Arcanum (esoteric)

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The arcanum or great arcanum (derived from the Latin arcanum = secret; not to be confused with the 22-part tarot card set major arcana ) denotes a term from alchemy in the esoteric context . Authors such as Jakob Böhme and Paracelsus have used it variously in their writings, and Emanuel Swedenborg has used it as the title of his main work.

Definition

Little is known about its precise meaning. According to its nature, the arcanum was evidently a component or overall name of a secret doctrine . Theoretically, the term can have two different meanings, namely on the one hand that of a very specific thing to which it refers, but which is secret, and on the other hand that of a less precise linguistic use in the sense of 'secret' (Latin: arcanum ), although it can be related to different things, which are, however, in a more or less specific context (processes, connections), which is itself considered " hermetic ". The first case would have presupposed precise knowledge, the second only a general presumption of meaning. The few surviving indirect sources are mentions in the writings of historically known personalities who were at least temporally close to the alchemists, although it is not known how immediate their access to certain Hermetic teachings really was. These indirect sources used the term in different contexts that can only be approximated to one another. According to this use, the former possibility that the term referred to a very specific context would be excluded. However, this is not mandatory, so that the meaning often claimed in esotericism in the sense of a general mystery and secret doctrine or a preparation whose components were not disclosed and which, among other things, served to produce the " Philosopher's Stone " or the term in general denoted the hidden forces of nature, cannot be ruled out. The indirect sources that can be shown to refer to the term 'Arcanum' do not confirm this.

Proven use of the term

  • The doctor Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus (1493–1541) was also an alchemist himself. He used the term medical in the sense of a correct dosage of a preparation to determine the transition from the medicinal effect to the poison. This determination was also important for him for the correct dosage of the constituents of human blood, especially in connection with his very precise recipe for the production of artificial people in the retort, the so-called homunculi .
  • The so-called ' Philosophus Teutonicus ' Jakob Böhme (1575–1624) used the term several times in his theosophical letters in the sense of a secret procedure and the associated secret knowledge that would only be revealed to the people who were designated for it.
  • The French philosopher Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) used the term in a falsifying sense, referring to the English mystic Robert Fludd (1574–1637), rejecting his claim (as well as the one put forward by other alchemists) in his work Epistolica Exercitatio , who speak of mysteria der religio as well as of the arcanum , describing it as it were with the means of religion.
  • The well-known mystic of the 18th century, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) called his main work Arcana Coelestia (German: "Heavenly Secrets"). It is about the fundamental knowledge that like comes to like - good to good and bad to bad.
  • Adam Friedrich Böhme (editor of a book from 1782) used the term to designate a 'human core': a strange “ Arcanum medicinale ” was placed in the human being , which distinguishes it “among all Animalibus”.

Indirect reference

In order to give at least an approximate idea of ​​the framework in which the term had an otherwise possible general meaning, in addition to the meaning given by Jacob Böhme and his later namesake (namely as a central human ingredient - see also the following quotations), the Reference to Robert Fludd serve to suggest a use of the term in connection with the Homunculus recipe, since this played an important role not only with Paracelsus, but also with Fludd, in this case primarily in connection with his cosmological philosophy, in which he connected man as a principle with the whole universe. This cosmology is reminiscent of other representations of the so-called ' anima mundi ' (world soul) in the pictorial representation carried out by Fludd . This, in turn, could give an indication of the larger general context in which the Arcanum term was understood by Swedenborg. The latter represented a very similar philosophy, which in turn contains important elements of the Neoplatonic philosophy, especially in Plotinus .

According to Boehme's hints, the term also had the general meaning of a secret spiritual teaching accessible only to the specially initiated, which was either passed on directly or considered one's own search because of the associated effort for an effective means of gaining knowledge ("The path is the goal" ). For the alchemists, according to their understanding of transmutation, this search was at least indirectly to be equated with the search for the “philosopher's stone”. It is widely believed that this search was less about converting worthless metals into gold and more about self-knowledge and self-improvement. A continuous theme was obviously the unity of man and the cosmos, which the practicing alchemists connected with the search for a higher self-identity. The tradition that they worked with crucibles and retorts in the laboratory does not necessarily mean that they worked in the same way as today's chemists. While Böhme only used the term mystically and theosophically (people-thematic, Rudolf Steiner would say: " anthroposophical "), Paracelsus referred it to medical and magical formulas in a very similar sense. Fludd, on the other hand, placed similar recipes in a cosmological context and passed the baton on to Swedenborg - albeit only to that extent - who made the connection with the general Neoplatonic philosophy perceptible. The common theme for all was that which presented itself as the deeper secret of human nature and especially of human beings in relation to their insertion or reflection in the cosmos. According to some alchemists, whoever knew this secret of the recipe of his essence, was also able to artificially produce a person, as is at least guaranteed by Paracelsus.

Use of the term in Paracelsus, Böhme, Fludd and Swedenborg

Paracelsus

Paracelsus made the term "arcanum" a fixed term in drug theory: "Arcana" are for him the "virtutes" (healing powers) recognized by the wise doctor and philosopher, the "forma" of the material world, medicinal plants and healing minerals, among others can be entered and which are able to express themselves through the "signature" . These “arcana” could not only heal the body but also the mind of the patient. Paracelsus also called "arcana" but also individual compound, especially chemical remedies, the composition of which was kept secret.

Paracelsus gives a possible clue for understanding the Arcanum topic, who on the one hand understood it as the correct dosage to differentiate between poison and remedy: “If a thing is also a poison, it can be brought into the form of a non-poisonous thing [...] glow (Arsenic) with sale nitri (saltpeter), then it is no longer a poison. […] I separate what is not an arcanum from what is an arcanum and I give the right dose of the arcanum ”. On the other hand, Paracelsus' topic is particularly relevant to the composition of the blood in his Homunculus formulation. Here there seems to be a certain overlap of the inner and outer search: the search for the inner self and the creation of an artificial person experience a thematic overlap. The production of a homunculus, which later became so well known through Goethe's Faust II , can actually - explicitly - be demonstrated for the first time in Paracelsus, who still referred to himself as an alchemist, although he no longer felt bound by their hermetic closure, but entirely on the contrary, it left an extremely extensive body of literature. But it is precisely this that makes him a valuable transitional witness, as he was still close to the tradition in question.

For Paracelsus, the arcanum was not expressly but synonymously with the hidden forces of nature, which were only accessible to the systematic seeker. Connected with this was the Homunculus principle, which corresponded to the core of an animated living being that could be grown into an artificial or completely natural person with the help of certain alchemical formulas in the retort. He announced the recipe in his text De natura rerum (1538), according to which the ingredients included urine, sperm and blood, from which a human being was to emerge within a period of about 40 days. What then stirs is "like a person, but transparent". For 40 days this being had to be nourished with the arcanum of human blood at constant heat, and ultimately a human child would arise, but much smaller than a naturally born child.

It is controversial to what extent this recipe was based on previous alchemical tradition, but there are several indirect indications that at least the homunculus practices as such were a basic element of alchemy. The sometimes rumored contrary assertion that the alchemists only allegorically engaged in the production of homunculi can at least as little be proven and would also be rather improbable as long as the tradition of their practical laboratory methods is retained.

Jakob Boehme

For the already mentioned ' Philosophus teutonicus ' Jakob Böhme, the human being as a mirror of the cosmos and his self-discovery, guided in this sense, was the actually central theme of his philosophy, and especially in the instruction of how he had to accomplish this and what the result was for When it came into being, the 'great arcanum' lay with him: “Because the book, since all secrecy lies within, is man himself. He himself is the book of the essence of all beings, while he is the equality of the divinity. The great arcanum lies in him. Only the revelation belongs to the spirit of God. ”With this reference, Böhme repeatedly states that if man is content to seek the truth in the phenomenal world alone without deeper exploration, he will find it in it as little as himself. Because, as Goethe later said, man only knows himself by knowing the world - and vice versa. Böhme: “In the whole course of his time in this world a person from his mother's womb cannot take for himself anything that is more useful and necessary to him than this, that he learns to recognize himself correctly: 1) what he is; 2) from what or by whom ?; 3) what he was created for; 4) what his office is [...] ”. If the human being leaves it only to be tied to the outside world, then "he walks back and forth in creation and looks at it like the cow at a new stable door and never looks at himself, not what he is". As far as it can be inferred from the quotation above, this sheds significant light on his understanding of the Arcanum: For Böhme, man, the world and nature were basically one thing: his self-knowledge corresponds to the perspective of a hologram tablet , in which one does not only see a partial section , but sees the whole world, albeit perhaps a little unclear. That in turn may have influenced Leibniz's doctrine of monads .

Böhme used the term 'seal of God' synonymously in his letter 28: “The seal of God lies in the fact that its true reason is to remain silent in the event of perpetual punishment - let one know for sure that it will not be misused. There is also no power to recognize it, unless someone knows by himself what he is looking for in it. Science is of no avail, let one hand the tincture into the other; otherwise he would not like to prepare it, he would certainly be in the new birth [...] Everyone has to look for it himself. It is not appropriate to break God's seal, because there is a fiery mountain in front of it, so I am appalled and have to wait to see if it is God's will. How did I want to teach others about it in detail? "

The human being as a microcosm
Production of the homunculus in the alchemist's laboratory

Robert Fludd

A contemporary of Boehmes who was very similar in spirit to him was the English mystic Robert Fludd, who in his main work: Utriusque cosmi maioris scilicet et minoris Metaphysica, physica atque technica Historia with constant reference to the forefather of alchemy, Hermes Trismegistos , his doctrine of the connection between macro and Microcosm, whereby the macrocosm meant the entire universe and the microcosm meant the human being. Associated with this was a special number mysticism in the Pythagorean tradition, to which Kepler also referred - but in a more mathematical method, which he criticized Fludd. For Fludd, too, man was a reflection of the cosmos, which he u. a. in clear illustrations that have a striking resemblance to pictorial representations of the so-called anima mundi. This principle, also known as the 'world soul', goes back to Plato and describes, at least in analogy, the holistic connection of the cosmos with earthly living beings and especially humans. As already mentioned, Fludd also dealt with recipes for the production of homunculi.

Emanuel Swedenborg

This doctrine also had an effect on Swedenborg, who also proceeded from a kind of human principle that existed in the universe as an archetype even before the emergence of humans and only found its highest expression in him. For Swedenborg, too, who exerted a great influence on Goethe, man and the universe were basically one thing: “That the entire heaven represents one man and therefore is called the great man, and that everything and everything about man, both external and internal, is that Corresponding to people or angels is a secret not yet known in the world. ”Significantly, this is part of the Neoplatonic tradition, to which the so-called German idealists also later saw themselves obliged, and can already be found in Plotinus in his work Der Geistige Kosmos : "Since we assert that this all exists, as it were, according to the pattern of that, so in that realm the all must be a living being [...]". All of this corresponds to the basic conviction that there was a kind of human principle in the universe from the beginning, which was only completed later in humans. If that were correct, then it would be obvious to start with human germs that are perhaps anchored in human genes, but above all that lead to their manifestation.

literature

  • CG Jung: Studies on Alchemical Concepts . Olten Verlag (Collected Works, Vol. 13), Homberg 1978, ISBN 3-530-40713-5 .
  • Jacob Böhme: Theosophical letters . Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1996, ISBN 3-458-33486-6 .
  • Jacob Böhme: De tribus principiis . (Description of Drey's Divine Being), 1619.
  • Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer : Paracelsus. Novel trilogy . Orion Heimreiter Verlag, Heusenstamm 1979, ISBN 3-87588-112-5 .
  • Ernst Kaiser: Paracelsus . (Rowohlt monograph), Reinbek 1969.
  • Gerhard Wehr : Jakob Böhme. (Rowohlt monograph), Reinbek 1971.
  • Emanuel Swedenborg: Of soul, mind and body . Swedenborg-Verlag, Zurich 1956, ISBN 3-85927-032-X .
  • Emanuel Swedenborg: The earth bodies in space . Swedenborg-Verlag, Zurich 1983, ISBN 3-85927-036-2 .
  • Plotinus: The spiritual cosmos (mundus intelligibilis) .

About making art people:

  • Paracelsus: De natura rerum . Reprinted in: Klaus Völker (Hrsg.): Artificial people . Fantastic library, Suhrkamp.
  • W. Somerset Maugham: The Magician . Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 2007, ISBN 3-257-20165-6 .
  • Gustav Meyrinck: The Golem . Kurt Wolff Verlag, Leipzig 1915.
  • Mary Shelley: Frankenstein . Anaconda Verlag, Cologne 2009, ISBN 3-86647-376-1 .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. s. Alexander von Bernus : The Secret of the Adepts. Information about the Magisterium of Alchemy, the preparation of the major arcana and the way to the lapis philosophorum ., Hartmann Esoterischer Verlag, Bürstadt 2003, ISBN 3-932928-23-7
  2. ^ CG Jung: Studies on Alchemical Concepts .
  3. Hans-Werner Schütt : In Search of the Philosopher's Stone, ISBN 978-3-406-46638-0 , page 375: "For the occidental alchemists, nature revealed itself as self-identity."
  4. ^ Nine books of Archidoxis (1525/26). Liber Quintus. De arcanis . Huser edition. Part 6, Basel 1590, pp. 42-55 --- Sudhoff edition. 1. Department, Volume 3, Munich & Berlin 1930, pp. 138–152
  5. Guido Jüttner. Arcanum . In: Lexikon des Mittelalters, Artemis & Winkler, Munich and Zurich 1980, column 895
  6. ^ Charles Burnet. Arcanum, arcanum . In: Claus Priesner and Karin Figala (Eds.) Alchemie. Lexicon of a Hermetic Science. Beck, Munich 1998, pp. 61-62
  7. Wolf-Dieter Müller-Jahncke . Paracelsus . In: Claus Priesner and Karin Figala (Eds.) Alchemie. Lexicon of a Hermetic Science. Beck, Munich 1998, pp. 267-270
  8. Paracelsus: De natura rerum . Reprinted in: Klaus Völker: Afterword . In: Klaus Völker (Ed.): Artificial people . Fantastic Library, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1994, ISBN 3-518-38793-6 .
  9. Paracelsus: De natura rerum .
  10. Jakob Böhme: Theosophical Sendbriefe XX, 3 (October 17, 1621).
  11. Jakob Böhme: De tribus prinzipiis ("Description of the three principles of divine nature").
  12. Jacob Böhme: Letter 20
  13. Jakob Böhme: Letter 28/12 and 14.
  14. Emanuel Swedenborg: The earth bodies in space. From the earth's body or planet Mercury . Swedenborg Publishing House.
  15. Plotinus: The spiritual cosmos ( mundus intelligibilis ).

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