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“agonized remorse on the implied assumption that sufficiently
prolonged pain will transfigure his soul and he will become
worthy of the restoration that waits in redeeming time”
(Stockholder, 1992: 161). This “redeeming time” is, for
Paulina, the time needed for the king’s wound to heal, and also
for his abandoned child and persecuted queen to heal: it will
include his return to himself as well as their return to him. For
Paulina, this healing stage involves a restoration following a
period of
separation
, each in a particular, separate, and
healthful environment, and time is necessary at this stage to
complete the healing process.
Separation, in Paracelsian iatrochemistry, is crucial to the
obtaining of the quintessence, that is, to achieving the purest
distillation. “Paracelsean pharmacy,”
21
according to Walter
Pagel, an influential scholar in the field of Paracelsian medical
theory, “is based on
separation
. By this is meant the isolation
of the specific virtue
—
‘arcanum’
—
which has a specific action
on one or several diseases. . . . What medicine needs is ‘to
extract, not to compose’” (1982: 144). For Paracelsus,
separation is thus, in the words of Pagel, “the greatest miracle
in nature
—
it is the model and original pattern of all birth”
(1982: 91). It is through separation, rather than composition,
that new life is possible.
Every particle initially present will come into being
and to its proper form. This takes place through
separation accompanied by condensation whereby
invisible prime matter is converted into a visible
substance
—
matter in the ordinary sense. This process
is comparable to the separation and condensation of
soot from hardly visible smoke and air. (Pagel, 1982:
91)
21
Pagel chooses to use “Paracelsean” while contemporary critics tend to use
“Paracelsian,” as does the author of this study.