From the book
Nine Books on the Nature of Things
Attributed to Paracelsus · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordAnimalis homo is a theological and philosophical category contrasted with the wise person, not a biological claim that some people are less human.
- In the workThe argument begins by conceding that an objection has force: one may say that stars have no power to compel anyone.
- In this editionNote 94 explains the category without dehumanizing its subjects.
- A place to read“virum sapientem dominari Astris posse”
Meaning
Animalis homo is a theological and philosophical category contrasted with the wise person, not a biological claim that some people are less human. It denotes a person who neither knows nor employs the powers attributed to the microcosm and therefore remains subject to stars. Sapiens names the person able to exercise wisdom and resist that subjection. The distinction structures the source’s answer to an objection against astral compulsion.
Use in the book
The argument begins by conceding that an objection has force: one may say that stars have no power to compel anyone. The response qualifies the claim rather than simply denying it. Stars compel one kind of person but obey another. The wise person can rule them; the animal person follows their leading through failure of self-knowledge. The internal firmament and microcosmic powers supply the proposed ground of human agency.
A miner changing employers illustrates escape from an oppressive planetary condition. Someone called a child of Saturn can become a child of the Sun; conversely, a person can leave a benign condition for a harmful one. The lengthy examples of waste, gambling, and poverty moralize this reversal. They belong to the text’s social and ethical rhetoric, not a neutral causal account of poverty.
The source then insists that wisdom learns from another’s loss rather than one’s own repeated mistakes. It ends with hunters, fishers, and fowlers whose wisdom and assisting star are said to draw creatures to them. These extraordinary claims show that freedom is not described as simple independence from all astral aid. The wise agent overcomes one astral relation with another while exercising the power the text attributes to human nature.
Places to read
- Book 9 · Signature · Passage 17Latin“virum sapientem dominari Astris posse” Wisdom is assigned authority over stars.
- Book 9 · Signature · Passage 18Latin“soboles Solis fiat” Planetary affiliation is presented as changeable.
- Book 9 · Signature · Passage 19Latin“benigno sese planetae subducere” The reverse change can also occur.
- Book 9 · Signature · Passage 20Latin“ab alieno exemplo sapit” Learning from another’s example defines wisdom in the polemic.
Translation in this edition
Note 94 explains the category without dehumanizing its subjects. The translation’s “animal person” should be read with the local opposition to wisdom, not as a modern psychological or zoological classification.