Occult science in medicine

by Franz Hartmann

I.—Ens Astrale.[32]

Diseases arising from external influences; whether from physical nature or from deeper causes; the planet upon which we live being itself an astrum (star), having a physical and ethereal body, a life, a soul, a mind and a spirit.

“The stars on the sky do not form a man. Man grows out of two beginnings; the Ens seminis (the male sperm) and the Ens virtutis (the reincarnating spiritual monad). He has therefore two natures, a corporeal and a spiritual nature, and either of these two requires its digest (matrix and nutriment). As the womb of the mother is the world surrounding the child, from which the fœtus receives its nutriment, so is terrestrial nature from which the terrestrial body of man receives the influences acting in his organism. The Ens astrale is a thing which we do not see, but which contains us and everything that lives and has sensation. It is that which contains the air, and from which and in which live all the elements, and which we symbolize as M (Mysterium), (“Paramirum,” Lib. I.)

This Ens Astrorum is therefore evidently the Akâsa, which forms the basis of all material things in physical nature, and if the close relation between man’s physical nature and the physical nature surrounding him were better known, it would become more comprehensible how the states of the all-penetrating ether, changes in temperature, heat and cold, electric and magnetic conditions in nature, come to affect the physical nature of man, acting internally by inducing corresponding changes in his microcosm, even if he is protected against the direct action of rain, storm, moisture, cold, heat, etc., etc. A sudden change of conditions in the outside air can affect a patient imprisoned in a room where no such change is perceptible, and a cloudy day produce a melancholy effect even upon a blind person. There are no end of diseases which for want of a better explanation are attributed to “catching cold,” etc., while in fact it is the existence of certain conditions in the all-pervading ether, which induces similar conditions in the body of the patient. Thus, for instance, changes of the moon, or the position of the moon, or the magnetic currents of the earth, produce certain effects in certain persons, even if these persons know nothing about these laws, for it is a fact well known to the ancients, but which has almost been lost sight of by modern medicine, that man, apart from the order in which his organs are arranged, is essentially a counterpart of nature, an image of the world on a smaller scale, a microcosm within the macrocosm. An atmospheric pressure in outside nature produces an atmospheric pressure in him; if nature rejoices in the sunlight of spring, his heart rejoices with it; if storms rage on the outside, similar storms may be aroused in him, etc., etc. He is, in fact, only a laboratory in which the universal forces of nature are performing their work. To this chapter also belong all miasmas and contagious influences, with all the bacteriæ, microbes, amœbæ, bacilli, etc., etc., which are the pride of modern discoverers, but whose characteristics, if not the forms of their bodies, were well known to Paracelsus, who describes them under the names of Talpa, Matena, Tortilleos, Permates, etc. He says:

“God has caused living creatures to exist in all the elements, and there is nothing empty of life. That which becomes manifested in the visible kingdom has come into existence by being generated in the upper regions. Without such a generation above, it could not have become manifested below.” (“Lib. Meteorum,” I. 4.)

Since the modern discovery of the cholera, tubercle bacilli, and other micro-organisms spreading contagious diseases, it has been the opinion of many, that the presence of such microbes was the only and fundamental cause of such diseases; but still more recent investigations have shown such that the presence of these microbes does not constitute the whole cause; for they have been with impunity introduced into the human organism, and have also been found to exist in persons who had fully recovered from such a disease. This surely shows that there must be an influence causing the microbes to come into existence, after which they can spread and multiply if the conditions are favourable, and the fundamental cause of such epidemics is therefore not the presence of the microbes, this being merely a symptom, but the influences which cause them to come into existence, producing states of which the bodies of these organisms are a product and expression and which appears to proceed from causes situated deeper than visible physical nature, if we do not mistake the form for the “spirit” of which the form is the symbol.

“Human science knows how to philosophize about the things that come within its external observation; but Wisdom shows what is contained in the Prima Materia, which is a greater and higher knowledge than that of the Ultima Materia (the physical plane).” (“Meteorum,” I. 4.)

This “higher region,” from which such injurious influences originate, causing the growth of miasmas and microbes, is the “astral plane,” or the soul of the world, and as the evil states in the soul of the world are caused by the evil states of the human mind, it becomes comprehensible how epidemic diseases, pestilence and plague, no less than wars, are the ultimate results of disharmonies and depraved spiritual states in the soul of humanity. The greatest truth if seen through a perverted mind appears distorted as a caricature and superstition; it can be seen in its own light, only if properly understood.

The astral plane is the plane of desires, emotions, and passions; that is to say, the plane of those influences (forms of the universal will), which become manifested as desires, emotions, and passions in the animal organism, and if we were to enter this subject, it would bring us within the realm of the supersensual but nevertheless actual kingdom of living elemental powers belonging to the soul of the world. If our eyes were opened to the perception of thoughts, it would be seen how a continual thought-transference is taking place among individual minds, influencing and determining their actions, even if they are not aware of it, causing not only individual moral diseases, insanities, obsessions and crimes, but whole epidemics of such kinds. There is an immense field for investigation for the psychologist; not for that kind of “psychologists” who imagine that insanity is under all circumstances a disturbance of the functions of the brain from physical causes, but for those who can realise that the functions of the brain may be disturbed by the disordered action of the mind; for although in many cases of brain disease it is as difficult to determine whether the disorder of the mind or that of the brain existed first, as it would be to answer the question, which existed first, the hen or the egg? nevertheless a lesion of the tissues of the brain does not take place without a cause, and this cause in the majority of such cases comes from the sphere of the emotions and thoughts.

If there is no mind, there can be no mental disease. If mind is something (even if it were, as some imagine, the product of the physiological function of the brain), it must be something substantial, and being something substantial, it is able to produce substantial effects; moreover, its actions show a certain order and harmony, which go to prove that mind has an organisation. If this order and harmony be disturbed, discord, disease, insanity will be the result. Without the presence of mind nothing would come into existence; without the consciousness in the All, no brain would be able to manifest consciousness, and this is what Paracelsus means when he says:—