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 wordCorpus is not confined to tangible flesh in the death account.
- In the workBook Eight begins its human separation at death.
- In this editionNote 74 explains the local equivalence of sacramental, sidereal, and heavenly, and warns that the internal Cabalia reference is not a bibliographically secured surviving title.
- A place to read“corpora duo”
Meaning
Corpus is not confined to tangible flesh in the death account. The author distinguishes two bodies, heavenly and earthly, and glosses them as sacramental and elemental. Sacramentale, sydereum, and coeleste characterize the subtle body in this passage; elementale describes the body that decays. These are local identifications within a historical cosmology, not a licence to equate every use of “spirit,” “soul,” or “sacrament” elsewhere.
Use in the book
Book Eight begins its human separation at death. One body flies upward like an eagle while the other falls earthward like lead. The image supplies contrasting trajectories before the next paragraph gives their properties. The elemental body rots, becomes a corpse, and remains buried. The sacramental body neither rots nor is buried, occupies no place, and is nevertheless said to appear to people after death. The text derives ghosts, visions, and supernatural apparitions from this body and connects the ancient magi’s cabalistic art with it.
This account is followed by a threefold separation of body, soul, and spirit. The transition should be preserved rather than flattened into one modern diagram. The author first distinguishes two bodies and then three substances; their categories overlap in vocabulary but are not simply the same list. Each of the three tends to a different original repository.
At the book’s conclusion, elemental things and sacramental creatures again have different destinies. Both return to first matter, but the elemental return is associated with unconsumed torment and the sacramental return with glorification and joy. This contrast gives the earlier body distinction an eschatological horizon. The apparitions and post-mortem properties remain the text’s theological claims, not verified descriptions of the dead.
Places to read
- Book 8 · Separation · Passage 7Latin“corpora duo” The account starts with two bodies.
- Book 8 · Separation · Passage 8Latin“locum nullum occupat” The subtle body is assigned nonspatial and apparition-producing properties.
- Book 8 · Separation · Passage 9Latin“tres substantiae” The next division is threefold, not a repetition of the first.
- Book 8 · Separation · Passage 44Latin“sacramentales creaturae” The closing destiny returns to the distinction.
Translation in this edition
Note 74 explains the local equivalence of sacramental, sidereal, and heavenly, and warns that the internal Cabalia reference is not a bibliographically secured surviving title. “Occupies no place” translates the source’s explicit claim.