for use. I confess this discussion is somewhat removed from my original purpose: that philosophy, as well as divinity, was revealed to Adam. But some heads are blocks in their own path and, as I told you, refuse to believe that God imparts any natural secrets. That made me produce these few scriptural examples as preparations for the proposition itself and, if he has any understanding, for the reader. I do not expect him to comply with my principles. Indeed, far from it: he may withhold his charity. Let him be as strict as justice can make him. I wish to prevail in nothing except Truth; and in Truth’s name I begin.

You were told earlier that Cain and Abel were instructed in sacrifice by their father Adam. But when Cain murdered his brother Abel, Abel’s priesthood descended to Seth. The faculties accompanying Seth’s descendants confirm this, since Enoch, Lamech and Noah were all prophets. Perhaps it troubles you that I attribute a priesthood to Abel. Besides his own practice, however, I have Christ’s testimony: he numbers Abel’s blood among that of persecuted prophets and wise men. Now, concluding that these people possessed no knowledge

of philosophy because Scripture mentions no use they made of it is an argument that denies something but proves nothing. To show how empty this inference is, I shall give an example from Moses himself. We know very well that no prophecies of Abraham survive, nor do we read anywhere that he ever prophesied; nevertheless, he was a prophet. For God rebuked Abimelech king of Gerar, who had taken Sarah from Abraham under the impression that she was his sister, in these words: “Now therefore restore the man’s wife, for he is a prophet; he shall pray for you, and you shall live.” We may learn from this that the Holy Ghost does not always mention a soul’s secret perfections in the public account of a person. I would not be so impudent as to expect your assent to this doctrine if Scripture were silent in every text, if I did not find infallible traces of magic there, leading me without a lantern to the art’s own archives. I know that the crowd and tumult of other affairs form both the greater number and the main substance of Moses’s history. Yet throughout its course I meet acts that cannot be numbered among the patriarchs’ ordinary fortunes: they are extraordinary performances, pointing to uncommon causes.

I have always admired the discipline of Eliezer, Abraham’s steward, who, when he prayed at the well in Mesopotamia, could make his camels kneel too. I must not believe that this was juggling, or that Banks’s spirit could be the spirit of prayer. Jacob covenants with Laban that all the spotted and brown cattle in his flocks shall be assigned to Jacob as wages. No sooner is the bargain made than Jacob discovers an art for multiplying his own colours and almost sends his father-in-law woolgathering. “Jacob took rods of green poplar, hazel and chestnut, peeled white strips in them and exposed the white within the rods. He set the peeled rods before the flocks in the gutters and watering troughs when they came to drink, so that they would conceive when drinking. The flocks conceived before the rods and brought forth ring-streaked, speckled and spotted cattle.” Scripture says elsewhere that “Jacob saw in a dream, and behold, the rams leaping upon the cattle were ring-streaked, speckled and mottled.” This in no way weakens our assertion or proves that generation miraculous and supernatural. No one, I believe, is so mad as to think the appearances, or rams of the dream, actually leapt upon the flock and

supplied the place of its natural males. God used this apparition only to signify the truth of the art by which Jacob acted and tell him his hopes were fulfilled. But I shall not dwell on any particular, and so pass from this dream to another. Joseph, seventeen years old and at an age of some discretion, presents a vision to his father. He does not do so casually and without purpose, as we tell one another our dreams; I believe he expects an interpretation, knowing his father has the skill to explain it. The wise patriarch, understanding the secrets of the two luminaries, assigns males to the sun and females to the moon; then he gives a third significance to the lesser stars. Finally, he answers his son with a question: “What is this dream you have dreamed? Shall I, your mother and your brothers truly come and bow down to you upon the earth?”

I think no one will deny that interpreting dreams belongs to magic and has always been sought as a kind of secret learning. It is true that when the interpreter receives knowledge directly from God, as Daniel did, it falls outside natural science’s limits. But I mean a natural interpretation such as this, depending upon certain obscure likenesses. For anyone

who knows the analogy of parts to parts in the great body we call the world can know what each sign signifies, and consequently may become a good interpreter of dreams. Jacob’s first practice, mentioned earlier—the increase of his speckled flocks—is an effect so purely magical that our most obstinate opponents dare not question it. I could cite another passage concerning this patriarch and pointing towards magic’s foundations; added to this discussion, however, it would disclose too much. I therefore leave it to the investigation of those considerably advanced in the art, if not its masters. The sum is this: humanity could not attain true knowledge by itself; God instructed it through sheer mercy. To confirm this, I ask the reader to consider personal experience. In our own day many magical books exist, disclosing the art truly and plainly. Countless people study these books; yet after a lifetime of effort not one in ten thousand understands them. If, with all these advantages, we cannot attain Nature’s secrets, shall we think those first fathers did so, possessing none of our libraries to help them and no learned person upon

earth to instruct them? Could they accomplish without means what we cannot accomplish with very considerable means? Perhaps the Peripatetics will tell me their syllogism is the engine capable of all this. Let them then demonstrate the philosophers’ stone’s first matter in Barbara or Baroco. But they will tell me there is no such thing. Look: I tell them in return, and assure them upon my salvation, that there is; yet their logic will never discover it. It is clear, then, that God first instructed Adam; Adam’s children received the knowledge from him; and through their tradition it descended to the patriarchs. Each father bequeathed these secrets to his child as his best and most lasting legacy. I have now accompanied Jacob, the Israel of God, both in his pilgrimage at Padan-aram and in his symbolic inheritance, the pledge of the land of Canaan. But two removals do not complete a patriarch’s wanderings. God calls him from his fathers’ dwelling to his descendants’ prison, providing him a place of freedom in the house of bondage. I must follow where his fortune leads: from Isaac’s Hebron to Pharaoh’s Goshen, then back to Machpelah’s cave and dust. As for his sons and the company accompanying his journey there, I find no particular record

of them. Moses tells me only of a general departure: “Joseph died, and all his brothers, and all that generation.” To prove the art’s continuance and succession, I must now turn to the court, where I shall find Levi’s son newly translated from his ark and bulrushes. Yet something remains to be said about Joseph, and it truly proves how common magic was in those days, its effects familiar to Jacob’s sons. Having conveyed his cup into Benjamin’s sack and detained his brothers by that stratagem, he asks them: “What deed have you done? Did you not know that a man such as I can certainly divine?”

In this speech he treats his brothers as familiar with the art’s performances, even making that familiarity an argument against them: “Did you not know?” But the following words are especially effective in showing what kinds of people the ancient Magi were. They were indeed such as Joseph describes himself: princes and rulers of the people, rather than beggarly Gypsies and mountebanks like our doctors now. In those days the great aspired to be good. As these secrets proceeded from God, so they were received by the gods—I mean kings. For Scripture says: “I have said, you are