P R E F A C E. original: "PROOEMIUM"

...[considering] which, of every degree and arrangement, it will not be difficult to perceive in some way the operations of heavenly light original: "lux cœlestis"; a term often used in early modern natural philosophy to describe divine or stellar influence acting upon the physical world upon the ethereal, super-heavenly, and spiritual waters. By this path—so far as the possibility of human understanding allows—one may contemplate the structure of the entire machine original: "machina"; likely referring to the machina mundi or "machine of the world," a common metaphor for the universe as a complex, divinely-constructed system and the various arrangements of its parts. Thus, through the final and lesser effects of the principles, one may even, in a manner, judge the nature of those very principles themselves

The following woodcut is a decorative tailpiece, common in 17th-century printing to fill empty space at the end of a section. It features a central figure—likely a personification of the Sun or a divine being given the radiate headdress—surrounded by symmetrical, leafy scrollwork known as foliage.