A decorative woodcut headpiece features a central basket overflowing with flowers and foliage, flanked by symmetrical floral scrolls and stylized blossoms.

Benevolent Reader!

The worthiness of this present treatise deserved, not unjustly, for its author, Dr. Heinrich Khunrath, to provide a sufficient introductory report. However, because the well-reputed author of the both famous and scholarly History of the Church and Heretics original: "Kirchen- und Ketzer Historie," a landmark work by Gottfried Arnold published in 1699 that defended many mystical and alchemical thinkers, Gottfried Arnold, has already discussed the man at length in Volume 3, Chapter 2, page 11 and following; it will be enough for this occasion to simply set down the most necessary details and, as it were, to provide a recapitulation.

The aforementioned Heinrich Khunrath lived around the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries original: "Sæculi", and became significantly well-known among the learned world through his writings.

Regarding his homeland, he was a native of Leipzig; and as the famous Johannes Moller original: "Joan. Mollerus" writes in the second part of his Homonymoscopia A biographical dictionary of authors who shared the same name, intended to clear up historical confusion...