much of fludd's writing, and his pathology of disease, centered around the sympathies found in nature between man, the terrestrial earth, and the divine. while paracelsian in nature, fludd's own theory on the origin of all things posited that, instead of the tria prima, all species and things stemmed from first, dark chaos, then divine light which acted upon the chaos, which finally brought forth the waters. this last element was also called the spirit of the lord, and it made up the passive matter of all other substances, including all secondary elements and the four qualities of the ancients. moreover, the fluddean tripartite theory concluded that paracelsus' own conception of the three primary principles—sulphur, salt and mercury—eventually derived from chaos and light interacting to create variations of the waters, or spirit.