Inaugural Physico-Medical Dissertation on the Magnetism of the Macrocosm and Microcosm

§. 1.

In this chapter consists the main scope of our endeavor; for the genuine and true—so that we may satisfy the rubrics of our little dissertation—as well as the reproved keimena subjects/theorems of both Magnetisms in Medicine, must be delineated. But let us pursue all these things concisely. Therefore, so that opposites placed next to each other may shine forth more brightly, I think I will not act wrongly if I oppose the examples of reproved Magnetism, as if from opposite fronts, directly against each approved keimenon of Magnetism.

§. 2. The first keimenon is the natural principle which, viewed in the genus of nature, is true and has a causal connection joined with effluvia, and which, when left to itself—neither specifically performing some other supernatural suspicious elevation—is equal and sufficient for producing the same. This principle being placed in the act of causing, and with other things being equal, the magnetic effect necessarily follows. Examples of magnetisms arising from such a principle are not to be summoned from afar, since in both the Macrocosm and the Microcosm a very rich harvest of these offers itself.

§. 3. The Macrocosm provides us with an example without example, and in it the superior world or heaven with all its host. Whom does it escape that heaven and the stars act magnetically upon the inferior world, exciting, vegetating, and cherishing almost all force and energeia energy/activity of sublunary things from afar? So that you may truly say, with the denial of this eternity of magnetic astral influx, all sublunary vigor and all strength goes to ruin. This chain of celestial and inferior forces is continuous and uninterrupted, and it suffers no gap or rupture. Hence, Hermes Trismegistus in the Emerald Tablet not without cause expressed this friendly cohesion, saying: Everything that is above is as that which is below. And this magnetic consensus is derived from a natural cause as from a genuine fountain.