Today’s word of the day, courtesy of the Words Coach (https://www.wordscoach.com/dictionary) , is sylph. Pronounced / sɪlf / (the /ɪ/ is what we used to call a short i sound), the noun means “one of a race of supernatural beings supposed to inhabit the air” or “a slender, graceful woman or girl” (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/sylph).

The word appears in English in the “1650s, ‘air-spirit,’ from Modern Latin sylphes (plural), coined 16c. by Paracelsus, originally referring to any race of spirits inhabiting the air, described as being mortal but lacking a soul. Paracelsus’ word seems to be an arbitrary coinage, but perhaps it holds a suggestion of Latin silva and Greek nymph, or Greek silphe ‘a kind of beetle,’ but Littré and other French etymologists propose a Gaulish origin.
“The Century Dictionary comments that, ‘to occultists and quacks like Paracelsus words spelled with -y- look more Greek and convincing.’ The idea itself seem to have come from the air-spirits of Cabbalism.
“The meaning ‘graceful girl’ is recorded by 1838, on the notion of ‘slender figure and light, airy movement’ [OED, 2nd ed. print, 1989]” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=sylph).

Merriam-Webster, in its Did You Know section, says, “Paracelsus was a man with a vivid imagination. He concocted an elaborate theory of ruling ‘elemental spirits’: gnomes controlled the earth, salamanders fire, undines water, and sylphs (graceful beings whose name in English is from New Latin sylphus) the air. You would hardly believe this 16th-century German-Swiss physician had his feet on the ground, but those fantastic ideas were balanced with an impressive array of solid medical discoveries. In fact, many of his scientific contributions are still highly respected, but his sylph idea has long since been discounted as fairy-tale fantasy. The creatures remain only as romantic figures of literature, art, and ballet, where diaphanous woodland sylphs are often depicted enchanting unwary males” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sylph).

“Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim (10 November 1493–24 September 1541), known as Paracelsus, was a Swiss physician, alchemist, lay theologian, and philosopher of the German Renaissance” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus).

He was born in Schwys in Switzerland, near the Sihi river. His mother had been a servant in the Einsiedeln Abbey hospital, and his father was a physician. She died when he was just eight or nine years old, and his father moved the family to Carinthia, in what is today southern Austria. Paracelsus was homeschooled (a not-rare practice) in a variety of the natural sciences and in the humanities by local clerics and “the convent school of St. Paul’s Abbey in the Lavanttal) (ibid.).

“Paracelsus sought a ‘universal knowledge’ that was not found in books or faculties. Thus, between 1517 and 1524, he embarked on a series of extensive travels around Europe. His wanderings led him from Italy to France, Spain, Portugal, England, Germany, Scandinavia, Poland, Russia, Hungary, Croatia, Rhodes, Constantinople, and possibly even Egypt. During this period of travel, Paracelsus enlisted as an army surgeon and was involved in the wars waged by Venice, Holland, Denmark, and the Tatars. Then Paracelsus returned home from his travels. He tried to establish himself in Salzburg (Austria) but soon fled to avoid arrest and persecution for his participation in the Peasants’ Revolt. He later obtained citizenship in Strasburg” (ibid.). He later became a citizen of Strasburg, but he didn’t stay very long. In fact, he traveled around Europe

“Paracelsus was compared with Martin Luther because of his openly defiant acts against the existing authorities in medicine. But Paracelsus rejected that comparison, famously stating: ‘I leave it to Luther to defend what he says and I will be responsible for what I say. That which you wish to Luther, you wish also to me: You wish us both in the fire.’ A companion during the Basel years expressed a quite unflattering opinion on Paracelsus: ‘The two years I passed in his company he spent in drinking and gluttony, day and night. He could not be found sober an hour or two together, in particular after his departure from Basel.’ Threatened with an unwinnable lawsuit, he left Basel for Alsace in February 1528” (ibid.). But wherever he went, he was denied the ability to practice medicine because his unorthodox views preceded him.

The name Paracelsus, which first began to be used around 1530, has a couple of possible meanings. Hofenheim, transliterated, becomes “high home,” and celsus is Latin for “lofty,” so perhaps there is a connection there. On the other hand, perhaps para means “beyond,” and Celsus is the Roman encyclopedia writer best known for De Medicina, “a primary source on diet, pharmacy, surgery and related fields, and it is one of the best sources concerning medical knowledge in the Roman world” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aulus_Cornelius_Celsus).

Paracelsus’s legacy is paradoxical. On the one hand, he made real contributions to medical science. “After his death, the movement of Paracelsianism was seized upon by many wishing to subvert the traditional Galenic physics, and his therapies became more widely known and used” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsushttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus). On the other hand, “Paracelsus believed that the principles sulphur, mercury, and salt contained the poisons contributing to all diseases. He saw each disease as having three separate cures depending on how it was afflicted, either being caused by the poisoning of sulphur, mercury, or salt. Paracelsus drew the importance of sulphur, salt, and mercury from medieval alchemy, where they all occupied a prominent place” (ibid.), among other strange beliefs.

In other words, it seems a bit unfair to label Paracelsus a “quack.” I imagine that someday scientists will look back on the 21^st century and note how odd some of our scientific “facts” appear. Even now we look back on the government-sponsored diet science of the 1970s with a bit of disdain, like the insistence that consuming fats is the cause of all evil. After all, one does not have to be a sylph to be healthy.

Today’s image comes from Snargl, a website for AI-generated fan fic that invites people to publish on a wide variety of topics. It has a page on sylphs, and one its interesting points is this: “After the alchemists, the image of sylphs was popularized by the English poet Alexander Pope in the 18th century. In his satirical poem ‘The Rape of the Lock,’ he created a new mythology:

• According to Pope, sylphs are the souls of women who were coquettes in life. After death, their vain and light spirits return to the air.
• They become guardians of living women’s chastity, protecting their outfits, hairstyles, and cosmetics from men. This turned the formidable elemental into a glamorous guardian of fashion and beauty.”

The image comes this page (https://snargl.com/wiki/sylph-fantasy-creature/).