The Strange Tale of Paracelsus The Alchemist

Paracelsus—born a white Caucasian European (but not necessarily Christian) male on September 24,1493 in Egg an der Sihl, a village close to the Etzel Pass in Einsiedeln, Schwyz—had actually been named “Theophrastus von Hohenheim” (or, of course—and much more to his liking—Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim) and, as history somewhat recorded, later became known as a Swiss physician, an alchemist, a lay theologian, a geologist, a lens-maker, an early theosophist, a numerologist, a geometrician, a late-in-the-latter’s-life follower of Leonardo da Vinci, and of course, above all, a philosopher . . . not just of any Renaissance period, but during in the German Renaissance, notable for its introduction of advanced mechanics and, though little was known about them, The “Abraxas School”: A little-known group of Pythagorean scholars and mathematicians in Germany in the late 1500s who, like the Kelara School before them in India, had identified the “infinite series”—one of the most basic components of calculus itself, two hundred years before Newton—around the time Paracelsus had reached the height of his powers as an Alchemist. The word is “Abraxas” could be found in Gnostic texts such as the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit, and had also appeared in the Greek Magical Papyri.

With Philip Paracelsus’s help—after his greatest triumph as an Alchemist, the surprise (and accidental) invention of the Philosopher’s Stone during his short-lived career as a Freemason in 1547, the Abraxas School grew in size, and Philip soon renamed it “The Sacred Abraxian Order of the Mitre and Compass.” With his help, the Order soon gave the Germans an entirely different form of “Differentiation” and “Integration”—both more useful than their Newtonian and Leibniz-inspired counterparts—the secrets of which were lost to history when the Order was attacked—and forcibly disbanded—by a then-thought-long-lost sect of the Knights Templar ( a sect known as “Protectors of the Astrolabe,” though it wasn’t known why; it had only been rumored that Paracelsus had stolen whatever “the Astrolabe” truly was in 1541, and the attack upon the Order had been an attempt to reclaim it), as besides, some of the Order’s practices (as a “secret society” within German Masonic lore) were rumored to be highly pagan, prefiguring—it is still rumored—some of the exploits of Aleister Crowley and Alan Parsons in their (much later) attempts to conjure up the Whore of Babylon, or “Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Prostitutes and Abominations of the Earth.”

As stated, as the unsung inventor of, among other things, the actual Philosopher’s Stone—in an alchemical process he perfected at age 37—“Philip” (for short) lived a vert long time. Was still alive in 1999, in fact. He became “immortal” (and “impermeable”) at the age of 55, during the year 1547, during his time with the Abraxas School. The “terms” of his immortality, as granted by the Stone were then—and still were, today—fairly vast: He could not die of old age or natural causes; he could not die of sickness or disease; he could not die via poisoning, nor through any means of physical violence against him (he would simply heal—and rapidly); and not through any means, really, save for one: Beheading (because the Stone’s vapors worked on the areas of the brain responsible for controlling many different processes . . . but still, they were areas of the brain). He would stay this way, theoretically, until the end of time itself, or the end of Earth or whatever future planet he occupied, whichever came first.

In 1605, he helped Miguel de Cervantes edit an early draft of the novel that would become Don Quixote. Sensing that it was indeed a new world to be discovered (and mastered, if possible)—and about time for one, too!—he immigrated to America in 1605, helping to establish the first colony there: Jamestown, Virginia. He was there when Pocahontas saved John Smith’s life, and became friends with Chief Powhatan himself (their language was easy enough for his genius-level intellect to decipher and translate to and from in his head). He was also there when Smith discovered and mapped out what would become New England, in 1614, and fell in love with Maine’s scenery, climate, and—at the time—its isolation. He had adored the journey they had taken from the towering cliffs of Penobscot, in and out of the islands that formed a kind of barrier reef, to the sandy shores of Cape Cod and the Massachusetts coast that reminded Smith of Devon. It was a perfect place for Paracelsus to settle and conduct his experiments . . . out of sight, out of mind, or so he thought. There, he declared, in Maine, would he make his home—for now, but hopefully, forever, for he did love it so.

A dozen years or so before, there had been born a West Countryman to whom the actual colonization of New England owed much more—indeed probably owed more than to any other man—other than Paracelsus, or “Sir Philip,” as Smith had been fond of calling him. This man, who worked with Paracelsus—unknowing of his occult origins or his immortality—was Sir Ferdinando Gorges, to whom Paracelsus later became attending physician. Gorgess came of ancient Somerset stock, connected to both the Queen of England and the Howards and therefore, a court family. Being a younger son, he inherited little and went off to the wars in Flanders.

In the 1590’s Gorges served under Essex in Normandy, and in after year . . . used often to tell how Henry of Navarre—though in reality, it was Paracelsus who—carried him wounded from some breach or other. Certainly Henry and Paracelsus had a high opinion of Gorges and the latter wrote—disguising his identity as Henry’s—to recommend him to the Queen for promotion: “[he] hath gained very great reputation for his valour and conduct in war.” The Queen responded with the command of the fort at Plymouth and its Rock: he was the first there in the citadel looking out over the Barbican and Cattewater where the ships came and went for America. With Paracelsus by his side.

Before the Queen died, Paracelsus had already taken upon himself exploratory voyages to the American coast, to both Virginia and North Virginia. All this time, and all through the war, the West Country fishermen were going there regularly—and in increasing numbers—flocking to the Newfoundland fishery, which Paracelsus founded as a source of income in order to further conduct his experiments. He discovered lightning and electricity and its properties years before Ben Franklin, and centuries before James Clerk Maxwell, using the calculus he had helped create while at the Abraxas Order.

But the New England fishery, several hundred miles farther on, was yet to be discovered. However, in 1602, Captains Gosnold and Gilbert set sail from Falmouth for the New England coast, with the intention of leaving a plantation there. Paracelsus went with them. They were much impressed by his feats of “witchcraft” on the voyage, though of course, once they landed, each had to swear the other two to secrecy about what they had witnessed . . . including Paracelsus’ experiments with electric eels. The climate—in summer “as healthful a climate,” with “not a man sick two days together in all our voyage” (thanks to the medicine of Paracelsus, of course). It was Paracelsus idea to name Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Elizabeth’s Isle, the names of which stuck, but were accredited—publicly—to Gilbert and Gosnold. They nosed up one main river that “may haply become good harbours and conduct us to the hopes men so greedily do thirst after,” i.e., a Northwest Passage, while Paracelsus explored the other river that together, made with the Northwest Passage a pair. A report of the voyage was made to Raleigh, whose rights in regard to American colonization were at this time still in force. Paracelsus connection to them—and his identity as a “wonder worker”—were not revealed. Gosnold and Gilbert kept their promise to keep his name secret and out of the history books. He did this not out of any lack of vanity (for Paracelsus had never lacked in that department), but rather, because he sensed the climate there—socially—to be none to habitable for a man of his repute either here, or in Germany. Indeed, later, he would barely escape the pyre during the Salem Witch trials . . . but more on that later.

There is attributes to Sir Ferdinando a quote that had actually been written by Paracelsus himself:  “After I had those people sometime in my custody I observed in them an inclination to follow the example of the better sort, and in all their carriages manifest shows of great civility far from the rudeness of our common people.” (Remember, this is some ten years before the visit of Pocahontas.) “And the longer I conversed with them the better hope they gave me of those parts where they did inhabit, as proper for our uses, especially when I found what goodly rivers, stately islands and safe harbours those parts abounded with, being the special marks I leveled at as the only want our nation met with in all their navigations along that coast. And having kept them full three years, I made them able to set me down what great rivers ran up into the land, what men of note were seated on them, what power they were of, how allied, what enemies they had, and the like of which in his proper place.” In other words, Paracelsus became a shadowy, behind-the-scenes leader of the New England People, and only later did he have some dealings with one individual who became fascinated by him: Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose short story Young Goodman Brown told of but one of many of Paracelsus’ mystic orgies, which he presided over in order to “charge” the land with magical current (or “tangential” energy, as he called it, similar to but separate from Amperes or Voltage—which, unlike as are credited to their “discoverers,” actually came from Paracelsus himself, having named them both after pupils of his back at the Abraxas Order). Hawthorne, in 1605, helped preside over this orgy, and only later in his long life (Paracelsus had, in thanks for his help in keeping the New Order a secret, granted immortality to Hawthorne through the powers of the Philosopher’s Stone in 1605, and Hawthrtorne, thereafter, felt that he “owed” Paracelsus a favor; Hawthorne himself though did not “spring whole and untethered into history” with his writing—to quote the Occult Historian William Blake, born in 1757—until the year 1835, with the publication of Young Goodman Brown).

In1606, two companies got together: The London and the Plymouth companies. They undertook American plantation in the south and in the north, without a complete separation between each other’s areas and with intermingled rights and claims. Support for the Western company came as much from Bristol as from Plymouth, and here Gorges found common meeting-ground with his Somerset neighbor, Lord Chief Justice Popham, who had been recorder of Bristol. (Though secretly, all had met with Paracelsus to get his “sacred approval,” as by that time, all these men had become—secretly—disciples of his. It seemed he was carrying on the tradition of—and possibly the re-establishment of—the Masonic Abraxas Order, here in America.) The idea of a public plantation, instead of a series of individual enterprises, was Popham’s in public (though Paracelsus’s in private) and that it was his (Popham’s, and privately, Paracelsus’s) influence that got the Virginia charter, combining London and West Country interests.

Gorges, Popham, Hanham, and Pring too were all followers—though not necessarily disciples—of Paracelsus, as well. In fact it was through secret agreement with Paracelsus that in 1692—the unfortunately, wildly out of control by 1693—witch burnings became a reality, though not for the reasons that “ordinary” history records. Rather, it was because Paracelsus wanted an “Explicit Purge” of all those who would “betray and destroy” his New Order of Abraxas (via disloyalty or the sharing of its Masonic secrets) . . . though for the public’s sake (and their limited understanding), the widely-stated reasons for the Burning Times were purely religious in nature. Paracelsus sheltered as many students of the New Order as he could . . . But the Witchfinder General became merciless, thoughtless, and took on a significance of his own which he liked. To boot, Paracelsus himself perhaps grew careless in his rush to secure the Order from the General, for in 1693—the last year of the burnings—he came close to being put to the Pyre himself, and had only been saved by the intervention of, of all people, Hawthorne, still himself a very minor and unremarkable—and at that point unrecorded—figure in history’s pages (again, with reference to Blake, he would not become “notable” to “Ordinary History ,” as he called it, until much later). It was because of Hawthorne’s “piety” and selflessness in the rescue of the Witchfinder General Himself from a vengeful coven of—actually, very, very rare instance of—actual “Satanic” witches that Paracelsus survived. (The “Satanic” Witches were all caught and, unfortunately, executed, and since they were the last of their bloodline in America, thus ended the only American “Vherbenalistic” School of Witchery.) Paracelsus himself traveled South, fleeing the Witchfinder General’s men using secret forest paths that only he and his most dedicated students knew of, and together, they escaped southward, into Connecticut and Rhode Island, never to be seen in Maine—or Massachusetts—ever again.

Most of the True Witches (or “True Practitioners of the Artful Craft of Mysticism and Magick,” as Paracelsus dubbed them) were simply herbalists and minimalists who had learned at his feet, as well as had learned from him the folklore of Germany—soon to become American folklore due to their underground influence—and some even learning his teachings of Alchemy and later, after the New Order of Abraxas died out—disappointing Paracelsus greatly—did they spread those secrets, firstly and fore mostly to the few but vibrant followers of the Ancient Rite of Scottish Masonry who were at the time present in America, even then. Paracelsus traveled widely after that, establishing the small city of Winter River, Connecticut, in 1729.

He would live there—and was widely known for having “exorcised the Legions of Demons of that land,” including two demons, one named “Betelgeuse” and another a Sumerian being known as “Gozer”—for another 180 years. But other than that, he kept mostly to himself and continued to—in the greatest of secrecy, citing a newfound cautious streak in him—teach his secrets to his pupils. Secrets which by this time included the (provable) existence of the “Luminiferous Aether,” later known to early twentieth century physicists, and to modern quantum mechanics as the idea of “the vacuum.” Since most of the citizens of Winter River, Connecticut, were his followers (left over students from the by-then fallen New Order of Abraxas back in Massachusetts), they quickly established the “Secret Church of the Way of Saint Abraxas” as a cover for their more pagan, alchemical, and Rosicrucian activities. He left there after that, and settled in Virginia. (And it was Paracelsus’ trip to Europe—under the cover of night and an assumed name—in 1784, that helped lay the groundwork for the “School of Theosophy” of Madam Blavatsky and her contemporaries . . . who later included a young boy who had “renamed himself” Aleister Crowley).

In fact, while in Europe throughout the early 1800s, he came up with a great many inventions. He founded an ongoing enterprise that he named “The Reliquary ” (its successors to bear the numbers 3 through 14, with 2 being omitted because of its Pythagorean implications), the fourth of which would call the outer-reaches of Astoria, Oregon, its home. Its purpose was to collect “Magickal Antiques” and “Magickal Effects and Possessions” but “only after their original owner or infuser’s death had occurred,” to keep them all safe and in one easily-accessible place that Paracelsus   (during the latter part of the 1900’s) could easily get to by plane if he needed a stronghold, or a supply of powerful historical artifacts. But in 1815, he participated in the Battle of Waterloo (via Magically aiming the infamous beheading canon). The Battle of Waterloo, which took place in Belgium on June 18, 1815, marked the final defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte, who conquered much of Europe in the early 19th century. Napoleon rose through the ranks of the French army during the French Revolution, seized control of the French government in 1799 and became emperor in 1804. Through a series of wars, he expanded his empire across western and central Europe. The Battle of Waterloo, in which Napoleon’s forces were defeated by the British and Prussians, marked the end of his reign and of France’s domination in Europe. It was Paracelsus who brought about that end, for upon his arrival in Europe in 1784, he had sensed—perhaps psychically—that all was not well with France, or Germany, or England, for that matter. (Not only that, but England herself had just undergone a humiliating defeat by—of all countries!—his beloved United States of America(!), in which they had won their hard-fought independence from England forever. (In fact it had been Paracelsus who had befriended a young Benjamin Franklin and helped him to draft the letter of succession known as “The Declaration of Independence.”) Once finished with his business in England, he immediately journeyed back to the U.S.A. because he knew—he sensed it in his gut—that in his “Second Home Country” (the first always and foremost being Germany), things were rapidly changing, and in a way he did not approve of, either.

He arrived back in America in 1785, at the same time that John Adams, the first American ambassador to Great Britain, has his first meeting with King George III at the Court of St James's. In fact on July 6 of that year, The United States dollar was unanimously chosen as the country's monetary unit, the first time a nation has adopted a decimal currency. It had only been through Paracelsus’ counsel with King George the III that King George had managed to convince Adams of the absolute necessity of a decimal currency. This was, of course, to further Paracelsus’ agenda: If the United States had a decimal currency, then three things would soon be possible: One, the practice of “Infernal Geometry” combined with “Sacred Geometry,” and coated in a thick veneer of Masonry, would get quite a boost by utilizing the new decimal “Metric” measuring system of England. Two, it would be easier to conduct business—and amass a financial fortune—in a country that used the same decimal measuring system for its currency, for it had been upon the decimal measuring system—in its very first incarnation—that had enabled the original Order of Abraxas, in Germany, to create the first (and more advanced even than we have now) version of Calculus (which Paracelsus, in the latter part of the twentieth century, would teach to a handful of students, including Albert Einstein, and later a few eager students in Louisville, Kentucky).

It is prudent to mention Kentucky at this juncture, because of what happened next in that region, in 1912. But firt, a word about the Reliquaries:

The first two Reliquaries in Europe had been so successful (and were now so full of various Magickal or Magically Affected items), that Paracelsus’s students had established a fourth branch here in the U.S., in Astoria, Oregon—Reliquary 5—in 1829 and there it would remain until the late twentieth century, whereupon history would once again swing its pendulum toward the United States, and Reliquary 13 would be built, this time, as mentioned, in South Dakota. But in 1910, Reliquary 5 became compromised by a pair of eager-beaver FBI agents—one consumed with a passion for the occult, the strange, and the abnormal, due to the mysterious disappearance of his sister years earlier; his partner, formerly a consummate virologist, molecular chemist, and forensic scientist—who unintentionally (well, perhaps; beyond simple curiosity, their motives will never be known for even William Blake—long ago made immortal by Paracelsus and appointed his “Biographer”—did not record their names) opened one of the greatest Relics of them all: The Draculian Sarcophagi, in which Vlad Dracula and his legendary Three Brides had been buried after Abraham Van Helsing had—with the help of a young, traveling Abraham Lincoln—destroyed them only twenty-five years before then. This had been during Lincoln’s early days as a “legendary Slayer of Vampires,” as Blake put it (curiously capitalizing the word “Slayer,” as though it were a title to be handed down), before he had settled into a primarily political and hearth-and-home lifestyle . . . gotten married . . . and had a child. Ordinary History recorded that the child had died; in truth, Lincoln had had to slay him, for the Vampires—who had been the true Southern villains behind the American institution of slavery and the puppeteers of the Civil War itself—had unleashed their vengeance upon him. Abraham was at long last laid to rest when a Vampire’s Ghoul—a human from whom Vampires regularly feed, but do not kill—of course assassinated him, that Ghoul being John Wilkes Booth). But after the intrepid FBI agents had opened the Draculian Sarcophagi, the spirits—called specifically “the Eidolons” of Dracula and his brides by Blake, for some unknown reason)—escaped and began splitting in twain, replicating, and seeding a brand new wave of Vampires in a whirlwind streak of violence and death that finally culminated in Kentucky in August of 1912, whereupon Paracelsus teamed up with the “Scoobian Slayer League” (founded by little-known scientist Marvel D.D. “Shags” Tuodope, of the then-young Miskatromyk University, which Paracelsus founded in Louisville shortly before this) led by none other than Woodrow Wilson himself, there during a campaign stop, and marched on the conclave of Vampires assembled in a large cemetery just south of Harrodsburg, Kentucky.

Welcome to the new fight for the Light, ladies and gentlemen. And meet Josef “Misto” Denizen, now in 1999 a professor of theoretical physics and “theoretical engineering” at Miskatromyk University, which sits—or used to sit—right behind to the Speed Scientific Engineering campus at the University of Louisville.