PREFACE OF MICHAEL MAIER,

COUNT PALATINE OF THE EMPIRE,

TO THE READERS.

If you wonder, benevolent readers, what cause I had for publishing this treatise—marked by the name of the MOST SECRET SECRETS—after so many and such great authors on hieroglyphics, allegories, fables, theological, philosophical, poetic, chemical, and medical subjects have been published and are now finally scattered into the public light of the world, and for dedicating them to you, especially, for your judgment after so many prejudices, you will undoubtedly cease to wonder once you have looked into the matter itself, my studies and intent, and your own candor at the same time. Among Christians, I believe, there is no one so ignorant of all things, provided they have common sense and hold the first rudiments of letters, who has not sometimes read the books of the Heathens (a huge number of which have reached our age) and has not observed these two things in them: First, the names of gods, goddesses, and heroes, such as Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Apollo, Juno, Venus, Pallas, Hercules, Jason, and the rest; Second, the monstrous, horrific, and incredible deeds of each individual god and hero. For the books of the Heathens are so filled with these two things that, by insisting on them on almost every page, they contain hardly anything else worthy of memory. For example, if one were to take away the gods and the deeds of the gods and the heroes born of gods from Homer and Herodotus among the Greeks, or from Livy and Virgil among the Romans, the greatest part of their works would be marked with an obelisk a symbol used by ancient critics to mark spurious or corrupt passages. For the deeds are so connected with the persons, and these with the deeds, that if one is removed, the other cannot stand, or if one is granted, the other is granted.