The Life of Paracelsus

Franz Hartmann's The Life of Paracelsus (1887), an English biography and anthology by a nineteenth century physician and theosophist, translating and quoting long passages from Paracelsus's own alchemical and magical writings, including the passage on electrum as a seven metal, seven planet composition used in protective amulets, rings, bells and occult mirror making. Hartmann was a member and sometime president of the Theosophical Society, and the book reads Paracelsus through that framework rather than as an independent critical study. Its value is direct: it renders substantial primary Paracelsus material into English, with long extracts that can be checked against the book itself, and this atlas has read those extracts directly rather than relying on anyone's summary of them. Its limit is that it is not a critical edition: Hartmann selects, translates and frames the extracts himself, adds his own theosophical commentary throughout, and offers no scholarly apparatus checking his translation against Paracelsus's original German and Latin texts. Use it to establish what Hartmann's book records Paracelsus as saying, not as independent confirmation that Paracelsus's claims are true or that Hartmann's translation is philologically exact.