Having read Jung's glowing praises of Paracelsus, as well as various accounts of his amazing life, I was very excited to read this book to get a better idea what his actual writings are like. This selection of excerpts is alternately enjoyable and baffling, since Paracelsus was a very complicated thinker with enormous ambitions, and it appears from these excerpts that his reach often exceeds his grasp. He takes an encyclopedic approach to explaining everything about the science of his day as he understood it, completely mingled with his personal theology. The Paracelsian universe is saturated with living and breathing forces, stars influencing everything but in very strange ways that seem to contradict each other, and the inner light of nature leaving signs strewn about everywhere for the enlightened person to interpret. It's rather daunting to read that you really can't just use a particular herb to cure something, because you have to choose the right herb at the right time to fit the current astrological environment as it relates to the person requiring healing. All very heady stuff, and it might be easy to dismiss Paracelsus as a wooly-headed dreamer except for the known historical facts about his rather heroic life, and his reputation for expending great amounts of energy helping the poor.
In summary, the book doesn't (and really couldn't) cover any of the many subjects that concerned Paracelsus in great depth, but it provides a wonderful survey and starting point for additional investigation into this great man's writings.
