In Aurora Thesaurus, Dorneus is said to have evolved Leonhard Thurneysser’s sketch of a right-size apparatus to distill urine. But even Thurneysser was profoundly influenced by the writings of Paracelsus.
The merging of a man with a chemical tool would only be accepted in the fantastic world of Hieronymus Bosch. But, as an alchemist, I must try to understand why Paracelsus gives the prestigious title of homunculus, or tiny man, only to a tool to distill our liquid waste. And as a researcher, I can not help but notice that the Swiss doctor-alchemist uses the same term in other treaties and with well-hidden meanings.
The man-vessel in the picture on the top, known as an anatomical alembic, belongs to “Aurora Thesaurusque Philosophorum, Theophrasti Paracelsi, Germani Philosophi, & Medici prae cunctis omnibus accuratissimi“, Basel 1577, a treatise alternately attributed to Gerard Dorn and Paracelsus ( through Dorn’s memories of his master).
As an appendix to the book, we can find “Anatomia Corporum ad huc Viventium” that’s to say, the anatomy of living according to Paracelsus, a little treatise, often taken as superstitious, about what today we would define concordances between the shape and dimensions of the vessel and the morphology and size of the patient. This is especially the case with the chapter the anatomical alembic in the picture is tied up, that’s to say, “De Vase Distillatorio ad Urinam”, on the distillatory vessel for urine. The text will be translated from Latin and presented in the article “De Furnace Anatomica”. We will see that Paracelsus ambiguously refers to the anatomical alembic as a homunculus, and we know he adopts the same terms in other treatises to indicate the incarnation of a spirit. Does Paracelsus and Dorneus, for him, mean to indicate the best possible flask size to distill our liquid waste?
To alleviate our disappointment would be enough to think of the importance of this unseemly substance in the production of Lapis Microcosmi. But let’s put aside this “prosaic” possibility for the moment and look for something more fascinating (as if the production of the Magisterium Magnum was not charming enough).
Some interpreted the anatomical alembic as an indication of inner processes, such as a man who uses himself as a metaphoric extractor. The paracelsian doctrine of concordances between vessel and morphology/size of the patient, in “Anatomia Corporum ad huc Viventium”, may imply a knowledge well older than Paracelsus. Going back to the scholar Arabic distillers era, we find ideas that may unite fields now irremediably disconnected. For instance, Ibn-Sīnā/Avicenna developed a comparison with the top of the alembic and the process of applying suction cups, with blood conceived as a vehicle of the spirit of man; and in the upper half of the human body, as an alembic’s cap, was gathered the vaporized spirit of the mixture.
This ancient idea seems to have been an integral part of the so-called popular erudition until a few centuries ago. The eighteenth-century Italian scientist Antonio Vallisneri gathers this lost knowledge in his “Lezione accademica intorno l’origine delle fontane”, or academic lesson on the origin of fountains, 1726, not without having labeled them as superstitions: ” … our elders believed that any steam rising from the center of our body could go wandering everywhere and for every part, from fiber to fiber, from pore to pore and particularly from the lower abdomen ascended to the head, where, in the shape of the alembic, was received and, once stored, it was distilled and like rain fell on the lower parts. But the cautious diligence of modern anatomists, proving the opposite, has denied these lies”. But this thinking is still somewhat distant from the concept we are used to giving to the paracelsian homunculus, in the sense of the creation of a tiny man, which instead fits the world of occult magic (1).
The eighteenth chapter of the Indian poem Rasarnava, or Ocean of Mercury, starts with the sentence: ” A beautiful, shining copper vessel (…) shall be the measure of the man in height and half in diameter” (2). It follows the description of final critical operations to be performed inside, which may sound legitimately operational to a lab alchemist and, probably to an inner alchemist, legitimately tantra. But should we only give this Rasarnava actor a metaphoric role, imagining him as a real man or a real vessel? Wouldn’t it be possible to reconnect these far-distant concepts?
As said above, historians of science state that Gerard Dorn took inspiration from Leonhard Thurneysser’s idea to compare layers of urine with human body regions, but since the writings of Paracelsus profoundly influenced Thurneysser, the idea behind it could have been Paracelsus himself. Unlike his contemporaries, instead of spontaneous sedimentation of urine, Thurneysser applied fractionated distillation at different temperatures to determine the elements of sulfur, salt, and mercury.
But which techniques he used are nowhere described. In the drawing on the left, we can see a diagram of the procedure Thurneysser took from Diokles of Karystos (4th Century BC). So circulus representing the head, superficies the thorax, perforatio belly + bowels, and fundus analogous to the urinary tract.
As said above, historians of science state that Gerard Dorn took inspiration from Leonhard Thurneysser’s idea to compare layers of urine with human body regions, but since the writings of Paracelsus profoundly influenced Thurneysser, the idea behind it could have been Paracelsus himself. Unlike his contemporaries, instead of spontaneous sedimentation of urine, Thurneysser applied fractionated distillation at different temperatures to determine the elements of sulfur, salt, and mercury. But which techniques he used are nowhere described. In the drawing on the left, we can see a diagram of the procedure Thurneysser took from Diokles of Karystos (4th Century BC). So circulus representing the head, superficies the thorax, perforatio belly + bowels, and fundus analogous to the urinary tract.
Leonhard Thurneysser (1531-1596) may have been one of the most influential uroscopists in Europe. Uroscopy, in the 16th Century, was almost synonymous with medical diagnosis. In those times, physicians were regularly depicted with a urinary vessel (Matula) in their hands. Thurneysser was a fascinating figure. Born and raised in Basel, Switzerland, he was trained by his father as a goldsmith. But he soon developed an interest in medicine and natural sciences and was a protégé of Johann Huber, a professor of Internal Medicine in Basel. At 18, he traveled through Europe, the Near East, and Egypt. Everywhere he went, he displayed professional abilities as a goldsmith, physician, chemist, alchemist, printer, metallurgist, and astrologer. Among his publications was “Quinta Essentia”, a description of the connection of alchemy and medicine in the spirit of Paracelsus, to figure out his admiration for the Swiss doctor-alchemist.
We are no longer used to watching master uroscopists performing their theatrical analysis, as today, the latter is carried out through the chemical breakdown of our liquid waste. But Alchemy asks us not to forget the importance of our raw matters as urine ( together with blood and bones) in the production of Lapis Microcosmi, the human part of the Magisterium Magnum to be joined to Lapis Macrocosmi (3). It is not a chance occurrence that Paracelsus applies anatomical concordances to the distillation tools for those matters. Allegories involving odd combinations of man-tools could stand either for Lapis Microcosmi ( so operations on urine, blood, etc.) or metals, especially the alchemical metal for antonomasia: gold. And there is no contradiction, as Mercurius from raw human matters was even used to “open” gold, but we could alchemically say it was strengthened with gold, our Sun in the Earth (4).
We know that iatrochemistry, to some extent, did gather and conserve the shadow of the ancient alchemical processes. For instance, still in renaissance times, alchemists did know that they would find the element Earth at the bottom and the Fire on the top of the vessels, and vice versa when the rotation of the processes turned again (5). On the other hand, they were perfectly aware of the need for a real science of sizes and shapes to be applied to their laboratory tools and vessels. The failure to follow such did lead to failure in salt volatilization, to mention one.
My translation from “Anatomia Corporum ad huc Viventium” appendix to Aurora Thesaurus:
De Vase Distillatorio ad Urinam, on the distilling vessel for urine:
“Concerning the height measurement, it must be used a vessel out of white Venetian blown glass, substantially transparent, with a spouted cap-helm, straight and 24 inches high and diameter four inches wide, which is indeed the sixth part of the height: the proportion of our vessel will fit the human body. It is understood that it must contain our spagirical and anatomical homunculus (tiny man) hidden in his urine, our actual anatomy, and fire, which is well described to the inexperienced chemical quacks. It is outlined the cap of our vessel with its spout, head, nose, and neck of our tiny anatomical man. To finish, the body of the vessel under the cap, to which we apply the longitudinal measures to distinguish all the areas of the living body, is suitable for a living body; if dead, no medicine would be beneficial to him.
For those who took a casual glance at the writing, I mean to repeat:” the anatomical homunculus hidden in his urine, our actual anatomy, and fire”. The homunculus is the alchemical fire in the human urine, which Paracelsus called Quintessence. The real essence of a man. The alchemical essence.De Furnace Anatomica, on the Anatomical Furnace (I was undecided until the last moment whether to publish it or not, it was so mentally disorganized, it seemed like a person who is mentally passing a well-known scheme… but fortunately, there were pictures).
In no different relation, the proportions of our oven must correspond to the previous (the anatomical alembic), so the body height is twenty-four inches from the inner part. Divided into three cavities, any eight inches in height brought to twenty-four inches shall have a threefold bottom, which has to be holed differently. A tiny slit shall be broken in the middle of the diameter to fill up the fourth part of its bottom area. In the middle, six apertures shall be perforated at the same distance, the interval width of the holes from each other shall be equal, whose diameter, the diameter of the fourth part, the large hole of the inferior basement shall be, the proportion and geometry are well known, six superior holes, it shall have the proportion of at least over one and a half, shall be united, the fire of first degree, with the entrance measuring three longitudinal octaves, corresponding to nine inches: second degree of future fire, of the fourth parts the three, 18 inches: the fire of the third degree shall be 27 inches: and of the fourth one is six and thirty, a simile proportion of 12 inches in small diameter, more than threefold, and longitudinal more than one and a half, the superior holes differently of how they are seen from outside.
A different proportion is due when hovering, so to reach the four holes in the bottom: this is to keep completely open the superior ones, and the inferior must be equal in the exposed part, bear that the basement in the middle should be double and set above and swiveling in his neck, the superior holes little by little can be opened and if halting must be fixed, and so the regimen of fire can be increased or decreased suiting the opus. The pot does contain sand and into it the distillatory vessel; it is made from copper, war helmet-shaped, and the part on the cuspid shall be rolling, together with a glass container; this masterpiece, equally copper made, longitudinally measuring 20 inches, equally divided, hung from a part of the lid of the pot, copper like, and whose curved superior straight helmet holds, on the other hand, it must have a copper chandelier next to the lid, which shall carry the receiving, with the rolling container. The remaining lateral tower, filled with coal, and the superior part closed, shall have a slit to communicate with the furnace, light on the coal according to your experience.”
The remaining chapters of the appendix run along the doctrine of Thurneysser (who, in turn, took inspiration from Paracelsus). According to this doctrine, diseases result from derangements of the body’s chemical processes. Therefore urine had to be analyzed chemically to identify such pathologic processes.
- See also Testamentum Fraternitatis Roseae et Aureae Crucis. Part 6 ;
- From David Gordon White “The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India”, The University of Chicago 1996;
- See also Testamentum Fraternitatis Roseae et Aureae Crucis. Part 2 ;
- See also Testamentum Fraternitatis Roseae et Aureae Crucis. Part 3 ;
- See also Codex Laur. MS Ashburham 1166 and the Acrostic I.A.A.T , Rodanius and the Rotation of Elements Part 1 , Stoll, the Lacinius Translator on Male and Female Elements ;