itself preserves like the neophyte an absolute and unbroken stillness if not silence! Where the air is free for hundreds of miles around of all mephitic influence; the atmosphere and human magnetism absolutely pure, and no animal blood is spilt.

You cannot be one with All, unless all your acts, thoughts, and feelings synchronise with the onward march of Nature. The principal obstacle to the realization of this Oneness is the inborn habit of man of always placing himself at the centre of the Universe.