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 wordPraedestinatio is predestination; terminus is an appointed boundary or end.
- In the workThe initial distinction between violent and spontaneous death is clarified through predestination.
- In this editionNote 54 identifies the mustard-seed saying as a paraphrase of Matthew 17:20 and records the irregular personal-reference wording in the Latin.
- A place to read“solus Deus resuscitare potest”
Meaning
Praedestinatio is predestination; terminus is an appointed boundary or end. Book VI links the natural end of a thing with God's will and ordinance. These words define a limit on human restorative power. They are not a timetable given to the practitioner, nor does the text explain a reliable method for identifying an individual's appointed term in advance.
Use in the book
The initial distinction between violent and spontaneous death is clarified through predestination. Whatever nature mortifies according to its predestination can be restored only by God or divine command. What nature consumes, a human cannot restore. The author presents this limit while defending the possibility of restoring what human action has destroyed, and he condemns attempts to exceed ordinary human power as arrogation of God's power.
The next paragraph says a thing dying according to its nature has its term through predestination, as divine will and ordinance decree. It adds that this occurs through various diseases and accidents. Consequently, the contrast is not simply old age versus accident, nor can the violent/spontaneous vocabulary be mechanically mapped onto modern categories of cause of death. The controlling concept is the completion of a natural, divinely ordained term. Against that completed term, the author denies any preservative.
Divine action remains an explicit exception to the limit on ordinary human capability. The mustard-seed faith saying allows the possibility of extraordinary acts when God assists or the requisite faith exists. That is a theological qualification, not a natural procedure. The passage's polemical setting matters: the author fears that hostile false physicians will misrepresent him as usurping divine power. His discrimination is therefore part of the defended position. These limits qualify even the spectacular restoration stories; the appeal to extraordinary faith is not an unrestricted promise that every death can be reversed.
Places to read
- Book 6 · Resuscitation · Passage 1Latin“solus Deus resuscitare potest” Restoration beyond the natural endpoint is reserved to God.
- Book 6 · Resuscitation · Passage 2Latin“ex variis morbis & diversis casibus” Diseases and accidents may fall within the appointed endpoint.
- Book 6 · Resuscitation · Passage 2Latin“consummatum terminum vitae” The completed term is explicitly beyond a preservative.
Translation in this edition
Note 54 identifies the mustard-seed saying as a paraphrase of Matthew 17:20 and records the irregular personal-reference wording in the Latin. “Natural death” is retained but must be read with the text's inclusion of diseases and accidents, rather than silently modernized as nonviolent senescence.