Universal Music-making (Musurgia Universalis), Volume I

One person likes the cold, and another takes delight in heat:
One is healthier in winter, and another in summer,
And there are those by whom dry things are desired,
And on the contrary, those who seek out the moist. The poet refers to the four primary qualities—hot, cold, dry, and moist—which governed the "humors" of the human body in early modern medicine.

And if we look at the secondary qualities,
One touches the hard willingly, another the soft.
There is he who extols the rough and the knotty,
And he to whom liquid things are pleasing.

All are rivers from the same source.
But perhaps my speech would be too long
If I continued to follow his other virtues,
And fully made known his praises.

ATHANASIUS Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680), the author of this volume. will ensure that my short speech
Will be supplemented for you, revealing high mysteries
Previously unknown to the common people, yet true,
So that the human intellect remains enthralled.

ATHANASIUS, that one from whom nothing remains hidden
That is written in any language original: "idioma." Kircher was famous for his study of Coptic, Arabic, Hebrew, and his attempts to decipher Hieroglyphics.,
Whereby he can share with everyone
The most abstruse and profound knowledge;

He who, without having braved the risks
Of exposing himself to the journey there,
Knows fully how to explain the pyramids
And the obelisks of portentous Egypt. Kircher published extensively on Egypt, most notably Oedipus Aegyptiacus, claiming to have rediscovered the "lost" wisdom of the ancients without ever leaving Europe.

You tell it, Rome, to whom the sentiments
Of so many silent stones The "silent stones" are the Egyptian obelisks standing in Rome, which Kircher famously attempted to translate. are known through him.
Let the schools speak, and the remote nations
Now made rich with unknown languages.

He will unfold those harmonic orders
Which the Earth preserves in its productions;
He will reveal the peaceful union and the war
Between animals, and of herb with herb. This refers to "natural magic" or the "doctrine of signatures"—the idea that plants and animals have natural sympathies (unions) or antipathies (wars) based on their inner harmonic nature.