Theophrastus von Hohenheim (Paracelsus)
1493-1541 · Esotericism · Prominent
Paracelsus was a Swiss-German physician and alchemist of the Renaissance who founded medical chemistry. He burned the standard medical textbooks in front of students at Basel and told them to trust what they saw at the bedside and the light of nature over any authority. He dosed patients with minerals he prepared himself, and read the body as one piece of a cosmos where every thing wears a visible sign of its purpose.
Signature
The position Paracelsus is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful
- Knowledge
- Sense Experience / Intuition
Positions on the 9 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- The Divine
- mildly leans Describable (35 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Universals
- leans Realism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Identity
- leans Unchanging (25 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (75 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Unity (25 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- mildly between Immanence and Transcendence (45 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Conviction
- leans Certain (75 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
11 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Paracelsus refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Trinitarian Monotheism / Panentheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Wisdom
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Moral Realism
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - End of Things
- Apocalyptic Renewal
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Perception
- Symbolic Forms
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Sense Experience / Intuition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Natural Law
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Synergism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Creation ex Nihilo / Continuous Creation
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Eschatological
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Charismatic Authority / Wisdom
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Paradox
- Coincidentia Oppositorum
What is the status of paradox? - Death
- Ascent of the Soul
What happens at death? - Human Nature
- Imago Dei
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?