"Paracelsus" was the Latin pen name of Phillippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim.

Hohenheim died in Salzburg in 1541 at the age of 48. "He was a Renaissance physician, botanist, alchemist, astrologer, and general occultist" (wiki, emphasis mine). He gave the element zinc its name, and is credited as being the first systematic botanist. He was the first to synthesize laudanum, later to become the opiate of choice for much of Europe's aristocracy. He also invented the alphabet of the Magi, used to engrave the names of angels on talismans.

now. tell me that isn't the greatest thing you've heard in while. i dare you.

via wikipedia and danny r. inexpressible gratitude.

well, that about sums it up.

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For teaching, of course, true eloquence consists, not in making people like what they disliked, nor in making them do what they shrank from, but in making clear what was obscure...

st. augustine, on christian teaching, iv.11

If heroes like Goethe and Schiller could not succeed in breaking open the enchanted gate which leads into the Hellenic magic mountain ...

friedrich nietzsche, the birth of tragedy (p. 75)

"hellenic magic mountain" is with no doubt at all one of the five best phrases of all time, by any standard, and under any judge.