Della Porta Magia Naturalis (German 1713)

...the aversion and attraction, so they too might learn how to establish an order for their governance.

10. Thus, this art is so filled with power and mysteries, and teaches how to recognize hidden properties of things and the whole of nature to such an extent—and how one thing agrees with another or not—joining them together so that effects arise which the common people regard as Wonder-Works original: Wunder-Werck; phenomena that appear supernatural to the uneducated but are actually rooted in natural law, as they seem to exceed human understanding. Therefore, it was so common in Ethiopia, or the Land of the Moors, because herbs, stones, and other necessary materials were to be found there in greater abundance.

11. Those who take pleasure in observing this Wondrous Art must regard its works as nothing other than the works of Nature, whom Art merely serves, performing the duty of a handmaid. Thus, wherever Art perceives that something is lacking in things naturally related, she knows how to replace it through subtle vapors original: Ausdämpfungen; referring to the "effluvia" or spirits believed to mediate between material things, in the proper quantity and at the right time. Just as we see in agriculture, where Nature herself produces the herbs and seeds, but Art only prepares them. For this reason, the poet Antipho Antiphon of Rhamnus, a Greek orator and philosopher used to say: we could hardly become masters through Art over that which Nature has already done. And Plotinus calls a Magus, or such a Wonder-Artist, a servant and not a master of Nature.

12. But those of superstitious, wicked, and godless minds may stay far from here, for we wish to have nothing to do with them, and we shut our doors against them; it is our opinion that they should rightly be driven out, punished, and eradicated, not only from this threshold but from cities and lands.

13. What the office of such a servant of nature entails, and what it is necessary for him to know, we shall further report in the following.

Chapter III.

What a Magus or Natural Artist must know,

and how he must otherwise be constituted.

Because we have described Magic original: Magia or the Wondrous Art in such a way that it sets out to accomplish something and belongs to the active branch of natural wisdom, such an artist should rightly be perfectly trained in Philosophy and the Knowledge of Nature. For from these he can learn: