“There is one people which Herodotus calls Hyperboreans. The current name of this people is Muscovy. Their terrible decline, which will last for many centuries, cannot be trusted. The Hyperboreans are experiencing both strong decline and tremendous prosperity. In this very country of Hyperboreans, which no one ever thought of as a country in which something great could happen, the Great Cross will shine over the humiliated and rejected … Divine Light from the Hyperborean mountain will shine, and all the inhabitants of the Earth will see it”.
This prediction is attributed to the famous scientist and alchemist Aureol Theophrastus Bombast Paracelsus. This prediction was replicated by the American edition of the 100 Great Predictions. A dubious, frankly, book. Its compilers refer to a certain book by Aureol Theophrastus Bombast, which is called "The Oracles". However, there is no such opus in the academic bibliographies of the works of Paracelsus. Why? Because it never existed. Most likely, the "Oracles" are the fruit of the not very scientific mind of American occult dreamers. True, the connection between Paracelsus and Russia still exists. And even some kind of prediction that can be attributed to Russia.
Russian trace
Paracelsus was not an armchair scientist. He was sure that true knowledge is acquired not in universities, but through direct contact with the bearers of wisdom. That is why in 1516 a young scientist from Switzerland Aureol Theophrastus Bombast set off on a grandiose journey around the world. It was a long-term hike for knowledge, during which Paracelsus visited a dozen countries and met a hundred of the best sages of that time - folk healers, astrologers, alchemists, shamans and mystics.
Around 1521, a Swiss vagrant settled in Constantinople, where, according to another famous scientist of the time, Jan van Helmont, he immersed himself in alchemical experiments. Here, according to van Helmont, Paracelsus receives the Philosopher's Stone and a panacea. And in the same year, according to legend, he goes to Muscovy. With a philosopher's stone.
Why does the Swiss go exactly to Russia? A successful alchemist who accomplished the Great Deed would be greeted with triumph by the best universities in Europe, and the monarchs of the Old World would be ready to guarantee an endless sinecure at their own courts.
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Unfortunately, we cannot answer this question today. But we can definitely say that Paracelsus had the strongest motivating factor to go to the then periphery of civilization.
It is not excluded that the Swiss arrived in Moscow from Constantinople as part of a group of Greek or Italian specialists - engineers, architects, doctors. The son of the Byzantine princess Sophia Palaeologus, the Moscow sovereign Vasily III, flooded almost the entire territory of the former Byzantine Empire and Italy with his recruiters, whose task was to engage the best local professionals in the grand ducal service.
Some biographers of Paracelsus claim that the alchemist was personally received by Basil III and that mutual sympathy arose between them. There is a hypothesis that the "artistic German" was specially invited to the grand ducal palace in order to solve one important but strategic problem in the young Russian state. The fact is that Basil's wife, Queen Solomonia, suffered from infertility, and, probably, the "call" of the Swiss luminary of medicine (and also received the Philosopher's Stone) was to help the Rurikovichs continue the dynasty.
But it didn’t work … It’s hard to say what caused the failure: either the philosopher’s stone didn’t "work", or the problem was stronger than the genius of Paracelsus, or an evil fate prevented an important mission. The fact is that on July 30, 1521, the troops of the Crimean and Kazan khans broke into the Kremlin. Vasily III fled to Volokolamsk, and Paracelsus was less fortunate: the alchemist became a prisoner. Moreover, a personal prisoner of the khan.
The further chronology of the life of Aureol Theophrastus Bombast is controversial: some biographers say that the scientist became almost the khan's best friend, gained wisdom from the khan's court doctors and returned safely to Constantinople, accompanying the khan's son, others argue that Paracelsus managed to escape from captivity and through Lithuania return to "civilized" Europe.
Actually, this is not so important. The mission, if it existed, of course, failed. Solomonia never gave birth to an heir: in 1525, Vasily III received a divorce, the former queen went to a monastery, and her place was taken by the Lithuanian Elena Glinskaya, the future mother of Ivan the Terrible.
Well, Paracelsus, having earned the reputation of the wisest scientist of his time, in 1541 was stabbed to death in one of the dark gateways of the city of Salzburg.
"Mysterious" prediction
In his books, Paracelsus did not make a single mention of Muscovy. But there is one prediction that experts associate with Russia. In the book Prognostications, published during the life of the scientist, the eleventh chapter contains a very strange prophecy, accompanied by an engraving depicting a bear:
“Although the sun shone over you once, and you enjoyed life, eating food and indulging in robbery, carnal pleasures, you still did not think about the end of all that exists and forgot about winter. For which He deprived you of pleasure and made you suck on his own paws. Since you, having become like a bear, have lost the meaning of life, the Almighty brought you to the consciousness of the role of hard work. Be the wisdom of man your essence, winter would not overcome you forever ….
I don't know why, but modern scientists attribute this prediction to only two countries - Russia and Germany during the time of Hitler …
Stibor Ostoy