King James: Daemonologie (1597 First Edition)

...to give themselves over to the same. These two methods I call the Devil's school and his rudiments Basic principles or first lessons.. The learned have their curiosity awakened and fed by that which I call his school: this is Judicial Astrology original: Astrologie judiciar; the practice of predicting future events or human affairs by the stars, which James distinguishes from "natural" astrology/astronomy.. For various men, having attained a great perfection in learning and yet remaining too bare (alas!) of the spirit of regeneration The process of being spiritually reborn or transformed by divine grace. and its fruits, find that knowledge of all natural things is as common to stupid pedants as it is to them. They attempt to claim original: "vendicate" a greater name for themselves, not only by knowing the course of heavenly things, but likewise by climbing to the knowledge of things to come through them.

At first glance, this appears lawful to them because its basis seems to proceed from natural causes only. They are so allured by it that, finding their practice proves true in various things, they study to know the cause. And so, mounting degree by degree upon the slippery and uncertain scale of curiosity, they are at last enticed—where lawful arts or sciences fail to satisfy their restless minds—even to seek that black and unlawful science of Magic.

There they find, at first, that various forms of circles and conjurations, when rightly joined together, will raise various forms of spirits to resolve their doubts. Attributing these results to a power inseparably tied to or inherent in the circles—and using many words of God confusedly wrapped within them—they blindly glory in themselves. It is as if they had, by their quickness of intellect original: "ingine"; meaning ingenuity, wit, or mental skill, made a conquest of Pluto's original: Plutoes; the Roman god of the underworld, used here to represent the realm of the Devil. [dominions]...