CHAPTER OVERVIEW
• Creating the Ens of Paracelsus
• Physical and Spiritual Healing in Alchemy
• Secret Fire: Kundalini in Alchemy and Qabala
According to Paracelsus, the Ens is among the most powerful and easiest medicines to make. The Ens is an influence, or principle that affects us and is a definite spiritual, psychic, or physical thing. While five such principles are designated as creating illness within us, the Ens tincture, created from the vegetable kingdom, can be used to correct these imbalances and bring us physical and psychic health. In addition, the Ens allows a means of working in the plant realm toward specifically initiatic products. According to spagyric theory, the Ens manifests the highest initiatic virtue of the plant it created.
It is this initiatic aspect we seek when we create and ingest the Ens of a particular plant. Authorities seemingly disagree on the nature of spagyric medicines when it comes to this point. At least one authority claims that initiation is the sole goal of the alchemical product. Others, particularly Frater Albertus, Bacstrom, and Manfred Junius, suggest that powerful medicines for physical illnesses may be produced using the alchemical process. A middle ground has also been offered (and has been stated in a previous chapter): that the creator of the product realizes more of a spiritual benefit from its ingestion, while another may realize more of a physical benefit from its use. Hermetic tradition supports this middle position as well as the possibility of the recipient, who has not assisted in the medicine's creation, reacting much more strongly at the sudden increase in overall vibratory rate. Some individuals who have taken alchemical products are said to have responded violently to ingesting unprepared the more potent metallic and mineral medicines. As a qualifier, it might be that the effects of the medicine will cause anyone who does not involve themselves in spiritual or esoteric activities on a regular basis to find either a more physical reaction or a more violent shock.