Magia Naturalis, oder Hauß-, Kunst- und Wunder-Buch

gone to foreign lands; and when they returned home, they highly praised it and kept it entirely secret.

4. The most experienced in secret exercises of wisdom say that this is the summit of natural sciences, whereby a man attains the most perfect mastery in these matters; and if in the art of nature anything excellent can be devised that appears to one as a work of wonder, they count it among Magic.

5. Others say that this is the operative part of natural wisdom, which teaches how to join one nature to another artistically and at the right time, and thereby bring forth certain effects.

6. The Platonic teachers, and among them even Plotinus (b) says, following Hermes, that this is a science through which the lower is made subject to the higher, or the earthly to the heavenly, and through certain allurements brought about by art, the universal form (and soul) of the world is enticed (to cooperate).

7. Therefore, the Egyptians called nature herself a wonder-working artist, because she has a certain power to entice and draw something similar through its like; which power consists in love: and when they then found that through a certain equality and kinship of natures one thing was

drawn to another, they called these magical or wonderful natural attractions.

8. But to us it appears as if Magic is nothing other than a thorough inspection of the whole of nature: For if one knows how to rightly survey the movement of the heavens, the stars, and the elements, as well as their changes, he will also be able to thoroughly fathom the hidden secrets found in animals, herbs, and minerals, and in their generation and corruption: so that this science seems to radiate from the very face of nature herself, as we shall further hear.

9. Plato also seems to aim at this (c) when he says: It seems to him that the Magic or wonder-art of Zoroaster was nothing else than a science of divine things and the right use thereof, in which the children of the Persian kings were instructed among other royal exercises, so that they might learn to establish and arrange their own civil government after the pattern of the universal government of the world. Thence M. Tullius (d) also says that among the Persians no one could attain to royal majesty and dignity unless he had first been instructed in the magical science; so that just as nature governs the world through the mutual relationship of things—

(b) Libro de sacrificio & Magia.
(c) In Alcibiade.
(d) Libro Divinationum.