Lumen Naturae

The lumen naturae — the light of nature — names Paracelsus’s first source of knowledge: the second light, equally given by God, read out of the book of nature by the trained physician, set alongside the light of revelation. Against the medieval theological structure that made revelation the sole supernatural illumination, Paracelsus insisted on a natural light hidden in nature and particularly in human nature. The move placed the physician’s knowledge of the body on the same authoritative footing as the theologian’s knowledge of scripture.

Jung treats the lumen naturae as the conceptual hinge of Paracelsus’s arcane teaching and traces its provenance to the ancient alchemical tradition: “The light hidden in nature and particularly in human nature likewise belongs to the stock of ancient alchemical ideas. Thus the ‘Tractatus Aristotelis’ says: ‘See therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness.’ The light of nature is indeed of great importance in alchemy” (Jung 1967, CW 13, ¶161). The aim of the alchemical opus is “to beget this light in the shape of the filius philosophorum.” The lumen naturae is therefore both a source of knowledge and an end — the light is what illuminates and what is, by the opus, produced.

For the Lineage, the lumen naturae is the name under which the psyche is restored to nature before it is called the psyche. It is the Paracelsian ancestor of what Jung will name the objective psyche — a knowing in nature that the physician discerns and by which he is instructed.

Relationships

• paracelsus
• imaginatio-vera
• filius-philosophorum
• carl-jung

Primary sources

• alchemical-studies (Jung 1967, CW 13, ¶¶149, 161)
• jung-spirit-man-art (Jung 1966, CW 15)