POWER OF PLANTS: When medicinal plants meet humanity, seeking the depth of plants and people relationship through Paracelsus’ spagyric medicine in contemporary Italy -when the past meets the present (future), bridging the macrocosm and the microcosm-

Abstract

This fieldwork-based research project is divided into three different parts to search for the depth of plants and people relationship through Paracelsus’ theory of macrocosm and microcosm moreover his spagyric medicine. Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, so called Paracelsus, was a Swiss doctor, philosopher and an alchemist from the 16th century who made a revolution in medicine during the Renaissance in Europe. His original theory of medicine combining alchemy, astrology and medicine as macrocosm as the universe and microcosm as the human body to seek what it really means to cure not only the physical body but also the immortal soul and the astral spirit through his spagyric medicine formed by alchemical procedure. The first part of this research is to discover the history of medicine and where Paracelsus was his position in his era followed by a literature review for his theory and his connection with the plants that he has used for his herbal treatises. The second part is doing ethnography at the Orto Botanico di Roma as an internship to find the actual plants of Paracelsus through combining ethnobotanical and anthropological methodology, followed by semi-structured interviews with the gardeners. The last part is to find the legacy of Paracelsus that still exists today in contemporary Italy. Going to ancient pharmacies as an anthropological fieldwork, and then finding the spagyric theory and method of Paracelsus that guided me to do the intensive qualitative structured interviews with the Italian alchemists who relates to spagyrics to find out what still exists today to connect to history. The aim of this integrated interdisciplinary research is to investigate the potential of alternative medicine to treat various aspects of human life from a humanistic anthropological point of view as an example to see the depth of plants and people relationships through the scope of macrocosm/microcosm theory of Paracelsus.