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  • Paracelsus’s Theory of Embodiment
  • Tessa Morrison
Cislo, Amy Eisen, Paracelsus’s Theory of Embodiment (The Body, Gender and Culture Series), London, Pickering & Chatto, 2010; hardback; pp. 166; R.R.P. US$99.00; ISBN 9781851969951.

Paracelsus has always been an enigmatic figure: a physician, botanist, alchemist, astrologer, and occultist, with a reputation for both extreme drunkenness and piety. In his system of thought though, the body was the microcosm of the macrocosm. He believed that the body could suffer from chemical imbalances of mercury, sulphur, and salt and was affected by astrological powers. Amy Eisen Cislo extends knowledge of these connections in Paracelsus’s work by a close study of the relationship between his concept of the physical body and those aspects of the body that were invisible and divine. Through a close reading of his texts on conception and gestation, she reveals his theory of the natural body as being separate from the spiritual self.

According to Cislo, Paracelsus struggled to come to terms with religious ideas about the body and theorized that it was a scientific object not subject to divine control. In a time when women were perceived to be easily swayed into pacts with the devil through coitus, fears of witches and monstrous births [End Page 251] were prevalent, and the topics of conception, gestation, and birth occupied the thoughts of many. These concerns drew attention to understandings of pregnancy and the workings of the female body. Since in the Bible women were created from Adam’s rib they were considered physically the same as men, but, for instance, with the womb considered as an inverted penis. The learning of the day on reproduction followed the classical texts of Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen: men were warm and women were cold or men were agents and women were receptacles for the man’s seed. However, Paracelsus rejected classical teachings and developed a unique theory of embodiment.

Cislo examines three groups of Paracelsus’s texts through time: the first group of texts is on conception; the second on the body of Mary; and the third on the bodies of Adam and Eve. Her studies of the texts show inconsistencies in his theory; however, there are fundamental ideas that underpin these three groups of texts. They are that birth involves a divine element and that men and women play different and significant roles in the process of reproduction. There was a relationship between the spiritual being and the physical self in the human body. This raised questions on the nature of the bodies of Mary, Christ, Adam, and Eve, whom Paracelsus claimed had physical bodies possessing different earthly or chemical qualities from those of ordinary human bodies.

Paracelsus’s Theory of Embodiment is an extremely interesting and scholarly study and Cislo has untangled Paracelsus’s complex theory of embodiment with a good deal of clarity.

Tessa Morrison
The School of Architecture and Built Environment
The University of Newcastle
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