PREFACE

...[may] shine forth for the brothers of this monastery (if their deeds harmonize with their words in the same key original: tono. The author uses a musical metaphor to describe the necessary alignment between a person's actions and their claims of holiness.). This, therefore, is the chief reason why I have cast myself into their cause: so that we might remove the perhaps ill-founded suspicions of Master Libavius Andreas Libavius (c. 1555–1616) was a prominent German physician and chemist. While he was a pioneer in chemistry, he was a fierce critic of the Rosicrucians, whom he suspected of practicing black magic and subverting social order. and others. These men, by Hercules original: hercule. A common Latin exclamation used to emphasize the truth or intensity of a statement., are skilled at using the most wicked opinions to judge things as either Diabolical or lies—things which seem new to the ear, or crude and foreign to the eye, or certainly difficult and beyond the grasp of the imagination. Yet, if they were to explore these matters a little more accurately, they would find them not only evident upon discovery, but even easier to perform without any demonic art.

We shall clearly declare this in this Apology Apologia (a formal defense of a set of beliefs or actions, often written to answer specific accusations) of ours, in which we have proposed two ways, the truest and most certain of all, by which prophecy vaticinium (the power of foretelling the future or speaking via divine inspiration), the knowledge of spiritual and secular secrets, and the performance of things commonly wondered at may be fully accomplished and led to the desired end. These are: namely, either by the pouring out of the Holy Spirit into men—the way we read that the Apostles performed their miracles—or by the revelation of mysteries locked away in the hidden bowels original: visceribus. This term refers to the innermost, deepest parts of the natural world where God has "hidden" the secrets of alchemy and physics. of Nature, which also requires the assistance of the spirit; and in this way Solomon was practiced in every kind of wisdom.

It also happens sometimes that the Devil, through his impious prophets—namely, Necromancers Necromanticos (practitioners of 'black' magic who were believed to consult the spirits of the dead)—speaks the truth and utters divinations of the future. Yet he could not do this without the divine will, without which his prophecies are merely conjectures interspersed with lies. Hence, the spirit of the Devil, poured out into the world by his own judgment, is either a liar, or equivocal, or...