STORELLA'S PREFACE.

Whoever you are who approaches to read this work of secrets, after you have given huge thanks to glorious God, who has granted that so hidden and so precious a secret should come into your hands, and when you have purged your mind from every stain of iniquity, so that the keenness of your intellect may not be stained and darkened by the impurity of conscience while understanding such subtle and pure precepts, I would have this one thing persuaded to you, most humane reader: that before you betake yourself to the author, you do not disdain to read this our preface, completed with nine annotations; perhaps you will find things that you will not regret having read.

That the book is Aristotle's. First Annotation.

And even if this volume is not Aristotle's—as the Prince of Mirandola affirms in the first [book] against the Astrologers, and the second in the 5th of his premonitions (which could be persuaded from the fact that the author in this book acknowledges a ninth sphere, which no one doubts was unknown to Aristotle, unless he had called the first of the stars the ninth of the elements)—nevertheless, not a few philosophers, both recent and ancient, cite this [book] as Aristotle's.