Pandora: The Noblest Gift of God, or the Worthy and Healing Stone of the Sages

Preface.

When the powerful and highly learned man Theophrastus Paracelsus saw this, he discovered out of great zeal and love for his German people the ueram Magiam true magic: per quam actuando, uel uniendo uirtutes naturales, mirabilia efficimus opera in natura, & quasi mundum maritamus, ut Pius Mirandulanus scribit : quæq; in rerum supernaturalium cognitionem nos ducit. through which, by activating or uniting natural virtues, we perform wonderful works in nature, and as it were marry the world, as Pico della Mirandola writes: and which leads us into the knowledge of supernatural things. Such Magi (but I do not mean devil-conjurers or other black magicians) were the wise men who came to the newborn child to Bethlehem: likewise the Kabbalists among the Hebrews, the Philosophi philosophers among the Greeks, the Gymnosophists among the Indians.

But so that one would not throw pearls before swine, the good Theophrastus [invented] a new Magical