Book I: Natural Magic

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486–1535) was a soldier, physician, lawyer, theologian, and the most comprehensive synthesist of Renaissance occult philosophy. He composed De Occulta Philosophia in his youth, showed it to the Abbot Trithemius around 1510 (who praised it highly), then withheld it from publication for decades while he revised. It appeared finally in 1531 in a circulated draft and in its complete form in 1533 — the same year Agrippa died in obscurity in Grenoble.

The three books of De Occulta Philosophia are a systematic architecture: Book I treats natural magic, the virtues resident in the elemental world, drawn out through medicine and natural philosophy. Book II treats celestial magic, the mathematics of planetary influence, talismans, and musical harmony. Book III treats ceremonial magic, the intelligences, angels, daemonology, divine names, Kabbalah, and theurgic operation. Together they argue that magic is not superstition but the consummation of philosophy — the unified knowledge of physics, mathematics, and theology working together.

This translation renders Book I from the 1533 first complete Latin edition (Sodalitas Augustiniana, Cologne — Library of Congress copy, archive.org identifier DeOccultaPhilosophiaLoc1533). The Freake 1651 English translation (ThreeBooksOfOccultPhilosophydeOccultaPhilosophia1651, CC0 public domain) was not consulted during translation; translation is independent from the 1533 Latin.

Chapter I — How the Mage Gathers Virtues from the Threefold World

Since the world is threefold — elemental, celestial, and intellectual — and each lower realm is governed by the higher, receiving into itself the influx of its virtues; since the Archetype himself, the supreme Creator, pours forth the virtues of his omnipotence into us through angels, through the heavens, through stars, elements, animals, plants, metals, and stones (for whose service he established and created all these things): the Magi do not find it unreasonable that we, ascending through those same grades, through each of the worlds, might attain to the Archetype himself — the maker of all, the first cause from whom all things proceed — and might not only enjoy those virtues already present in higher beings, but also draw down new virtues from above.

The virtues of the elemental world are therefore explored through varied natural mixtures by medicine and natural philosophy. The rays and influences of the celestial world are then connected to these, following the rules of astrologers and the disciplines of mathematicians. And all of this is confirmed and strengthened by the diverse powers of intelligences through the sacred ceremonies of religion.

This order and procedure — through all three worlds — I will endeavor to set forth in three books: the first containing natural magic, the second celestial magic, the third ceremonial magic.

I do not know whether it will be wholly pardonable that a man of small genius and learning should have engaged so freely in such a difficult, arduous, and intricate matter in the very flower of youth. For this reason I wish no one to give more assent to what I say here than I myself give — which is only so much as shall not be rejected by the Catholic Church and the assembly of the faithful.

Chapter II — What Magic Is, Its Parts, and What the Mage Must Be

Magic is a faculty possessed of the greatest power, full of the highest mysteries. It embraces the profoundest contemplation of the most secret things, and encompasses the knowledge of all nature — its power, qualities, substance, and virtue entire. It teaches how things differ and how they agree, and produces its wondrous effects by uniting the virtues of things through applying them to their proper subjects — at all times joining and wedding the gifts and virtues of higher things to lower ones. This is the most perfect and highest science, the loftier and more sacred philosophy, the absolute consummation of the noblest learning.

For all regulative philosophy is divided into physics, mathematics, and theology. Physics teaches the nature of what exists in the world, investigating its causes, effects, times, places, modes, events, wholes and parts. Mathematics teaches us to know nature extended in three dimensions, and to observe the motions and courses of celestial things. Theology teaches what God is, what mind, what intelligence, what angel, what daemon, what soul, what religion, what sacred rites, temples, observances, and sacred mysteries — and instructs us also in faith, miracles, the power of words and figures, hidden operations, and the mysteries of signs; and as Apuleius says, teaches us rightly to know and master the laws of religion's ceremonies.

Magic itself comprehends and works actively within all three of these sovereign faculties. Rightly, therefore, was it held by the ancients as the highest and most sacred science.

It was illuminated by the most weighty authors and most distinguished writers: chief among them, Zoroaster and Zalmoxis shone so brightly that many believe them to be its inventors. In their footsteps came Abaris the Hyperborean, Charmondas, Damigeron, Eudoxus, and Hermippus. Yet other, more renowned high priests of this art followed: Hermes Trismegistus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Plotinus, Proclus, Dardanus, Orpheus the Thracian, Gog the Greek, Germa the Babylonian, Apollonius of Tyana. Ostanes also wrote excellently in this art, whose books, dug from his tomb, the Abderite Democritus illuminated with his own commentaries. Furthermore, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Democritus, Plato, and many noble philosophers sailed away to learn this art; returning, they proclaimed it with the highest reverence and kept it among their secrets. We know that Pythagoras and Plato went to the priests of Memphis to learn it, and traversed all of Syria, Egypt, Judaea, and the schools of the Chaldaeans, that no sanctuary of the most sacred monuments of magic should be hidden from them, and that they might be steeped in divine things.

Whoever now desires to study in this faculty must be learned in physics — where the qualities of things are set forth and the hidden properties of every entity opened; and must be a practitioner of mathematics — through which the aspects and figures of the stars are known, on which depend the sublime virtues and properties of each thing; and must be learned in theology — where the immaterial substances that dispense and govern all things are made manifest. Without these, no one can understand the reason of magic. For there is no work completed by magic, no truly magical work, that does not comprehend all three faculties.

Chapter III — On the Four Elements, Their Qualities, and Their Mutual Mixtures

The four elements — fire, earth, water, and air — are the primary foundations of all corporeal things. From them all composed things in these lower realms are constituted, not by simple heaping together but through transformation and union; and when they are corrupted, they are resolved back into elements again.

No sensible element is pure. They are mixed in varying degrees of more and less, and are mutually transmutable: earth, becoming loose and dissolving, turns into water; water, thickened and condensed, turns back to earth; water evaporated by heat passes into air, and air superheated becomes fire; fire extinguished returns to air; cooled down from excess combustion it becomes earth or stone or sulfur — as lightning makes clear. Plato, however, holds that earth alone is untransmutable, while the other elements transmute both into earth and into one another.

Each element has two specific qualities: the first is its own, which it retains; in the second it meets the element that follows. Fire is hot and dry; earth is dry and cold; water is cold and moist; air is moist and hot. By two contrary qualities, elements are contrary to each other: fire to water, earth to air. Further, some are heavy — earth and water — and some light — air and fire. The first two are therefore called passive, the latter active.

Plato, distinguishing in yet another way, assigns three qualities to each: to fire — sharpness, rarity, and motion; to earth — bluntness, density, and rest. By these, fire and earth are contrary. The other elements borrow their qualities from these: air takes two qualities of fire — rarity and motion — and one of earth, bluntness. Water takes two of earth — obscurity and density — and one of fire, motion. Thus fire is doubly rarer than air, triply more mobile, quadruply more sharp. Air is doubly more sharp than water, triply rarer, quadruply more mobile. Water is doubly more sharp than earth, triply rarer, quadruply more mobile. As fire is to air, so air is to water, and water to earth; and the reverse proportions hold equally.

This is the root and foundation of all bodies, natures, virtues, and wondrous works. Whoever knows the qualities of the elements and their mixtures will easily accomplish marvelous works, and will be consummate in natural magic.

Chapter IV — On the Threefold Consideration of the Elements

The four elements, known in three orders, make twelve — completing the quaternary into the duodenary; progressing through seven into ten, it reaches the supreme unity on which all virtue and wondrous operation depends.

In the first order are the pure elements, which neither compound, borrow, nor suffer mixture; they are incorruptible — not the source from which, but the channel through which, the virtues of all natural things are produced into effect. Their virtues cannot be explained by anyone, for they can do all things to all things. Whoever is ignorant of these cannot reach any work of wondrous effect.

The elements of the second order are composite, multiple, and various, and impure — yet reducible through art to pure simplicity. Once returned to that simplicity, their virtue surpasses all things, completing all hidden operations and all the operations of nature. These are the foundation of the whole of natural magic.

The elements of the third order are not elements in the first or direct sense, but decomposed, variable, multiple, and mutually permutable. These are the infallible medium — therefore called the middle nature, or the soul of the middle nature. Very few understand their profound mysteries. In them, through certain numbers, grades, and orders, is the consummation of every effect in natural, celestial, and super-celestial things alike. They are wondrous and filled with mysteries that can work in magic both natural and divine. Through them descend the binding, loosing, and transmutation of all things — foreknowledge of the future, the banishing of evil daemons, and the winning of good spirits.

Without these three orders of elements and their knowledge, let no one presume to accomplish anything in the hidden sciences of magic and nature. But whoever can reduce the impure to the pure, the multiple to the simple, and can distinguish — without dividing the substance — the nature, virtue, and power of each in number, grade, and order: such a person will easily attain the perfect knowledge and operation of all natural and celestial secrets.

Chapter V — On the Wondrous Natures of Fire and Earth

For the accomplishment of all wondrous operations, says Hermes, two things suffice: fire and earth. Earth is the patient; fire is the agent.

Fire, as Dionysius says, comes clear in all things and through all things, yet draws back from all; it is luminous to all, yet hidden and unknown at the same time. When fire exists by itself, with no matter present in which to manifest its proper action, it is immense and invisible, powerful unto its own action, mobile, giving itself in a certain way to all things that draw near, renewing, custodian of nature, illuminating — its splendor grasped by no understanding — clear, discerning, uplifting, cutting sharply, lofty, refusing to suffer diminishment, ever moving and moving others, comprehending another while itself incomprehensible, needing nothing else, secretly increasing from within itself, unfolding its magnitude to the materials it receives, active, powerful, invisibly present in all things at once, not enduring neglect, leading all things back — universally and particularly — to their order with sudden force, incomprehensible, impalpable, not diminished, exceedingly rich in its own gifts.

Fire is an immense and violent portion of nature, says Pliny — whether it consumes more than it begets, or begets more than it consumes, remains uncertain.

Fire itself is one and penetrates all things, say the Pythagoreans; but in heaven it is diffused and gives light; in the underworld it is confined, shadowy, and tormenting; in between it partakes of both. Fire, one in itself, is therefore manifold in its receiver, distributed in various forms to various things — as Cleanthes testifies in Cicero.

There is the fire of daily use; the fire latent in stones, struck out by the impact of steel; fire in the earth, which smolders when the earth is dug; fire in the waters, which warms springs and wells; fire in the depths of the sea, which heats the water when stirred by winds; fire in the air, which we often see making it warm. All animals and living things, all plants, are nourished by heat. Whatever lives, lives on account of the enclosed fire within it.

The properties of celestial fire are: the heat that makes all fruitful, and the light that gives life to all. The properties of infernal fire are: the burning ardor that consumes all, and the darkness filled with desolation. The celestial and luminous fire therefore repels dark daemons; and so too does our wooden fire, insofar as it bears the image and vehicle of that superior light. Moreover, he who said I am the light of the world — who is the true fire, the Father of lights, from whom comes every good and perfect gift — pours out the splendor of his fire first to the sun, then to the other celestial bodies, and through these as intermediate instruments that splendor flows down into our own fire.

Therefore, just as daemons of darkness grow stronger in the dark itself, so good daemons — who are angels of light — receive increase from light: not only divine, solar, and celestial light, but also from the fire that is among us. Hence the wisest founders of the first religions and ceremonies decreed that prayers, psalmodics, and all sacred rites be performed only with lit lights. Hence the Pythagorean symbol: Do not speak of God without a lamp. They commanded that fires and lights be lit beside the bodies of the dead against evil daemons, and not removed until, after the rites of sacred purification are completed, the body is committed to the earth. The Almighty himself, in the Old Law, required all his sacrifices to be offered with fire, and ordained that a fire always burn on the altar — which also the priestesses of Vesta perpetually kept and guarded among the Romans.

Of all the elements, earth is the base and foundation. It is the object, subject, and receptacle of all celestial rays and influxes. It contains within itself the seeds and seeding virtues of all things; therefore it is called animal, vegetable, and mineral. Fecundated by all the other elements and by the heavens, it gives birth from itself to all. It is the receptacle of all fertility, the first parent and begetter of all, the center and foundation and mother of all things. Take from it whatever secret, purified, refined, and subtle substance you will — leave it a while exposed to the open sky: fecundated and made pregnant by celestial virtues, it will of itself produce plants, worms and small creatures, small stones, and shining sparks of metals. In it are the greatest secrets; if it be purified by the art of fire and restored to its simplicity by appropriate washing, it is the primal matter of our creation, and the most saving medicine for our restoration and preservation.

Chapter VI — On the Wondrous Natures of Water, Air, and the Winds

The other two elements are no less powerful than these; nature ceases not to work wonders in them either. Water is so necessary that no creature can live without it; no plant, no herb can spring up without the moisture of water. Water is the seminary of the virtues of all things. Among animals, this is most evident with those whose seed is watery. The fruits and herbs of the earth, though their seeds are dry, must still be made wet if they are to be fertile — whether by moisture absorbed from the soil, or by dew, or by rain, or by water applied by hand. Moses describes earth and water alone as producing the living soul. And water itself gives a double production: swimming creatures in the waters, and flying creatures in the air above the earth. That the productions of earth also owe something to water, the same scripture testifies, saying that after creation the shrubs and plants had not yet put forth, because God had not yet rained upon the earth. So great is the power of this element that even spiritual regeneration does not take place without water, as Christ himself testified to Nicodemus. The greatest use of water in religion is in purifications and washings; its necessity is no less than that of fire. Its utilities are infinite and its uses manifold; all things consist by its power, for it holds the virtue of generating, nourishing, and increasing.

Hence Thales of Miletus and Hesiod established water as the principle of all things — the most ancient and the most powerful of all the elements, one that commands all the rest. As Pliny says: the waters devour the earth; they extinguish flames; they mount to the heights and claim the sky with their covering of clouds; they fall again and become the cause of all things born upon the earth. The wonders of waters are innumerable, described by Pliny, Solinus, and many historians.

Ovid remembers the marvelous virtues of diverse waters in these verses: "Hammon's spring is cold at midday, chill at sunrise and at setting sun. Athamantian water is said to kindle wood when approached at the moon's smallest crescent. The Ciconians have a river that turns the bowels of those who drink it to stone, and lays a film of marble over things touched. Crathis and Sybaris near your shores make hair like amber and like gold. And stranger still — certain waters can change not only the body but the very mind. Who has not heard of the shameful waves of Salmacis? The Ethiopian lakes, to drink from which makes one burst into laughter, or sink in wondrous heaviness. Whoever slaked his thirst at the Clitorian spring flees wine and rejoices in temperate waters alone. The Lyncestian river has the opposite effect — whoever drinks too freely staggers as if he had drunk unmixed wine. There is a lake in Arcadia, Pheneus, suspected of its ambiguous waters: fear them by night — drunk at night they harm, drunk in daylight do no harm."

Josephus reports a remarkable river between Arcea and Raphanea in Syria: it flows full one week, then as if its springs were stopped it runs dry for six days, and on the seventh day returns, by unknown causes of nature, to its former abundance of waters — whence the people called it the Sabbath river, after the sacred seventh day of the Jews.

The Gospel testifies about the Pool of Bethesda, in which whoever first descended after the water was stirred by an angel was freed from whatever disease afflicted him. The same virtue and power is said to have belonged to the fountain of the Nymphs Ionides, which stood in the territory of the Eleans near the village of Heraclea by the Cytheron river — whoever went down into it with a diseased body would come out whole and sound, every bodily defect driven away.

It remains now to speak of air. Air is the vital spirit pervading all things, giving life and consistency to all, binding, moving, and filling everything. Hence the Hebrew doctors do not count it among the elements, but treat it as a kind of medium and glue, joining different things together, and as the breathing instrument of the world. Air most readily receives into itself all the influxes of the heavens and communicates them to the other elements and to all mixed things. It receives in itself, as a kind of divine mirror, the species, images, and forms of all natural things, of all artificial things, and of all speech whatsoever; and carrying these with itself, it enters bodies through the pores, impressing them whether in sleep or waking — providing the material for diverse wonderful dreams, premonitions, and auguries. Hence they say it happens that a person passing a place where a man has been killed, or where a fresh body is hidden, is seized by fear and terror — for the air in that place, filled with horrible images of murder, affects the spirit of the man as he breathes it in with like images, disturbing and perturbing him; from which follows fear. For whatever strikes suddenly astonishes nature.

Hence many philosophers have believed that air is the cause of dreams and many other impressions upon the soul, through the transport of images or likenesses or species — which flow off from things and speeches and multiply themselves in the air itself, until they reach the senses, and finally the imagination and the receiving soul. For the soul, freed from cares and unimpeded, is formed by these images as they arrive. And although the species of things are by their own nature carried to the senses of humans and animals, yet they can, while still in the air, receive from the heavens a certain impression that causes them to flow more readily to the sense of one person than another, according to the aptitude and disposition of the recipient.

And it is possible, by nature alone and without any superstition, with no other spirit as intermediary, for one person to communicate the conception of his mind to another at any distance, however great and unknown, in the briefest time — though the exact time cannot be precisely measured, yet it must of necessity be accomplished within twenty-four hours. I myself know how to do this, and have done it many times. The same was known and done by the Abbot Trithemius.

For this reason — that certain images, whether spiritual or natural, flow out from bodies into the air — Plotinus demonstrates and teaches how idols (visible forms) efflux from bodies: through a certain influence of bodies upon bodies, gathering strength in the air through light, through motion; presenting and showing themselves to sight and to other senses; and sometimes working wonderful things upon us.

We see how, when the south wind blows, the air thickens into fine clouds, and in them as in a mirror are reflected the images of distant armies, mountains, horses, and men, and other things — images that disappear with the dispersal of the clouds. Aristotle in the Meteorologica shows how the rainbow is formed in a cloud of air by a kind of mirror effect. Albert says that the likenesses of bodies can by a force of nature be easily formed in moist air, in the same manner as the images of things are in things.

Aristotle also tells of a man with such weak vision that whenever he walked, his image appeared before him as if in a mirror, always preceding him face-to-face, for his visual ray could not penetrate and was reflected back. Similarly, through the art of certain mirrors, whatever images we wish can be produced in the air at a distance, even outside the mirrors — which the unlearned, seeing them, take to be ghosts of daemons or shades of souls, when in truth they are nothing but likenesses related to themselves, devoid of all life.

And it is known that if one is in a dark place from which all light is excluded except a single ray of sunlight admitted through the smallest hole, and if white paper or a flat mirror is placed opposite the hole, whatever happens outside in the sunlight will be seen upon the paper or mirror. There is another wonder still more admirable: if one paints certain images with proper art and exposes them by night to the rays of the full moon, and then another person who is in the secret looks from a great distance, he sees them and reads them in the moon's disc itself. This is a most useful art for communicating secrets to those besieged in towns and cities — it was once practiced by Pythagoras and is not unknown to some today, nor to myself. All of these, and many more greater things, are founded in the nature of air itself, and have their rational principles in mathematics and optics.

As likenesses are reflected to sight, so sometimes also to hearing — as is manifest in the echo. And there are arts more hidden still, by which a man may hear and understand, even at great distances, what another speaks or whispers in secret.

The winds, too, are born of the element of air — for they are nothing other than air in motion and agitation. The four principal winds blow from the four quarters of heaven: Notus from the south, Boreas from the north, Zephyrus from the west, and Apeliotes or Eurus from the east — as Pontanus compressed them in two verses: "From the top of Olympus Boreas breathes, Notus from the depths; the west is Zephyrus's seat, Eurus comes from the east."

Notus, the southern wind, is misty, moist, warm, and disease-bearing — Jerome calls it the cupbearer of rains. Ovid describes it: "Notus flies out on dripping wings, his terrible face covered in pitchy darkness, his beard heavy with rain-clouds, water streaming from his white hair, mist sitting on his brow, his wings and breast dripping."

Boreas, contrary to Notus, is the northern wind — violent and sonorous; it scatters clouds and clears the air, locks water in ice. Ovid makes it speak of itself: "My strength is apt for this — that I drive away sad clouds and churn the straits and uproot knotted oaks; I harden snow and strike the earth with hail. When I collide with my brothers in the open sky (for that is my field) I labor with such force that the air rings with my blows and fire is struck from the hollow clouds."

Zephyrus (also called Favonius) is the gentlest wind, blowing from the west with mild breath — cold and moist, dissolving winter, bringing forth buds and flowers. Contrary to it is Eurus (also called Subsolanus and Apeliotes), from the east — watery and cloud-bringing, of swift voracity. Of these Ovid sings: "Eurus withdrew to the dawn and the Nabataean realms and the Persian peaks and the ridges bathed in morning light. Evening and the shores warmed by the setting sun belong to Zephyrus; bristling Boreas seized the north; the opposite land grows wet with unceasing clouds and rainy Auster."

Chapter VII — On the Kinds of Composed Things: How They Relate to the Elements, and What in the Elements Corresponds to the Soul, the Senses, and the Morals

After the four simple elements, there follow next from them four kinds of perfect composed things: stones, metals, plants, and animals. Although all the elements concur in the composition of each of these kinds, each kind nevertheless chiefly follows and imitates one predominant element.

All stones are earthy — they are naturally heavy and descend, and so compacted by dryness that they cannot be melted. Metals are watery and liquable — as the natural philosophers confirm and the alchemists discover, they are generated from viscous water, or from watery quicksilver. Plants agree with air so well that they can neither spring up nor grow except in the open. Animals have a fiery kinship, as Virgil says: "Fiery is their vigor and celestial their origin." The fire is so akin to them that when it is extinguished, all life immediately fails.

Each kind is further distinguished within itself by degrees of the elements. Among stones: those that are opaque and heavier are called earthy; those transparent are watery; those solidified from water — as crystal, beryl, and pearls in their shells — are likewise watery; those that float on water and are spongy (pumice, actual sponges, tufa) are airy; and those from which fire is drawn, or into which it can sometimes dissolve, or which are generated from fire — like the thunderstone, pyrites, and asbestos — are fiery.

Among metals: lead and silver are earthy; quicksilver is watery; copper and tin are airy; gold and iron are fiery.

In plants: roots correspond to earth, by reason of their density; leaves to water, by reason of their sap; flowers to air, by reason of their fineness; seeds to fire, by reason of the generative spirit within them. Furthermore some plants are called warm, some cold, some moist, some dry, borrowing the names of the elements from their own qualities.

Among animals: some are especially earthy and inhabit the bowels of the earth — worms, earthworms, moles, and many reptiles; others are watery, like fish; others airy, unable to live outside air; others fiery, dwelling in fire — like salamanders; and certain cicadas called pyraustae; and those burning with a fiery heat, like doves, ostriches, lions, and those beasts which the Sage calls "those that breathe fiery vapor."

In animals: bones correspond to earth; flesh to air; the vital spirit to fire; the humors to water. The humors are further distributed among the elements: red cholera belongs to fire; blood to air; phlegm to water; black bile to earth.

In the soul itself, according to Augustine: intellect corresponds to fire; reason to air; imagination to water; the senses to earth. And these senses too are distributed among the elements: sight is fiery, for it perceives nothing without fire and light; hearing is airy, for sound is produced by struck air; smell and taste are referred to water, for without moisture there is neither flavor nor odor; touch is wholly earthy, aligning itself to coarser bodies.

Human actions and behaviors are also moderated by the elements: slow, solid movement is marked by earth; fear, inertia, and the most sluggish work are marked by water; cheerfulness and friendly manners by air; sharp and irascible impulse by fire. The elements, therefore, are the first principle of all things — all things are from them and in accordance with them; and they diffuse their virtues through all things, in all things, and in every way.

Chapter VIII — How the Elements Are in the Heavens, in the Stars, in Daemons, in Angels, and in God Himself

It is the unanimous opinion of the Platonists that, just as in the archetypal world all things are in all things, so also in this corporeal world all things are in all things — but in different modes, according to the nature of the recipient. And so the elements are not only in these lower things; they are also in the heavens, in the stars, in daemons, in angels, and in the supreme Creator and Archetype himself.

But in these lower things the elements are crass forms immersed in matter — material elements. In the heavens, the elements are present through their whole natures and virtues — in a celestial mode, and far more excellent than below the moon. For the solidity of celestial earth exists there without the heaviness of water; the agility of celestial air, without flux; the heat of celestial fire, not burning but luminous, vivifying all things by its warmth.

Furthermore, among the stars: Mars and the Sun are fiery; Jupiter and Venus are airy; Saturn and Mercury are watery; those that dwell in the eighth sphere, and the Moon (which most take to be watery — since after the fashion of earth it attracts the celestial waters, and once imbued with them communicates and influxes them to us through its nearness) are earthy.

Among the signs of the zodiac likewise, some are fiery, some earthy, some airy, some watery. They govern the elements in the heavens by distributing to each of the four triplicities the beginning, middle, and end of its element: the beginning of fire belongs to Aries, its progress and increase to Leo, its completion to Sagittarius; the beginning of earth to Taurus, its progress to Virgo, its end to Capricorn; the beginning of air to Gemini, its proceeding to Libra, its term to Aquarius; the beginning of water to Cancer, its middle to Scorpio, its end to Pisces. From the mixture of these planets and signs together with the elements, all bodies are compounded.

The daemons also are distinguished from one another in this way: some are called fiery, some earthy, some airy, some watery — hence those four rivers in the underworld: fiery Phlegethon, airy Cocytus, watery Styx, earthy Acheron. And in the Gospels we read of the fire of Gehenna and the eternal fire into which the accursed are sent. The Apocalypse speaks of the lake of fire. Isaiah says of the damned: "The Lord shall strike them with corrupt air." Job says: "They pass from the heat of waters of snow," and speaks also of the earth dark and covered with the shadow of death, the land of misery and darkness.

Even in the supramundane angels and blessed intelligences are found these elements. In them there is a stability of essence — an earthy force, whereby they are the firm thrones of God. There is a clemency and piety — a watery virtue that cleanses. Hence they are called "waters" by the Psalmist, who says of heaven: "Who rules the waters above it." There is in them also a subtle airy spirit; and a shining love of fire — hence they are called in holy scripture "couriers of the winds," and elsewhere the Psalmist says: "Who makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a burning fire."

Among the angelic orders: the Seraphim, Virtues, and Powers are fiery; the Cherubim are earthy; the Thrones and Archangels are watery; the Dominations and Principates are airy.

Of the Archetype himself — the Maker of all things — we read: "Let the earth open and bring forth the Savior." Is it not of the same One it is said: "the spring of living water, cleansing and regenerating"? Is it not the same — the Spirit breathing the breath of life? And again, as both Moses and Paul testify: "a consuming fire"?

The elements are therefore everywhere and in all things — none can deny this. First in these lower things, but there secular and crass; in the heavens purer and brighter; in the supracelestial, living and wholly blessed. The elements therefore are: in the Archetype as ideas of things to be produced; in intelligences as distributed powers; in the heavens as virtues; in the lower world as the grosser forms.

Chapter IX — On the Natural Virtues of Things, Immediately Dependent on the Elements

Some natural virtues of things are elemental — such as heating, cooling, moistening, and drying. These are called primary operations, or qualities in act. These qualities alone transmute the whole substance, which no other quality does. Other virtues are present in things from their composing elements, going beyond the primary qualities — such as maturing, digestive, resolving, softening, hardening, astringent, cleansing, corrosive, caustic, opening, evaporating, strengthening, soothing, conglutinating, obstructing, expelling, retaining, attracting, repelling, stupefying, relaxing, lubricating, and many more. The elemental quality has much to accomplish in the compound that it does not accomplish in itself alone. These operations are called secondary qualities, since they follow the nature and measure of the mixture of the primary virtues — as is copiously treated in the books of the physicians. For instance: maturation is the operation of natural heat according to a certain measure in the substance of the matter; hardening is the operation of cold; similarly congelation; and so with the rest.

These operations sometimes act on a specific organ — like those that provoke urine, milk, or menstrual blood — and these are called tertiary qualities, which follow the secondary as the secondary follow the primary. By these first, second, and third qualities, many diseases are both treated and induced.

Many things are also made artificially that greatly astonish people — such as fire that burns in water (called Greek fire, the many compositions of which Aristotle teaches in his special treatise on this subject). Similarly fire that is extinguished by oil and kindled by cold water when poured from above; fire that is fed by rain, wind, or sun; fire called aqua ardens (burning water), whose composition is well known and which consumes nothing but itself; and inextinguishable fires, incombustible oils, and perpetual lamps that can be quenched by neither wind nor water nor any means — which would seem utterly incredible were it not for that most famous lamp which once burned in the temple of Venus, in which burned asbestos stone, once lit truly never to be quenched.

Against these, one can also prepare wood or other combustibles so that they cannot be burned by fire; and compositions are made with which hands anointed can carry red-hot iron, or plunge a hand into molten metal, or go with the whole body into fire without harm — and similar marvels.

There is also a substance that Pliny calls asbestos and the Greeks name amiantos — not consumed by fires — of which Anaxilaus says that a tree wrapped in it can be struck with axes and goes unheard.

Chapter X — On the Occult Virtues of Things

Beyond the elemental qualities, there are other virtues in things that belong to no element — such as repelling poison, dispersing anthrax, attracting iron, or some other like effect. This virtue is a consequence of the species and form of this or that thing. Hence even a small quantity produces no small effect in acting — which is not granted to elemental quality.

These virtues, being largely of form rather than matter, accomplish much with a little matter. Elemental virtue, being material, requires much matter to accomplish much. They are called occult properties, because their causes lie hidden such that human intellect cannot fully investigate them — which is why philosophers have obtained knowledge of most of them through long experience more than through inquiry of reason. For as food in the stomach is digested by heat (which we know), so too it is transformed by a certain hidden virtue which we do not know — not by heat alone, for in that case it would be better transformed near a fire than in a stomach. So things have beyond the elemental qualities we know certain other inborn virtues, coborn with nature, which we marvel at and are often astonished by — being unknown to us, rarely or never seen.

As Ovid says of the phoenix: "There is one bird that renews and reseminates itself — the Assyrians call it the phoenix." And elsewhere: "All Egypt gathers to see so great a wonder, and the crowd hails the rare bird with rejoicing."

The ancients marveled greatly at what they called the Matrona — a beast said to nourish a creature from itself that devoured itself. Hence even today many anxiously seek to know what this Matrona-beast might be. Who would not marvel at fossil fish extracted from the earth, reported by Aristotle, Theophrastus, and the historian Polybius? And the singing stones described by Pausanias — all are works of occult virtues.

The ostrich digests cold iron and the hardest metal as nourishment for its body; its stomach is said to be proof even against red-hot iron. The little torpedo fish so arrests the force of winds and tames the rage of the sea that, no matter how fiercely the storm rages with all sails spread to the wind, yet by touch alone it compels ships to stand so still they cannot be moved by any force. Salamanders and pyraustae (fire-insects) live in fire — though they sometimes seem to burn, they are not harmed.

Similar is what is said of a certain bitumen with which the armor of the Amazons is said to have been anointed, which is dissolved by neither iron nor fire — with which also the Caspian Gates of bronze, according to fable, were treated by Alexander the Great. With similar pitch Noah's Ark is said to have been caulked — and it endures to this day on the mountains of Armenia through thousands of years of storms.

There are many other wonders of this kind, barely credible, yet known through experience itself — such as what antiquity relates of Satyrs: beings of half-human, half-beast form, yet capable of speech and reason. Holy Jerome himself records that one of these once spoke to the blessed hermit Anthony and confessed the error of the heathen in worshiping creatures, and asked the common God to be prayed for on its behalf; and Jerome affirms that one of them was once brought alive before the people, and shortly after sent to the Emperor Constantine.

Chapter XI — How Occult Virtues Are Infused into Species from the Ideas, through the Reasons of the World-Soul and the Rays of the Stars; and Which Things Most Abound in This Virtue

The Platonists say that all lower things are formed and imagined after higher ideas. They define an idea as a form above bodies, souls, and minds — one, simple, pure, immutable, indivisible, incorporeal, eternal — and all ideas of the same nature.

They posit ideas first in the Good itself — that is, in God — in the mode of a cause; distinguished from one another only by certain relational reasons, with nothing in the divine nature varying in diversity, yet agreeing among themselves in essence, so that God is not a multiple substance. They posit them secondly in the intelligible itself — that is, in the world-soul — by proper forms and by absolutely separate forms differing from one another, so that the ideas in God are all one form, while in the world-soul they are many. They are posited in subsequent minds, whether joined to body or separate, by a kind of participation, growing more and more distinct by degrees. They are posited in nature as the lowest seeds of forms, infused from the ideas. And finally they are posited in matter as shadows.

Added to this: there are in the world-soul as many seminal reasons of things as there are ideas in the divine mind. By these reasons the world-soul has built for itself in the heavens, beyond the stars, additional figures, and has imprinted properties on all of these. From these stars, figures, and properties all the virtues and properties of lower species depend — so that every species has a celestial figure suited to it, from which also there proceeds to it a marvelous power in operation, just as through the seminal reasons of the world-soul it receives its proper endowment from its idea.

For ideas are not only the essential causes of each species, but also the causes of every virtue that belongs to that species. This is what many philosophers mean when they say that the virtues existing in natural things are moved by certain definite, stable, not fortuitous or casual reasons — efficacious, potent, and unfailing, none working in vain, none working for nothing — which virtues are the operations of the ideas. They err only per accidens, from the impurity and inequality of matter; for this reason things of the same species are found more or less potent according to the purity or confusion of the matter — for all celestial influxes can be impeded by the confusion and incapacity of the matter.

Hence the Platonists have this proverb: celestial virtues are infused according to the worthiness of the matter. And Virgil: "Fiery is their vigor and celestial their origin, in the seeds, as far as harmful bodies do not hinder them."

Therefore things in which the idea is less immersed in matter — that is, which receive greater likeness to the separated — possess more potent virtues in action, resembling the operation of the separated idea. Thus we know that the position and figure of the heavens is the cause of every noble virtue which is in lower species.

Chapter XII — How diverse virtues are infused in diverse individuals, even of the same species

The singular gifts of individuals, even within the same species, are infused by the celestial figures and the position of the stars, and these gifts are in many things as marvelous as those of the species themselves. For every individual, when it begins to exist under a determined horoscope and celestial constellation, contracts with its being a wonderful virtue of acting and being acted upon — something marvelous, and beyond what it holds from its species — both through the influx of the heavens and through the obedience of generative matter to the world-soul. This obedience is of the same kind as the obedience of our body to our souls. For we feel in ourselves that toward whatever form we conceive, our body is moved — pleasurably, or with horror, or in flight. Likewise the celestial souls, when they conceive diverse things, cause matter to move by this obedience toward them. Thus many marvels appear in nature from the imagination of superior movements. Thus also diverse things, not only natural but sometimes artificial, conceive diverse virtues — and this is maximized when the intent of the worker strives toward the same end.

Hence Avicenna says: whatever things happen here must preexist in the motions and conceptions of the stars and spheres. Thus arise in things various effects, inclinations, and characters — not only from matter variously disposed, as most suppose, but from diverse influx and diverse form — not specifically diverse, but particular and proper. The grades of these are variously distributed by the very first cause of all things, which is God, who remaining the same distributes to each as he wills — yet secondary causes cooperate with him, both angelic and celestial, disposing bodily matter and all else committed to them. All virtues are therefore infused through the world-soul, yet particularly through the virtue of images and presiding intelligences, and through the special harmonious concourse of stellar rays and aspects.

Chapter XIII — Whence come occult virtues

It is known to all that a certain virtue is innate in the magnet by which it attracts iron; and that the adamant, by its very presence, removes the magnet's power; that electrum and the balagius gem, when rubbed and warmed, draw up straw; that asbestos stone, once lit, is never or barely extinguished; that the carbuncle shines in darkness; that the agate stone, placed on or beneath pregnant women or plants, strengthens and draws; that jasper stops the flow of blood; that the echinus fish stops a ship; that rhubarb purges bile; that the liver of the chameleon, burned on rooftops, excites storms and thunder; that the heliotrope stone purges the sight and renders the wearer invisible; that the lyncurian stone removes the illusions from eyes; that the lipparis stone, when burned, summons all beasts; that the synochitides leads up shades of the dead; that the anachitides makes the images of the divine appear; that the ennecris stone placed beneath dreamers yields oracles. There is an Aethiopian herb by which standing waters are said to dry up and all locked things to open; and we read of a plant given by Persian kings to their emissaries, so that wherever they came, abundance of things would abound around them. There is also a Spartan or Scythian herb which, if tasted or merely held in the mouth, allows the Scythians to endure twelve days without food or thirst. Apuleius teaches, having been instructed by a divine power, that there are many kinds of herbs and stones by which men can even confer perpetual life upon themselves — yet it is not permitted that men know the science of them; for since they live but a short time and eagerly pursue evil, daring every wickedness, if they were granted length of time they would spare not even the gods themselves.

But whence these virtues come — none of those who have written great volumes on the properties of things has told us: not Hermes, not Bochus, not Aaron, not Orpheus, not Theophrastus, not Thebit, not Zenothemis, not Zoroaster, not Euax, not Dioscorides, not Isaac the Jew, not Zacharias the Babylonian, not Albertus, not Arnold. And yet all these affirm what Zacharias writes to Mithridates: that great power, and the fates of men, are present in the virtues of stones and herbs. A higher contemplation is therefore required to find whence these things come.

Alexander Peripatetic, not departing from his senses and qualities, held that these virtues come from the elements and their qualities — which might perhaps be thought true, except that those elemental qualities are of the same species, while the operations of stones are many, agreeing neither in species nor genus. Therefore the Academics with their Plato attribute these virtues to the forming ideas of things; Avicenna to the intelligences; Hermes to the stars; Albertus to the specific forms of things. And though these authors seem to contradict one another, none of them, rightly understood, departs from the truth — since all their statements agree in the same effect in most respects. For God, as the end and origin of all virtues, grants his seal of ideas to his servants the intelligences, who as faithful executors imprint the individual things entrusted to them with ideal virtue upon the heavens and stars as instruments, while these stars dispose matter to receive those forms which, as Plato says in the Timaeus, reside in the divine majesty as those to be drawn down through the stars. God, the dispenser of forms, distributes them through the ministry of intelligences whom he has set as rulers and guardians over their works — and to whom that faculty has been entrusted in the things committed to them, so that every virtue of stones, herbs, metals, and all other things is from the intelligences presiding over them.

Form and virtue come therefore first from ideas, then from presiding and governing intelligences, then from the dispositions of the heavens, then from the correspondingly disposed complexions of the elements that answer to the celestial influxes, by which the elements themselves are disposed. In lower things, therefore, operations of this kind are held through expressed forms; in the heavens through disposing virtues; in intelligences through mediating reasons; in the archetype through ideas and exemplary forms — all of which must concur in the execution of each thing's effect and virtue. Virtue and marvelous operation dwell therefore in every herb and stone, but more in the star; and beyond that, each thing gathers much to itself from the intelligences presiding over it; but most powerfully from the supreme cause, to whom all things mutually correspond in consummated consonance through their harmonic accord — as if in certain hymns, always praising that highest Maker, as in the Chaldean furnace those holy youths invite all things to sing: Bless the Lord, all things sprouting on the earth, and all things moving in the waters, all birds of heaven, beasts and cattle together with the sons of men. There is therefore no cause of the necessity of effects other than the connection of all things with the first cause, and their correspondence to the divine exemplars and eternal ideas, from which each thing holds its determined particular place in the archetype, from which it lives and draws its origin; and every virtue of herbs, stones, metals, animals, words and prayers, and all things that are from God, is innate therein. God, though he works in lower things through intelligences and heavens, sometimes nonetheless — setting aside these intermediaries or suspending their ministry — does those things immediately from himself; and these works are then called miracles. For while the secondary causes, which Plato and others call ministers, necessarily act under the command and order of the first cause, and necessarily produce their effects, God sometimes nonetheless releases or suspends them as he pleases, so that they entirely desist from the necessity of his command and order. These are the great miracles of God: thus fire in the Chaldean furnace did not burn the youths; thus the sun at Joshua's command retreated from its course by the space of one day; thus at Hezekiah's petition it went back ten lines or hours; thus at Christ's Passion it suffered eclipse at the full moon. And the reasons of these workings can be investigated or attained by no rational discourse, no magic, no science however occult or profound — they must be learned from the divine oracles alone.

Chapter XIV — On the spirit of the world, what it is, and that it is the bond of occult virtues

Democritus and Orpheus, and many Pythagoreans, having most diligently investigated celestial forces and infernal natures, said all things are full of gods — and not wrongly, since there is no thing so excellent in virtue that, widowed of divine aid, could be content with its own nature. The gods they called the divine virtues diffused in things — which Zoroaster called divine allurements, Synesius called symbolic enticements, and others called souls or even life; they said the virtues of things depended on these, because it belongs to the soul alone to extend from one matter into other things around which it works — as a man extends his intellect to intelligible things and his imagination to imaginable things. This is what they meant when they said: the soul of one being goes forth and enters another, and bewithces it and impedes its operations — just as the adamant impedes the magnet from drawing iron.

Since the soul is the first mover, self-moving and by itself mobile, while the body or matter is by itself ineffective when moved, and far degenerated from the soul, there must therefore be a more excellent medium — which is as it were not quite body, yet almost soul; or not quite soul, yet almost body — by which the soul is joined to the body. This medium they conceive as the spirit of the world, which we call the fifth essence: for it does not subsist from the four elements, but as something fifth above or beyond them. This spirit is therefore required as medium, through which the celestial souls may dwell in the coarser body and lavish their wonderful gifts. This spirit is in the body of the world roughly as spirit is in our human body: just as the forces of our souls are applied to our members through spirit, so the virtue of the world-soul is diffused by this fifth essence through all things. For nothing in the whole world is found lacking a spark of this virtue. Yet it is most poured into those things which have drunk most of this spirit; and it is drawn by stellar rays, insofar as things make themselves conform to these.

Through this spirit all occult properties are propagated into herbs, stones, metals, and living creatures — through the sun, through the moon, through the planets, and through the stars beyond the planets. This spirit can benefit us more if one knows to separate it as much as possible from the other elements; or at least to use chiefly those things in which this spirit is most abundant. For those things in which this spirit is least submerged in body and least confined by matter act more powerfully and perfectly, and more readily generate their like — since all generative and seminal virtue is in it. For this reason alchemists strive to separate this spirit from gold and silver; which when duly separated and extracted, if afterwards applied to any matter of the same genus — that is, to any of the metals — gold or silver will at once be produced. And I myself know how to do this, and have at times seen it: but I could not make more gold than was the weight of that gold from which I extracted the spirit. For since that spirit is a form extended and not intensified, it cannot beyond its own measure transmute an imperfect body into a perfect one — though I am not without trust that this can be done by another art.

Chapter XV — How we ought to investigate and experience the virtues of things, by the way taken from similarity

The occult properties of things lie therefore not in elemental nature but infused from the heavens — hidden from our senses, scarcely if at all known by reason; they proceed from the world-soul and spirit through stellar rays; they can only be tracked by us through experience and conjecture. Therefore, if you wish to work in this study, you must consider that every thing moves and converts what is like unto it, and inclines toward itself as much as it can — both in property (that is, in occult virtue) and in quality (that is, in elemental virtue); and sometimes even in substance itself, as we see in salt: for whatever stands long with salt becomes salt. Every agent, once it has begun to act, does not move toward what is below itself, but in some way — as far as can be — toward its equal and companion.

We see this plainly in sentient animals, whose nutritive faculty does not transmute food into herb or plant, but converts it into sentient flesh. In whatever things therefore an excess of some quality or property is present — whether heat, cold, boldness, fear, sadness, anger, love, hatred, or any other passion or virtue, whether innate by nature or acquired at times by art or chance, as boldness in a harlot — those things move and provoke others most toward that quality, passion, or virtue. Thus fire moves toward fire, water moves toward water, the bold moves toward boldness. It is known among physicians that brain benefits brain and lung benefits lung; similarly they say the right eye of a frog, hung around the neck in a cloth of its natural color, cures eye-disease — and the left in the left, the right in the right; similarly they say of crab eyes; likewise the feet of the tortoise benefit those with gout, if bound so that foot to foot and hand to hand, right to right and left to left, they are hung.

In this way they say every sterile animal provokes to sterility — above all its testicles, matrix, or urine. Similarly they say a woman does not conceive who every month receives something of the urine of a she-mule, or something infused in her from it. If therefore we wish to work toward some property or virtue, let us seek animals or other things in which that property most excellently inheres, and from these take the part in which that property or virtue most flourishes. If we wish to promote love, seek an animal that loves greatly — such as the dove, turtle-dove, sparrow, swallow, or wagtail — and take from these the members or parts in which the venereal appetite most flourishes: heart, testicles, matrix, member, seed, menses. Let this be done at the time when these animals are most seized and intent upon such affect — for then they powerfully provoke and impose love. If we wish to augment boldness, seek the lion or rooster, and take from these the heart, or eyes, or forehead.

Thus is to be understood what Psellus the Platonist says: that dogs, ravens, and roosters confer wakefulness — and likewise the nightingale, bat, and owl — and of these chiefly the head, heart, and eyes. Therefore they say: if anyone carries the heart of a raven or bat upon himself, he will not sleep so long as it is carried. The dried head of a bat, bound to the right arm of one who is awake, does the same; but if placed over one who is sleeping, he is said not to waken until it is removed. In the same way the frog and owl make one talkative — and of these especially the tongue and heart; thus the tongue of the water-frog, placed under the head, makes one speak in dreams; and the heart of the owl, placed on the left breast of a sleeping woman, causes her to reveal all her secrets; similarly the heart of the screech-owl and the fat of the hare, placed on the chest of a sleeping person, are said to do the same.

By the same method all long-lived animals confer long life; and whatever things possess a self-renewing virtue confer renewal and restoration of youth to our body — as physicians have many times shown, as is manifest of the viper and serpents. It is known that stags renew their old age by eating serpents; likewise the phoenix is renewed through the pyre it builds for itself; and a similar virtue is in the pelican, whose right foot, placed under warm dung, regenerates from it a pelican within three months. Therefore certain physicians, with certain preparations from viper and hellebore and from the flesh of certain such animals, promise to restore youth — and sometimes do restore it, and at times a youth such as Medea promised to restore to the old man Pelias. It is also believed that the strength of bodily vigor can be increased by applying bear's blood drunk fresh from a recent wound — because that animal is most powerful.

Chapter XVI — How the operations of diverse virtues are transfused from one thing to another and mutually communicated

You ought to know that the power of natural things is so great that not only do all things affect those near them with their virtue, but beyond this, they infuse in them a similar power — through which these things in turn affect other things with this same virtue — as we see in the magnet: that stone not only attracts iron rings, but infuses into the rings themselves a power by which they can do the same; as Augustine and Albertus report having seen. In this way they say that a public harlot, in whom there is bold and banished shamelessness, affects with this same property all things near her — which afterwards pass it on to others. Therefore they say: if one puts on the clothing or the shirt of a harlot, or carries about a mirror in which she daily gazed at herself, one will be made bold, fearless, shameless, and lecherous. Similarly they say cloth that has been at a funeral takes on from this some property of sadness and saturnine character; and that a noose from a hanging similarly has certain marvelous properties.

Similar is what Pliny narrates: if one lays soil beneath a blinded green lizard and encloses rings of solid iron or gold in the same glass vessel, when the lizard appears to have recovered its sight — emitting its gaze through the glass — the rings are said to prevail against eye-ailments. The same they say is true with the weasel and rings, whose eyes having been pricked out are known to restore their sight again; similarly rings are placed for a certain time in the nest of sparrows or swallows, and afterwards used for love or goodwill.

Chapter XVII — How virtues of things are to be investigated and tried through enmity and friendship

It remains now to see that all things have friendship and enmity among themselves; every thing has something it fears and abhors — hostile and destructive to it; and something it exults in — beneficent and fortifying. Thus among the elements, fire opposes water; and air and earth mutually agree. Among the celestials: Saturn's friends are Mercury, Jupiter, Sun, and Moon; his enemies Mars and Venus. Jupiter's friends are all the planets except Mars. All planets hold Mars in hatred, except Venus. Jupiter and Venus love the Sun; his enemies are Mars, Mercury, and Moon. All planets love Venus except Saturn. Jupiter's, Venus's, and Saturn's friends are Mercury's; his enemies are the Sun, Moon, and Mars. Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn are friends to the Moon; Mars and Mercury are her enemies.

There is also the enmity of stars when their houses are opposite — as Saturn to the luminaries, Jupiter to Mercury, Mars to Venus. And stronger enmity belongs to those whose exaltations are opposed — Saturn and the Sun, Jupiter and Mars, Venus and Mercury. The strongest friendship belongs to those who agree in nature, quality, substance, and power — as Mars with the Sun, Venus with the Moon, Jupiter with Venus. And there is also friendship between those whose exaltation is in the other's house — Saturn with Venus, Jupiter with Moon, Mars with Saturn, Sun with Mars, Venus with Jupiter, Moon with Venus. Such as the friendships and enmities of the higher, such are the inclinations of the things subject to them in the lower. These relations of friendship and enmity are nothing other than certain inclinations of things toward one another — desiring a thing if it is absent, moving toward it unless impeded, resting in what is gained, fleeing the contrary, shuddering at its approach, never resting in it.

Led by this understanding, Heraclitus declared that all things happen by strife and friendship. The inclinations of friendship in vegetables and minerals are: what the magnet has in drawing iron; what the emerald has for wealth and grace; what jasper has for birth; what agate has for eloquence. Similarly naphtha draws fire and leaps toward it from wherever seen; similarly the root of the aphroxis herb draws fire from afar as naphtha does. And similar is the inclination between the male and female palm tree — whose branches, when a branch of one has touched a branch of the other, intertwine in mutual embrace; nor does the female bear fruit without the male. And the almond tree bears less fruitfully when alone. Vines love elm and poplar; the olive loves the myrtle mutually; likewise olive and fig. Among animals there is friendship between the blackbird and the thrush, between the crow and the heron, between peacocks and doves, between turtle-doves and parrots.

Not only among animals themselves is there friendship, but also with other things — metals, stones, plants. The cat rejoices in the catnip herb, in whose rubbing it is said to conceive and supply the lack of a mate. Mares in Cappadocia expose themselves to the south wind and from its breath and draft conceive. Frogs, toads, serpents, and all venomous reptiles take pleasure in the plant called the laughing-parsley — of which physicians say: if one eats it, he dies laughing.

Animals have also learned from other creatures the remedies for their diseases: the tortoise, when hunted by a serpent, eats origanum and is fortified by it; the stork, when eating serpents, seeks its safety in origanum; the weasel, before fighting a regulus serpent, eats rue — whence we learn that origanum and rue possess virtue against venom. The toad, when wounded by another's bite and venom, makes for rue or sage and rubs the site of the wound, thus freeing itself from the danger of poison. Men have learned many remedies for diseases and the virtues of things from brute animals: the celandine herb, beneficial to sight, was shown by swallows, who heal their fledglings' eyes with it; the magpie, when ill, puts a bay laurel leaf into its nest and so recovers. Similarly wood-pigeons, jackdaws, partridges, and blackbirds purge their annual discomforts with bay laurel leaves; crows use the same to quench the chameleon's poison; the lion, when it has a fever, eats an ape and recovers; the hoopoe heals itself with adiantum; thus stags showed the use of the dittany herb for drawing out arrows — for when struck by a dart, they eject it by eating this herb; Cretan goats do the same; and female deer shortly before birth purge themselves with a certain herb called seselis; similarly those stung by a phalangium spider heal themselves by eating crabs; pigs wounded by serpents heal themselves by the same pasture; ravens, when they sense themselves poisoned by the Gallic toxin, seek the oak — or, as others say, the crow-berry — as a remedy; elephants, after devouring a chameleon, aid themselves with the oleaster; bears harmed by mandrake escape by devouring ants; geese, ducks, and all aquatic birds heal themselves with the plant sideritis; doves, turtle-doves, and hens with the plant helxine; cranes with the rush; panthers against aconite heal themselves with human excrement; boars with ivy; female deer with the herb cinnarae.

Chapter XVIII — On the inclinations of enmities

Conversely are the inclinations of enmities — which are like the hatreds of nature, and as it were anger, indignation, and a certain imperious contrariety, so that things flee their contraries or repel them as things fleeing before their face. Enmities of this kind are: rhubarb against bile; theriaca against poison; sapphire against carbuncle, feverish burning, and ailments of the eyes; amethyst against drunkenness; jasper against blood-flux and harmful phantasms; emerald and chaste-tree against lust; agate against poisons; peony against the falling sickness; coral against the illusions of black bile and stomach pains; topaz against spiritual ardors — such as avarice, lust, and all excess of love.

Similar is the inclination of ants toward the origanum herb, and to the wing of the bat and to the heart of the hoopoe — from whose presence they flee. Origanum is also in itself contrary to the frog and resists the salamander; and with cabbage it disagrees with such persistent hatred that they destroy each other; cucumbers so hate oil that they curl upon themselves to avoid contact; the bile of the raven is said to drive and deter men from a place where it is hidden along with certain other things. Thus the adamant disagrees with the magnet, so that placed near, it does not allow iron to be drawn — and the ranunculus is so deadly to sheep that the form of the ranunculus leaf is naturally depicted in their livers. Goats so hate basil that they consider nothing more pestilential. Again, mice and weasels are at strife: hence if weasel brain is added to the rennet in cheese-making, they say mice will not touch it nor will it otherwise be spoiled by age. The scorpion and the stellion lizard are such enemies that even the sight of the stellion brings fear and cold-sweat torpor to the scorpion; hence, putrefied in oil, it kills scorpions and heals those whom scorpions have struck when the oil is rubbed on. There is also enmity between scorpions and mice: placing a mouse on a scorpion sting is said to cure it. Scorpions and spider-crabs also disagree; asps and mongooses; serpents and crabs — serpents' greatest adversary being the crab.

Touching a crocodile with an ibis feather makes it immobile. The bustard bird flies up upon seeing a horse; a slave runs at seeing a ram; and also at seeing a viper. The elephant, hearing a pig's grunt, and the lion, seeing a rooster, are afraid. Panthers will not approach those anointed with hen-fat, especially if garlic has been cooked in it. There is also enmity among foxes, swans, bulls, and crows. Among birds too there is perpetual war: crows and owls, kite and raven, pipit and turtle-dove, sparrow-hawk and bunting, goldenfinch and turtle-dove, eagles and vultures, stags and dragons. Among sea creatures too there are enemies: dolphins and whales, cestrus and bass, moray and conger; the polyp so fears the locust that if it sees it nearby it dies outright. Lobsters corrode the polyp; the conger corrodes the lobster; hyena is said to be in such terror of the panther that it will not even attempt to resist, and touching anything of the panther's skin — and if the skins of both are hung opposite, the panther's hair is said to fall out. And Orus Apollo says in the hieroglyphics: whoever is girded with hyena skin and goes among enemies is harmed by no one and passes through unafraid.

The lamb has likewise its enmity and noxious dread of the wolf — it shudders and flees and fears; and they say: if the tail, or skin, or head of a wolf is hung above the stable, the sheep grow sad and eat nothing from excessive fear. Pliny also reports that the esalon, a small bird, breaks the eggs of the crow, whose fledglings are harried by foxes; in turn this bird plucks their cubs and the bird itself — and when crows see this, they assist as against a common enemy. The acanthis, a small bird living among thorns, therefore hates asses, which devour the flowers of the thorn. The egithus, a most tiny bird, disagrees so utterly with the ass, that even the ass's braying causes the egithus's eggs and fledglings to perish. The olive tree is said to disagree so greatly with a harlot that if one is planted by her, it remains forever fruitless or withers entirely. The lion fears nothing so much as burning torches, and it is believed to be tamed by nothing else; the wolf fears not iron nor spear, but a stone — struck by it, worms are born in the wound; the horse is so horrified by the camel that it can bear neither to look upon nor even sense its presence; the elephant, seeing a ram, becomes gentle; the snake fears a naked man but pursues one clothed; a raging bull tied to a fig tree grows calm; electrum (amber) attracts all things except basil and things anointed with oil, with which it disagrees by a certain natural antipathy.

Chapter XIX — How to investigate and try the virtues inherent in things from their whole species, or from the particular gift of the individual

You must moreover consider that virtues inhere in some things according to species — as boldness and courage in the lion and rooster; timidity in the hare and lamb; rapacity and voracity in the wolf; treachery and cunning in the fox; flattery in the dog; avarice in the raven and crow; pride in the horse; anger in the tiger and boar; sadness and melancholy in the cat; lust in the sparrow — and so for similar things. The greater part of natural virtues accompanies the species.

But some virtues inhere in things according to the individual: as there are certain men who violently abhor the sight of a cat, so that they cannot behold it without gravest horror — which horror does not inhere in them according to the human species, as is manifest. And Avicenna narrates that in his time there lived a man from whom all venomous creatures fled, and all that happened to bite him died while he remained wholly unharmed. Albertus reports seeing a girl in Cologne who hunted spiders for food and was notably sustained and nourished by that kind of meal. Thus there is boldness in the harlot, timidity in the thief. And in this way philosophers say: an individual who has never suffered sickness confers benefit against all sicknesses; therefore they say the bone of a man who never had a fever, hung over a sick person, frees him from the quartan fever.

Many singular virtues also inhere in individuals, infused by celestial bodies — as we showed above.

Chapter XX — That natural virtues inhere in some things through their whole substance, in others through certain parts or members

You must moreover consider that the virtues of things inhere in some according to the whole — that is, according to their entire substance, or all their parts: as that little echinus fish which by its mere touch stops a ship, does not do this through some outstanding part, but through its entire substance. So the hyena has it from its entire substance that whatever dog is touched by its shadow falls mute; so the celandine benefits sight not through any one part but through all its parts alike, root no less than leaf and seed. Some virtues, however, inhere in things through certain of their parts alone — in the tongue, or the eyes, or certain other members or parts. Thus in the eyes of the basilisk and the catablepa is a most violent virtue of killing men when they see them; a similar virtue is in the eyes of the hyena — which, wherever it sweeps its gaze over any animal, causes it straightway to freeze and be unable to move; a similar virtue is in the eyes of certain wolves, who, if they see you first, stun you and make you so hoarse that if you wished to cry out, you would have no voice at your service. Of this Virgil writes: Now the voice itself flees Moeris; wolves saw Moeris first.

So there were certain women in Scythia, and among the Illyrians and Triballi, who, whenever they gazed in anger upon someone, are said to have killed them. Similarly the Telchines, a people of Rhodes, are said to have changed all things for the worse by their gaze — and were therefore submerged by Jupiter. Therefore enchanters of this sort use the eyes of such animals in eye-salves, intending to work similar passions through fascination.

Similarly ants flee from the heart of the hoopoe — not from its head, foot, or eyes. The bile of the stellion, ground in water, gathers weasels — not its tail or head; goat's bile enclosed in a bronze vessel in the ground gathers frogs; goat's liver is hostile to moths and butterflies; the heart of a dog makes dogs flee whoever possesses it; foxes will not touch roosters who have eaten fox-liver. So many things possess diverse virtues diversely dispersed through their diverse parts — just as celestial virtue is infused in them according to the diversity of their receptive capacities — as in the human body, bones receive only life, eyes sight, and ears hearing.

And in the human body there is one small bone which the Hebrews call Luz — the size of a husked chickpea — which is subject to no corruption, and cannot even be conquered by fire; it is preserved always unharmed. From it (so they say), as a plant from its seed, in the resurrection of the dead our animal body will sprout again. These virtues are not declared by reason, but by experience.

Chapter XXI — Of virtues that inhere in things only while alive, and of those that remain in them after death

You must furthermore know that certain properties inhere in things only while living, and certain ones remain even after death. Thus the echinus stops ships, and the regulus and catablepa kill by sight — only while living; after death they perform nothing of the kind. Similarly they say that in cases of colic, a living duck placed on the belly draws the disease across, and the duck dies. Similar is what Archytas says: if you take a heart freshly extracted from a still-living animal, still warm and living, and hang it above a patient suffering quartan fever, it removes it. So if one swallows — while it is still living and palpitating — the heart of a hoopoe, or swallow, or weasel, or mole, it confers upon him memory, reminiscence, intellect, and divination.

Hence arose the general precept: that whatever is to be gathered from animals — whether stones, members, or excretions such as hair, dung, or hooves — these ought to be taken from animals still living, and if possible the animals should remain alive even afterwards. Hence they prescribe: when gathering the tongue of a frog, let the frog live and return it to the water; if gathering the tooth or eye of a wolf, do not kill the wolf; and so for similar things.

Thus Democritus teaches: if one extracts the tongue of a living sea-frog, with no other part of the body adhering, and returns the frog to the sea, and places the tongue above the palpitation of the heart of a sleeping woman — whatever he asks her, she will answer truly. Similarly, frog eyes bound on a sick person before sunrise — so that the frogs, blinded, are released into the water — are said to drive away tertian fevers; and the same eyes, bound with nightingale flesh in deer-hide, are said to ensure wakefulness by driving off sleep.

The spine of the sting-ray bound to the navel is said to make births easy, if it was taken from a living ray and the ray released back into the sea. They say the right eye of a serpent, bound on, benefits against epiphora, if the serpent is released alive. And there is a certain fish or great serpent named the myrus: if its eye is removed and bound to the forehead of a sufferer, it is said to heal ophthalmia — and the fish's eye regrows; but one must be taken with the other eye of vision, who has not released it alive. The teeth of all serpents, when removed from the living animal, hung above a patient, are said to heal quartan fever; similarly a mole's tooth removed while the mole is alive and then released heals toothache. Those who carry the tail of a weasel that was released will not be barked at by dogs.

Democritus narrates: the tongue of the chameleon, if removed while still alive, is powerful for the outcome of trials; and the same is salutary for parturient women placed around the house — with caution not to bring it into the house, for it would be most pernicious.

But there are also properties that remain after death. Of these the Platonists say: in things where the idea is less submerged in matter, even after they are dead and gone, what is immortal in them does not cease to work wonders. Thus in herbs and plants — when pulled and dried — the virtue once infused by the idea still flourishes and operates. Hence: as the eagle in life surpasses and conquers all birds, so even the eagle's feathers after death destroy and corrode all other birds' feathers and plumes. By the same reason the lion's skin destroys all other skins; the hyena's skin destroys the panther's skin; the wolf's skin corrodes the lamb's skin. These work not only in bodily contact but sometimes even in vocal harmony: a drum made from wolf-skin silences a drum of lamb-skin; a drum of sea-urchin's skin, by whatever distance its sound is heard, drives far away all reptiles; and strings made from the intestines of a wolf, if strung in a lyre or cithara together with sheep-gut strings, will make no consonance — this is manifest.

Chapter XXII — How lower things are subject to the celestial bodies; and how the human body, and human exercises and characters, are distributed among the stars and signs

It is manifest that all lower things are subject to the higher, and in some manner — as Proclus says — mutually in each other: in the lowest, the highest; in the highest, the lowest. Thus in heaven are terrestrial things — but in a celestial mode; and on earth are celestial things — but in a terrestrial mode, that is, according to their effect. Thus we speak of certain solar things and certain lunar things, in which the Sun and Moon cause something of their virtue. Hence things of this kind receive more operations and properties similar to the operations and figures of the stars and constellations to which they are subject.

Thus we know solar things respect the heart and head, because of Leo (the Sun's house) and Aries (the Sun's exaltation). Martial things benefit head and testicles, because of Aries and Scorpio. Hence for those whose senses reel from wine and whose head aches: immersing the testicles in cold water or diluting with vinegar is a presently effective remedy.

Concerning this ordering, it is necessary to know how the human body is distributed among the planets and signs. Know therefore, according to the Arabic tradition, that the Sun presides over the brain and heart, the thigh, the marrow, the right eye, and the vital spirit. Mercury presides over the tongue and mouth and the other instruments or organs of sense both interior and exterior; and likewise over the hands, feet, legs, nerves, and the phantasmic faculty. Saturn presides over the spleen, lichen, stomach, bladder, womb, right ear, and the receptive faculty. Jupiter presides over the liver and the more fleshy part of the stomach, the belly, and the navel — whence antiquity records the placing of navel-images in the Temple of Jupiter Ammon. Some also attribute to Jupiter the ribs, pubic region, intestines, blood, arms, right hand, left ear, and the natural faculty. Mars presides over blood and veins, kidneys, the bile-chyle, nostrils, back, the flow of seed, and the irascible faculty. Venus presides over kidneys, testicles, womb and matrix, generative seed, and the concupiscent faculty; also flesh and fat, belly, pubic region, navel, and all that serves the work of Venus — the sacrum, the spine, and the loins; and also the head and the mouth from which the kiss as pledge of love is given. The Moon, though she claims the whole body and its individual members according to the variety of signs, yet particularly ascribes to herself the brain, lungs, spinal marrow, stomach, menses, all excretions, and the left eye together with the force of growth.

Hermes himself says that in the head of an animal there are seven apertures distributed to the seven planets: right ear to Saturn; left ear to Jupiter; right nostril to Mars; left nostril to Venus; right eye to the Sun; left eye to the Moon; and the mouth to Mercury.

Each sign of the zodiac also governs its own members: Aries governs the head and face; Taurus the neck; Gemini the arms and shoulders; Cancer presides over the chest, lungs, stomach, and biceps; Leo presides over the heart, stomach, liver, and back; Virgo governs the intestines and the bottom of the stomach; Libra governs the kidneys, thighs, and buttocks; Scorpius the genitals, vulva, and womb; Sagittarius rules the thighs and groins; Capricorn the knees; Aquarius the legs and shins; Pisces governs the feet.

And just as the triplicities of these signs correspond and agree in celestial things, so also they agree in the body's members — as experience sufficiently attests: for from cold of the feet, belly and chest ache — members that answer to the same triplicity. Hence a remedy applied to one benefits the other: warming the feet stops pain in the belly.

Remembering this ordering, know that things subject to one of the planets have a particular aspect or inclination toward the members attributed to that same planet — and primarily those attributed to its house and exaltation; for the other dignities (triplicities, terms, and faces) have little weight here. Therefore: peony, citron-tree, clove, citron-rind, marjoram, dorycnium, cinnamon, saffron, aloe-wood, incense, amber, musk, and some myrrh — these heal head and heart, because of the Sun, Aries, and Leo. The plantago herb (Martian) heals head and testicles because of Aries and Scorpio — and so for the rest.

Moreover: saturnine things confer sadness and melancholy; jovial things confer joy and dignity; martial things confer boldness, quarreling, and anger; solar things confer glory, victory, and courage; venereal things confer love, lust, and desire; mercurial things confer eloquence; lunar things confer common life.

The exercises and characters of men are likewise distributed among the planets: Saturn rules over old men, monks, the melancholic, hidden treasures, and things acquired over long journeys and with difficulty. Jupiter rules the religious, prelates, kings and dukes, and lawfully acquired gains. Mars rules barbers, surgeons, physicians, lictors, executioners, butchers, furnace-workers, bakers, and soldiers — those commonly called Martians. Likewise the remaining stars signify their own exercises, as these are described in the books of the astrologers.

Chapter XXIII — How to recognize to which stars natural things are subject, and which things are solar

Which things are subject to which star or sign is very difficult to recognize; yet they are recognized through imitation of stellar rays, or of their motion, or their figure; some also by their colors and smells; and some by the effects of their operations consonant with certain stars.

Thus solar things among the elements are fire and bright flame; among the humors, purer blood and the vital spirit; among tastes, what is sharp mixed with sweetness. Among the metals, gold — for its splendor; and it has from the Sun the property of being a fortifier of the heart. Among stones, those that imitate solar rays with golden drops:

The actites stone, with its golden drops imitating the Sun, has virtue against epilepsy and against poisons. The stone called Oculus Solis (Eye of the Sun), which bears a figure like the pupil of an eye, from whose center a ray flashes, fortifies the brain and benefits sight. The carbuncle, shining in the dark, has virtue against all aerial and vaporous poison.

The chrysolite — possessing a thin and lucid green in its color, from which when opposed to the Sun a golden star flashes — strengthens the spiritual faculties and benefits those with asthma; and when perforated and filled in the perforation with ass-hairs, then bound to the left arm, it drives away phantasms and melancholic terrors and repels foolishness.

The iris stone, similar to crystal in color and often found hexagonal, when part of it above a roof is opposed to the Sun's rays and the other part remains in shadow, collects solar rays into itself — and projecting them by reflection makes the rainbow appear on the opposite wall.

The heliotrope stone — green like jasper or emerald, starred with red drops — makes one steadfast, glorious, and of good fame; it benefits longevity; and it has a marvelous virtue in solar rays, which it is said to turn to blood, that is, to make them appear blood-red as if the Sun were suffering eclipse — when the stone is anointed with the juice of the herb of the same name and placed in a vessel full of water. And it has another and more marvelous virtue over the eyes of men: so piercing and blinding their sight that it permits them not to see the one who bears it — though this it does not accomplish without the help of the herb of the same name, which is also called heliotropium, that is, solsequium or sunflower. Albertus Magnus and William of Paris confirm these virtues in their writings.

The hyacinth stone also has virtue from the Sun against poisons and pestilent vapors; it makes the wearer safe and well-regarded; it benefits wealth and talent.

Chapter XXIV — What things are under the Moon

Lunar things among the elements are earth, and then water — both of sea and of rivers — and all things moist: the saps of trees and of animals, especially those that are white, such as egg-whites, fats, sweats, phlegm, and the superfluities of bodies. Among tastes, the salt and the insipid. Among metals, silver. Among stones: crystal, silver marcasite, and all white and green things; likewise the selenite (the lunar stone), which is white and translucent with a honey-colored gleam, imitating the Moon's motion and bearing her figure within itself, and restoring it day by day in growing and diminishing number.

Also pearls — generated from drops of water falling into shells — and likewise crystal, and beryl. Among trees and plants, the lunar ones are the heliotrope of the Moon (selenotropion), which turns toward the Moon as the sunflower turns toward the Sun, and the palm tree, which sends out a new branch at each rising of the Moon; also hyssop, and a species of rosemary, the smaller trefoil and the greater, sharing the nature of both; likewise the chaste tree (agnus castus), the olive, and the herb chinostates, which grows and diminishes with the Moon — not only in its humor and virtue (which all plants share to some degree) but in its very substance and the count of its leaves; all save the Martian onions, which alone have contrary forces, waxing and waning against the Moon's increase and decrease — just as among the birds the oriole (the Saturnine bird) is equally hostile to Moon and Sun.

Lunar animals are those that take pleasure in human company and that excel equally in love and hatred with shifting natures — such as dogs of every kind. The chameleon is also lunar, who always assumes the color of whatever is presented to him — just as the Moon varies her nature according to the sign in which she is found. Likewise lunar are pigs, hinds, goats, and all animals that observe and imitate the Moon's motion: the dog-headed ape and the panther, for the panther is said to bear a mark on its armor like the Moon's, growing in circles, and to curve its horns in the same way. Lunar also are cats, whose eyes grow wider or narrower according to the Moon's phases; and all things of like kind — such as menstrual blood, with which many marvels and portents are performed by the magi. The hyena, which changes its sex, subject to various enchantments, and all amphibious animals (those that inhabit land and water alike — beavers, otters, and those that hunt fish) — and beyond these, all monstrous animals and those that are generated without manifest seed or through equivocal generation, such as mice generated by coupling and also by earth's putrefaction.

Among birds, the lunar ones are geese, ducks, grebes, and all water-fowl and fish-hunters: herons, and those that are equivocally produced — wasps from the carcasses of horses, bees from the putrefaction of oxen, flies from soured wine, scarab-beetles from the flesh of asses. Most especially lunar is the two-horned scarab, which the Egyptians call bull-formed: he buries his ball, leaves it for twenty-eight days — the days in which the Moon traverses the whole zodiac — and on the twenty-ninth day, when he reckons the conjunction of the luminaries is at hand, opens it and casts it into water, from which the young scarabs emerge. Among fish, the sea-cat (aeluros) is lunar — its eyes vary with the Moon's phases — and all fish that observe the Moon's motion: the torpedo, the sea-cucumber, the crab, the oyster, the shellfish, and frogs.

Chapter XXV — What things are under Saturn

Saturnine things among the elements are earth, and also water. Among the humors, black bile that is moist — both the native and the adventitious — except when it is burnt. Among tastes, the sour, the more acrid, and the heavy. Among metals, lead; and also gold, for its weight; and golden marcasite. Among stones, onyx, the sapphire, the chalcedony, the magnet, and all dark and earthen and heavy things. Among plants and trees: asphodel, serpentaria, rue, cumin, hellebore, silphium, mandrake, opium; and those that stupefy; and those that are never sown and never bear fruit; and those that produce dark berries or black fruit, such as the black fig, the pine, and the cypress — the cypress, tree of mourning, that does not put forth new shoots from its berries, forbidding, bitter in taste, violent in smell, its shade oppressive, black with pitch, its fruit useless, incorrupt in duration; and all the funerary and death-sacred trees, such as parsley, with which the ancients used to strew the covers of burial-chambers before they placed bodies within them — for which reason it was the custom at banquets to weave garlands from all herbs and flowers, but parsley was excluded, because it belongs to mourning and does not suit festivity.

Among animals: the creeping and solitary, the nocturnal, the sad, the contemplative, or utterly brute; the avaricious, timid, melancholic, laborious, slow-moving, unclean in their feeding, and those that devour their young — from these are the mole, the ass, the wolf, the hare, the mule, the cat, the camel, the bear, the pig, the ape, the dragon, the basilisk, the toad, all serpents and creeping things, scorpions, ants, and those that are born of putrefaction in earth, in waters, and in the ruins of houses — mice and many kinds of worms. Among birds, the Saturnine ones are those long-necked and coarse-voiced: cranes, ostriches, and peacocks — sacred to Saturn and Juno; likewise the great owl, the screech-owl, the bat, the hoopoe, the raven, and the oriole, most envious of birds. Among fish: the eel, which lives apart from all others, the sea-mouse, the small shark that swallows its own young; likewise tortoises, oysters, mussels, and sea-sponges, and whatever proceeds from them.

Chapter XXVI — What things are Jovial

Jovial things among the elements are air. Among the humors, blood and the vital spirit, and all things pertaining to the increase, nourishment, and quickening of life. Among tastes, those that are sweet and pleasant. Among metals, tin, silver, and gold — for their temperament. Among stones: hyacinth, beryl, sapphire, tuthia, emerald, green jasper, and all that are perpetually green and sky-colored. Among plants and trees: houseleek (beard of Jove), basil, bugloss, mace, spike-lavender, mint, mastic, elecampane, violet, darnel, henbane, white poplar; and those trees called prosperous — oak, winter-oak, holm-oak, beech, hazel, poplar, service-tree, white fig, pear, apple, vine, plum, ash, cornelian cherry, olive, and oil. Beyond these: wheat, barley, wheat grain, raisins, licorice, sugar, and all those whose sweetness is clear and refined, sharing something of an astringent and sharp taste — such as walnuts, almonds, pine-nuts, hazelnuts, pistachios, peony roots, myrobalans, and rhubarb, and manna. Orpheus also attributes storax to Jupiter.

Among animals, those that show some dignity and wisdom and are mild, well-disciplined, and of good character — the deer, the bull, the elephant — and all the gentle ones such as sheep and lamb. Among birds, those of temperate complexion: hens and egg-yolks; likewise partridge, pheasant, swallow, pelican, the hoopoe (cucupha), and the stork — birds of piety and tokens of gratitude; sacred to Jupiter is the eagle, symbol to emperors and to justice tempered with clemency. Among fish, the dolphin, the anchovy, the bream — for their piety.

Chapter XXVII — What things belong to Mars

Martial things among the elements are fire; likewise all that are burnt and sharp; among the humors, choler. Among tastes, the bitter, the acrid, those that burn the tongue, and those called lachrymose. Among metals, iron and red copper and all fiery, red, and sulphurous things. Among stones: the diamond, the magnet, the bloodstone, various-colored jasper, amethyst. Among plants and trees: hellebore, garlic, euphorbia, galbanum, ammoniacum, radish, laureola, wolfsbane (napellus), scammony, and all things poisonous through excess of heat; and those armed with piercing thorns, or that burn, prick, or blister the skin at contact — thistle, nettle, ranunculus; and those that draw tears when eaten, such as Ascalon onions, leek, mustard, castoreum; and all thorny trees; and the cornelian cherry, sacred to Mars. Among animals, those that are warlike, rapacious, bold, and of keen imagination — the horse, the mule, the goat, the kid, the wolf, the leopard, the wild ass; and also serpents and venomous dragons and all things hostile to human beings, such as fleas and flies, and the dog-headed ape, for its irascibility. Among birds, all the rapacious, flesh-eating, bone-breaking ones: the eagle, the falcon, the hawk, the vulture; and those called ill-omened and funereal birds: the night-owl, the screech-owl, the kestrel, the kite; and those that are always ravenous and most predatory, those that gulp their food and make as if straining their voice — ravens, crows; and the woodpecker, most sacred of all to Mars. Among fish: the pike, the mullet, the sting-ray, the sea-ram, the sea-goat, the sea-wolf (bass), the sea-bream (glaucus) — those that are simultaneously the most voracious and the most predatory.

Chapter XXVIII — What things are Venereal

Venereal things among the elements are air and water. Among the humors, phlegm mingled with blood, the breath and genital spirit. Among tastes, the sweet, the unctuous, and the delectable. Among metals, silver and yellow or red copper. Among stones: beryl, chrysolite, emerald, sapphire, green jasper, cornelian, actites, lapis lazuli, coral, and all that are beautiful, varied, white, or green. Among plants and trees: verbena, violet, Venus-hair fern, the bright herb, and without Valerian, which in Arabic is called phu; likewise thyme, ladanum, amber, musk, sandalwood, coriander, and all aromatics, and pleasing and sweet fruits — sweet pears, figs, and pomegranates, which the poets say were first made in Cyprus by Venus. Among things specially dedicated to her: the rose of Lucifer, the myrtle of Hesperus.

Among animals, those that are lustful, delicate, and strongly amorous — young dogs, rabbits, lascivious she-sheep, she-goats, and the he-goat, which of all animals generates earliest, and is even said to begin to couple on the seventh day after birth. The bull, for his pride, and the calf, for his wantonness, are also Venereal. Among birds: the swan, the wagtail, the swallow, the pelican, the fox-goose (chenalopex), the greatest lovers of their chicks. Likewise the raven and the dove are sacred to Venus, and the turtledove — of these two birds one or the other was to be offered in the purification of childbirth; and the sparrow is sacred to Venus, which the law commanded to be given in the purification of leprosy — the Martial disease, against which nothing is more efficacious. The Egyptians also call the eagle a form of Venus, because she is inclined to Venus: for when pressed and the male calls, she rushes back thirteen times in a day.

Among fish, the lustful tench, the most lascivious scarus, the starling-wrasse for love of offspring, the sea-bream that fights for its mate, and the tithymallus for the fragrance and sweetness of its scent.

Chapter XXIX — What things follow Mercury

Mercurial things among the elements are water, though Mercury moves all things indistinctly; likewise the humors, though chiefly those that are mixed; but Mercury also governs the animal spirit and various, foreign, mingled tastes. Among metals: quicksilver, tin, and silver marcasite. Among stones: emerald, agate, porphyry, topaz, and all those of diverse colors, and those in which varied figures are set by nature, or those made by art — as glass — and those that blend yellow with green. Among plants and trees: hazel, cinquefoil (pentaphyllon), mercurialis, fumitory, pimpernel, marjoram, parsley, and those shorter and smaller in their leaves, composed of mixed natures and varied color. Among animals, those that are clever, ingenious, vigorous, of versatile intelligence, swift in running, and that easily associate with human beings — dogs, apes, foxes, weasels, deer, and mules; and hermaphroditic animals, and those that alternate sex in turn — the hare, the hyena, and like things.

Among birds, those that are by nature ingenious, melodious, musical, and versatile: goldfinch, fig-peckers, blackbird, thrush, lark, nightingale, calandria, parrot, magpie, ibis, porphyrion, and the unicorn-horned scarab. Among fish: the tench, who fertilizes itself and thereby makes both male and female unnecessary; the cunning polypus, versatile in color; the stingray for its ingenuity; likewise the mullet that shakes the food off the hook with its tail.

Chapter XXX — That the whole sublunary world, and all things in it, is distributed among the planets

Moreover, whatever is found in the whole world is subject to the dominion of the planets and receives its virtue therefrom: in fire, the life-giving light belongs to the Sun, heat to Mars; in earth, the varied surface to the Moon and Mercury and to the starry heaven, the whole mass to Saturn. Among the middle elements, where moisture governs, the airy is subject to Jupiter, the watery to the Moon, the mixed obeys Mercury and Venus. By the same reasoning in nature, the active causes follow the Sun, matter follows the Moon, the fecundity of active causes belongs to Jupiter, the fecundity of matter to Venus; swift achievement of effects to Mars and Mercury — the former by vehemence, the latter by manifold and dexterous virtue; the continual persistence of all cycles is dedicated to Saturn.

And in the number of growing things: all that bear fruit comes from Jupiter; all that bears flowers from Venus; all seed and bark from Mercury; all root from Saturn; all wood from Mars; all leaves from the Moon. Hence all that bear fruit but do not flower belong to Saturn and Jupiter; those that flower and bear seed but no fruit belong to Venus and Mercury; those that are produced spontaneously without seed belong to the Moon and Saturn. All beauty comes from Venus, all strength from Mars; and each planet rules and governs what resembles itself.

Similarly among stones: weight, binding, and astringency come from Saturn; benevolence and temperament from Jupiter; hardness from Mars; life from the Sun; grace and beauty from Venus; occult virtue from Mercury; the common benefit from the Moon.

Chapter XXXI — How provinces and kingdoms are distributed among the planets

Even the orb of the earth is distributed among the planets and signs in its kingdoms and provinces. For to Saturn with Capricorn are subject Macedonia, Thrace, Illyria, India, Ariana, Gordiana — many of which regions are in lesser Asia. With Aquarius: Sarmatia, Oxiana, Sogdiana, Arabia, Phazania, Media, Ethiopia, and these regions belong for the most part to inner Asia.

To Jupiter with Sagittarius: Tuscany, Gaul, Spain, and fertile Arabia. With Pisces: Lycia, Lydia, Cilicia, Pamphylia, Paphlagonia, Nasamonia, and Garamantica.

Mars governs with Aries: Britain, Gaul, Germany, Barstania, hollow Syria, Idumaea, and Judaea. With Scorpio: Syria, Commagene, Cappadocia, Matagonitidem, Mauritania, and Getulia.

To the Sun with Leo are subject Italy, Apulia, Sicily, Phoenicia, Chaldaea, and the Orchenians. Venus with Taurus holds the Cyclades, the coasts of lesser Asia, Cyprus, Parthia, Media, and Persia. With Libra she rules Bactriana, Caspia, Serica, the Thebaid, the Oasis, and the Troglodytes.

Mercury with Gemini holds Hyrcania, Armenia, Mantiana, Cyrenaica, Marmarica, and lower Egypt. With Virgo: Greece, Achaia, Crete, Babylon, Mesopotamia, Assyria, and Elam — from which the Elamites of Scripture take their name.

The Moon with Cancer is followed by Bithynia, Phrygia, Colchica, Numidia, Africa, Carthage, and all Carchedonia. This we have gathered from Ptolemy's account — to which, according to the writings of other astrologers, much else could be added. But whoever knows how to compare these regional distributions above the sidereal distribution with the ministries of the governing intelligences, with the blessings of the tribes of Israel, with the portions of the apostles, and with the figurative seals of sacred scripture — that person will be able to elicit great and even prophetic utterances about each region, oracles of things to come.

Chapter XXXII — What things are subject to the signs and fixed stars, and to their images

A similar reasoning applies across all particulars regarding the figures of the fixed stars: as the celestial ram wishes to have dominion over the earthly ram; the celestial Bull over the earthly bull and ox; so Cancer over crabs; Leo over lions; Virgo over virgins; Scorpio over scorpions; Capricorn over goats; Sagittarius over horses; and the sign of the Fishes to have fish beneath it. Likewise the celestial Bear presides over bears; Hydra over serpents; and the Dog-star over dogs — and so for each.

Apuleius himself distributed particular herbs among the signs and planets: to Aries, elisphakon; to Taurus, peristeron orthion; to Gemini, peristeron hyption; to Cancer, symphyton; to Leo, cyclamen; to Virgo, calamyntha; to Libra, scorpiuron; to Scorpio, artemisia; to Sagittarius, anagallis; to Capricorn, lapathum; to Aquarius, dracontea; to Pisces, aristolochia. To the planets: to Saturn, sempervivum (houseleek); to Jupiter, eupatorium; to Mars, peucedanum; to the Sun, heliotrope; to Venus, panax or callitrichum; to Mercury, phlomum; to the Moon, aglaophotis.

But Hermes — followed by Albertus — gives to Saturn asphodel, to Jupiter henbane, to Mars plantain (arnoglossa), to the Sun polygonium, to Venus verbena, to Mercury cinquefoil (pentaphyllon), to the Moon chinastacen. And now experience has also taught us: asparagus is subject to Aries, and basil to Scorpio — for seed sprinkled with the shavings of a ram's horn produces asparagus, and basil ground between two stones generates scorpions.

Furthermore, from the more illustrious fixed stars, following the teachings of Hermes and Thebit, I shall enumerate some here. The first is called the Head of Algol — it rules among stones, the diamond; among plants, black hellebore and artemisia. Next come the Pleiades — presiding among stones, crystal and diodocus; among plants, the herb diacodon, frankincense, and fennel; and among metals, silver. Third, Aldebaran holds beneath it among stones, the carbuncle and ruby; among plants, tithymallus and woodruff (matrisilva). Fourth is the star called Capella — it holds among stones, sapphire; among plants, horehound, mint, artemisia, and mandrake. Fifth, Sirius — it has beneath it among stones, beryl; among plants, juniper (savina), artemisia, and dracontea; and among animals, the tongue of a serpent. Sixth, the lesser Dog-star — it has among stones, agate; among plants, the flower of heliotrope and pennyroyal. Seventh, the heart of the Lion — it holds among stones, garnet; among plants, celandine with artemisia, and mastic. Eighth, the tail of Ursa Major — it has among stones, magnet; among plants, chicory (whose leaves and flowers turn toward the north), artemisia with periwinkle; among animals, the tooth of a wolf. Ninth is called the Wing of the Raven — beneath it among stones, black onyx; among plants, burdock, henbane, and comfrey; among animals, the tongue of a frog. Tenth, Spica — it has among stones, the emerald; among plants, sage, trefoil, periwinkle or periwinkle (promarulla), artemisia, and mandrake. Eleventh is Alchamech — it rules among stones, jasper; among plants, plantain. Twelfth, Elpheia — beneath it among stones, topaz; among plants, rosemary, trefoil, and ivy. Thirteenth is the heart of Scorpio — beneath it among stones, sardonius and amethyst; among plants, long aristolochia and saffron. Fourteenth, the falling Vulture — beneath it among stones, chrysolite; among plants, savory and fumitory. Fifteenth is called the tail of Capricorn — it holds among stones, chalcedony; among plants, marjoram, artemisia, catnip, and that which they call calamint (similar to pennyroyal), and the root of mandrake.

It must further be known that not every stone, plant, animal, or other thing is governed by one star alone — but many receive influence from several, and not so much singly as in conjunction. Thus among stones, the chalcedony is subject to Saturn and Mercury, with the tail of Scorpio and of Capricorn; sapphire to Jupiter and Saturn, and to the star Alhaioth; tuthia to Jupiter and the luminaries; emerald to Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury, and to Spica; amethyst, by the authority of Hermes, is subject to Mars together with Jupiter and the heart of Scorpio; manifold jasper to Mars and Jupiter and the star Alchamech; chrysolite to the Sun, Venus, and Mercury, and to the star called the falling Vulture; topaz to the Sun and to Elpheia; diamond to Mars and the head of Algol. Similarly among plant things: serpentaria is subject to Saturn and to the celestial Serpentarius; mastic and mint to Jupiter and the Sun together — but mastic also adheres to the heart of the Lion, and mint to Capella; thus hellebore to Mars and the head of Algol; musk and sandalwood to the Sun with Venus; coriander is dedicated to Venus with Saturn. Among animals, the sea-calf is subject to the Sun and Jupiter; the fox and the ape to Saturn and Mercury; domestic dogs to Mercury and the Moon; and many of these we have already taught in the foregoing.

Chapter XXXIII — On the seals and characters of natural things

All stars have their own proper natures, properties, and conditions, whose seals and characters they also produce through their rays in these lower things — in elements, in stones, in plants, in animals and their members. Hence each thing, by its harmonic disposition and by the star that irradiates it, receives a special seal or character impressed on it, significative of that star and harmony, containing in itself a special virtue distinct from others by genus, species, or number of the underlying matter. Each thing therefore has its character for some particular effect impressed on it by its star — especially by that star which most eminently prevails in it — and these characters contain and retain within themselves the proper natures, virtues, and roots of their stars, and produce in other things (upon which they are reflected) effects similar to their stars, and attract and further the influx of their stars — whether of planets, fixed stars, images, or celestial signs — as often as they have been properly wrought in fitting matter, at the due time, and with due solemnities.

The ancient philosophers who labored greatly to investigate the hidden conditions of things, perceiving this, noted the images, figures, seals, sigils, and characters of the stars — those that nature itself, through the rays of the stars, has depicted in these lower things: some in stones, some in plants, and in the junctions and nodes of branches, some in the various members of animals. For laurel, lotus, heliotrope, and solar plants show in their roots and cut-off nodes the characters of the Sun; and similarly in the bones and shoulder-blades of animals — from which the art of divination from shoulder-blades (spatularia) arose. And in stones and quarries, the characters and images of celestial things are found not infrequently.

But since in so great a diversity of things a teachable science cannot be conveyed save in a few things that human wisdom can grasp, let us now, setting aside those things that can be investigated in plants and stones and other things and the members of many animals, halt our step at human nature alone — which, as the most complete image of the whole universe, containing in itself the whole celestial harmony, we shall without doubt find abundantly supplying in itself the seals and characters of all the stars and celestial influences — and those the more efficacious, the less remote they are from celestial nature.

But as the number of the stars is known to God alone, so also are their effects and seals about these lower things — and therefore no human understanding can ascend to knowing them. Hence very few have come to light — things that the ancient philosophers and chiromancers discerned partly by reason, partly by experience — and many still lie hidden, closed up in nature's treasury.

Therefore I shall here note certain seals or characters of the planets, which the ancient chiromancers recognized in the palms of human hands. Julian calls these the sacred or divine letters — since by them, in the word of holy scripture, the life of human beings is written in their hands. And they are the same everywhere among all nations and languages, always remaining constant and like to themselves. From these the chiromancers both ancient and modern have afterward found many others. Whoever wishes to know them must seek their volumes. It is sufficient here to have shown from where the characters of nature draw their origin, and in what things they are to be sought.

[Here follow the figures of the divine letters: the characters of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon, in their proper forms.]

Chapter XXXIV — How through natural things and their virtues we may attract and draw the influxes and virtues of the celestial bodies

If you now desire to receive the virtue of any star, bring together those things that belong to that star — among plants, animals, metals, and stones — and its influx will descend upon you, as a piece of wood prepared to receive flame by means of sulfur, pitch, and oil. Moreover, when you duly apply to some species or individual thing many things scattered among them that are conformed to the same idea and star, then through this matter so opportunely prepared, a special gift is poured from the idea through the reason of the world-soul. I say opportunely prepared — that is, in a harmony similar to that harmony by which a virtue was already infused into the matter. For although things have certain virtues, as we have said, these virtues are so deeply hidden that rarely does any work produced by them come to perfection from them alone —

But just as in a grain of mustard, bruising awakens the latent sharpness; just as the heat of fire brings to sight letters written with onion juice or milk, which previously lay hidden; just as letters inscribed on a stone with goat's grease, completely invisible, when the stone is submerged in vinegar come forth and shine as if sculpted and prominent; and just as the broom or arbutus branch rekindles an extinguished madness — so the celestial harmony reveals, excites, strengthens, and makes manifest the latent virtue in matter, and (so to speak) brings it from potentiality to act, when things are properly exposed to it under celestial opportunity.

For example: if you desire to attract virtue from the Sun, seek those things that are solar among plants, animals, metals, and stones — and apply these, taking especially those that are superior in the solar order, for these contribute more — and so you will draw a special gift from the Sun, through the Solar rays received together opportunely, and through the spirit of the world.

Chapter XXXV — On the mixtures of natural things with each other, and their usefulness

We have found it established in lower nature that the totality of virtues of the higher bodies is not comprised in any one thing — but is dispersed among several species in our world. Thus there are many solar things, of which each one does not embrace all the virtues of the Sun, but different ones have different solar properties. Therefore sometimes in operations it is necessary to make mixtures — so that if a hundred or a thousand of the Sun's virtues are scattered among as many plants, animals, and similar things, we can smelt these together and reduce them to a single form, in which we will see all the said virtues contained, united.

In mixing, there is a double virtue: one that is already inherent in the parts and is celestial; another, acquired through the certain and artful mutual confusion of many things in certain proportions of mixtures congruent with heaven, under a certain constellation — and this virtue descends through a kind of likeness and disposition of things toward each other with the higher things, insofar as subsequent virtues correspond step by step with antecedent ones; especially when the patient is also accommodated to its active agent.

Thus from a certain composition of herbs, vapors, and similar things — fashioned both physically and astronomically — a certain common form results, furnished with the gifts of many stars: as in the honey of bees, which is gathered from the juices of innumerable flowers and reduced to a single form, and contains the virtue of all of them — by an art of flies that is almost divine and admirable. And yet no less admirable is what Eudoxus of Cnidus reports of artificial honey, which a certain tribe of giants in Libya knows how to make from flowers — so excellent that it seems to differ very little from the honey of bees.

Every mixture that consists of many things is then most perfect when it is so joined from its parts that it becomes one, consistent throughout, and not easily dissipated — as we see stones and diverse bodies sometimes bound together and united by a certain natural force such that they appear to be perfectly one; as two trees through grafting, and as oysters with rocks by a certain force of occult nature, are seen joined — and certain animals have been seen changed into stones, and thus united with the substance of stone, so that they seemed already to make one body, and that a homogeneous one. Thus ebony among types of wood is sometimes wood, sometimes stone. Whenever therefore someone fabricates a mixture from many materials under the celestial influxes, the variety on the one side of the celestial actions, and on the other the aggregated potentialities of things, produce certain marvels through ointments, through collyria, through fumigations, and similar means — such as are read in the books of Chiramides, Archytas, Democritus, and Hermes (who is surnamed Alchorat), and many others.

Chapter XXXVI — On the union of mixed things, and the introduction of the nobler form and of sensible life

It must be known that the nobler a thing's form is, the readier and more prompt it is to receive, and also the more powerful to act. Accordingly, the marvels of things become incomprehensible when, to materials properly mixed and opportunely timed, they are set forth for being quickened — and life is obtained for them from the stars, and a sensible soul, as a nobler form, is conciliated to them.

So great is the power in prepared materials that we see them acquire life when a perfect mixture of qualities seems to have broken down the prior contrariety; and they have attained a more perfect life insofar as their complexion is more removed from contrariety. The heavens, as the prepotent cause from the beginning of each thing's generation, when the matter is perfectly concocted and digested, impart the celestial influxes and marvelous gifts together with life — insofar as in life and the sensible soul itself there is comprehension for receiving nobler and more sublime virtues. The celestial virtue, moreover, sometimes lies dormant in lower things like sulfur removed from flame; but in living bodies it often blazes, as sulfur when kindled — and then its vapor fills all things near it; and thus certain marvelous works are generated, such as are read in the book called Nemith, which is also entitled The Laws of Pluto — because such generations are monstrous and are not produced according to the laws of nature.

For we know that from worms are generated gnats; from a horse, wasps; from the lion and ox, bees; from a donkey whose legs have been removed and buried, a scorpion is generated; from a roasted duck, if it be ground to powder, then cast into water, frogs are generated; if it be roasted in a warm and subterranean place and cut into pieces, toads are generated; from the herb basil, ground between two stones, scorpions; from the hairs of a menstruating woman placed under dung, serpents; and the hair of a horse's tail cast into water conceives life and passes into a destructive worm. And there is an art by which, in an egg being incubated by a hen, a form resembling a human is generated — one which I myself have seen, and have known how to compose — which the magi declare to be efficacious in marvelous virtues, and call it the true mandrake. It is necessary therefore to know what materials — whether begun or perfected by nature or by art, or aggregated from many things — are able to receive what kind of celestial influxes; for the fitness of natural things toward the celestial suffices for us to drink in their influx, since nothing prevents the celestial from diffusing its light into lower things, and no material can remain entirely bereft of its virtue.

Chapter XXXVII — How through certain natural and artificial preparations we draw down celestial and vital gifts from above

The Academics, together with Trismegistus, and Iarcha the Brahman, and the Hebrew Kabalists all affirm that all things which exist under the lunar sphere in this lower world — subject to generation and corruption — exist also in the celestial world, but in a celestial mode; and then also in the intellectual world, but in a far more perfect, more excellent, and more complete manner; and finally in the Archetype most perfectly. And through this series, each lower thing corresponds to its superior, and through this to the supreme — and from these it receives: from the heavens that celestial force they call the fifth essence, the spirit of the world, or the middle nature; from the intellectual world the spiritual and mental vigor transcending all qualitative virtue; from the Archetype, finally, through these intermediaries and according to its degree, the original force of all perfection.

Hence from these lower things to the stars, from them to their intelligences, and from these to the Archetype, each thing can fittingly be reduced — and from this series flows the whole of magic and all occult philosophy. For something is daily drawn naturally by art; something divine is daily drawn by nature — perceiving which, the Egyptians called nature a magician: that is, the magical force itself, in attracting like through like and fitting through fitting.

This mutual attraction, through the mutual agreement of things with each other — of higher with lower — the Greeks called sympatheia. Thus earth agrees with water in coldness, water with air in moisture, air with fire in heat, fire agrees with heaven in matter; nor does fire mix with water except through air, nor air with earth except through water. So neither does the soul mix with the body except through spirit; nor the intellect with the spirit except through the soul. Thus we see: when nature has fashioned the body of the human fetus, by that very preparation it draws the spirit immediately from the universe; this spirit is the tinder in body and spirit toward receiving understanding and divine mind — just as in dry wood, dryness is prepared for the penetrating oil; the oil imbibed into this is food for fire; and fire itself is the vehicle of light.

Through these examples we see how through certain natural and artificial preparations we can receive certain celestial gifts from above. For stones and metals agree with herbs, and herbs with animals, and these with the heavens, and the heavens with the intelligences, and these with the divine properties and attributes, and with God himself — to whose likeness and image all things were created. The first image of God is the world; of the world, man; of man, the animal; of the animal, the zoophyte; of the zoophyte, the plant; of the plant, metals; and of metals, stones represent their likenesses and images. Again in spiritual things: the plant agrees with the animal in vegetation; the brute with man in sensation; man with the daemon in intellect; the daemon with God in immortality. Mind is joined to understanding; understanding to intellect; this to intention; intention to imagination; imagination to sensation; sensation to the senses; and the senses finally to things themselves.

For such is the binding and continuity of nature that all superior virtue, dispersing its rays through all intermediate things step by step, flows down to the uttermost things — and the lower, through each of their superiors, reach the highest. For the lower things are so mutually connected to the higher that the influx from their summit, the first cause, proceeds like a taut string from the top down to the bottom — so that if one extreme is touched, the whole vibrates at once, and the touch resonates all the way to the other extreme; and when one lower thing is moved, the higher to which it corresponds is also moved — as strings on a well-tuned lyre.

Chapter XXXVIII — How we can receive from above gifts not only celestial and vital, but also intellectual, daemonic, and divine

The Magi declare that through things conformed to lower things by their higher counterparts, celestial gifts can be drawn by opportune celestial influxes — and that thus also through these celestial things, celestial daemons (insofar as they are attendants of the stars) can be attracted and insinuated to us. Therefore Iamblichus, Proclus, and Synesius — with the whole school of the Platonists — affirm that through certain natural materials possessing the divine force, that is, those naturally congruent with the higher things, duly gathered, prepared partly physically and partly astronomically, and opportunely compounded from all sides, gifts not only celestial and vital but also intellectual and certain daemonic and divine things can be received from above. And Hermes Trismegistus writes that from the proper and specific things of a certain daemon, a statue rightly composed will at once be animated by the appropriate daemon. Augustine also mentions this in the eighth book of the City of God.

For such is the harmony of the world that even the supracelestial is drawn by the celestial, and the supernatural conspires with and is drawn by the natural — because the one formative virtue and participation of forms is diffused through all things; which formative virtue, as from hidden reasons it produces manifest things, so the magus assumes the manifest to attract the hidden — through the rays of the stars, through fumigations, through lights, through sounds, through natural things congruent with the celestial; in which things, beyond the corporeal qualities, there inhere also reasons, senses, numbers, and measures that are incorporeal and divine.

Thus we read that the ancients, through certain natural things, were accustomed often to receive something divine and marvelous: the stone found in the pupil of the hyena's eye, retained under the tongue, is said to grant divination. The same is said of the lunar selenite stone. The stone anchitis is said to evoke images of the gods; the synochitis to retain the shades of the underworld once evoked. The herb aglaophotis — also called marmoritides, growing in the marbles of Arabia on the Persian side — produces, as Pliny narrates, the effect used by magi when they wish to evoke the gods. There is also the herb theangelis, by which, when drunk, magi divine. There are moreover certain herbs through which the dead are recalled to life — from which the historian Xanthus narrates that a certain dragon's whelp, slain, was restored to life by its parent using a herb called balis; and the same restored a certain man named Tillo, who had been killed by a dragon. And Lubar reports that in Arabia a man was called back to life by a herb.

Whether such things can truly happen through the power of herbs or any other natural thing in a human being, we shall discuss in what follows — but that it can happen in other living creatures is certain and evident. Thus flies submerged in water, if placed in warm ashes, revive; bees similarly submerged recover life in catnip juice; and eels that have died from lack of water, if their body remains intact and they are placed under macerated dung with vulture's blood added, recover life after a few days. If the echinus is cut into pieces and cast into the sea, its parts are said to gather back and revive. We know also that the pelican recalls her slain chicks to life with her own blood.

Chapter XXXIX — That through certain materials of the world we can attract the spirits of the world, and the daemons that serve these spirits

No one is ignorant that evil daemons can be attracted through evil and profane arts — as Psellus narrates that the Gnostic magicians were accustomed to perform the execrable and abominable obscenities they practiced: such as were once performed in the rites of Priapus, and in the service of the idol called Panor, to whom sacrifice was made with the obscene parts uncovered. Nor different from these — if there is truth in it and not mere fable — is what is read of the abominable heresy of the Templars, and similar things are established about malefic women, whose dotage is often detected going astray in such outrages. By these and similar things evil daemons are attracted and conspire — as the malign daemon said to John of the magician Cynops: All the power of Satan dwells there, and makes a pact of alliance with all the principalities, and we ourselves together with him; and Cynops obeys us, and we in turn obey him.

No one, on the other hand, is ignorant that by good works, pure mind, mystical prayers, devout supplications, and the like, the supracelestial angels are attracted to our side. No one therefore should doubt that in the same way certain materials of the world can also attract the world-spirits, or at least the daemons that serve them and are their attendants — the aerial daemons, as Hermes says: not the supracelestial, still less the more sublime.

Thus we read that the ancient priests made statues and images that foreknew the future — and infused into them the spirits of the stars, not so much because these spirits were confined by certain materials as because they were pleased by them; since recognizing those materials as congruent with themselves, they always dwell willingly in them and speak through them and accomplish marvels — just as daemons are accustomed to do in human bodies they occupy.

Chapter XL — On ligatures: what kinds they are, and how they are accustomed to be made

Enough has been said of the virtues and marvelous efficacy of natural things. It remains now to consider a thing of great marvel — namely the binding (ligatio) of human beings: in love or hatred, in sickness and health, and the like; likewise the binding of thieves and robbers, so that they cannot steal in some place; the binding of merchants, so that they cannot buy or sell in some place; the binding of an army, so that it cannot cross some boundary; the binding of ships, so that no force of wind can drive them from port, even with infinite sails stretched taut; the binding of a mill, so that it cannot be turned by any force; the binding of a cistern or spring, so that water cannot be drawn from it; the binding of a field, so that crops cannot be produced in it; the binding of some place, so that nothing can be built there; the binding of fire, so that it cannot be kindled in some place; and that something combustible set against the strongest fire will not burn; likewise the binding of lightning and storms, so they cannot harm; the binding of dogs, so that they cannot bark; the binding of birds and beasts, so that they cannot fly or flee — and similar things, scarcely credible, yet often verified by experience.

These bindings are wrought through spells (veneficia), through collyria, ointments, potions, philtres, through attachments and suspensions, through rings, through the power of the imagination and the excesses of the soul, through images and characters, through incantations and imprecations, through lights, through sounds, through numbers, through words and names, invocations, sacrifices, adjurations, exorcisms, consecrations, devotions, and through various superstitions and observances, and things similar to these.

Chapter XLI — On magical spells and their power

The power of magical spells is said to be so great that they are believed capable of overturning, wasting, and transforming all lower things — as Virgil sings:

These herbs, these poisons gathered for me from Pontus,
Moeris gave me himself — for many grow in Pontus;
By these I have often seen Moeris become a wolf and hide himself in the woods,
Often call up souls from the depths of the graves,
And I have seen harvests transplanted to other fields.

And elsewhere, of the companions of Ulysses:

Whom the fierce goddess Circe, with potent herbs,
Had clothed in the faces and backs of beasts from human forms.

And a little later:

Picus, tamer of horses, whom his wife, captured by Cupid,
Circe struck with a golden rod and, transformed by poisons,
Made into a bird, and sprinkling her wings with colors.

Among the kinds of such sorceries are those of the kind recited by Lucan about that Thessalian sorceress evoking the dead:

To here whatever was produced by malign birth is mixed —
Not the foam of dogs in whose midst terror flows,
The entrails of a lynx, the knotted sinew of a hyena,
Were lacking — and the marrow of a stag that fed on serpents.

And what Apuleius narrates of Pamphila the sorceress working for love — to whom her slave girl Fotis brought the shaven hairs of goat-skins from inflated wineskins in place of the hairs of a young Boeotian: Pamphila, already wild of mind, climbed up onto the roof, which was naked on the other side of the house and open to all the eastern and other views, and most convenient for her arts in this secret place; and she first furnished her grim workshop with the accustomed apparatus — every kind of aromatic, nameless plates inscribed with letters, and nails from ships that had weathered storms, and many members exposed from the corpses of the buried: here nostrils and fingers, there fleshy nails from men who had been hanged, elsewhere preserved blood of the slaughtered, and skulls wrested from the teeth of beasts. Then, chanting over breathing entrails, she poured libations now with fresh water, now with cow's milk, now with mountain honey and mead; so she committed those hairs, tied and knotted in mutual embraces, with many odors to be consumed in the living coals — then immediately by the invincible power of magical discipline and the blind violence of the compelled spirits, those bodies whose crisp hairs smoked borrowed human spirit, and felt, and heard, and walked, and came wherever the odor of their stolen remnants led them, and leapt at the doors, eager to enter in place of that Boeotian youth.

Augustine likewise attests that he had heard in Italy of certain sorceress women so steeped in their arts that by giving a cheese they would instantly transform men into beasts of burden, which would carry necessary loads; and when the work was done, restore them again to men.

Chapter XLII — On the admirable virtues of certain spells

I shall now narrate certain spells, so that their examples may prepare the way for the whole of this consideration. Among them is menstrual blood — let us see how great its virtues are in sorcery. As they say: wine turns sour in its presence, young vines wither at its touch, crops become barren when touched by it, the shoots of gardens burn up, the fruit of trees falls down; the brightness of mirrors grows dim by the very sight of it, and the edge of iron blades in barbers' razors and the gleam of ivory are blunted; iron is immediately corroded by rust; bronze, if touched, contracts a foul smell and turns green; dogs driven to taste it are maddened and the bite of their madness becomes incurable; the combs of bees die and if touched the hives are abandoned; linen blackens when being boiled; if pregnant women are touched by it, they miscarry — it also brings about abortion when applied externally to pregnant women. She-asses that have eaten as many grains of barley as they have been touched by it will not conceive for the same number of years. The ash of clothes stained by it, if sprinkled on laundered garments, changes the dye of purple and robs flowers of their color.

They say tertian and quartan fevers are driven away if the menstrual blood is sealed in wool from a black ram in a silver bracelet. Moreover, it is said to be most effective against tertians and quartans to smear field-plants with it secretly from below; and much more effective when done by the woman herself without her knowledge; and likewise epileptic seizures and disease are healed this way. Among all, there is agreement that if drinking-water is feared from the bite of a dog, the fear is instantly dispersed if only the hem of a garment stained with it is placed under the cup. Furthermore it is said that women stripped during menstruation and circling the crops drive off caterpillars, worms, beetles, and all harmful insects — though they must beware of doing this at sunrise, lest the seed dry up. Similarly hailstorms and whirlwinds are driven off and it is a defense against lightning. Pliny himself recounts many of these.

Know this: its power is greater if the blood flows at the waning Moon; but its force is stronger if it occurs at the Moon's silence; if it happens at an eclipse of Moon or Sun, it becomes irremediable; and it is of greatest and most powerful vigor when that purging first occurs, in the first years, while virginity is still intact — and this also is consistent then: for all the bolts of a house touched by it, all sorcery within it becomes void.

Furthermore, the threads of cloth touched by it are not overcome even by fire, and if thrown into a conflagration will not spread the flames further. It is also said that if the root of peony is given with castoreum and the smearing of menstrual cloths to one suffering from epilepsy, the disease is cured. Moreover, if you burn or roast the stomach of a stag and add pieces of menstrual cloth, crossbows fumigated by it become useless for hunting; and the hairs of a menstruating woman, if placed under dung, generate serpents; and if burned, their odor drives away serpents — so great is the venom of this venom, that it is even venom to venomous things.

There is also hippomanes — the little piece of flesh, not little-famous among sorceries, the size of a fig, black in color, that appears on the forehead of a new-born foal: which, unless the mother immediately devours it, she turns entirely away from her foal and will not suckle it. For this reason it is said to have the greatest power of stirring love, when reduced to powder and mixed with the blood of the lover and given in cups. There is also another sorcery called by the same name hippomanes — the fluid that flows from the groins of mares in the season of their amorous fury — which Virgil mentions where he sings:

Hence finally hippomanes, which the shepherds rightly name —
A slow fluid that drips from the groin,
Hippomanes — which the evil stepmothers have often gathered,
Mixing herbs and words not harmless.

Apollonius in his Argonautica narrates the herb of Prometheus, which he says was born from the pus and blood dripping to earth while the vulture was tearing and feeding on Prometheus' liver in the Caucasus: its flower, he says, resembling saffron in color, a Corycian color, rising on a double stalk the measure of a cubit, the root beneath the earth like freshly cut flesh, emitting a blackish juice like the dark fig: with which, if anyone first performs a sacred rite to Persephone and anoints the body, he cannot be harmed by iron or by fire.

The blood of the basilisk — which they also call the blood of Saturn — is said to have such power in sorcery that it gives the bearer success in petitions from the powers, and also prayers to the gods, and remedies for diseases, and the gifts of beneficences. They say also that a tick, if pulled from the left ear of a dog that has no other color than black, has great power in divination of life — for if a sick person responds to the one who places it at his feet, standing and questioning about the disease, there is certain hope of life; but death, if he gives no response. A stone bitten by a rabid dog is said to have the force of discord if placed in a drink, and that it prevents barking from a dog; the tongue of the plant dog's-tongue (cynoglossa) placed in a shoe under the toe — especially if combined with the herb of the same name — produces the same effect. The same is accomplished by the membrane from a dog's birth-caul; and dogs flee from one carrying a dog's heart.

And Pliny narrates that there are toads called rubetae, living only in brambles, full of sorceries — of which marvelous things are done: for with the bone in its left side, cast into cold water, it immediately seethes; by this the onslaught of dogs is restrained; love is stirred and quarrels incited when added to a drink; lust is stimulated when bound on; but against this, the bone in the right side cools boiling water and thereafter it will not boil until it is removed; quartan fevers are cured with it bound in fresh lamb's skin; and other fevers, and love and lust are inhibited. And the spleen and heart of these frogs effectively help against the sorceries made from them — this Pliny recounts.

Iron with which a man has been killed is also said to have marvelous power among sorceries: for if from it a bit and spurs for a horse are fashioned, with these even the most fierce horse is most easily governed and subdued; and if with them a horse's feet are shod, they say the horse becomes the swiftest and is not wearied by any labor. Characters and certain names are also said to need to be inscribed. They also say that if someone immerses a sword with which men are beheaded in wine, whoever drinks of it being sick is freed from quartan fever. They also say that a cup made from bear-brain and given to someone in the bear's skull causes ursine madness — so that the man who drank it believes himself transformed into a bear, and judges all things seen under the appearance of bears, and so persists in that rage until the force of the cup has been dissolved, no other ill being perceived thereby in his constitution.

Chapter XLIII — On suffumigations, their reasoning, and their power

Certain suffumigations accommodated to the stars have great power, insofar as they strongly affect the air and spirit toward opportunely receiving the celestial gifts under the rays of the stars — for our spirit, since it is a subtle vapor of blood, pure, clear, airy, and unctuous, is greatly transformed by such vapors, inasmuch as each is a vapor somewhat similar to the other. Air, moreover, affected through these vapors most easily by the qualities of lower and celestial things, penetrating constantly and suddenly into the vital organs, wonderfully reduces us to similar qualities. Hence suffumigations are usually applied to those about to prophesy in order to affect the imagination — and indeed those agreeable to certain spirits prepare us to receive divine inspiration. Thus they say a fumigation of linseed, psyllium seed, violet roots, and celery roots causes the seeing of future things and confers the power of prophecy.

Let no one marvel at how greatly suffumigations can affect the air, who feels with Porphyry that certain aerial daemons are at once attracted and insinuated by certain vapors exhaling from their proper fumigations; that thunder and lightning are produced and the like — as the liver of the chameleon burned on the roof-tiles is known to stir rains and lightning; and the head and throat, if set alight with oak wood, cause the crash of rains and thunder. Fumigations are also made under the opportune influxes of the stars to make the phantoms of daemons appear at once in the air or elsewhere. Thus they say that if a fumigation is made of coriander, parsley, and henbane or hemlock, daemons immediately gather — hence they call these the herbs of spirits. Similarly they say that if a fumigation is made from the root of the giant fennel with the juice of hemlock and henbane, black poplar, and red sandal and black poppy, daemons will appear and strange figures; and if parsley be added to these, it puts daemons to flight from the entire place and destroys their phantoms. Similarly fumigation made from calamint, peony, mint, and Christ's palm drives away all evil spirits and harmful phantasms.

Moreover, certain fumigations are said to gather or put to flight certain animals: as Pliny reports, with liparé suffused, all beasts are called forth; with bones of the stag burned at the throat, serpents are gathered; but with stag's horn suffused, they are put to flight. The same effect is produced by peacock feathers when fumigated. Similarly with an ass's lung kindled, all venomous things flee; with a horse's hoof fumigated in some house, mice are put to flight. The same is produced by the mule's hoof; and flies are put to flight by it, if it be from the left foot. They say that if a house or some place is fumigated with the gall of cuttlefish, mixed with frankincense and roses and aloes-wood, and then something of sea-water or blood is cast into that place, the whole house will appear full of water or blood; and if plowed earth is thrown in there, the earth will seem to tremble.

That vapors of this kind form some body and infuse virtue into it and preserve it for a very long time should be estimated no otherwise than that some contagious or venomous vapor of pestilence kept for more than two years in the walls of a house infects those who live there; just as a calamity latent in clothes from an epidemic or leprosy afterwards infects those who touch it. For this reason certain fumigations are applied to images and rings and similar instruments of magic and to hidden treasures — which Porphyry attests to contribute not a little. Thus they say that if anyone buries gold, silver, or something precious, with the Moon joined to the Sun in the bottom of the sky, and fumigates the place with coriander, saffron, henbane, parsley, and black poppy — all ground in equal measure and dissolved with the juice of hemlock — what is thus hidden can never be found or taken away, and daemons will always guard it; and if anyone strives to take anything from it, they will be harassed by them and will fall into frenzy.

And Hermes says that spermaceti in fumigation has no equal for attracting daemons — therefore if from it and aloes-wood, costum, musk, saffron, and frankincense, dissolved with the blood of a hoopoe, a fumigation be made, it very quickly gathers the aerial spirits; and if from it a fumigation is made around the graves of the dead, it gathers the shades and manes of the dead.

Thus whenever we direct some work toward the Sun, we fumigate with solar things; if toward the Moon, with lunar things; and similarly for the others.

And it must be known that just as there is contrariety and enmity in stars and spirits, so also in fumigations they are mutually contrary: aloes-wood and sulfur are contrary to each other; frankincense and mercury; and spirits drawn in by the fumigation of aloes-wood flee when sulfur is kindled. As Proclus illustrates: a spirit accustomed to appear in the form of a lion immediately disappeared when a rooster was shown to it — because the rooster is contrary to the lion — and so regarding similar things this must be considered and practiced.

Chapter XLIV — Composition of certain fumigations accommodated to the planets

For the Sun we compose a fumigation from saffron, amber, musk, aloes-wood, balsam-wood, berries of laurel, with cloves, myrrh, and frankincense — all ground and mixed in a certain proportion that renders a more pleasing scent, and incorporated with the brain of an eagle or the blood of a white cock, in the form of pills or lozenges.

The lunar fumigation we compose from the dried head of a frog, the eyes of a bull, the seed of white poppy with frankincense and camphor, which shall be incorporated with menstrual blood or the blood of a goose.

For Saturn: the seed of black poppy, the seed of henbane, the root of mandrake, the lodestone, and myrrh — and these are composed with the brain of a cat or the blood of a bat.

For Jupiter: the seed of ash, aloes-wood, storax, gum benzoin, lapis lazuli, and from the tips of peacock's feathers — and these are incorporated with the blood of a stork or swallow, or with deer's brain.

For Mars we take euphorbia, bdellium, ammoniacum, the roots of each of the two kinds of hellebore, lodestone, and a little sulfur; and all things are incorporated with the brain of a raven, human blood, and the blood of a black cat.

For Venus we compose the fumigation from musk, amber, aloes-wood, red roses, and red coral — and these are composed with the little brain of sparrows and the blood of doves.

For Mercury the fumigation is made from mastic, frankincense, cloves, the herb cinquefoil, and the agate stone — and all things are incorporated with the brain of a fox or weasel, and with the blood of a magpie.

Beyond these, there are also general-class fumigations for Saturn: all fragrant roots, such as costum and the herb of frankincense. Jupiter's fumigations: all fragrant fruits, such as nutmeg and cloves. Mars: all fragrant wood — sandalwood, cypress, balsam, and aloes-wood. The Sun: all gums — frankincense, mastic, benzoin, storax, ladanum, and amber and musk. Venus: flowers — roses, violets, saffron, and the like. Mercury: all barks of wood and fruit, such as cinnamon, cassia, mace, the barks of citrus and of laurel, and berries, and all likewise fragrant seeds. The Moon has for fumigation the leaves of all plants — Indian leaf, and leaves of myrtle and laurel.

Know also, following the teachings of the magi, that in every good work — as love, benevolence, and the like — the fumigation should be good, sweet-smelling, and costly. In a bad work — such as hatred, anger, calamity, and the like — the fumigation should be fetid and vile.

The twelve signs of the Zodiac also have their fumigations: Aries, myrrh; Taurus, costum; Gemini, mastic; Cancer, camphor; Leo, frankincense; Virgo, sandalwood; Libra, galbanum; Scorpio, opopanax; Sagittarius, aloes-wood; Capricorn, asafoetida; Aquarius, euphorbia; Pisces, frankincense.

The most potent of all fumigations, described by Hermes, is that which is compounded from seven aromatics according to the forces of the seven planets: it receives from Saturn costum; from Jupiter nutmeg; from Mars aloes-wood; from the Sun mastic; from Venus saffron; from Mercury cinnamon; from the Moon myrtle.

Chapter XLV — On collyria, ointments, philtres, and their virtues

Collyria and ointments — conspiring with the virtues of natural and celestial things around our spirit — can multiply, transmute, transfigure, and transform it, now one way, now another; and even induce a transposition of those powers that inhere in them — so that they can now act not only on their own body but also on the body of a neighbor, and affect it through the rays of sight, through fascinations, and through contacts with a similar quality.

Our spirit, since it is a subtle vapor of blood, pure, clear, airy, and unctuous, makes it fitting to compose collyria from similar vapors that more harmonize with our spirit both in substance — and through likeness attract more, and more draw and transform the spirit. Similar virtues certain ointments and other compositions possess; hence through contacts certain diseases, sorceries, and loves are induced in some by things anointed on the hands or garments; and similarly through kisses, loves are induced by certain things retained in the mouth — as in Virgil we read that Venus besought Cupid:

That when gladsome Dido receives you in her lap
Among the royal feasts and Lyaean wine,
She will give embraces, and seal sweet kisses:
Breathe hidden fire into her, and deceive her with venom.

Sight, moreover, being the purest sense and feeling things more clearly than the rest, imprinting the marks of things more keenly and deeply in us, most of all and more than the others harmonizes with the phantasmic spirit — which appears in dreams, where visions more often present themselves to us than sounds or other sensations. Therefore collyria that transform the visual spirits readily affect the imagination — which, being affected by diverse species and forms, transmits them through the same spirit to the outer sense of sight; whereby a sensation of such species and forms is caused in it after its own manner, as if they were moved by external objects — so that one believes oneself to see terrible images, daemons, and the like.

Thus collyria are made to cause us to see the shadows of daemons instantly in the air or elsewhere — such as I have known how to compose from the gall of a night-raven, the eyes of a black cat, and certain other things. Similar to this is one composed from the blood of a hoopoe, a bat, and a he-goat; and they say, if a steel mirror be anointed with the juice of artemisia and fumigated, it makes the invoked spirits appear in it. So too there are certain fumigations or anointings that cause sleeping persons to speak, walk, and carry out the deeds of those awake — and even sometimes things that the waking scarcely can or dare to do. Some make us hear fearful or delightful sounds never present; and similar things. This is also the reason why maniacs and melancholics believe they see or hear externally what imagination only phantasms within — hence they fear what is not to be feared, fall into marvelous and completely false suspicions, flee where no one pursues, grow angry and struggle with no one present, fear where there is no fear. Such passions even magical compositions can induce — through fumigations, through collyria, through ointments, through potions, through sorceries, through lamps and lights, through mirrors, through images, through incantations and charms, through sounds and harmonies made from the sinews of certain animals in a certain harmony; and also through various rites, observances, ceremonies, and superstitions — as these will be treated in their proper places.

Nor only are such passions, appearances, and imaginations induced by these arts, but the things themselves and human beings are truly transformed and transfigured into various forms — as we read of Proteus, Periclymenus, Achelous, and Circe.

Chapter XLVI — On involutions, attachments, and suspensions, and their manner and power

When the soul of the world, through its virtue, fecundates all things — whether generated naturally or sanctified artificially — by infusing into them celestial properties toward certain marvelous effects they produce, then the things themselves — not only applied through fumigations, collyria, ointments, potions, and the like, but also when conveniently wrapped up and bound on, or suspended from the neck, or placed in some other way, or even approached with the lightest contact — imprint their virtue on us. Through these attachments, suspensions, involutions, appositions, and contacts of body and soul, accidents are changed — into diseases, into healths, into courage, into fear, into sorrow, into joy, and the like — and they render the bearers gracious or terrible, accepted or reprobate, honored and beloved, or hateful and abominable.

These passions are thought to be infused through the aforesaid means no differently than is evident in the grafting of trees, where vital virtue is transfused from the trunk into the scion grafted onto it with a certain binding — even when they do not adhere together by contact; and as when the female palm approaches the male, its branches bend toward the male and curve — which the gardeners, observing, bind ropes from the male to the female, which stands erect again over itself as if having obtained the male's virtue through the continuity of the rope.

Similarly we see that the sea-torpedo, even touched from afar through the longest rod, instantly numbs the hand of the toucher. And if someone touches a sea-hare, whether by hand or by rod, while it is in its disease, they incur a failing of the soul. Similarly they say that a sea-star, anointed with fox-blood and an iron nail, affixed to the doorpost, can cause harmful medicines to do no harm.

It is also said that if a woman takes a needle, infects it with dung, then wraps it in earth in which a human corpse has been buried, and carries it with her in a cloth that was used in a funeral, no man can lie with her for as long as she carries it. From these examples we see how by certain attachments or suspensions of things, and by a certain simple contact or the continuity of some thread, certain virtues can be received thence.

It is necessary to know the certain law and manner of binding and suspending congruent with this art — that they be made under a certain constellation and harmony; and that these attachments and suspensions be made with metallic or silken threads, or from hairs, sinews, or skins, or bristles of certain animals. The involutions, moreover, should be made in the leaves of herbs, or the skins of animals, or in certain cloths, and similar things — so that the things among themselves agree. Thus if you intend to attract to yourself the virtue of any solar thing, wrap it in a laurel leaf or lion's skin, with a golden or saffron-colored silken thread, and suspend it from the neck — the Sun reigning in the figure of the heaven. For thus you will be able to become partaker of the solar virtue of that thing. But if you desire the virtue of some Saturnine thing, wrap it in similar manner while Saturn dominates, in the skin of an ass or a funerary cloth — especially if you are working for sadness — and suspend with a black thread. And the same should be estimated regarding the rest.

Chapter XLVII — On rings and their composition

Rings also — which antiquity always held in great honor — when opportunely fashioned, put forth their virtue in us in like manner: insofar as they affect the bearer and his spirit, making him joyful or sad, gentle or terrible, bold or timid, lovable or hateful; insofar also as they fortify us against diseases, poisons, enemies, evil daemons, and against all other harmful things; or also bind us to the same. The manner of constructing such rings is this: when some fortunate star ascends, well aspected by the Moon or joined with her, we must take the stone and herb subject to that star, and fashion a ring from the metal consonant with that star, and set the little stone in it with the underlying herb or root; and finally not to omit the inscriptions of images, names, and characters — and the fumigations; but these things we shall discuss elsewhere, where we must treat of images and characters.

Thus we read in Philostratus that Iarcha, the chief of the Indian sages, fashioned seven rings according to this rule — inscribed with the virtues and names of the seven planets — and gave them to Apollonius, who wore each one on separate days, distinguishing them by the names of the days; by whose benefit he lived beyond the hundred and thirtieth year, moreover always retaining the bloom of youth.

In like manner, Moses, lawgiver and prince of the Hebrews — initiated into magic in Egypt — is read in Josephus to have fashioned rings of love and of oblivion.

Chapter XLVIII — On the virtues of places, and which places correspond to each star

The virtues of places are also admirable — arising either from things placed in them, or from stellar influxes attending those places, or from some other adventitious cause. For as Pliny reports of the cuckoo: wherever one first hears that bird, if the right foot is inscribed in a circle and that footprint is dug up, fleas are not born wherever that earth is scattered. Likewise they say that dust collected from a snake's tracks, if bees are sprinkled with it, they return to the hive. Similarly, dust in which a mule has rolled, if sprinkled on the body, mitigates the ardors of love. Dust in which a hawk has rolled, if bound in a red linen cloth, is said to be a remedy for quartan fever. A small stone gathered from a swallow's nest is said to revive epileptics immediately; and if applied, to protect them continually — especially if it has been wound in swallow blood or placed against the heart. And it is said that if someone who is fasting and has opened a vein walks over the place where an epileptic has recently fallen, the disease is transferred to him. Pliny tells that driving an iron nail into the spot where an epileptic first fixed his head, as he fell, is a remedy for that disease. A herb grown from the head of a statue and collected, if bound with red thread to a patch of someone's garment, is said to relieve headache immediately; and any herb collected from rivers or streams before sunrise, so that no one sees the gatherer — if bound, tertianum, to the left arm — so that neither you nor he who bears it knows what it is — cures tertian fever.

From places appropriated to the stars, Saturn corresponds to foul, dark, subterranean, religious and funereal places — cemeteries, burial-grounds, abandoned dwellings fallen into ruin, dark and horrible places, solitary caverns, caves, wells. Also fish-ponds, swamps, marshes, and the like. To Jupiter are ascribed all privileged places — consistories of the purple-clad, tribunals, cathedrals, gymnasia, schools, and all places clean, neat, and sprinkled with varied sweet fragrances. Mars: fiery and bloody places — furnaces, bakeries, butcheries, crosses, gallows, and places where the slaughter and carnage of wars have taken place, and executioner's places, and the like. To the Sun belong bright places, serene air, palaces of kings and princes, pulpits, theatres, thrones, and all things royal and magnificent. Venus, however, dwells in pleasant springs, verdant meadows, flower-gardens, adorned bedchambers and brothels (as Orpheus pleases) — cerulean shores, baths, dancing-halls, and all things feminine. Mercury holds workshops, schools, merchants' stalls, forums, and similar places. The Moon inhabits deserts, forests, cliffs and mighty rocks, mountains, groves, springs, waters, rivers, seas, shores, ships; she is also said to wander various groves and to possess the public ways, the storehouses of grain, and similar.

For this reason those working love magic customarily bury their instruments — whether rings, images, mirrors, or other such things — for a certain period in a brothel, so that from that place they may be imbued with a Venereal faculty; for they believe this happens in no other way than things standing in a foul place become foul, and things in an aromatic place become aromatic and fragrant.

The very orientation of the world also pertains here. Hence those who would gather Saturnine, Martial, or Jovial herbs are told to face east or south — first, because those herbs delight in being heavy in the Sun; second, because their principal domiciles (namely Aquarius, Scorpius, Sagittarius — signs for Saturn and Jupiter — and Capricorn and Pisces) are southern signs. But those who would gather Venereal, Mercurial, or Lunar herbs are told to face west or north — because those signs delight in being occidental; or toward the north, because their principal domiciles (Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Virgo) are northern signs. In solar working one must face east or south — and even better, always toward the solar body itself and its light.

Chapter XLIX — On light and colors, on lamps and torches, and how they are distributed by stars, houses, and elements

Light also is a highly formal quality, the simple act of intelligence and its image — first diffused from the divine mind into all things. In God the Father, who is the Father of lights, it is the first and true light. In his Son, it is the illuminating splendor and abundance. In the Holy Spirit, it is the burning radiance that surpasses all intelligence — even, as Dionysius says, that of the seraphim. In angels, it is diffused as shining intelligence and deep joy beyond all bounds of reason, received nevertheless in various degrees according to the nature of the receiving intelligence. It descends then into the celestial bodies, where it is the abundance of life and effective propagation — and also visible splendor. In fire it is a natural vigor infused from the celestial bodies. In humans, finally, it is the lucid discourse of reason and knowledge of divine things — the whole rational light, though this is itself multiple: either by bodily disposition, as the Peripatetics hold, or (which is truer) according to the pleasure of the liberally giving cause, who distributes to each as he wills. Thence it passes into the imagination, yet still above sense; finally, in sensible form, to the sense — most of all to the eyes. In the eyes is visible clarity, extended through other transparent bodies, wherein it becomes color and renitent beauty; in opaque bodies, however, a certain beneficent and generating virtue that penetrates even to the center, where the rays, gathered into a narrow space, become a caligionous heat, tormenting and seething. And so all things feel the vigor of light according to their capacity, which joins all things to itself by its vivifying warmth and, penetrating all existing things, conducts their qualities and virtues through all.

For this reason magi prohibit the shadow of the infirm from being cast toward the sun or moon, or the urine of the infirm from being cast against sun or moon — because the penetrating rays of light, carrying noxious qualities from under the diseased body, transmit them to the opposite side and cause harm there by such quality. This is also why fascinators observe that they cover their victim with their own shadow; and why the hyena, by the contact of its shadow, causes dogs to be struck dumb.

There are also artificially made lights — through torches, lamps, candles, and the like — composed from certain things and liquids opportunely chosen according to the pattern of the stars and prepared in harmony among themselves; when lit and shining alone, they are wont to produce certain marvelous and celestial effects, which men often wonder at. As Pliny narrates from Anaxilaus: the fluid of mares from coitus, burned in a lamp, produces monstrous horse-heads. Similar is done from asses. Musciline creatures tempered with wax and burned cause flies to appear. Serpent skin burned in a lamp makes serpents appear. And they say that when vines are in flower, if one wraps a phial full of oil around them and leaves it so until they are ripe, then afterward lights it in a lamp, it makes grapes appear — and the same holds for other fruits. If centaurea is mixed with honey and hoopoe blood and placed in a lamp, bystanders appear much larger than usual; and if it is lit at night in clear sky, one sees stars running toward one another. The ink of the cuttlefish also has this power when added to a lamp: it makes Ethiopians visible. And it is said that a candle made from certain Saturnine things, if extinguished in the mouth of a recently dead man, afterward whenever it burns alone induces the greatest sadness and fear in those present. Hermes, Plato, the Chyrannides, and among later writers Albertus in a special treatise, recount many more such lamps and lights.

Colors also are a kind of lights, which — mixed into things — are wont to expose those things to the stars and celestial bodies with which they themselves agree. In later books we will discuss of what colors the planetary lights are, according to which also the natures of the fixed stars are discerned — and these too may be applied to the flames of lamps and lanterns. But in this place we will set forth how the colors of lower and mixed things are distributed to the various planets.

All black, bright-earthy, lead-gray, and dark colors refer to Saturn. Sapphire-blue, airy, continually green, clear, purple (the darker kind), and colors mixed of gold and silver belong to Jupiter. Red, ardent, fiery, flaming, violet, purple (the intense kind), blood-red, and iron-gray refer to Mars. Golden, saffron, and more luminous purple refer to the Sun. All white, beautiful, varied, green, ruddy, and slightly saffron or purple colors refer to Venus, Mercury, and the Moon. From the houses of the heaven, the first and seventh have white; second and twelfth, green; third and eleventh, saffron; fourth and tenth, red; fifth and ninth, honey-yellow; sixth and eighth, black.

The elements also have their colors, by which physicians judge the complexion and property of natures. The earthy color, gathered from cold and dry, is dark and black, and betokens black bile and a Saturnine nature. Cerulean tending toward whiteness denotes phlegm — for cold whitens the moist and dry blackens. A reddish color indicates blood. Fiery or flame-yellow indicates choler — which, because of its subtlety, is easily mixed with all else and thereafter causes various colors: mixed with blood where blood dominates, it produces vibrant red; where choler dominates, brownish-red; in equal mixture, red; with burnt blood producing a hemp-like color; red with blood dominant, or brownish-red with choler prevailing; mixed with the melancholic humor, it darkens to black; with equal parts melancholy and phlegm, hemp-yellow; with phlegm predominating, lurid; with melancholy predominating, glaucous; mixed with phlegm alone in equal measure, citrine; if one exceeds the other, pale or sub-pale. All colors are more potent when they appear in silk or metals, or in transparent substances, or in precious stones, and in those things that most nearly imitate the celestial likeness — most potent of all in living things.

Chapter L — On fascination, and its method

Fascination is a ligature that enters from the spirit of the fascinator through the eyes of the fascinated into the fascinated person's heart. The instrument of fascination is the spirit — a certain pure, lucid, subtle vapor generated by the heart's heat from the purest blood. This continually emits rays similar to itself through the eyes. These emitted rays carry with them a spiritual vapor; that vapor carries blood — as appears in bleary and reddened eyes, whose ray emitted to the onlooking spectator's eyes draws along with itself the vapor of corrupted blood, compelling the spectator's eyes to labor with the same disease. So too, when an eye thus opened and fixed on someone with a strong imagination shoots its rays like javelins — for the rays are the vehicles of the spirit — into the opposing eyes: that tenuous spirit of the fascinated, diverted from the eyes, is roused when it strikes the heart; fortified in its proper region, it wounds the heart and infects the spirit with this alien spirit. Hence Apuleius: "These eyes of yours, slipping through my eyes into my inmost vitals, kindle the sharpest fire in my marrow." Know therefore that men are most fascinated when with most frequent mutual gaze they direct eye to eye, ray coupled to ray, light joined to light; then spirit is joined to spirit and fixes sparks. Thus the strongest ligatures, the most ardent loves, are kindled by the eyes' rays alone — even from a momentary glance, like a dart or blow piercing the whole body; whence the amatory spirit and blood, so wounded, are carried to the lover and fascinator no differently than the blood and spirit of someone avenging a slain man flows back to the slayer. Hence Lucretius sang of these amatory fascinationsː

And the body seeks that from which the mind is wounded by love,
for generally all fall into the wound, and blood leaps
in the direction where the blow has struck;
and if the enemy is near, the bloody moisture occupies him.

Such is the power of fascination — especially when the vapors of the eyes serve the affections. For this reason fascinators use collyria, ointments, ligatures, and the like to affect and strengthen the spirit in a certain manner. To induce love, they use Venereal collyria from hippomanes, the blood of doves or sparrows, and similar things. To induce fear, they use Martial collyria from the eyes of wolves, hyenas, and the like. For calamity or illness, they use Saturnine collyria. The same reasoning applies for the rest.

Chapter LI — On certain observations that produce admirable virtues

Certain gestures and observations are also said to possess certain natural virtues — such that certain diseases can sometimes be removed or inflicted by them. Thus they say quartan fevers are driven away by binding nail clippings from the patient to an eel wrapped in linen and releasing it in the water. And Pliny tells that nail clippings from hands and feet, mixed with wax and spoken over with the words "quartan fever," "tertian fever," or "daily fever" as the case may be, if affixed to a neighbor's door before sunrise, are remedies for these diseases. Similarly, all nail clippings thrown into ant-holes: the ant that first begins to drag one of them is caught and bound to the neck, and the disease is thus said to be dispelled. Something from a lightning-struck tree, thrown back over the shoulder, is said to remove some disease. In quartan fevers, a fragment of a nail from a cross, wrapped in wool, is hung from the neck; or a rope from a cross — and once the patient is freed, it is buried in a place that the sun does not reach.

The hand of someone snatched away by immature death, applied to scrofula and parotid swellings at the throat, is affirmed to heal them. They also say that difficult births are immediately resolved when someone has passed over the bed of the laboring woman with a stone or a missile that has killed three animals with single blows: a man, a boar, and a bear. The same effect is said to come from a javelin pulled from a man's body if it has not touched the ground; likewise arrows extracted from the body if they have not touched the ground, placed under those lying down, are said to be an aphrodisiac. They also say that epilepsy is cured by food from the flesh of a beast killed with the same iron by which a man was killed. Eye ailments are denied to those who, when washing their feet with water, then touch their eyes with it three times. For ailments of the groin, some bind a linen thread removed from a loom, tied with nine-times-seven knots, naming some widow at each knot.

The spleen of a sacrificial animal is laid over the patient's aching spleen; the healer says he is making the spleen a remedy — then it is placed inside the wall of the bedchamber or roofing, sealed with a ring, and the charm said three-times-three times. The urinary remedy for the spleen: a green lizard's urine in a pot hung before the bedroom door, so that the sick person touches it with his hand when going in and out. A lizard killed in a bull-calf's urine is said to inhibit the Venus of whoever made it. One who puts his own urine in a dog's urine is said to become slower to love and to feel numbness in the loins. Against all harmful medicines, one's own morning urine spread on the sole of the foot in the dark is said to be a remedy.

There is a small frog that climbs trees: if one spits in its mouth and releases it, it is said to cure a cough. Remarkable also, but easy to test by experiment, is what Pliny narrates: if anyone regrets having struck someone either from a distance or close up, and immediately spits on the middle of the striking hand, the struck person is immediately relieved of pain. This is confirmed in quadrupeds by the immediately corrected behavior of an animal after such a remedy. Some even say the blow is aggravated before the attempt. In similar manner it is good to put saliva in the hand, and to spit similarly on the right shoe before putting it on, when one passes a place where one has encountered some danger. We spit against epilepsy and contagion to repel it. Some also seek pardon from the gods for any audacious hope by spitting into the breast. In similar manner, triple spitting in any medicine has been a custom, and the effects aided thereby.

Wolves are said to be kept from a field if a boar's legs are broken, a knife is slowly inserted, and blood is sprinkled around the field's borders and the boar buried in the place from which the sprinkling began. The people of Methane of Trozenium had a most certain remedy against the Notus wind's harm to their vines, confirmed by invariable experience: with the wind still blowing, two men from different directions tear a white rooster in half, and each, holding his part, walks the vineyard circuit until they meet at the starting place and bury the rooster pieces there.

They also say that if a viper is held aloft on a staff, it will prophesy the future; and that a staff with which a frog was struck from a snake assists those in difficult labor — all this Pliny himself recounts. They also prescribe, when gathering roots and herbs, to first trace three circles with a sword, then dig, and to beware the contrary wind.

Also: if one measures a dead man with a rope — first from the elbow to the longest finger, then from the shoulder to the same finger, then from the head to the feet — making all three measurements three times, and afterward another person is measured with the same rope in the same manner: they say that person will be made unfortunate, unlucky, and fall into calamity and sadness. Albertus from the Chyrannides: if a woman has bound you by spells to love her, take her shirt and urinate through its collar and right sleeve outward — and the spell will be dissolved. Pliny: to sit with fingers interlaced before a pregnant woman or someone receiving a medical remedy is witchcraft — confirmed when Alcumena was bearing Hercules; but it is worse if it is done around one or both knees. Similarly, crossing the legs alternately on opposing knees is witchcraft — and for this reason it was forbidden in councils of commanders and magistrates, as obstructing all action. But it is said that if someone standing before a door calls by name a woman lying within, and she answers, and then drives a knife or needle into the doorpost and breaks its point, the lying one cannot lie with that woman for as long as those things remain.

Chapter LII — On the face, gesture, and habit and figure of the body, and what they correspond to in the stars; whence physiognomy, metoposcopy, and chiromancy derive their foundations

The face, gesture, bodily movements and positions, and the figures we assume also assist us in receiving celestial gifts, expose us to the heavens, and produce certain definite effects in us — no differently than with hellebore: the person collecting that herb, by whether they pull the leaf up or down, causes by that very motion the herb to draw humors up or down. That face and gesture also affect vision, imagination, and the animal spirit, no one is ignorant of. Those who lie together for offspring often impress upon the children being born the faces they themselves then bear or imagine. The clement and joyful face of a prince in his city gladdens the people; fierce or sad, it suddenly terrifies. A mourner's gesture and expression easily stirs compassion. An attractive person easily excites love. And so on.

Know that such gestures and figures expose the body to the heavens no differently than odors and medicines do the spirit, and interior passions do the soul. For as medicines and soul-passions coalesce with certain celestial dispositions, so too gestures and bodily movements obtain their efficacy from certain celestial influxes.

Saturnine gestures are those that are sad and mournful — lamentation, head-blows, also religious ones — genuflection with gaze fixed downward, as one supplicating, breast-blows, and similar expressions; and the austere and Saturnine man's face, as the satirist describes: "With bowed head and eyes fixed on the earth, mutters to himself, gnaws at silent rage, and weighs each word with protruding lip." Jovial gestures: cheerful and honorable faces, honorific gestures, joined hands as if applauding or praising, genuflection with head upraised as if in adoration. Martial: sharp, fierce, cruel, irascible, grim gestures and faces. Solar: bold, honorific faces and gestures; promenades; genuflection on one knee as when honoring a king. Venereal: dances, embraces, laughter, lovable and joyful faces. Mercurial: inconstant, nimble, slippery gestures and the like. Lunar: changeable, bewitching, and childlike.

And as we have spoken of gestures, so too human figures are distinguished by planet. Saturn indicates a person of color between black and saffron — lean, stooped, rough-skinned, with prominent veins, a hairy body, small eyes, joined eyebrows, sparse beard, thick lips, gaze fixed toward the earth, heavy gait, rubbing the feet together while walking; cunning, ingenious, a seducer, a killer. Jupiter indicates a person of white complexion tinged with red, beautiful in body, of good stature, bald, with somewhat larger eyes not wholly black, wide pupil, short and unequal nostrils, larger front teeth, curly beard, of good spirit and good morals. Mars makes a man red-complexioned, with reddish hair, round face, saffron eyes, terrible and sharp gaze, bold, festive, proud, cunning. The Sun indicates a man of dark complexion between saffron and black, tinged with red, somewhat short in stature but beautiful in body, bald and curly-haired, saffron-eyed, wise, faithful, desirous of honor. Venus indicates a person of white complexion tending toward black but predominantly white and adorned with redness, beautiful in body, with a beautiful round face, beautiful hair, beautiful eyes with intense black irises, of good morals, good-loving, benevolent, patient, and joyful. Mercury indicates from the figures a person not very white nor black, with an oblong face, elevated forehead, beautiful eyes not entirely black, a straight and somewhat long nose, sparse beard, and long fingers; ingenious, a subtle investigator, versatile, and subject to varied fortunes. The Moon indicates a person of white complexion mixed with redness, beautiful in stature, with a round and often marked face, eyes not entirely black, joined eyebrows, benevolent, easy, and sociable.

The signs also have their own faces and figures, which those who wish to know may seek in the books of astrologers. From these figures and gestures, finally, physiognomy, metoposcopy, and chiromancy — the arts of divination — depend; and even chiromancy, predicting future events, does so not as causes but as signs through similar effects caused by the same cause. Though these species of divination predict by inferior and weaker signs, their judgments are not to be despised or condemned when they prognosticate not from superstition but from the harmonic correspondence of all parts of the body. Whoever best imitates the heavens by nature, study, action, movement, gesture, face, mental affects, and opportunity of time — being most like those superiors — can receive ampler gifts from them.

Chapter LIII — On divination by auspices and auguries

There are also certain other kinds of divination depending on natural causes, confirmed in various matters by their art and experience — by which physicians, farmers, shepherds, sailors, and each from their own probable signs make prognoses. Aristotle treated many of these in his book On Weather. Among these kinds of divination, auspices and auguries hold the foremost place — valued by the Romans in former times to such a degree that nothing pertaining to public or private business was conducted without them; that the Etruscan people excelled above all others in this art, Cicero declares at length in his book On Divination.

There are several species of auspices. Some are called pedestrian, taken from quadrupeds. Some are auguries, taken from birds. Some are celestial, from thunder and lightning. Some are casual — when something fell in a temple or elsewhere. Some are sacred, taken from sacrifices. Some of these were called piacular or grim auspices — when the victim fled from the altar, or cried out when struck, or fell in a wrong part of its body. To these is added the exauguratio — when the wand fell from the hand of the augur, the wand customarily used to observe and take the auspice.

Michael Scotus recites twelve kinds of auguries: six from the right (fernoua, feruetus, confert, emponcthem, fonnafarnoua, fonnafaruetus) and six from the left (confernouam, conferuetus, uiaram, herrena, scaifarnoua, scaifaruetus). Explaining their names, he says: Fernoua is an augury when, setting out to do something, you see a man or bird going or flying, positioned on your left side; this is a good sign for the business. Feruetus is an augury when, setting out, you first encounter or see a bird or man pausing before you on your left side; this is a bad sign. Uiaram is an augury when a man or bird crosses your path on its own journey or flight, coming from your right and going to the left, and vanishes; this is a good sign. Confernouam is an augury when you first encounter a man or bird going or flying and pausing before you on the right, as you see it; a good sign. Conferuetus is an augury when you first encounter or see a man or bird reclining on your right as you see it; a bad sign. Scimafarnoua is an augury when a man or bird follows behind you and crosses ahead, but pauses somewhere on your right before reaching you or you reaching it, as you see it; a good sign. Scimafaruetus is when you see behind you a man or bird pausing on the right side; a bad sign. Scassarnoua is when you see behind you a man or bird, and it pauses in a place where you can see it; a good sign. Scassaruetus is when you see a man or bird passing and pausing on the left; a bad sign. Emponcthem is when a man or bird coming from the left and crossing to the right vanishes from your sight without you seeing it pause; a good sign. Hartena is an augury when a man or bird coming from the right passes behind your back to the left, and you see it pausing somewhere; this is a bad sign. So far Scotus.

The ancients also augured from sneezes — of which Homer makes mention in the seventeenth book of the Odyssey — because they believed them to proceed from a sacred place, namely the head, where the intellect is active and operative. And any word that unexpectedly comes into the mouth or mind of one rising in the morning is held to contain some presage and augury.

Chapter LIIII — On certain diverse animals and other things, and the significance they have in auguries

The first auspices of any undertaking must be received at its beginning. If you find your garment gnawed by mice at the start of a work, desist from what you began. If going out you stumble at the threshold or stub your foot on the way, hold back your journey. If anything of ill omen presents itself at the beginning of your undertakings, defer what you have begun — lest your whole intention be frustrated or accomplished in vain — and wait until you can seize a propitious hour with better omen.

We see that many animals, by a certain power naturally implanted in them, are prophetic and fatidical. Does not the cock most cleverly indicate the hours, and put the lion to flight with its wings spread? Many birds announce rain by their singing and chattering. Stinging flies foretell rain by sharp pricking. Dolphins foretell storms by their frequent leaps above the water. It would be a long work to recount all the presages that Phrygians, Cilicians, Arabs, Umbrians, Tuscans, and other peoples who followed augury learned from birds and animals, which were confirmed among them by many experiments and examples. In all things lie the hidden oracles of what is to come. And birds of omen will announce the greatest things to you.

Those that poets record as transformed from humans into birds: listen carefully to what the crow says, observe attentively its position — whether sitting or flying, from right or left, talkative or clamorous or silent, whether it goes ahead or follows, whether it passes or awaits the coming of someone, whether it flees and where it departs — observe all with diligence. Horapollo in the Hieroglyphics says: twin crows signify marriage, for that animal lays two eggs from which one male and one female must be born; but if, as very rarely happens, two males or two females are born, those joined as male-female pairs do not mix with another crow — and similarly the females do not mix with another male, but live each alone. Therefore, meeting a solitary crow augurs that one will have to live a widowed life. The same is portended by a black dove: after its mate's death, it always lives alone.

Ravens are to be observed with no less diligence. They are said to be preferred to crows for weightier matters. Epictetus the Stoic philosopher and serious author held that if a raven caws adversely against someone, it portends adversity to his body, fortune, honor, wife, or children. Then consider swans, which know the secrets of waters — their cheerfulness presages happy events not only to sailors but to all travelers besides, unless overcome by the arrival of a stronger bird, such as the eagle, which by the most powerful majesty of its imperium evacuates the testimony of all other birds if it speaks against them; for it flies higher than all birds, sees more deeply, and is never excluded from Jove's arcane counsel; it portends height and victory, but through blood — for it drinks not water but blood. To the Locrians fighting the Crotonians, an eagle flying over conferred victory. Hiero going out first to war had an eagle settle unexpectedly on his shield, foretelling his future kingship. At the birth of Alexander of Macedon, two eagles sitting all day over the house foretold his double empire of Asia and Europe. The same to Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, son of Demaratus of Corinth, driven from home by sedition and traveling to Etruria and Rome, an eagle removed his cap, flew high, and replaced it upon his head — foretelling the kingdom of the Romans.

Vultures signify difficulty, hardship, and rapacity — confirmed by experience at the founding of Rome. They show the sites of future slaughters seven days in advance; and because they look toward the side where the greater number will fall, as if hungering to kill the larger multitude, the ancient kings therefore sent scouts to report which way the vultures faced. The phoenix promises exceptional good fortune; when one appeared, new Rome was founded under more favorable auspices. The pelican, because it faces peril for the sake of its young, signifies a man who will face danger for friendship's sake. The stork, the bird of concord, creates concord. The crane — from the ancient word gruere, as congruere — always brings what is expedient and makes one beware the snares of enemies. The hoopoe signals gratitude, for it alone returns favor to its aged parents — in contrast to the hippopotamus, which kills its father and thus announces ingratitude and injustice. The bustard-bird (origis), the most envious, signifies envy.

From the smaller birds: the magpie, being garrulous, announces guests. The albanellus (a bird of passage), if it passes from left to right, indicates prosperity; if the contrary, the contrary. The stryix is always inauspicious, and so is the little owl — which, because it attacks chicks unexpectedly in the night as death unexpectedly comes, is said to foretell death, although sometimes, because it is not blinded by night's darkness, it signifies human diligence and vigilance — as was confirmed by its settling on Hiero's spear. The great horned owl provided Dido with her ill omen when she was lying with Aeneas, whence the poet sang: "And the foul bird, the messenger of coming grief, the slothful owl, alone on the rooftops often complains and draws out long cries into lamentation." And elsewhere: "The slothful owl, a dire omen for mortals." The same owl sang on the Capitoline when Rome was weakened before Numantia, and when Fregellae was destroyed for conspiracy against Rome. Almadel says: owls and night-ravens alighting in unusual regions and dwellings portend the death of the men in those regions and buildings — because those birds delight in corpses and sense them, and men about to die are already corpses in power.

On the hawk Ovid sings of litigation: "We hate the hawk, because it always lives in arms." Laelius Pompeius, lieutenant, was killed among the foragers in Spain — the hawk circling above his head is said to have foretold this to him. And Almadel says that birds of the same species fighting each other signify the mutation of a kingdom; but if birds of different species fight each other in turn, never seen gathered together before, they portend a new fortune for that region. Small birds also, by their arrival or departure, portend increase or decrease of a household; and the calmer and more serene their flight, the more praiseworthy. Hence Melampus the augur inferred the slaughter of the Greeks from the flight of small birds, saying: "You see how no bird makes its way through the clear sky." Swallows, because when dying they prepare hiding-places for their young, portend a large patrimony or inheritance from the dead. The bat meeting one who flees signifies escape — for though it has no feathers, it nevertheless flies away. The sparrow to one fleeing is a bad omen — it flees from the hawk to the little owl, equally endangered at both; in love affairs, however, it is a good omen, since impelled by lust it mates seven times in the hour. Bees are good omens for kings — they show an obedient people. Flies signify importunity and shamelessness, since when driven off they continually return.

Domestic fowl also are not without their auguries: cocks by their crowing promote the hope and journey of one setting out. Livia, pregnant with Tiberius, kept a hen's egg warm in her breast until a rooster with a remarkably fine crest was hatched — whereupon augurs interpreted that the child born would reign. Cicero writes that at Thebes roosters crowed at unusual hours of the night to foretell the Boeotians' victory over the Lacedaemonians — which the augurs thus interpreted, since that bird is silent when defeated and crows only when it has won.

Similarly, from animals and beasts, omens of future events are taken. The meeting with a weasel is ominous. The encounter with a hare frightens the traveler, unless he has caught it. The mule is inauspicious, being sterile. The pig is pernicious — such is its nature, and so it signifies pernicious men. The horse has an affinity with strife and war — whence Anchises in Virgil, seeing white horses, exclaims: "O alien land, you bring war! Horses are armed for war; these herds threaten war." Yet when yoked together in a chariot, because they pull in a concordant yoke, they signify hoped-for peace. The ass is useless, yet it proved useful to Marius — banished from his homeland and condemned, he saw an ass brought, refusing fodder but hurrying to water; judging from this augury that his path of safety was shown to him, he asked only this one form of aid from a band of friends, that they convey him to the sea; and with this obtained, placed on a small boat, he escaped the threats of the victorious Sulla. Yet however the ass may appear in an augury, it always signifies labor, patience, and impediments.

The wolf met on the road is a good omen — its efficacy was seen in Hiero the Sicilian, to whom a wolf snatching his writing-tablet in school confirmed his future kingdom; though he who sees the wolf first is deprived of his voice by it. Publius Africanus and Gaius Fulvius as consuls: at Minturnae a wolf tore the sentry, at the time the Roman army in Sicily was defeated by fugitives. The wolf also signifies the perfidious and men of bad faith — as is known in the progeny of Romulus: the faith that the she-wolf suckled into them at the beginning, as if by a law of nature, flowed down to their posterity.

To encounter a lion is good — being the strongest of animals, inspiring terror in all; but for a woman to encounter a lioness is bad, because it impedes conception, since the lioness does not give birth a second time. To encounter sheep and goats is good. It is also read in the Etruscan Book of Ostents: if this animal (the ram) should appear in an unusual color, it portends to a commander abundance and generosity in all things — whence Virgil sings to Pollio: "And in the meadows the ram will now change his fleece to sweet-blushing murex, now to yellow saffron." To meet oxen threshing is good, better still if plowing; though breaking the path and delaying the journey, the delay is compensated by the hospitality provided. The dog on a journey is favorable — as Cyrus, exposed in the forests, was nourished to kingship by a dog; and even the angel, companion of Tobias, did not scorn the dog as companion.

The beaver is a bad omen — because it bites off its own testicles and abandons them to hunters, it portends that a man will inflict harm upon himself. Mice signal danger: when they gnawed the gold in the Capitoline, both consuls were ambushed by Hannibal near Tarentum that very same day. The locust — as if making one stand in place (loco stare faciens) — obstructs vows and is a bad omen; but crickets advance the journey and announce good outcomes. The spider drawing thread from above is said to foretell future wealth. So too ants — because they know how to provide for themselves and prepare safe hiding-places, they portend security and riches, and signify the exercise of the multitude — hence when ants devoured Tiberius Caesar's tame dragon, the response came that he should beware the tumult of the multitude.

If a snake presents itself, beware a malicious enemy — for that animal has no weapon but its mouth. A snake slipping into a palace foretold Tarquinius his own fall. Two snakes found in the bed of Sempronius Gracchus: the haruspex told him that if he let the male go, his wife would die soon; if the female, he himself would die. Preferring his wife's life over his own, he killed the male, released the female, and died a few days later. Thus the viper signifies depraved and wicked women; the eel signifies a man hostile to all — for it lives apart from other fish and is never found joined to others.

Among all auspices and omens, however, no man is more efficacious, none more powerful, none that exposes the truth more clearly. Therefore observe attentively the condition, age, sex, profession, position, gesture, motion, exercise, complexion, dress, name, words, and speech of any person who presents himself to you. And you will inquire into all these things — for since so many lights of presage are infused into the other animals, there is no doubt that these are much more efficacious and clear when infused into the human soul. This Cicero himself attests, saying that there is naturally a certain auspice of eternity in human souls, for knowing all series and causes of things. In the foundations of Rome, a whole human head was found with its face intact, foretelling the greatness of the empire and giving the Capitoline hill its name. The Brutian soldiers before battle with Octavian and Mark Antony encountered an Ethiopian in the camp gate; though they immediately killed him as an adverse omen, they nevertheless fought unfortunately, and Brutus and Cassius both fell. Even the encounter with monks is commonly held ominous — most of all if it is in the morning — because that class of men lives principally off mortuary things, like vultures off carrion.

Chapter LV — How auspices are verified by the light of nature's sense, and on certain rules for its experience

Auguries and auspices predicted from animals and birds were first shown, we read, by Orpheus that theologian — and were afterward held in great honor among all peoples. They are verified by the luminosity of the sense of nature — as if certain lights of divination descend from this sense upon quadrupeds, birds, and other animals, through which they have the gift of giving us presages of human events. This Virgil seems to feel where he sings: "Hardly do I believe that they have a more divine intelligence, or a greater prudence in the ways of fate."

This sense of nature, as William of Paris says, is itself more sublime than all human apprehension, very close to prophecy, and greatly similar to it. From this sense a marvelous splendor of divination is naturally infused in certain animals — as appears manifestly in certain dogs, which recognize thieves and hidden men entirely unknown to themselves and the men, finding, tracking, seizing, and rushing upon them with jaws and teeth. By this same sense, vultures foreknow future slaughters from battles and congregate in places where battles will be, as if foreseeing their future food of corpses. By this same sense, partridges recognize their own mother whom they have never seen — and leave the partridge who stole their mother's eggs and hatched them.

By this very sense, with the human soul altogether ignorant, certain noxious and terrifying things are felt — whence terror and horror invade many men who neither sense nor think anything of such things: thus a robber hiding in a house, entirely unknown and unthought-of there, causes horror, fear, and restlessness of heart in the inhabitants — though not in all, since this splendor is not in all men, but in few. Similarly a hidden prostitute in a great house is sometimes sensed by someone who has no idea she is there. It is handed down in histories that one Heraiscus the Egyptian, a man of divine nature, recognized impure women not only by sight but by voice heard from afar, and was immediately afflicted thereby by considerable headache. William of Paris also recounts a woman of his time who, through this sense, sensed a man she yearned for approaching from two miles away. He also recounts a stork convicted of adultery by smell of the male, who gathered a multitude of male storks; they exposed the female's crime, and she — as if condemned by the judgment of all — was plucked and torn by the whole assembled multitude. He also recounts a horse which had unknowingly mated with its own mother: later discovering this, it bit off its own genitals to avenge the incest. Similar things are recounted by Aristotle, Varro, and Pliny. Pliny himself also narrates of an asp that came daily to a man's table in Egypt to be fed, and whose offspring was killed by the host's son; the asp, returning and recognizing the guilt, killed the offspring and never returned to that roof.

From these examples we see how certain lights of presage can descend upon certain animals — constituted as if in their gestures, movements, voices, flight, gait, food, color, and the like. For according to the teaching of the Platonists, there is a certain power infused in lower things by which they correspond in great part with the higher. Hence even the silent consent of animals is seen to agree with the divine bodies, and their bodies and affects are influenced by those virtues — under whose divinities they are thus inscribed.

One must therefore consider which animals belong to Saturn, which to Jupiter, which to Mars, and so on — and from their properties elicit presages. Thus those belonging to Saturn and Mars are all called dire and funereal birds: owls, ululas, and the others listed above. The bubo especially, as a solitary nocturnal Saturnine bird, is said to be of most inauspicious omen — of which the poet says: "And the foul bird, the messenger of coming grief, the slothful owl, a dire omen for mortals." The swan, however, being a delicate Venereal bird, sacred also to Phoebus, is said to be of most auspicious presage — especially in the auguries of sailors, because it is not submerged in water — whence Ovid sings: "The swan in auguries, always the most joyful of birds."

There are moreover the oscines — birds that make the auspice by voice and song: such as the raven, woodpecker, and crow (Virgil: "Often from the hollow ilex the crow on the left foretold"). Birds that portend by flight are: buteos, sanqualar, eagles, vultures, cranes, swans, and the like. In their flight one considers whether they fly ahead or follow, whether sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left, in what number they fly together — thus when cranes fly rapidly they signify storm; when silently, clear weather. When two wild birds fly together and they are funereal birds, they are said to portend evil, because two is the number of confusion. Similarly, carry the reasoning from numbers over to the rest. And it is a masterly thing in these conjectures to observe similarity — as Venus herself teaches Aeneas with these verses in Virgil: "Unless my parents vainly taught me augury: behold twice six swans rejoicing in their bands, which the bird of Jupiter, swooping from the expanse of heaven in open sky, was routing; now in a long line they appear to seek the land, or already to look down on land already taken; as those returned play with rustling wings and have encompassed the pole and given their song — not otherwise are your ships and your young men either holding harbor or entering the mouth with full sail."

The most marvelous kind of augury, however, is that of those who hear and understand the speech of animals — as among the ancients Melampus, Tiresias, Thales, and Apollonius of Tyana, who is read to have excelled in the language of birds, narrated by Philostratus and Porphyry. Once Apollonius, sitting with friends, watching sparrows settling in a tree, saw one arrive chirping from elsewhere; all the other sparrows followed it. He said to his companions: that sparrow told the rest that a donkey loaded with wheat had fallen in a lane near the city and the wheat was scattered all about; many were moved by these words and went to see, and found it as Apollonius had said, and marveled. Porphyry the Platonist says it was a swallow rather than a sparrow.

Certainly every voice of any animal is significant of some state of its own soul — whether joy, sadness, anger, or lust; these voices can be understood by those exercised about them, which is not so astonishing. Democritus himself transmitted this art, as Pliny says, naming birds whose mixed blood generates a serpent: whoever eats that serpent will understand the conversations of birds. And Hermes says: if on a certain day of the November kalends one goes out to hunt, and cooks the first bird caught with the heart of a fox, then all who eat of it will understand the voices of birds and other animals. The Arabs also hold that those who have eaten the heart and ear of a dragon understand the feelings of brute animals. Proclus the Platonist himself believed and passed on that the mole's heart assists presages.

Chapter LVI — On the haruspicy of lightnings and thunderbolts, and how portents and prodigies are to be interpreted

In addition to auguries, the Etruscan soothsayers and priests handed down the science of the omens of lightning and thunderbolts, portents, and prodigies. They established sixteen regions of the sky, assigning particular divine powers to each; moreover, eleven kinds of lightning, and nine gods who hurled them; explaining what each part, from each direction, signifies. Portents, prodigies, and ostents, whenever they occur, it is certain that they always portend something great. But the interpreter of these things must be an excellent conjecturer of similarities, and also a curious investigator of what affairs of princes and provinces are transacted at that time. For only princes, peoples, and provinces receive the heavenly care — to be preannounced and admonished above all others through stars, constellations, portents, and prodigies. If moreover in past centuries something same or similar has appeared, one must also consider what followed then, and according to this predict the same or similar things — because the same signs belong to the same things, and similar to similar.

Many excellent men and kings have been foretold by prodigies at their birth or death: as Cicero reports of Midas as a boy, sleeping and having ants put grains of wheat into his mouth — an omen of great riches. When bees settled on Plato's mouth as he slept in his cradle, sweetness of speech was foretold. Hecuba, about to give birth to Paris, saw in vision that she was giving birth to a burning torch that would set Troy and all Asia afire. The mother of Phalaris saw Mercury pouring blood on the ground until the whole house was flooded. The mother of Dionysius dreamed she gave birth to a little satyr. Tarquinius Priscus' wife saw a flame licking Servius Tullius' head and predicted his kingship. Similarly, after the capture of Troy, when Aeneas was disputing with his father Anchises about flight, a flame appeared licking the head of Ascanius and causing him no harm — which, portending kingship to Ascanius, persuaded them to depart. All great calamities have been foretold by portents and prodigies.

Thus we read in Pliny: under consuls M. Atilius and C. Porcius, milk and blood rained — foretelling a severe plague that would invade Rome the following year. In Lucania, iron rained that was like sponge, the year before M. Crassus was killed in Parthia with all the Lucanian soldiers who were in great number in his army. Under consuls L. Paulus and C. Marcellus, wool rained near the fortress Corifanum, close to which Titus Annius Milo was killed the following year. In the Cimbric wars, the sounds of arms and trumpets were heard from the sky. Livy on the Macedonian war: in the year when Hannibal departed, it rained blood for two days. On the second Punic war: he reports that water mixed with blood rained from the sky in the manner of rain, at the time when Hannibal was ravaging Italy. To the Lacedaemonians, shortly before the disaster of Leuctra, weapons sounded in the shrine of Hercules; and at the same time in Thebes, in the temple of Hercules, the doors locked with bars opened themselves, and weapons fixed on the walls were found on the ground. One must predict similar events from similar omens, as in former times something was predicted from them in different periods. And one must also not neglect the judgments of celestial influxes concerning these things — of which Agrippa says he will speak more at length in subsequent books.

Chapter LVII — On Geomancy, Hydromancy, Aeromancy, and Pyromancy — the four elemental divinations

The very elements themselves teach us fatal events — whence those four famous kinds of divination, Geomancy, Hydromancy, Aeromancy, and Pyromancy, took their names. Of these the sorceress in Lucan boasts when she says: "Earth will speak truly, and air, and ether, and chaos, and the seas, and the fields, and the rocks of Rhodope."

Geomancy first: it presages the future from earthquakes, rumblings, swellings, tremors, rifts, vortices, exhalations, and other such impressions of earth; whose art was handed down by Almadel the Arab. But there is also another species of Geomancy that divines by points inscribed in earth by a certain power or chance — which is not the present inquiry, but will be treated among the sortes in subsequent chapters.

Hydromancy furnishes oracles through watery impressions — their flows and refluxes, swellings and depressions, storms, colors, and similar things; to which are also joined the visions that occur in waters. A kind of divination discovered by the Persians: Varro tells of a boy who saw in water the image of Mercury, who in a hundred and fifty verses foretold the entire course of the Mithridatic war. We read also that Numa Pompilius practiced hydromancy — for in water he drew forth images of the gods and learned the future from them. Pythagoras practiced this art for a long time after Numa. Also, among the Babylonians in former times, a species of hydromancy called Lecanomantia was greatly prized, named from a basin full of water: golden and silver plates inscribed with certain images, names, and characters were placed in it; to which may also be referred the art by which lead or wax, melted and cast into water, express in manifest figures of images what one wishes to know. There were also oracular springs — such as the spring of Patris in Achaia, and the one called the spring of Juno at Epidaurus. Also, the haruspicy of fish: of such a kind as was taken in Lycia at a place called Dina, near the sea, in a sacred grove of Apollo — there was an excavation in dry sand in which, when one seeking to inquire about the future threw in roasted flesh, the place suddenly filled with water and a great multitude of fish of marvelous and unknown forms appeared — from the shapes of the horses of which the priest predicted what was to come. This Athenaeus reports at greater length from Polycharmus in the Lycian histories.

Aeromancy similarly provides prognostics through aerial impressions — the blowing of winds, streaks, halos, mists, and clouds; through imaginations in clouds and visions in air.

Pyromancy likewise divines through fiery impressions — comets, fiery colors, and visions and imaginations in fire. Thus Cicero's wife foretold that he would be consul the following year, because when she wished to examine the embers after a sacrifice, flame suddenly leaped up again. Of this kind are those things Pliny says: that pale, murmuring earth-fires are sensed as heralds of storms; that when lamp-flames carry flying fungi sinuously, wind is portended; lights that push out flames before them, or barely ignite; when clinging sparks are heaped on pots; when contained fire shakes its ash or emits a spark; or when cinders consolidate in the hearth; or when coals glow intensely.

To these is added Capnomantia — named from smoke — which scrutinizes the flame and smoke and their colors, sounds, and movements: whether the flame extends straight up, or is carried oblique, or rolls in a circle. As is read of these things in Statius with these verses: "Let piety be overcome; lay the altars, girl; let us seek the gods above; she, with keen gaze, discerns from the blood-red crests of the flames and the breath through the air of the fire, and from the clear summit of the middle light arising, teaches it then to roll in the empty form of a serpent in ambiguous gyration and to break in red."

Indeed in the craters of Etna and in the Nymphaean fields among the Apollonians, auguries were taken from fire and flames: favorable if what was thrown in was seized by the flames; grim if it was rejected. Of these things also we will speak in subsequent sections, among the responses of oracles.

Chapter LVIII — On the revival of the dead, on long sleep, and on abstinence

The Arabic philosophers hold that some men are able to elevate themselves above the powers of the body and the sensitive powers, and — overcoming these — to receive into themselves, through the perfection of the heavens and intelligences, a divine vigor. Since therefore all human souls are perpetual, and to perfect souls all spirits are obedient, the magi believe that perfect men, through the virtues of their soul, can restore other inferior souls already somehow separated from their dying bodies, and breathe life into them again — no differently than a weasel calls its slain offspring back to life with breath and voice, and lions vitalize their dead-born cubs by breathing into them. And since, as they say, all similar things applied to similar become of similar nature, and everything receiving within itself the influence of some agent also takes on and becomes connatural with that agent's nature — hence they believe that certain herbs and magical preparations also contribute not a little to this vivification: such as those said to be made from the ashes of the phoenix and the shed skins of serpents. This might seem to many fabulous and even impossible, if it were not confirmed by historical testimony.

For we read that many were revived: some drowned in water, some cast into fires and laid on pyres, some killed in war, some otherwise struck dead — recovered even after many days — as Pliny testifies concerning Aviola the consular, L. Lamia, Caelius Tubero, Corsidius, Gabieno, and many others. We also read that Aesop the fabulist, Tyndareus, Hercules, and the Palici (sons of Jupiter and Thalie) died and revived. And many were recalled to life by magi and physicians — as is delivered from histories concerning Aesculapius; and as we narrated above from Juba, Xantho, and Philostratus concerning Tillonus and a certain Arab, and Apollonius of Tyana. We also read of one Glaucus who was dead — against all expectation, with physicians in attendance, restored to life by a herb which some call "the dragon" — whence arose the proverb: "Glaucus resurrected by drinking honey."

Apuleius also, narrating this rite of revocation, says of Zachlas the Egyptian prophet: "The prophet thus propitiated, places a certain small herb before the mouth of the body, and another on its chest; then, turning to the east, he silently mouths certain words in invocation of the great sun; and the venerable scene turned all present's faces to the great marvel of the study: and now the breast swelling, now healthy veins pulsing, now the spirit filling the body — the corpse arose and the young man spoke..."

Chapter LIX — On Divination Through Dreams

There is also a species of divination that takes place during sleep — of dreams — confirmed alike by the traditions of philosophers, by the authority of theologians, by the examples of histories, and by daily experience. By "dream" I mean here not the phantasma or insomnium, which are vain and contain nothing of divination: these arise from the remnants of waking thought or from disturbance of the body — for whatever concern of mind or fortune has worn us down while awake, the same presents itself while sleeping, or sometimes its opposite deceives us in the insomnium. The somnium I mean here is what is caused in the fantastic spirit — when mind and body are well-disposed — by the influx of the celestial. The interpretive rule for such dreams is found among astrologers in the section on interrogations; yet it is not sufficient in itself, because dreams of this kind come differently to different persons, depending on the different quality and disposition of the fantastic spirit. Therefore no single common rule of dream-interpretation can be applied to all; but following the teaching of Synesius, since accidents are the same for the same things and similar things for similar — one who falls upon the same or similar vision many times should designate the same or similar meaning, passion, fortune, action, and event for himself, just as Aristotle says: sense confirms memory, from memory of the same thing often obtained comes experience, from many experiences gradually accumulates art and knowledge; in the same way one must proceed with dreams. Hence Synesius bids each person to observe their own dreams and the events arising from them — to record which visions issued in what events, to commit such rules, both of vision and waking, to memory, and by assiduous observation to accumulate many such rules within themselves; from which accumulation a divinatory art of interpreting one's own dreams gradually arises, provided nothing slips from memory.

Dreams are most efficacious when the moon transits the sign that was in the ninth house of the nativity or of the revolution of that year, or in the ninth sign from the sign of the progression. The truest and most certain divination, however, comes neither from nature nor from human arts but from purified minds, through divine inspiration. What pertains to oracles and vaticinations we will examine elsewhere.

Chapter LX — On Frenzy and the Divinations That Take Place While Awake; On the Power of the Melancholic Humor, by Which Even Daemons Are Sometimes Drawn into Human Bodies

It also happens that persons predict things not only while sleeping but also while awake — the soul loosed and impelled by its own impulse. This divination Aristotle calls furor, and teaches in his treatise on divination that it proceeds from the melancholic humor, saying: melancholics by the vehemence of their conjecture far and well, and quickly imagine and most readily receive the impressions of the celestial. And in the Problems he says: the Sibyls, the Bacchides, Niceratus of Syracuse, and Amon were diviners and poets by their natural melancholic constitution.

The cause of frenzy, if it is any within the human body, is the melancholic humor — not indeed what is called atra bilis, which is so depraved and dreadful a thing that physicians and natural philosophers hold that its assault, beyond the madness it induces, actually attracts evil daemons to besiege human bodies. We mean the melancholic humor that is called natural and candida bile. For when this is kindled and burns, it excites a frenzy leading us to knowledge and divination — especially when aided by some celestial influx, above all by Saturn's: for Saturn, being himself cold and dry, as the melancholic humor is, daily flows into it, augments it, and conserves it. Moreover, since he is himself the author of arcane contemplation, alien from all public affairs, and the highest of the planets, the soul itself is always recalled from external occupations to internal, and made to ascend from lower things, being drawn toward the highest; and he grants the sciences and foreknowledge of future things.

This is what Aristotle intends in his book of Problems: "From melancholy," he says, "certain ones become as if divine, predicting the future, and certain ones become poets." He further says that all men who have been outstanding in any science were for the most part melancholic — as Democritus and Plato testify, asserting that certain melancholics so surpass in genius that they seem divine rather than human. So we see many melancholics who are at first rude, inept, and mad — such as they say Hesiod, Ion, Tynnicus of Calcis, Homer, and Lucretius were — suddenly seized by the fury, who become poets and sing certain wondrous and divine things that they themselves barely understand. Whence divine Plato in the Ion: many seers, he says, after the force of their frenzy has subsided, do not sufficiently understand what they have written, although they treated each of the arts correctly in their frenzy — as the individual craftsmen of those arts judge on reading them.

They also hand down that the domination of the melancholic humor is such that by its assault it sometimes even attracts heavenly daemons into human bodies — in whose presence and instigation, as all antiquity testifies, men rage and utter many wondrous things. This is held to occur under a triple differentiation corresponding to the soul's triple apprehension — namely imaginative, rational, and mental. They say that when the soul, impelled by the melancholic humor with nothing restraining it, passes the reins of the body and transgresses the bonds of the members, and transfers itself wholly into the imagination, it suddenly becomes the dwelling of inferior daemons — from whom it often receives wondrous rational arts. So we see a most uneducated man suddenly become an excellent painter, architect, or master of whatever art. When such daemons portend future things, they show what pertains to the turbulences of the elements and the vicissitudes of the seasons — as future rain, storm, flood, earthquake, mortality, famine, slaughter and the like. When the soul is converted wholly into reason, it becomes the domicile of the middle daemons: from these it obtains knowledge and prudence of natural and human things, and predicts things pertaining to the mutations of kingdoms and the restitution of ages — as the Sibyl prophesied to the Romans. When the soul has ascended wholly into the mind, made a receptacle of the sublimer daemons, it learns the secrets of divine things from them: the pure law of God, the orders of angels, and what pertains to the knowledge of eternal things and the salvation of souls; and it foresees future things pertaining to divine providence — as future prodigies or miracles, a future prophet, or the transformation of a law. Thus the Sibyls long before his coming prophesied about Christ. Thus Virgil, understanding that Christ was about to be born and was now imminent, recalling the Cumaean Sibyl, sang to Pollio:

Now has come the last age of the Cumaean oracle;
A great order of centuries is born from the beginning;
Now the virgin returns, the Saturnian kingdoms return;
Now a new progeny descends from the high heaven.

And a little after, suggesting that the primal fault would be annulled, he says:

Should any traces of our sin remain,
They will be annulled, releasing the earth from perpetual dread.

And he adds:

He will receive the life of the gods, and will see heroes
Mingled with the divine, and will himself be seen by them,
And will rule a world pacified by his father's virtues.

Then foretelling the fall of the serpent and the venom of the tree of death:

The serpent will perish, and the treacherous herb of venom.

There are also prognostics that lie between the boundaries of natural and supernatural divination — as in those near death and weakened by old age, who sometimes foresee future things, because they — as Plato says in the Republic — who are less obstructed by the senses are sharper in understanding, and being nearer to the place they are about to migrate to, and already partially freed from their chains, no longer wholly subject to the body, they easily perceive the lights of divine revelation.

Chapter LXI — On the Formation of Man, the External and Interior Senses and the Mind, and the Threefold Appetite of the Soul and the Passions of the Will

It is the opinion of certain theologians that God himself did not immediately create the body of primeval man, but composed and formed it from the elements with celestial aid. To this opinion Alcinous from Plato's teaching assents, holding that the highest God is the creator of the world and of the gods and daemons — and for this reason those are immortal — but the younger gods made mortals and other kinds of mortal creatures at the command of the highest God: for if he had begotten these himself they would have been born immortal. The gods therefore, changing and binding together portions of earth and fire and air and water, constructed one body from all, which they subjected to the service of the soul, assigning to each of its powers their own provinces — assigning humbler seats to the humbler: thus to irascibility the precordia, to cupidity the belly; the nobler senses to the head, as to the citadel of the whole body; then the manifold organs of speech.

The senses are divided into external and interior. The external are divided in turn into the five known to all, to which equally five organs or substrates are attributed as foundations, so disposed that those placed in the more eminent part of the body also attain the higher order of purity: for the eyes, placed in the highest position, are the purest, akin by nature to fire and light; the ears, occupying the second rank both of place and purity, are compared to air; the nostrils hold the third rank, containing between air and water; then the organ of taste is grosser and most resembling the nature of water; lastly touch, diffused throughout everything, is assigned to the density of earth. The purer senses are those that perceive from afar without approaching the sensible — as sight and hearing; smell also perceives through the medium of air things that do not approach; taste perceives only what is nearby; touch has it the same way, for it senses approaching bodies; yet like sight through medium air it also senses hard, soft, and moist things through a medium staff or rod. Touch alone of the senses is common to every animal; and man possesses this sense and taste most precisely — surpassing other animals in these two; but in the other three senses he is surpassed by certain animals, as the dog sees, hears, and smells more keenly than man; and lynxes and eagles see more keenly than many other creatures.

The interior senses, as Averroes holds, are divided into four. The first is called the sensus communis — because it first collects and perfects all the images received through the external senses. The second is the vis imaginativa, whose office is to retain the images received from the prior senses when those senses are no longer present, and to offer them to the third sensory nature, which is phantasia — the power of estimating and thinking — whose work is to receive images and perceive and judge what and what kind a thing is whose images those are; and to commend to the fourth power, which we call memory, for safekeeping what it has thus discerned, conjoined, perceived, judged. Also among its generic virtues are discursus, dispositions, pursuits and flights, and incitements to action; and in the sphere of the intellective: intellections, virtues, the art of learning, counsel, and choice.

Above the sensible soul which deploys its powers through the organs of the body, the mind itself occupies the highest place — incorporeal — having a twofold nature: one that inquires into the causes, properties, and progressions of things contained in the order of nature and is content in the contemplation of truth, which they therefore call the contemplative intellect; and another nature or power of the mind that discerning by counsel what is to be done and what avoided, wholly engaged in deliberation and action, is therefore called the active intellect. This order of powers, nature established in man: that through the exterior senses we might know corporeal things; through the interior, beyond this, the likenesses of bodies; and further through the mind or intellect, abstractions that are neither bodies nor likenesses of them.

According to this threefold order of the soul's powers, three appetites arise in the soul. The first is natural — the inclination of nature to its end, as in stone downward, present in all things. The second is animal, following the senses, divided into irascible and concupiscible. The third is intellective, called will — differing from the sensual appetite in that the sensual desires nothing of itself except what can be offered to the senses and is somehow comprehended; but the will, although free by essence and capable of all possible things, can also be of impossible things — as in the daemon desiring to be equal to God. The will is continually altered and depraved by pleasure and pain when it assents to the inferior powers. Hence four passions arise from its depraved appetite, by which the body is sometimes also affected: the first is called oblectatio — a certain mollitude and compliance of the mind or will, by which it most freely consents to, obeys, and complies with whatever the senses hold out in pleasantness; the second is effusio — the remission or dissolution of virtue, when beyond oblectatio the whole force and intention of the mind melts and flows away in the sweetness of present good; the third is iactantia — an exulting elation, supposing itself to have attained some greatest good, in the possession of which it arrogates insolently, exults, and boasts vainly; the fourth and last is malevolentia — a certain pleasure in another's evil without one's own advantage. Corresponding to these four passions from depraved appetite through pleasure, pain generates four contrary passions: horror, tristitia, metus, and the grief at another's good without any harm to oneself — which we call invidia.

Chapter LXII — On the Passions of the Soul, Their Origin, Difference, and Kinds

The passions of the soul are nothing other than certain motions or inclinations arising from the apprehension of something as good or bad, fitting or unfitting. Such apprehensions are threefold: sensual, rational, mental. According to these three, the passions in the soul are threefold: when they follow sensual apprehension, they regard temporal good or evil under the aspect of the pleasant and the offensive, and are called natural or animal passions; when they follow rational apprehension, they regard good or evil under the aspect of virtue and vice, praise and blame, the useful and the useless, the honorable and the base, and are called rational or voluntary passions; when they follow mental apprehension, they regard good and evil under the aspect of the just and unjust, the true and false, and are then called intellectual passions or synderesis.

The subject of the soul's passions is the concupiscible power itself, divided into the concupiscible and irascible, and each regards good and evil but in different ways. The vis concupiscibilis sometimes regards good and evil absolutely — and from this arises amor or libido and contrarily odium; or it regards good as absent, and from this arises cupiditas or desiderium; and evil as absent but imminent, and from this arises horror, flight, and abomination; or it regards good and evil as present and obtained, and from this arise delectatio, laetitia, and voluptas; and contrarily tristitia, angustia, dolor. The vis irasacibilis regards good and evil under the aspect of the difficulty of acquiring or obtaining, avoiding, or repelling — and this sometimes with confidence: and from this arises hope and audacity; sometimes with diffidence: and from this arises desperatio and metus. At times the irascible power rises to vengeance, and this only concerning past evil as inflicted injury or harm, and then ira is caused. Thus we find eleven passions in the soul: amor, odium, desiderium, horror, laetitia, dolor, spes, desperatio, audacia, timor, ira.

Chapter LXIII — How the Passions of the Soul Change One's Own Body by Altering Accidents and Moving the Spirit

When the passions of the soul follow sensual apprehension, the phantasia or vis imaginativa governs them. For this power, according to the diversity of the passions, first diversely alters and transmutes one's own body by sensible transmutation — changing the accidents of the body and moving the spirit upward or downward, inward or outward, and producing diverse qualities in the members. Thus in joy the spirits are expelled outward; in fear they are drawn back; in shame they are moved to the brain; in joy the heart dilates gradually outward, in sadness it contracts gradually inward; in anger or fear similarly, but suddenly. Again: anger or the lust for vengeance produces heat, redness, bitter taste, and flux of the belly; fear induces cold, trembling of the heart, failure of voice, and pallor; sadness induces sweat and bluish-white pallor.

Compassion also — which is itself a kind of sadness — often ill-affects the body of the one who is compassionate, so that another's suffering seems to afflict them. It is also clear among some lovers that the bond of love is so strong that what one of them suffers, the other suffers too. Anxiety also induces dryness and blackness. How great are the heats that the desire of love stirs in the liver and in the pulse, physicians know — discerning from them the name of the beloved in the heroic passion, as Nausistratrus recognized that Antiochus was captivated by love of Stratonice. It is also manifest that passions of this kind, when most vehement, can bring death: at excessive joy, sadness, love, and hate, men sometimes die; often they are relieved of illness. So we read that Sophocles and Dionysius tyrant of Sicily — each upon receiving news of a tragic victory — died suddenly. So a mother died suddenly on seeing her son returning alive from the battle of Cannae. What sadness can do is known to all. We also know that dogs have often died of excessive grief at the death of their masters.

Sometimes from such passions long illnesses also follow, and sometimes they are cured. So those looking down from great heights sometimes tremble with excessive fear, grow giddy and infirm, sometimes lose their senses; so hiccups, fevers, and epilepsy sometimes follow from great terror, and sometimes recede from it; and sometimes wondrous effects arise — as in the son of Crastinus whom his mother bore mute, but violent fear and desire expelled the voice that nature had long denied. So from some sudden affection of passion, life, sense, and motion often suddenly abandon the limbs and often immediately return. How much also a vehement anger joined to great-souled courage can do was shown by great Alexander himself: surrounded in battle in India, he was seen to shoot forth light and fire from himself. The father of Theodoric is reported to have poured sparks of fire from his whole body, so that glittering flames leaped out from every side even when he rested. Similar things sometimes appear also in beasts — as in Tiberius's horse, which was reported to have breathed fire from its mouth.

Chapter LXIV — How the Passions of the Soul Alter the Body Through the Mode of Imitation by Likeness; and on the Transformation and Translation of Men; and What Powers the Imaginative Force Holds Not Only Over the Body But Over the Soul

The passions aforesaid sometimes alter the body through the mode of imitation — by virtue of the similitude a thing has for transmuting — which vehement imagination powerfully moves: as in the stupor and setting-on-edge of the teeth from the sight or sound of something sour; and because we see or imagine another eating sharp things; so seeing another yawn one also yawns; and some when they hear sour things named feel their tongue grow acid; the annoyance of some foul spectacle also infects taste and provokes nausea; some faint at the sight of human blood; some, when they see food given to an enemy, feel bitter saliva in their mouth. William of Paris narrates that he saw a man who was moved to purgation merely by the sight of a medicine, whenever a purgation was needed — though neither the substance of the medicine nor its taste nor its odor reached him, but only the likeness was apprehended. For this reason dreamers who dream they are burning or in fire are sometimes tormented intolerably as if they were truly burning — though there is no truth or substance of fire with them, only the likeness apprehended through imagination.

Sometimes also the very human bodies are transformed, transfigured, and transported — often in dreams, sometimes also while awake. So Cyppus, who was afterwards elected king of Italy, while intensely meditating on and admiring the battle and victory of bulls, fell asleep in that care, and in the morning was found with horns — because by none other than the vegetative virtue strongly stimulated by the vehement imagination, horn-bearing humors were elevated into his head and horns were produced. For vehement thought, as the species moves vehemently, in those members paints the figure of the thing thought upon, which imagination fashions in the blood, and the spirit nourished from it imprints upon the members — sometimes one's own, sometimes also another's: as the imagination of a pregnant woman imprints on the fetus the mark of the desired thing; and the imagination of one bitten by a mad dog imprints dog-images in the urine. So many suddenly grow old; another grew from a boy to a perfect man in the sleep of a single night. Many also wish to attribute to this the scars of Dagobert the king and the stigmata of Francis — the one vehemently fearing punishment, the other vehemently contemplating the wounds of Christ. So also many are transported from place to place across rivers, fires, and inaccessible places: because a species of some vehement desire or fear or audacity, impressed on the spirits and mixed with their vapors, moves the organ of touch at its origin together with phantasia, which is the principle of local motion; hence the members and organs of motion are excited to motion, and move without error to the imagined place — not from sight but from phantasia inwardly. Such is the force of the soul over the body, that wherever it imagines and dreams, it simultaneously lifts and transports the body itself.

We read many similar examples. Avicenna writes of a certain man who could paralyze his body at will. Gallus Vibius: it happened to him that in order not to fall into madness by chance, he began to imitate madmen by judgment, pursuing the art of frenzy as a pleasantry — but by imitating the insane, he reduced himself to true insanity. Augustine reports some who could move their ears at will, and with the head remaining still could turn the whole vertex to the forehead and back again when they wished; and another accustomed to sweat wherever he willed. It is known also that some weep when they wish, and pour out tears abundantly; others also who were epileptics would take from their stomach, like from a sack, various things they had swallowed, producing whatever they pleased. And today we see many who so imitate and reproduce the voices of birds, cattle, dogs, and certain men that they cannot at all be distinguished from the originals. Already Pliny narrates with many examples that women have been changed into men; similar things in his time Pontanus testifies of a certain woman of Casinum and another Aemilia, who having both married, after many years were changed into men.

How much also the imagination itself can do over the soul, no one is ignorant: for it is nearer to the substance of the soul than the senses are, and therefore acts more upon the soul than the senses do. So a woman through certain magically introduced strong imaginations, dreams, suggestions is most often tightly bound in love for someone. So Medea is said to have burned for Jason from a single dream. So the soul is sometimes entirely abstracted from the body through vehement imagination or speculation — as Celsus narrates of a certain presbyter who whenever he wished withdrew himself from his senses and lay like a dead man, feeling no pain when pierced and burned, lying motionless and without breath; yet he afterwards reported that he had heard human voices, but as if from a distance if they had called out loudly enough. Of these abstractions we will speak more fully in later sections.

Chapter LXV — How the Passions of the Soul Also Operate Outside Themselves in Another's Body

The passions of the soul that follow phantasia, when most vehement, can not only change one's own body but also pass beyond to operate in another's body — producing thereby certain admirable impressions in elements and external things, and also able to take away or inflict certain sicknesses of mind or body. For the passions of the soul are the most powerful cause of the constitution of one's own body. So the soul strongly elevated and set ablaze by vehement imagination sends health or illness not only into its own body but also into the bodies of others. So Avicenna holds that at someone's imagination a camel can fall. So one bitten by a mad dog and falling into rabies — dog-images appear in his urine. So a pregnant woman's desire acts on another's body when it marks the fetus in the womb with the note of the desired thing. So many monstrous births arise from monstrous imaginations of pregnant women — as Marcus Damascenus near the town of Petra in the Pisan borders reports: a girl was presented to King Charles of Bohemia and Emperor, hairy over her whole body like a beast — whom her mother had generated such, having been affected while conceiving by a certain religious dread, gazing at the image of the holy John the Baptist which was beside the bed. And this we see happen not only in humans but in animals: so we read that Jacob the patriarch, by rods cast into water, made the sheep of Laban discolored. So the imaginative force of peacocks and other birds is imprinted on the color of the eggs by the color of the member during coition — whence we produce white peacocks by surrounding the nesting place with white linen.

From these examples it is clear how the affection of phantasia, when it has intensified itself more vehemently, affects not only one's own body but another's. So also the lust of malefactors to harm, with fixed stares, most destructively fascinates. Avicenna, Aristotle, Algazel, and Galen assent to these things. For it is manifest that a body is most easily infected by the vapor of another sick body — as we see plainly in plague and leprosy. Again: the vapors of the eyes are so strong that they can fascinate and infect the nearest person — as the basilisk and catoblepas kill men with their gaze; and certain women in Scythia, among the Illyrians and Triballians, killed with angry looks whomsoever they had thus stared upon. Let no one therefore be surprised that one person's body and soul can be similarly affected by another's soul — for the soul is far more powerful, stronger, more fervent, and more potent in motion than vapors exhaling from bodies. Nor are the media through which it operates lacking; and the body is no less subject to another's soul than to another's body.

In this way a man is said to act upon another through affect and habit alone. Therefore the philosophers bid us flee far from the company of the evil and unfortunate: for their souls, full of noxious rays, infect those near them with calamitous contagion. Contrarily they bid us seek the company of the good and fortunate — for by their proximity they greatly benefit us. Just as an odor issues from galbanum or musk, so from evil something evil, and from good something good, bursts forth into the neighbor and sometimes persists long. Now if the passions aforesaid have such great force in phantasia, they certainly have greater in reason, since reason itself is more excellent than phantasia; and much greater still in the mind — for here, when it is fixed with the whole intention of the soul on the powers above for some good work, it often affects with a divine gift both its own body and others' bodies it is concerned with. In this way we read that miracles were performed by Apollonius, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Philolaus, and many prophets, and also by the saints of our religion — of which it will be more fully apparent below, when we treat of religion.

Chapter LXVI — That the Passions of the Soul Are Greatly Aided by Celestial Opportunity, and How Necessary Constancy of Soul Is in Every Work

The passions of the soul are greatly aided by and in turn greatly aid the heavens, and become most potent insofar as they agree with the heaven by natural compact or by voluntary choice and free will. For, as Ptolemy says, he who chooses what is better seems to differ in nothing from one who has it by nature. It conduces therefore greatly in any work to receiving the benefits of heaven, if we have also rendered ourselves consonant with heaven in thoughts, affects, imaginations, choices, deliberations, contemplations, and the like. For passions of this kind powerfully agitate our spirit toward their likeness and suddenly expose us and ours to the celestial powers that signify such passions — and moreover by their dignity and proximity with the higher, they receive celestial things far more largely and amply than any material things can. For our soul can, through imagination or a certain imitation, be so conformed to a star that it is suddenly filled with that star's gifts, as a proper receptacle of its influx.

The contemplative mind, insofar as it withdraws from all sense, imagination, nature, and deliberation and recalls itself to separate things, unless it exposes itself to Saturn, does not exist for the present investigation. For much does our mind operate through faith — which is a firm adhesion, fixed intention, and vehement application of the operator or recipient in any matter toward the co-operating and gift-bestowing power — to the point that a certain idol or image of the virtue to be received forms itself in us. We must therefore in any work and application vehemently desire, imagine, hope most firmly, and firmly believe — for this will be of the greatest assistance. And it is verified by physicians that firm belief, hope without doubt, and love toward the physician and medicine contribute greatly to recovery — sometimes even more than medicine itself. For when the virtue and efficacious power of medicine operates, the strong soul of the physician also operates, capable of changing qualities in the body of the sick patient — especially when the patient applying himself to the physician by faith thereby disposes himself to receive the virtue of the physician and the medicine.

Therefore the operator in magic must be of constant belief, confident, and must doubt in no way regarding the attainment of the effect, nor waver in mind. For just as firm and steadfast belief works wonders even sometimes in false works, so diffidence and hesitation disperses and breaks the power of the operating soul — which, being between the two extremes, dissipates and ruins it; and hence it happens that the desired influx from the higher powers is frustrated and lost, which without the stable and solid virtue of our soul cannot be joined and united to our things and works.

Chapter LXVII — How the Human Soul Can Be Joined With the Souls of the Celestial Bodies and Intelligences, and Together With Them Imprint Certain Wondrous Virtues on Lower Things

The philosophers say — especially the Arabs — that when the human soul has been most intent on some work through its passions and effects, it joins itself with the souls of the stars and even with the intelligences; and being so joined becomes the cause of some wondrous virtue being infused into our works and things — both because in the soul is the apprehension and power of all things, and because all things have natural obedience to it and necessarily respond, and the soul with strong desire moves them toward what it desires. In accordance with this, the art of characters, images, incantations, and certain words and very many other wondrous experiments for everything the soul desires is validated. Whatever the soul of a vehemently loving person dictates has efficacy for love; and whatever the soul of one powerfully hating dictates has efficacy for harming and destroying. Similarly in other things which the soul desires with strong desire. For everything one does and dictates through characters, figures, words, speeches, gestures, and the like — all aid the appetite of the soul and acquire certain wondrous virtues: partly from the soul of the operator in that hour when such appetite most strongly invades it, and partly from the opportune celestial influx then moving the soul in such a way.

For our soul, when it is carried into some great excess of passion or virtue, often seizes of itself the hour or opportunity that is stronger, better, and more fitting — which Thomas Aquinas himself acknowledges in Book III of the Contra Gentiles. So wondrous virtues for wondrous operations are caused and follow from the great affections in things which the soul dictates in that hour toward those things. But know that things of this kind profit nothing, or at least little, except to their author and to one who is already inclined toward them as if he were already their author — and this is the manner in which their efficacy is found.

The general rule in these matters is: every soul that is more excellent in its desire and affection makes things of this kind more apt and efficacious for what it desires. Therefore whoever wishes to operate in magic must know and discern the property, virtue, measure, order, and degree of their own soul in the power of the universe itself.

Chapter LXVIII — How Our Soul Can Transform and Bind Lower Things to What It Desires

There is also in human souls a power of transmuting, attracting, impeding, and binding things and persons to what it desires — and all things obey it when it is carried in great excess of passion or virtue to the point that it surpasses those it binds. For what is superior binds what is inferior and converts it to itself; and what is inferior is by the same reason converted to what is superior, or otherwise affected or agitated. For this reason a thing holding a superior grade of a given star binds, attracts, or impedes things holding an inferior grade, according as they agree or disagree. Hence the cock is feared by the lion, because solar virtue agrees more with the cock than with the lion; so the magnet attracts iron, because in the celestial hierarchy it holds a superior grade; so the diamond impedes the magnet, because in the order of Mars it is superior to it.

In the same way, a man who — through the affections of his soul and through the fitting application of natural things, opportunely exposed to celestial gifts — has grown stronger in solar virtue: binds and attracts the inferior in admiration and obedience; in the lunar order: to servitude or infirmity; in the Saturnine: to quiet or sadness; in the Jovial: to the exhibition of veneration; in the Martial: to fear or discord; in the Venereal: to love or gladness; in the Mercurial: to persuasion and compliance; and similar things.

The root of such binding is the vehement and unrestrained affection of the soul together with the concourse of the celestial order. The dissolutions or impediments of such binding are through contrary affect, and through what is more excellent and stronger — for just as a greater excess of the soul binds, so it also frees and impedes. Finally: where you fear Venus, oppose Saturn; where you fear Saturn or Mars, oppose Venus or Jupiter; for these astrologers say are enemies and most contrary to one another — which is to be understood of the diverse and contrary affects they cause in these lower things, not in heaven itself where nothing lacks, where all things are governed by love, and hatred or enmity cannot exist.

Chapter LXIX — On Speech and the Virtues of Words

Having shown that great virtue resides in the affections of the soul, it must also be known that no lesser virtue resides in the words of things and their names — and the greatest of all in complex speeches. By these principally we differ from brutes and are called rational — not from the reason that is taken according to the soul (which Galen says even brute animals share with us to varying degrees), but rational from reason as understood in voice and speech, which is called ratio enunciativa; in this part we surpass all other creatures: for logos in Greek sounds for both reason and speech and word. The word is twofold: interior and exterior. The interior word is the conception of the mind and the motion of the soul that takes place in the cogitative power without voice — as when in dreams we seem to speak and dispute, and also when awake we silently run through some whole oration. The exterior word has a certain act in voice and in the property of utterance, and is pronounced with the breath of man, with the opening of the mouth, and with the movement of the tongue. In this word nature coupled the corporeal voice and speech to the mind and intellect, making it an enunciative interpreter of the concepts of our intellect toward the hearer.

Words are therefore the fittest medium between speaker and hearer — carrying with them not only the concept but also by a certain energy the virtue of the speaker, transmitting it into the hearers — and even into other bodies and inanimate things. Those words above all others are of greatest efficacy which represent greater things — namely the intellectual, celestial, and supernatural — both most expressly and most mysteriously; and which are established in a more worthy language and more sacred dignity. For these, as certain signs and representations or sacraments of celestial and supernatural things, obtain their virtue both from the virtue of the things explained, of which they are vehicles, and from the force infused in them by the virtue of the one who instituted and utters them.

Chapter LXX — On the Virtue of Proper Names

That proper names of things are most necessary in magical operations is testified by almost all: for since the natural power of things first proceeds from objects to the senses, then from these to the imagination, and from this at length to the mind — in which it is first conceived and then expressed through voices and words — the Platonists therefore say that in this very voice, word, or name of a thing, already articulated in its own manner, the vital force of the thing itself latently dwells: first conceived by the mind itself as by a seed of things, then given birth through voices or words as by a delivery, lastly preserved in writing.

Hence the magi say that the proper names of things are certain rays of things, always and everywhere present, preserving the force of things — insofar as the essence of the named thing dominates and is discerned in them; and things are recognized through them as by their proper and living images. For just as from the influxes of heaven and the elements with the virtues of the planets, the highest craftsman produces diverse species and individual things, so according to the properties of those same influxes and influences, proper names result for things and were imposed by the One who "counts the multitude of stars, calling all of them by name." Of these names Christ also says elsewhere: "Your names are written in the heavens." Therefore the protoplast, knowing these celestial influxes and the properties of individual things, imposed names upon things according to their natures — as it is written in Genesis: "God brought before Adam all that he had created, that he might name them; and as Adam called each living creature, that was its name." These names truly contain wondrous forces in the meanings of things.

Every significant voice therefore primarily signifies through the influx of celestial harmony; secondarily through human imposition — though more often one way in this name and another in that. When in some voice or name both significations concur — that from harmony and that imposed by men — then the name, in its doubled virtue (natural and voluntary), becomes most efficacious for acting, whenever it has been rightly uttered in fitting places and times and with proper solemnity with exact intention toward matter that is prepared and naturally susceptible to it. So we read in Philostratus that when a girl who had died on her wedding day was brought to Apollonius at Rome, he carefully inquired her proper name, and upon learning it uttered something obscure by which the girl revived. It was also an observance of the Romans in sacred rites, when they besieged some city, to diligently seek out its true name and the name of the deity under whose protection that city was — which known, they would with a certain carmen evoke the tutelary gods of that city and vow and devote the city and its inhabitants; and thus finally, with the divine guardians absent, they would conquer it, as Virgil sings: "They have all departed, leaving their shrines and altars, the gods on whom this empire stood." Whoever wishes to know the formula by which the divine powers were evoked and the enemies devoted while the city was being invested should inquire in Livy and Macrobius; but Serenus Sammonicus narrates many more of these things in his books of recondite matters.

Chapter LXXI — On Complex Speeches and Carmina, and the Virtues and Bindings of Incantations

Beyond the virtues of words and proper names, there is also found another and greater virtue in complex utterances — from the truth contained in them, which has the greatest power to imprint, change, bind, and consolidate; so that the more vigorously it is assailed the more it gleams, and the more it is attacked the more firmly it is consolidated. For the virtue of truth is not in simple words but in enunciations in which something is affirmed or denied — such as carmina, incantamenta, imprecationes, deprecationes, orationes, invocationes, obtestationes, adiurationes, exorcismata, and the like.

In composing carmina and orations to attract the virtue of some star or power, one must therefore diligently consider what virtues, effects, and operations each star contains within itself, and weave these into the poem — praising, extolling, magnifying, and ornamenting what that star is wont to produce and influence; depressing and disapproving what it is wont to destroy and impede; supplicating and beseeching for what we desire to obtain; accusing and detesting what we wish destroyed and impeded — and in this manner composing the carmen richly, elegantly, properly divided with certain fitting numbers and proportions by its articles. The magi moreover bid invocation and prayer through the names of that same star or power to which such a carmen pertains — through its marvels or miracles, through its courses and ways in its sphere, through its light, through the nobility of its realm, through the grace and clarity that is in it, through its powerful and wondrous virtues, and through similar things. As in Apuleius, Psyche prays to Ceres: "I beseech you by your fruit-bearing right hand, I constantly implore you by the ceremonies of joyful harvests, by the silent secrets of the baskets, by the winged courses of your dragon-servants, by the furrowings of the Sicilian clod, by the ravishing chariot, by the earth that holds fast, by the descent of Proserpina into illuminated nuptials, and by the returns of discovering her in light — and by all the other things that the Eleusinian sanctuary of Attica conceals in silence." In addition to the manifold names of the stars, the magi also bid us invoke through the names of the intelligences presiding over those same stars, of which we shall speak more in the proper place.

Whoever desires broader examples of these things should examine the Orphic Hymns — nothing in natural magic is more efficacious than these, if the appropriate harmony is employed with full attention and the other circumstances known to the wise are brought to bear. But let us return to our subject. Such carmina aptly and rightly composed according to the rule of the stars, full of intellect and sense, vehemently and opportunely pronounced according to the number and proportion of their articles, and through the unified form resulting from those articles, together with the impetus of imagination, conspire the greatest power in the enchanter, and thence transfer into the enchanted thing to bind or direct it according to the affects and words of the enchanter.

The instrument of such enchanters is itself a certain purest harmonious spirit — warm, breathing, living, carrying with it motion, affect, and meaning — composed with its articulations, endowed with sense, and at last conceived by reason. Through this spirit's quality and its celestial similitude, beyond all that has been said, carmina also receive from the heavens, through the opportunity of time, most excellent virtues — far more sublime and efficacious than the spirits and vapors exhaled from living vegetable things, herbs, roots, gums, aromatics, fumigations, and the like. Therefore the magi enchanting things are accustomed simultaneously to breathe upon them and to inhale the words of the carmen, or to inspire the virtue through the spirit itself — so that the whole virtue of the soul may be directed into the enchanted thing, disposed to receive that stated virtue.

And it must be noted that every oration, writing, and words, just as they induce their accustomed motions by their accustomed numbers, proportions, and form, so also when uttered or written contrary to the accustomed order and in retrograde, move to unaccustomed effects.

Chapter LXXII — On the Wondrous Power of Incantations

The power of incantations and carmina is said to be so great that they are believed capable of overturning almost all of nature — as Apuleius says: "With magical whisper, nimble rivers are turned back, the lazy sea is bound, the living winds breathe out, the sun is stopped, the moon is forced to drip down her foam, the stars are torn out, the day is taken away, the night is held back." And Lucan sings of the same:

The vicissitudes of things ceased, and the long-delayed day
Stuck in the night; the ether obeyed no law;
The world grew numb and fell headlong at the song heard.

And a little before:

The song of the Thessalian woman flowed into hard hearts,
Love not drawn close enough.

And elsewhere:

A mind polluted by no poison drunk, undone by the incantation, perishes.

Virgil likewise in Damon:

Carmina can even draw the moon down from heaven;
Circe transformed the companions of Ulysses with carmina;
The cold snake dies in the meadow by singing;
And I have seen harvests translated elsewhere.

Ovid in the Sine titulo:

Grain struck by carmen fades into barren grass;
The waters of a struck spring fail;
Acorns fall from oaks, and the grape from the enchanted vine,
And fruit falls with nothing shaking it.

If these were not true, so severe a legal penalty would not have been enacted against those who enchanted another's crops. And Tibullus on a certain enchantress:

This woman I saw drawing stars down from heaven;
Here she turned the course of a rushing river with carmen;
She rends the solid ground with singing, and calls shades from their tombs,
And draws bones from the warm pyre.
When she wishes she drives storm-clouds from the gloomy sky,
When she wishes she summons snow from the summer air.

About all these things the enchantress seems greatly to boast in Ovid when she says:

When I wished, with the very river-banks marveling,
I turned the rivers to go back to their sources; I still the troubled seas;
I agitate the calm ones with song; I scatter and summon clouds;
I drive away and call the winds;
I break the throats of vipers with words and carmen;
I move the living rocks and the torn-up trees from the earth,
And the forests; I command the mountains to tremble,
And the earth to moan, and the shades to come out of their tombs;
Even you, moon, I draw down.

All poets further sing, and the philosophers do not deny, that wonders can be effected by carmina — that crops can be driven off, lightning compelled or obtained, sicknesses cured, and the like. For Cato in his farming treatise used certain remedies against the sicknesses of animals, which still survive in his writings. Josephus also testifies that Solomon understood incantations of this kind. Celsus Africanus likewise records, following Egyptian teaching, that the human body is healed according to the zodiac signs and the number of their faces — by thirty-six daemons, each receiving and protecting his own part of the body; whose names they call in the native tongue, through whose invocation and incantations the diseased parts of the body are restored to health.

Chapter LXXIII — On the Virtue of Writing, and on Making Imprecations and Inscriptions

The office of words and speech is to enunciate the interior of the mind and bring forth from the penetralia of thought what is hidden, and to manifest the will of the speaker. Writing itself is the ultimate expression of mind: the number, collection, state, end, continuity, and repetition of speech and voice — making a habit that is not accomplished by the single act of one voice. And whatever is in mind, in voice, in word, in oration, in speech — all of it and everything is also in writing. And just as nothing conceived in the mind is not expressed in voice, so nothing expressed is not also written.

Hence the magi require imprecations and inscriptions to be made in every work — by which the operator expresses their affect: if they gather an herb or a stone, they should speak and inscribe for what use they do it; if they fabricate an image, they should say and inscribe to what effect it is made. Such imprecations and inscriptions Albertus himself in his Speculum does not disapprove; without them our works would not be brought to effect, since it is not the disposition that causes the effect but the act of the disposition.

We find also the same teaching in use among the ancients — as Virgil himself testifies where he sings:

These three things first, diverse in triple color,
I wind around you, and three times around these altars
I lead the image.

And a little after:

Tie in three knots, Amaryllis, three colors;
Tie them, Amaryllis, and say: I tie the bonds of Venus.

And elsewhere:

Go, as this wax hardens and as this wax melts
By one and the same fire — so let Daphnis melt in our love.

Chapter LXXIV — On the Proportion, Correspondence, and Reduction of Letters to Celestial Signs and Planets in Various Languages, With a Table Indicating This

God gave to man mind and speech, which (as Hermes Trismegistus says) are held to be of the same virtue, power, and dignity as immortality itself. Speech itself the almighty God in his providence divided into diverse languages — which languages, according to their diversity, also received diverse and proper characters of writing, each established in a certain definite order, number, and figure: not fortuitously, nor by chance, nor by the frail will of men, but divinely so ordered and formed that they agree with the celestial bodies and the divine powers and virtues themselves.

Above all other language characters, the writing of the Hebrews is the most sacred of all — in the figures of the characters, the vowel-points, and the apex-accents: as if consisting of material, form, and spirit. First inscribed in the throne of God, which is heaven, in the position of the stars, to whose figures (as the masters of the Hebrews testify) the very letters were formed — fullest of celestial mysteries: both through what is signified by their figure and form, and through the numbers signified in them, and through their varied consonant harmony.

The more secret Kabbalists of the Hebrews from the figure and form of those letters — their simplicity, composition, separation, tortuosity, directness, defect, abundance, magnitude, smallness, coronation, opening, closure, order, transmutation, colligation, and revolution of letters and points and apices — and by computing the numbers signified by the letters, promise to explain all things: how they proceeded from the first cause and how they are reducible back to the same.

The Hebrews further partition the letters of their alphabet: twelve simple (corresponding to the twelve signs of the zodiac), seven doubles (corresponding to the seven planets), and three mothers (corresponding to three elements — fire, water, and earth; air they hold not as an element but as the binding spirit of the elements). These they also coordinate with points and apices. Thus just as from the aspects of the planets and signs together with elements, the creative spirit, and truth, all things were and are produced — so from these letter-characters and points signifying those productions, the names of all things are constituted, as certain sacraments and vehicles of the explained things, carrying their essence and virtues everywhere with themselves. In these, Origen therefore holds that names translated into another language do not retain their proper power — because they do not retain their natural meaning: only the primary names that are rightly imposed, because they signify naturally, have natural activity; not so those that signify by convention, which have activity not as significative but as certain natural things in themselves.

If there is any first and causal language whose words have natural meaning, this is manifestly Hebrew — whose order whoever deeply and radically grasps, and knows how to proportionally revolve its letters, will have the rule and norm for perfectly discovering any tongue. The twenty-two letters are the foundation of the world and of all creatures that are and are named in it; and all that is said and all that is created comes from them, and through their revolution receives name, being, and virtue. The one who investigates them must run through the individual combinations of letters until the voice of God is opened and the text of the most sacred letters presents itself openly — for hence voices and words have efficacy in magical works: for what nature first exercised magic in was the voice of God. But these are matters of higher speculation than are to be treated in this book.

Among the Greeks, the seven vowels correspond to the seven planets; the consonants Β Γ Ζ Κ Μ Π Ρ Σ Τ to the twelve zodiac signs; the remaining Θ Φ Χ Ξ represent the four elements and the spirit of the world. Among the Latins, these same assignments are made but in another order: the five vowels A E I O V, and I and V as consonants, are ascribed to the seven planets; the consonants B C D F G L M N P R S T govern the twelve signs; the others — Q X Z — make the four elements; H the aspiration represents the spirit of the world; Y, because it is a Greek and not Latin character and serves Greek words only, follows the nature of its own idiom. But one must not be ignorant of this: that the Hebrew letters are by common consent of all the wise most efficacious, because they have the greatest similitude with the celestial and with the world; the letters of other languages do not have such efficacy, because they stand at greater distance from them.

Each letter also has its proper numbers twofold: extended (expressing how many each letter is according to its simple order) and collected (gathering together all preceding letters' numbers); and also integral numbers arising from the letter-names according to various modes of reckoning. Whoever knows these can draw wondrous mysteries from any language through its letters, and likewise gather vaticinations of past and future times. There are moreover other mysterious marriages of letters with numbers — but on all of these, speaking abundantly in the books that follow, we here put an end to this prior book.

— End of the First Book of De Occulta Philosophia —

Colophon

Translated from the first complete published edition of De Occulta Philosophia: Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, De Occulta Philosophia Libri Tres (Cologne: Sodalitas Augustiniana, 1533). Digital text from the Internet Archive, Library of Congress copy, identifier DeOccultaPhilosophiaLoc1533. Public Domain Mark 1.0.

Book I treats Natural Magic — the virtues resident in the elemental world, gathered through medicine and natural philosophy — as the first of three levels in Agrippa's systematic architecture of occult philosophy. It is followed by Book II (Celestial Magic) and Book III (Ceremonial Magic). All three books were composed in Agrippa's youth, shown to the Abbot Johannes Trithemius around 1510, and withheld from publication for more than two decades before appearing in their complete form in 1533. Agrippa died the same year.

The Freake 1651 English translation (Three Books of Occult Philosophy, archive.org identifier ThreeBooksOfOccultPhilosophydeOccultaPhilosophia1651, CC0 public domain) was not consulted; this translation is derived independently from the 1533 Latin.

Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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Source Text: De Occulta Philosophia Libri Tres — Liber I

Caput I — Quomodo a triplici mundo Magi virtutes colligant

Cum triplex sit mundus, elementalis, caelestis & intellectualis, & quisque inferior a superiori regatur, ac suarum virium suscipiat influxum, ita ut ipse archetypus & summus opifex, per angelos, caelos, stellas, elementa, animalia, plantas, metalla, lapides suae omnipotentiae virtutes exinde in nos transfundat, in quorum ministerium haec omnia condidit atque creavit: non irrationabile putant Magi, nos per eosdem gradus, per singulos mundos, ad eundem ipsum archetypum mundum, omnium opificem, & primam causam, a qua sunt omnia, & procedunt omnia, posse conscendere: & non solum his viribus, quae in rebus nobilioribus praexistunt, frui posse; sed alias praeterea novas desuper posse attrahere. Hinc elementalis mundi vires, variis rerum naturalium mixtionibus a medicina & naturali philosophia vertuntur: deinde caelestis mundi radiis & influxibus, iuxta astrologorum regulas & mathematicorum disciplinas, caelestes virtutes illis connectunt: porro haec omnia intelligentiarum diversarum potestatibus per religionum sacras ceremonias corroborant atque confirmant. Horum omnium ordinem & processum, tribus his libris nunc tradere conabor: quorum primus contineat Magiam naturalem, alter caelestem, tertius ceremonialem. Sed nescio an plane venia dignum sit, hominem ingenii ac literaturae minoris, tam difficile, tam arduum, tam intricatum negotium, in ipsa mea adolescentia tam libere aggressum esse: quam ob rem quaecumque hic a me dicta sunt, & inferius dicentur, ius nolo quenquam plus assentiri, neque ipse ego plus assentior, nisi quatenus ab ecclesia catholica, fideliumque coetu non fuerint reprobata.

Caput II — Quid sit Magia, quae eius partes, & qualem oporteat esse Magiae professorem

Magica facultas potestatis plurimae compos, altissimis plena mysteriis, profundissimam rerum secretissimarum contemplationem, naturae potentiam, qualitatem, substantiam, & virtutem totius naturae cognitionem complectitur: & quomodo res inter se differunt, & quomodo conveniunt nos instruit: hinc mirabiles effectus suos producens, uniendo virtutes rerum per applicationem earum ad invicem, & ad sua passa congruentia inferiora, superiorum dotibus ac virtutibus passim copulans atque maritans. Haec perfectissima summaque scientia, haec altior sanctiorque philosophia, haec denique totius nobilissimae philosophiae absoluta consummatio. Nam cum omnis philosophia regulativa divisa sit in physicam, mathematica & theologiam: physica docet naturam eorum, quae sunt in mundo [...] Mathematica vero docet nos planam, & in tres porrectam dimensiones naturam cognoscere, motumque ac caelestium progressus suspicere [...] Theologia autem quid deus, ipsa docet, quid mens, quid intelligentia, quid angelus, quid denique daemon, quid anima, quid religio, quae sacra instituta ritus, phana, observationes sacraqueque mysteria [...] Sed iam me recolligo. Has tres imperiosissimas facultates Magia ipsa complectitur, unit atque aestuat: merito ergo ab antiquis summa sanctissimaque scientia habita est.

Caput III — De quatuor elementis, & eorundem qualitatibus, & in se invicem permixitionibus

Quatuor sunt elementa, & primaria fundamenta rerum omnium corporalium, ignis, terra, aqua, aer: ex quibus omnia elementata in istis inferioribus componuntur, non per modum coacervationis, sed secundum transmutationem & unionem: rursusque cum corrumpuntur in elementa resolvuntur. Nullum autem sensibilium elementorum purum est, sed secundum magis & minus permixta sunt, & in se invicem transmutabilia [...] Unumquodque autem elementorum duas specificas qualitates habet, quarum priorem sibi propriam retinet, in altera tanquam media convenit cum sequente. Est enim ignis calidus & siccus, terra sicca & frigida, aqua frigida & humida, aer humidus & calidus. Atque hoc modo secundum duas qualitates contrarias elementa sibi contraria sunt, ut ignis aquae, & terra aeri [...] Atque haec est radix & fundamentum omnium corporum, naturarum, virtutum & operum mirabilium: & qui has elementorum qualitates, & eorundem mixtiones cognoverit, facile perficiet opera miranda atque stupenda, eritque consummatus in Magia naturali.

Caput IV — De triplici elementorum ratione consideranda

Quatuor itaque quae diximus sunt elementa, sine quorum notitia perfectam nullam in Magia producere possimus effectum. Sunt autem singula triplicia, ut sic quaternarius compleat duodenarium: & per septenarium in denarium progrediens, ad supremam unitatem, unde omnis virtus & mirabilis operatio dependet, fiat progressus. Primo igitur ordine elementa pura sunt, quae nec componuntur, nec mutuantur, nec patiuntur commixtionem, sed incorruptibilia sunt, & non a quibus, sed per quae omnium naturalium rerum virtutes producuntur in effectum. Virtutes illorum a nullo explicari possunt: quia in omnia possunt omnia [...] Secundi ordinis elementa composita sunt multiplicia, & varia, & impura, educibilia tamen per artem ad puram simplicitatem; quibus tunc ad suam simplicitatem reversis, virtus est super omnia complementum dans omnium operationum occultarum & operationum naturae [...] Tertii ordinis elementa haec primo & per se non sunt elementa, sed decomposta, varia, multiplicia & inter se invicem permutabilia: ipsa sunt infallibile medium, ideoque vocantur media natura, sive anima mediae naturae [...] Sine his igitur triplicibus elementis eorundemque cognitione, nemo confidat se in occultis Magiae & naturae scientiis quicquam posse operari.

Caput V — De mirabilibus ignis, ac terrae naturis

Ad omnium mirabilium operationem, ait Hermes, duo sufficiunt, ignis & terra: haec est patiens, ille agens. Ignis, ut ait Dionysius, in omnibus & per omnia clare venit, & removetur, omnibus lucidus est, simul & occultus incognitusque: ipse quando per seipsum est, non accedente materia in qua propriam manifestet actionem, immensus est & invisibilis, per seipsum potens ad actionem propriam, mobilis, tradens seipsum omnibus quodam modo proximantibus, renovativus, naturae custodia, illuminativus, circumvelatis splendoribus incomprehensus, clarus, discretus, resiliens, sursum ferens, acute micans, excelsus, non receptus contumelia minorationis, semper motus movens, alterum comprehendens, incomprehensus, non indigens alterius, latenter crescens a seipso, & ad susceptas materias manifestans suimet magnitudinem, activus, potens, simul omnibus praesens invisibiliter, neglectus esse non patitur, ad certam autem sicut quaedam vindicta generaliter & proprie subito reducens in rationem, incomprehensibilis, impalpabilis, non minutus, in omnibus ditissimus suimet traditionibus. Immenfa & improba rerum naturae portio ignis est, ut ait Plinius [...] Ignis ipfe unus eft & per omnia penetrans, ut aiunt Pythagorici, fed in caelo dilatatus, colluftrans, in inferno vero coarctatus, tenebroftus & crucians: in medio de utroquo participans [...] Terra omnium elementorum basis & fundamentum. Ipfa enim eft obiectum, fubiectum, & receptaculum omnium radiorum influxuumque caeleftium: ipfa in fe continet omnium rerum femina feminalesquue virtutes: ideo ipfa dicitur animalis, vegetalis & mineralis.

Caput VI — De admirandis aquae, & aeris atque ventorum naturis

Non minoris potestatis erunt reliqua duo elementa, aqua videlicet & aer: nec in illis natura cesat mirabilia operari. Aquae enim tanta necessitas est, ut absque illa nullum animal degere possit: nulla herba, nec planta quaevis, citra aquae humectationem possit progerminareri. Ipsa est seminaria omnium rerum virtus: animalium primo, quorum semen aquae esse manifestum est: sed & frugum & herbarum semina, licet tenuia sint, tamen fieri aqua necesse est, si foecunda esse debeant: sive id fiat humore terrae imbibito, aut rore, vel pluvia, vel de industria adiecta aqua. Sola siquidem terra & aqua, a Mose describuntur producere animam viventem. Sed aquae duplicem productionem tribuit, natantium videlicet in aquis, & volatilium in aere supra terram. Terrestrium etiam productioni ipsam aquam partim deberi, eadem scriptura testatur, inquiens, quod post creationem virgulta & plantae non germinaverant, quia deus non pluerat super terram. Tanta eius elementi potestas est, ut nec ipsa spiritualis regeneratio fiat sine aqua, sicut ipse Christus ad Nicodemum testatus est [...] Superest de aere dicere. Hic spiritus est vitalis, cuncta permeans entia, omnibus vitam & consistentiam praebens, ligans, movens, & implens omnia. Hinc Hebraeorum doctores illum non inter elementa numerant, sed velut medium & glutinum, diversa insimul coniungens, & tanquam spiritum mundani instrumenti rebonantem habent. Ipse enim proxime caelestium omnium influxus in se concipit, aliisque cum elementis tum mixtis singulis communicat: non minus etiam rerum omnium cum naturalium tum artificialium, & sermonum quorumcunque species, velut deificum quoddam speculum in se suscipit & retinet [...] Venti enim nihil aliud sunt, quam motus aer & concitatus. Horum quatuor sunt principales, a quatuor coeli cardinibus flantes, videlicet Notus ab austro, Boreas ab aquilone, Zephyrus ab occidente, & ab oriente Apeliotes sive Eurus.

Caput VII — De generibus compositorum, quomodo se habeant ad elementa atque quid elementis ipsis conveniat cum anima, sensibus & moribus

Post quatuor simplicia elementa, proxime sequuntur ex illis compositorum perfectorum quatuor genera, quae sunt lapides, metalla, plantae, & animalia: & licet ad singulorum generationem omnia elementa in compositionem conveniant, singula tamen unum praecipuum elementum sequuntur imitanturque: Nam lapides omnes terrei sunt, natura siquidem graves sunt & descendunt, & ita concreti siccitate, ut liquefieri nequeant. Metalla autem aquea sunt & liquabilia, & quod confitentur physici, experiuntur alchimici, ex aqua viscosa, sive ex aqueo argento vivo generata sunt. Plantae sic cum aere conveniunt, ut nisi sub divo non pullulent, neque coalescant. Sic animalibus omnibus: Igneus est ollis vigor & caelestis origo. Adeoqu cognatus illis ignis est, ut eo extincto mox tota vita deficiat [...] In ipsa denique anima, teste Augustino, refert ignem intellectus, aerem ratio, aqua imaginatio, terram vero sensus.

Caput VIII — Quomodo elementa sunt in coelis, in stellis, in daemonibus, in angelis, in ipso denique deo

Est Platonicorum omnium unanimis sententia, quemadmodum in archetypo mundo omnia sunt in omnibus, ita etiam in hoc corporeo mundo, omnia in omnibus esse, modis tamen diversis, pro natura videlicet suscipientium: sic & elementa non solum sunt in istis inferioribus, sed & in coelis, in stellis, in daemonibus, in angelis, in ipso denique omnium opifice & archetypo. Sed in istis inferioribus elementa sunt crassae quaedam formae, immersae materiae, & materialia elementa: in coelis autem sunt elementa per totum naturas & vires: modo videlicet coelesti & multo excellentiori, quam infra lunam. Nam coelestis terrae soliditas illic est absque crassitudine aquae: & aeris agilitas procul ab effluxu: ignis calor ibi non urens, sed lucens, omniaque suo calore vivificans. Ex stellis praeterea ignei sunt Mars, atque Sol: aerei, Iupiter & Venus: aquei, Saturnus & Mercurius: terrei, qui incolant orbem octavum, atque Luna [...] Elementa igitur ubique, & in omnibus reperiri suo modo, nemo negare potest: primo in istis inferioribus, sed seculata & crassa, in coelestibus autem puriora & nitida: in supracoelestibus vero viventia, & ex omni parte beata. Sunt igitur elementa, in archetypo ideae producendorum, in intelligentiis distributae potestates, in coelis virtutes, in inferioribus crassiores formae.

Caput IX — De virtutibus rerum naturalium ab elementis proxime dependentibus

Virtutes rerum naturales, quaedam sunt elementales, ut calefacere, frigefacere, humefacere, exsiccare: & vocantur operationes seu qualitates primae, & secundum actum: hae enim qualitates solae tota omnino transmutant substantiam, quod aliarum qualitatum nulla facit: quaedam vero insunt rebus ab elementis componentibus tales, etiam ultra qualitates primas, ut sunt maturativae, digestivae, resolutivae, mollificativae, induratuvae, stypticae, abstersivae, corrosivae, causticae, apertivae, evaporativae, confortativae, mitigativae, conglutinativae, opilativae, expulsivae, retentivae, attractivae, repercussivae, stupefactivae, elargitivae, lubrificativae, & aliae plures [...] Et est genus huius, quod Plinius asbeston vocat, Graeci amianton dicunt, quod ignibus non absuminur.

Caput X — De virtutibus rerum occultis

Insunt praeterea rebus virtutes aliae, quae non sunt alicuius elementi, sicut fugare venenum, pellere anthraces, attrahere ferrum, vel quid aliud: & haec virtus est sequela speciei, & formae rei huius, vel istius. Unde etiam exigua quantitate non exiguum habet in agendo effectum: quod non est elementali qualitati concessum. Hae virtutes, quia multum formales sunt, ideo cum minima materia plurimum possunt: elementalis autem virtus, quia materialis est, ut multum agat, multam requirit materiam. Vocantur autem proprietates occultae: quia causae earum latentes sunt, ita quod humanus intellectus non potest eas usquequaque investigare: quare philosophi maximam earum partem longa experientia, plus quam rationis indagine adepti sunt [...] Sic pisciculus ille echines, ita frenat ventorum impetum & domat aequoris rabiem, ut quantumcunque etiam imperet & saeviat procella, infinitis etiam velis per ventum tentis, tamen usque adeo solo tactu compescit & cogit stare navigia, ut moveri nullo modo possint.

Caput XI — Quomodo virtutes occultae infunduntur rerum speciebus ab ideis, per rationes animae mundi, stellarumque radios: & quae res hac virtute magis abundant

Platonici omnia inferiora ferunt esse ideata a superioribus ideis: ideam autem definiunt esse formam supra corpora, animas, mentes, unam, simplicem, puram, immutabilem, indivisibilem, incorpoream & aeternam: atque eandem idearum omnium esse naturam. Ponunt autem ideas primo in ipso quidem bono, hoc est deo, per causae modum, solo esse relativis quibusdam rationibus inter se distinctas, neque quicquid est in mundo, sine ulla varietate subsistunt: convenirent tamen inter se essentia, ne deus sit substantia multiplex. Ponuntur secundo in ipso intelligibili, hoc est in anima mundi, per formas proprie, atque insuper absolutis formis invicem differentes, ita ut ideae in deo quidem omnes una forma sint, in anima mundi vero multae: ponuntur in sequentibus mentibus sive corpori coniunctis, sive a corpore separatis, participatione iam quadam, & gradatim iam magis magisque distinctae. Ponunt in natura tanquam semina quaedam infima formarum ab ideis infusa. ponunt in materia denique, ut umbras [...] Virtus igitur & mirabilis operatio est in unaquaque herba & lapide, sed maior in stella, ultra quam etiam ab intelligentiis praesidentibus unaquaeque res multa sibi comparat: potissime autem a suprema causa, cui omnia mutua & consummata correspondent, consonantia suo harmonico concentu.

Caput XII — Quomodo diversis individuis, etiam eiusdem speciei, diversae virtutes influuntur

Individuorum singulares etiam dotes plurimis insunt, tam mirabiles, quam in speciebus, etiam a figura caelestium situque stellarum. Omne enim individuum quando incipit esse sub determinato horoscopo & constellatione caelesti, contrahit cum esse, mirabilem quandam virtutem operandi & patiendi, rem mirabilem, etiam praeter eam quam habet a sua specie. cum per influxum caelestium, tum per obedientiam materiae generabilium ad animam mundi, quae quidem talis est, qualis est obedientia nostri corporis ad nostras animas. Nos enim sentimus in nobis id quod ad quamcunque formam concipimus, movetur corpus nostrum delectabiliter, vel horrende, vel fugiendo: sic frequenter animae caelestes, quando diversa concipiunt, tunc materia movetur per obedientiam ad illud [...] Infunduntur itaque virtutes omnes ad operandum per animam mundi, particulariter tamen virtute imaginum & intelligentiarum praesidentium, & concursu radiorum & aspectuum stellarum peculiari quodam & harmonico concentu.

Caput XIII — Unde proveniant virtutes rerum occultae

Mnibus notum est, virtutem quandam magneti inesse, qua ferrum attrahit: & quod adamas sua praesentia virtutem magnetis tollit: sic electrum & balagius confricati & calefacti paleam deducunt: lapis asbestos accensus, nunquam aut vix extinguitur: carbunculus in tenebris lucet: iactites foetum mulierum & plantarum, superpositus corroborat, suppositus trahit: iaspis sanguinem comprimit: echineis navem sistit: rabarbarum, cholera depellit. Chamaeleontis iecur summis tegulis exustum, imbres & tonitrua excitat [...] Opinatur Alexander Peripateticus [...] haec ab elementis earumque qualitatibus provenire [...] Academici cum suo Platone ideis rerum formatricibus has virtutes attribuunt: Avicenna autem ad intelligentias & Hermes ad stellas, Albertus ad formas rerum specificas, huiusmodi operationes reducunt [...] Deus enim in primis omnium virtutum finis & origo, sigillum idearum ministris suis praestat intelligentiis: qui tanquam fideles executores, res quasque sibi creditas ideali virtute consignant caelis atque stellis, tanquam instrumentis, materiam interim disponentibus ad suscipiendum formas illas [...] Proveniteque forma & virtus primo ab ideis, deinde ab intelligentiis praesidentibus & regentibus, postea a caelorum aspectibus disponentibus, porro ab elementorum dispositis complexionibus correspondentibus caelorum influxibus.

Caput XIIII — De spiritu mundi quis sit, & quod sit vinculum occultarum virtutum

Democritus autem, Orpheus, & multi Pythagoricarum, caelestium vires inferorumque naturas diligentissime perscrutati, omnia plena diis esse dixerunt [...] Medium autem tale fingunt esse spiritum mundi, scilicet, quem dicimus esse quintam essentiam: quia non ex quatuor elementis, sed quoddam quintum super illa aut praeter illa subsistens. Talis igitur spiritus necessario requiritur tanquam medium, quo animae caelestes insint corpori crassiori, & mirificas dotes largiantur. Hic quidem spiritus talis ferme est in corpore mundi, qualis in humano corpore nostro: sicut enim animae nostrae vires per spiritum adhibentur membris, sic virtus animae mundi per quintam essentiam dilatatur per omnia.

Caput XV — Quomodo debemus investigare, & experiri virtutes rerum, per viam sumptam a similitudine

Latet ergo in rebus proprietates occultae non ab elementali natura, sed caelitus infusae, sensibus nostris occultae, rationi vix detique notae [...] Nam quicquid diu steterit cum sale, fit sal [...] Si igitur volumus operari ad aliquam proprietatem vel virtutem, quaeramus animantia, vel alias res, quibus talis proprietas excellentius inest, & ex his assumamus nobis partem, in qua talis proprietas vel virtus maxime viget.

Caput XVI — Qualiter diversarum virtutum operationes transfundantur ab una re in aliam, & sibi mutuo communicantur

Scire debes, tantam esse rerum naturalium potentiam, quod non modo cunctas res sibi propinquantes sua virtute afficiant, verumetiam praeter hoc, infundunt ipsis consimilem potentiam, per quam hac eadem virtute ipsae etiam cetera afficiant, quemadmodum in magnete videmus: qui quidem lapis non solum annulos ferreos trahit, sed vim etiam annulis ipsis infundit.

Caput XVII — Qualiter per litem & amicitiam, virtutes rerum investigandae & experiundae sunt

Restat nunc videre, quod omnes res habent inter se amicitiam & inimicitiam: & omnis res habet aliquod timendum & horribile, inimicum & destructivum contra, aliquod exultans, beatificans & confortans: sic in elementis, ignis adversatur aquae: & aer terrae: & aer terrae invicem inter se conveniunt [...] Saturno amici sunt, Mercurius, Iupiter, Sol & Luna: inimici eius Mars & Venus [...] Fortissima autem est amicitia eorum qui concordant in natura, qualitate, substantia, potestae [...] Inclinationies vero amicitiae in vegetabilibus & mineralibus sunt, quale habet magnes attractivam in ferrum.

Caput XVIII — De inimicitiarum inclinationibus

E converso se habent inimicitiarum inclinationes: sunt autem sicut odium naturae inclinationes eiusmodi, & tanquam ira, indignatio & contrarietas quaedam imperiosa, ut res fugiat suum contrarium, aut propellat tanquam fugientiam a facie eius. Eiusmodi inclinationes habet rabarbarum in choleram, theriacam in venenum, sapphirus in anthracem, & ardores febrileos, & aegritudines oculorum, amethystus in ebrietatem: iaspis in fluxum sanguinis.

Caput XIX — Quomodo investigandae & experiundae sunt rerum virtutes, quae illis a tota specie insunt, aut particulari ipsius individui dono alicui rei subnatagoe

Insuper considerare debes virtutes rerum inesse quibusdam secundum speciem: ut audacia & animositas in leone & gallo, timiditas in lepore & agno, rapacitas sev voracitas in lupo, insidiositas & fraudulentia in vulpe, adulatio in cane, avaritia in corvo & comice, superbia in equo, ira in tygride & apro, tristitia & melancholia in cato, libido in passere [...] Quaedam vero insunt rebus secundum individuum.

Caput XX — Quod virtutes naturales quibusdam insunt per totam suam substantiam, quibusdam vero in certis suis particulis aut membris

Rursus considerare debes, virtutes rerum quibusdam inesse secundum totum, hoc est, secundum totam suam substantiam [...] sicut pisciculus ille echeneis, qui solo tactu fertur navem sistere, hoc non agit secundum aliquam praecipuam suam partem, sed secundum suam totam substantiam [...] Et est in humano corpore os quoddam minimum, quod Hebraei Luz appellant, magnitudine ciceris mundati, quod nulli corruptioni obnoxium, nec igne quidem vincitur, sed semper conservatur illaesum: ex quo (ut dicunt) velut planta ex semine, in resurrectione mortuorum corpus nostrum animale repullulascet.

Caput XXI — De virtutibus rerum quae insunt ipsis in vita tantum, & quae remanent in illis etiam post interitum

Scire praeterea oportebit quasdam proprietates inesse rebus tantummodo in vita, quasdam etiam permanere post mortem [...] Inde est, quod sicut aquila in vita sua omnes aues superat & vincit: sic etiam ea defuncta, pennae eius omnes aliarum avium pennas & plumas destruunt & corrodunt: eadem ratione pellis leonis omnes alias pelles consumit: & pellis hyaenae destruit pelles pantherae. & pellis lupi corrodit pellem agni. Et quaedam haec non agunt solum in contactu corporeo, sed etiam quandoque in harmonia vocali: sic tympanum factum de pelle adib, hoc est lupi, obmutescere facit tympanum de pelle agni.

Caput XXII — Quomodo omnia inferiora subsunt corporibus caelestibus, & quomodo humanum corpus, ipsaque hominum exercitia & mores, stellis atque signis distribuuntur

Manifestum est, quod omnia inferiora subsunt superioribus, & quodam modo (ut inquit Proclus) sibi invicem insunt [...] Sol praeesse cerebro, & cordi, femori, medullis, oculo dextro & spiritui vitae: linguae vero & ori, & caeteris instrumentis sive organis sensuum, tam interior quam exterior: insuper manibus, pedibus, cruribus, nervis, & virtuti phantasticae praeesse Mercurium [...] Singula porro signa zodiaci sua membra curant: sic Aries caput atque faciem regit: Taurus, collum: Gemini, brachia atque humeros: Cancer praeest pectori, pulmoni, stomacho & lacertis: Leo praeest corde, & stomacho, & iecori, atque dorso: Virgo respicit intestina, & fundum stomachi. Libra gubernat renes, & femur, atque nates: Scorpius genitalia, & vulvam, & matricem: Sagittarius dominatur femori atque subinguinibus: Capricornus regit genua: aquarius crura & tibias: Pisces regunt pedes.

Caput XXIII — Quomodo cognoscendum, quibus stellis res naturales subsint, atque quae res sunt solares

Quae vero res cui stellae vel signo subsint, cognoscere difficile est valde: cognoscuntur tamen per imitationem radiorum, vel motus, vel figurae superiorum: quaedam etiam per colores & odores, quaedam etiam per suarum operationum effectus quibusdam stellis consonantes. Sic solaria tunc inter elementa ignis, et lucida flamma: in humoribus sanguis purior, et spiritus vitae: inter sapores, qui est acutus, dulcedini mixtus. Inter metalla aurum propter splendorem: habetque a Sole, quod sit cordis confortativum.

Source Colophon

The Latin source text of De Occulta Philosophia Libri Tres is contained in the first complete edition: Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, De Occulta Philosophia Libri Tres (Cologne: Sodalitas Augustiniana, 1533). The Library of Congress holds a copy digitized and made freely available on the Internet Archive under Public Domain Mark 1.0 (identifier: DeOccultaPhilosophiaLoc1533). No login required.

A circulated manuscript version (1531) predates the printed edition; the 1533 text represents Agrippa's final revision. The standard modern critical edition is Vittoria Perrone Compagni, ed., De Occulta Philosophia Libri Tres (Leiden: Brill, 1992). The Perrone Compagni edition was not consulted; translation is from the 1533 Cologne text.

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