whose knowledge and devotion brought them from the East to Jerusalem. Secondly, this art suffers as religion does, and for the same reason. The principal causes of the Church’s present divisions and breaches are the ceremonies and figures used in it. For the Apostles undoubtedly instituted and left behind certain elements or signs—water, oil, salt and lights—through which they signified great and reverent mysteries. But our reformers, mistaking these things for superstitions, turned them all out of doors. Truly that was badly done: if Saint Peter’s shadow healed, shall these shadows of Christ not do much more? The Papist, on the other hand, ignorant of what these figures signify, placed an inherent holiness in them and so fell into very dangerous idolatry. I pass over the many things he invented himself—images, holy lambs and relics—adding these dead bones to the Church’s original and beautiful body. Now to draw the parallel: the magicians also instituted certain signs as the key to their art. These were the same as the former ones: water, oil, salt and light. Through them they tacitly disclosed their three principles and the light of Nature, which fills and

activates all things. The ordinary reader, studying their books but missing their meaning, took candles, common water, oil and salt, and began consecrating and exorcising them to construct his damnable, devilish magic. The magicians had a maxim: [New translation of the Latin:] “No utterance works in magic unless it is first formed by God’s utterance.” [Vaughan’s own English rendering:] “No word is effective in magic unless first animated by the word of God.” Hence their books often mentioned “word” and “speech.” Interpreting these according to his own fancy, the ordinary reader invented charms and formulas by which he promised wonders. The magicians wrote much about triangles and circles, indicating their more secret threefold nature and Nature’s rotation from the beginning of her week to her Sabbath. Through this circle or rotation, they also declared that spirits could be bound, meaning that the soul could be united to the body. The ordinary reader immediately imagined his triangles and characters, with many strange cobwebs or figures and a circle for conjuring. But, not knowing which spirit the magicians bound, he laboured and studied to bind the Devil. If you now ask who these magicians were, I must tell you: they were

kings, priests and prophets: men acquainted with religion’s substantial, spiritual mysteries, who dealt out its outward, figurative part to the people. Here we can see how magic fell into disrepute. Lawyers and ordinary theologians, ignorant of these secrets, read the ceremonial, superstitious rubbish of scribblers who claimed to practise magic, and condemned the art itself as impious and anti-Christian. To profess it became a capital offence, punished by death. Meanwhile the few masters of the science, observing its first injunctions, buried everything in deep silence. But after allowing his truth to remain obscured for a long time, God at last stirred up resolute and active spirits who put pen to paper, dispersed this cloud and partly disclosed the light. The leaders of this brave company were Cornelius Agrippa, Libanius Gallus the philosopher, Johannes Trithemius, Georgius Venetus, and Johannes Reuchlin, called Capnion in Greek, with several others in their respective times. After them all, as an usher to the company and one born out of due time, comes Eugenius Philalethes.

Having therefore publicly undertaken a province that I might have governed privately

with much greater satisfaction and advantage, I think it insufficient to have exposed the abuses and misfortunes suffered by this science unless I also attempt to demonstrate its antiquity. For arts are surely like people: their age and endurance are good arguments for their strength and integrity. Most appropriate, then, was the Egyptian’s rebuke to Solon: [New translation of the Latin:] “Solon, Solon! You Greeks are always children: you possess no ancient belief, no teaching grey with age.” [Vaughan’s own English rendering:] “You Greeks are forever childish, having no ancient opinion, no discipline of any long standing.” But, as I confess myself no antiquary, I wish some Selden would stand in this breach and fill it with those fragments now so close to dust that Time may put them in his hourglass. For my own part, I know this is an undertaking I cannot adequately accomplish. But since my hand is already in the bag, I shall draw out my few pebbles and sling them at the mark.

This art—or rather mystery—must be considered in several ways because its subjects are several. Its first and original existence is in God himself. It is simply the activity or operation of the divine Spirit working in matter, uniting

principles into compounds and resolving those compounds into their principles. In this sense we do not seek its antiquity, for it is eternal: an expression of divine wisdom, existing before all time or time’s creation. Secondly, we must consider it derivatively, as imparted and communicated to man. Properly speaking, this was neither its birth nor its beginning, but a discovery or revelation of the art. We must measure its antiquity from the time of this revelation. Our task will be to demonstrate the reasons why God revealed it, and also to whom and when.

The eye sees no farther than the scene in which it is present, but the ear receives sound from a great distance. We cannot give eyewitness testimony about actions older than ourselves unless we can look into that mirror in which all occurrences—past, present and future—may be seen. I must therefore build my discourse upon the traditions of those entrusted with the Word, both written and mystical: the Jews generally, and their Kabbalists in particular. I do not intend to rest upon these rabbis as foundations; I shall justify their assertions from Scripture and engage my reader with

proofs both divine and human. Finally, I shall pass from Judaea into Egypt and Greece, where I shall encounter these mysteries again, and prove that this science flowed out of Jewry, as the chemists say their salt-fountain flows, and watered the whole earth.