“”Three spirits live and actuate man”, teaches Paracelsus; “three worlds pour their beams upon him; but all three only as the image and echo of one and the same all-constructing and uniting principle of production. The first is the spirit of the elements (terrestrial body and vital force in its brute condition); the second, the spirit of the stars (sidereal or astral body – the soul); the third is the Divine spirit (Augoeides).”
Our human body, being possessed of “primeval earth-stuff”, as Paracelsus calls it, we may readily accept the tendency of modern scientific research “to regard the processes of both animal and vegetable life as simply physical and chemical.”
This theory only the more corroborates the assertions of old philosophers and the Mosaic Bible, that from the dust of the ground our bodies were made, and to dust they will return. But we must remember that “‘Dust thou art, to dust returnest’, was not spoken of the soul.””
H. P. Blavatsky
