PREFACE

...since he has no one to praise him, nor is he deemed worthy of praise by others, he praises himself. I pass over other men of that ilk literal: "of that sort of flour," an idiomatic way of saying "of that same stamp" who also consider me a poisonous magician magum veneficum: a sorcerer who uses harmful potions, drugs, or poisons as opposed to natural science; for nothing has ever been treated by me here, or elsewhere, which is not contained within the boundaries of Nature original: "Naturæ pomœria"; a pomerium was the sacred, legal boundary of a Roman city. Porta argues his "magic" never crosses into the forbidden or supernatural..

Accept therefore, studious readers, these long labors—produced not without study, sleepless nights, expenses, and many hardships—offered with a generous spirit. Cast away the blindness and envy of mind and soul, which tend to dull the sharpness of the mind and block the truth. Weigh these matters with an upright judgment while you test those things which we have written down: for if you discover both truth and utility at the same time, you might perhaps be more favorable to my studies.

However, it does not escape me that many ignorant men will not be lacking—men idle original: "feriatos," meaning those on holiday or unoccupied with serious intellectual work in every serious matter—who will look upon these things with hatred and envy. They will rashly assert that some things are not only false, but that they cannot even possibly happen. While they strive to overthrow the truth with arguments and vain disputes, they act in such a way that by "understanding," they understand nothing, and their own ignorance is betrayed.

These men, like the profane, ought to be kept away from the borders of our Natural Magic. For those who do not give credit to the miracles of Nature are, in a certain way, attempting to abolish Philosophy. But if we have omitted some things or spoken awkwardly: I know that nothing is so adorned that it cannot be polished, nor so full