Page:Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus Vol I (IA cu31924092287121).djvu/143

 understand this process. But there are many kinds of putrefaction, and one produces its generation better than another, one more quickly than another. We have also said that what is moist and warm constitutes the first grade and the beginning of putrefaction, which procreates all things as a hen procreates her eggs. Wherefore by and in putrefaction everything becomes mucilaginous phlegm and living matter, whatever it eventually turns out to be. You see an example in eggs, wherein is mucilaginous moisture, which by continuous heat putrefies and is quickened into the living chicken, not only by the heat which comes from the hen, but by any similar heat. For by such a degree of heat eggs can be brought to maturity in glass, and by the heat of ashes, so that they become living birds. Any man, too, can bring the egg to maturity under his own arm and procreate the chicken as well as the hen. And here something more is to be noticed. If the living bird be burned to dust and ashes in a sealed cucurbite with the third degree of fire, and then, still shut up, be putrefied with the highest degree of putrefaction in a venter equinus so as to become a mucilaginous phlegm, then that phlegm can again be brought to maturity, and so, renovated and restored, can become a living bird, provided the phlegm be once more enclosed in its jar or receptacle. This is to revive the dead by regeneration and clarification, which is indeed a great and profound miracle of Nature. By this process all birds can be killed and again made to live, to be renovated and restored. This is the very greatest and highest miracle and mystery of God, which God has disclosed to mortal man. For you must know that in this way men can be generated without natural father and mother; that is to say, not in the natural way from the woman, but by the art and industry of a skilled Spagyrist a man can be born and grow, as will hereafter be described.

It is also possible to Nature that men should be born from animals, and this result has natural causes, but still it cannot be produced without heresy and impiety. If a man have connection with an animal, and that animal, like a woman, receives the seed of the man with appetite and lust into its womb, and shuts it up there, then the seed necessarily putrefies, and, through the continuous heat of the body, a man, and not an animal, is born from it. For always, whatever seed is sown, such a fruit is produced from it. If this were not so it would be against the light of Nature and contrary to philosophy. Whatever the seed is, such is the herb which springs from it. From the seed of an onion an onion springs up, not a rose, a nut, or a lettuce. So, too, from corn comes corn; from barley, barley; from oats, oats. Thus it is, too, with all other fruits which have seeds and are sown.

In like manner, it is possible, and not contrary to Nature, that from a woman and a man an irrational animal should be born. Neither on this account should the same judgment be passed on a woman as on a man, that is, she should not on this account be deemed heretical, as if she had acted contrary to Nature; but the result must be assigned to imagination. Imagination is very frequently the cause of this: and the imagination of a pregnant