A Spiritual Phenomenon: A Review of Bruce Moran’s Paracelsus: An Alchemical Life

ABSTRACT There are many obstacles on the road of individuation. Remaining true to oneself is one of the most difficult, especially when critics try to tear you down. Occasionally a rare individual appears who is misunderstood because he is far ahead of his time. Paracelsus is such a man. Not only did he resist falling under the pressures put on him by physicians who stubbornly adhered to antiquated medical traditions, but he vehemently struck back. Historian Bruce Moran gives us an excellent biography of this iconoclastic man who changed the direction of metallurgic alchemy into a new form of medicinal healing, iatrochemistry. Jung celebrated Paracelsus whom he described as having “created a psychological empirical healing science.” Paracelsus’s ideas were the inchoate principles of analytic psychology that took another five centuries to blossom. Moran shines a much-needed light on a fascinating figure who helped pave the way for the practice of modern medicine.