Tria principia

Theophrast von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus first publicly presented the doctrine of the Tria Principia in mature form.

The tria principia or tria prima (Latin for the three principles or three primes), occasionally also referred to as the three philosophical elements, are an important basic concept of late medieval or early modern alchemy, which was derived from the four-element doctrine in a complementary and expanding manner, and can only be found in a clear, mature form in Paracelsus (1493 - 1541). The three philosophical principles or substances are: Sulphur (encompassing fire and air and therefore called "fire air" by the alchemists), Mercurius (water) and Sal (earth element). Sulphur stands for the combustible, Mercurius for the volatile-liquid and Sal for the solid, form-giving, stable principle. Strictly speaking, the Tria Principa are not substances but processes, i.e. the sulphur process, the mercury process and the salt process, whose material carriers can be different substances.

„Now I want to go back to an example with wood. This wood is a body. When you burn it, what burns is sulphur, the smoke is mercury, and what becomes ashes is salt.“

– Paracelsus: Opus Paramirum, First Book, Ch. 2

Basic character of the three principles

The following is a tabular overview of the basic characteristics of the three principles, which is based - with some modifications and extensions - on the account of the chemists and historian of chemistry John Read (1884-1963):

Sulphur	Mercurius	Sal
fiery principle	liquid principle	solid principle
combustible, dissolving	metallic, melting	incombustible, resistant
oily, fatty	alcoholic	salty, earthy
fire, air	water	earth
spirit	soul	body
Metabolic-limb system	Rhythmic system	Nerve-sense system
Willing	Feeling	Thinking
Chaos	Movement	Form
Capital	Labour	Goods

However, such unambiguous classifications, namely the allocation of principles to body, soul and spirit, must be taken with great caution and do not do justice to their inherent dynamics. Depending on the context and the point of view, completely different classifications are also called for. Paracelsus, for example, assigns the spirit to Mercurius and the soul, which mediates between body and spirit, to Sulphur. The concept of the Tria Principia requires a very flexible handling, adapted to the respective situation.

On a purely physical level, the Tria Principia correspond to the three basic types of chemical bonds: Sulphur corresponds to the covalent bond, Mercurius to the metallic bond and Sal to the ionic bond, just as the 4 elements are physically related to the classical and non-classical states of matter.

Alchemy and Spagyric

According to the alchemical view, all substances, especially all metals, are created by a specific interaction of these three principles. Through suitable interventions in these three substance-forming processes, it should be possible to prepare the philosopher's stone and transmute base metals into gold.

Spagyric plant alchemy

Paracelsus related the doctrine of the three principles primarily to the assessment of disease processes and to the correct preparation of spagyric remedies. In the plant, which in a certain sense is to be understood as an inverted human being, the sulphurising processes take effect in the blossoming and ripening of the fruits, the mercurial activity unfolds in the area of the green leaves, whereby here assimilation through photosynthesis comes to the fore instead of respiration, and the salt processes emanate from the roots protruding into the soil.

In spagyric plant alchemy, the essential oils are the main carriers of the sulphur principle, the alcohol serves as the carrier of the mercurial principle and the salts contained in the plant represent the sal principle. The volatile oils are separated by distillation, the remaining plant parts are fermented (fermentatio) and the resulting alcohol is distilled off. The residue is ashed (calcinatio) and the soluble salts are dissolved with water. Thus the three principles are cleanly separated from each other and are now reunited according to the basic alchemical principle of solve et coagula for greater effectiveness.

The "Tria Principia" in the course of the year

In the summer of St. John's Day, the sulphur process in man increases to its highest intensity and now also takes hold of the nervous system. To the imaginative eye, the human being now appears to be permeated by a phosphorescent phantom of sulphur. But the ahrimanic powers, which are tremendously related to these sulphurising substances, are also pushing their way in. Snakelike, dragon-like, they entwine themselves around man from bottom to top and try to pull his consciousness down into a dull unconscious state.

In summertime the salt, mercury and sulphur processes are more intermingled, whereas in deep winter they are largely separated. Then in the depths of the Earth the salty works, which is permeable to the spiritual and in which the remnants of the lunar forces are life-giving. Above this, the hydrosphere spreads out with a tendency towards the spherical; the Earth then appears, as it were, as a gigantic "drop of mercury" in space. In the air sphere with the solar and stellar effects a mild sulphuric process is stirring.

„If we now go more towards the Earth, into the interior of the Earth, then for what the Earth actually wants to be, the process of acid formation, and especially - from the acids again come the salts - of salt formation comes into consideration. So that when we look up into the universe, we really have to look up into the sulphurisation process, into the sulphurisation process. When we look at this tendency of the earth to form a cosmic drop, then we are actually looking into the Mercurial process. If we turn our gaze down to the earth's soil, which then sends up to us in spring all growing, sprouting, sprouting life, then we look at the salt process.“ (Lit.:GA 229, p. 27)

Literature

• John Read: Prelude to Chemistry: An Outline of Alchemy, Its Literature and Relationships, The Macmillan Company, New York 1937
• Manfred M. Junius: Praktisches Handbuch der Pflanzen-Alchemie. Wie man heilkräftige Essenzen, Tinkturen und Elixiere selbst zubereitet. Ansata-Verlag, Interlaken 1982, ISBN 978-3715700557
• Rudolf Steiner: Das Miterleben des Jahreslaufes in vier kosmischen Imaginationen, GA 229 (1999), ISBN 3-7274-2290-4 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Beiträge zur Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe, Heft Nr. 118/119, Rudolf Steiner-Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach 1997 Beiträge (Contributions) 118-119

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