Spagyric Philosophy & Practice
Welcome back, little plant people. I pray your Summer is going swimmingly.
I wanted to share with you all the man who helped open the door to the archaic world of Spagyric Arts for me and several others. He is one of the most famous alchemists we should all know about as his contribution to the world of healing is incomparable.
Known as the father of Spagyrics, let’s look at Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, also known as Paracelsus.
Born in the late 1400s, assumed to be around 1493, in Switzerland, Paracelsus’ parents were both professionals in the medical field (new at the time, and they were offering their services to the poor out of monasteries.)
His parents, namely his father, made sure he was educated from an early age on medicine, botany, herbalism, and mineralogy.
Once able to live on his own he traveled about from his home country to Egypt, the middle east and Africa.
He was a primary medical aid on the battlefield, and afterwards returned home to Switzerland where he began teaching at the University of Basil.
Paracelsus’ name gained traction because with his training of both modern medicine and the medicine of healers past using traditional and spiritual modalities he was helping to heal people with ailments that were deemed ‘incurable’ with modern techniques from professional physicians.
In fact, the physicians at the time were more interested in studying the body postmortem rather than learning how it functions while alive, so life in the hands of a professional physician seemed more like a science experiment rather than a chance to help someone.
Oh, how time is a cyclical thing.
A major part of why Paracelsus was able to help heal people outside of medically professional walls was that he had developed an entirely new way to approach healing through herbal medicine.
This approach he called Spagyria; “Spāo” meaning to separate and “Aegeros” meaning to bring back together.
A Philosophical Endeavor
This form of medicine was, and still is, an alchemical and philosophical way of creating remedies by way of separating a plant into its three essentials, the Tria Prima.
Everything contains within it Mercury, Sulfur, Salt. What the goal of Spagyric Tincture-making is is to separate the three of those sacred components, refine them through several steps, and to recombine them.
Along the way it is vital to be fluent in reading and speaking the language of Alchemy, Astrology, and Magia Naturalis, or Magic of Nature (Magic/Qabala) as these are the The Hermetic Arts and Sciences that are the pillars to Spagyric Practice.
There is not a lot of resource out there for this art that is unearthing in real time, but if you are interested in learning true Spagyria and all it encompasses I will leave a list of books from my own personal library that have guided me.
This journey is meant to be learned with a trained teacher. I had to seek mine out, but this practice spoke to me like none other, so if it is meant to be your path your guide will find you as well.
We will very very briefly review the process (this has taken me years to study, and I am still learning and applying the lessons everyday, so writing it down into a post will prove difficult, but not impossible)
In every material contains within it its suspended Salt, Sulfur, and Mercury. These three philosophical components are what we, as alchemists, must extract and refine in order to recombine them.
First, and above all other steps, is to mindfully create your intention with this Spagyric Medicine. This intention will be what guides this entire process, and it is vital that you write it down, or create a sigil for it, and keep this posted in your lab or apothecary where you will see it everyday as you work.
Next is finding the True Sidereal Astrological sign of the plant you are working with and understanding its correspondences to the luminaries. This ensures your harvest, processing time, and each of the steps in the Spagyric Tincture making process are holding the most potent terrestrial and celestial medicine.
Steps
The steps as follows are VERY rough guides to creating a Spagyric Tincture as given to me by my teacher Phoenix Aurelius:
- Choosing your Mercurius Vegetabilis, which we use to extract the Sulphuris Vegetabilis. Red Wine made in-home is always preferred, but in my case we use Organic Cane Ethanol.
- Blending your biomass and mercury together to make sure that almost all of the surface area of the plant matter is in contact with the mercury (organic cane ethanol in my case)
- Leaving this mixture of mercury and biomass in a glass jar in the dark in an incubator from the waxing moon in that plant’s sign to the waning moon.
- Incinerate & Calcine spent plant matter
- Dissolve the now close-to-white ash in boiling water to leach the minerals
- Filter ash from mineral water
- Evaporate the dissolved mineral water to create the crude mineral matrix
- Scrape mineral matrix off evaporation dish. Calcine.
- Repeat Steps 6-9 until pure white mineral is obtained (solve et coagula)
- Saturate diH2O with purified mineral matrix & crystallize
- Recombine Purified Mineral Matrix (Salt of Salt) and Tincture and incubate at 40°c
In creating a tincture of this philosophical magnitude Paracelsus knew that he was bridging the world of above, middle and below, and that our bodily systems were influenced by the stars and the underworld, and that we operated as a reflection since we are a microcosm of the universe.
When separating a plant into its Tria Prima, we are seeking to destroy impurities through the great flame and many cycles of distillation & filtration, and returning those parts together once they are whole and pure. The philosophical impact this has on a person when working with Spagyric Grade Pharmacopeia is much more life-changing because it is touching on the three planes of existence.
When we undergo a traumatic experience we are divided into our own Tria Prima. This event grants us the opportunity to grow, heal and purify our impurities. This is why working with more than just the physical plane heals us, and generations before and after us.
The Four Pillars of Spagyric Medicine
Paracelsus states that there are four pillars to crafting Spagyric Medicine, Physick, Astronomy, Alchemy, and Virtue:
- Physick: The physical; the human anatomy and its correspondences within itself are studied and understood fully.
- Astronomy: The Celestial; the luminaries in the Heavens have a direct relationship with the terrestrial bodies below. These relationships are understood and applied. (IAU style Sidereal Astrology)
- Alchemy: Solve et Coagula; the foundation of the Spagyric Medicine-making process. The practitioner should have a firm grasp on the Alchemical Arts and Sciences.
- Virtue: The most important pillar of all that leads the othe three; the desire and goal to help others above the want for notoriety, profit or convenience. Love, above all else, will guide the practitioner through this process.
5 Causes of Energetic Imbalance
Paracelsus also states that there are only five reasons a person would fall ill: Ens Astrale, Ens Naturale, Ens Veneni, Ens Spirituale, Ens Dei.
- Ens Astrale: Someone is living a life misaligned to their stars as guides. This will have effect on your thoughts and mind.
- Ens Naturale: Aging, environmental, constitution; this person's inner and outer environment are not hospitable to health.
- Ens Veneni: toxins; poisons from food or drink or sugar can affect the inner and outer terrain of a being.
- Ens Spirituale: Unseen forces or malevolent spirits or entities (djinn, demons, parasites, etc.); this can manifest in many ways such as hormone imbalance, diabetes, endocrine imbalances, etc.
- Ens Dei: A disconnect from God and His good plan for you since birth; this person is not following their joy or passion in life, or living up to their sacred name. Ens Dei can manifest as someone not knowing who they are and becoming misled easily or misleading others.
Conclusion
Like I said, there is so much to cover (topics I couldn't fit here if I wanted to), but in essence in Spagyric Medicine we seek the quintessence; the final form; the purity after the breaking down. When working with whole medicine as a tool and resource, and not just its broken parts, we remember that we had the answer and solution inside of us the entire time.
No one needs any form of specialized spiritual medicine, but it certainly helps as a guide and a reminding tool that we ourselves are born whole and can revisit wholeness once more with effort and hard labor put forth. We are already equipped with the magic inside of us to heal, but the illusion of powers that be have convinced many that we need x, y, and z to be whole.
As I do in all classes, I am reminding you that your intuition is the lighthouse within, and that you are both the lock & key.
If you have ever been curious about beginning your trek on the green path check out the upcoming classes I have here!
https://www.sevendreams.co/
