Sal Lumen and Spiritus Mundi Philosophici

To the most high, most powerful and most virtuous Prince, my Lord the Duke of Lorraine and Bar, and so forth. MY LORD, That phoenix among fine minds, François, my lord, of the most illustrious house of Candale, had made himself as admirable in the practice of the mechanical arts, in which he surpassed the most ingenious and celebrated men of his age, as in the profound theory of the rarest sciences. Those sciences seem to have been preserved from the universal flood only to crown him with glory. By his own invention he could have furnished later ages with models of both kinds of perfection in his inimitable masterpieces. Yet he thought his labour most usefully employed in giving a new birth, through his excellent commentaries, to the Pimander of Hermes. A long succession of centuries had kept it buried. Some had abandoned it too readily because of its obscurity; others had lightly neglected it, judging from its opening that it was a dream invented at will. The former through impatience, the latter through ill-considered contempt, unhappily deprived themselves of the enjoyment of this priceless treasure. They would have made us share their loss had not this new Hercules crossed Acheron and Cocytus and, despite Cerberus, retrieved it from the dark river of oblivion into which ignorance and envy had cast it. He brought it back to us still wet and dripping from that long shipwreck, and restored its lustre by the brilliance of the precious stones with which he enriched it. Amid its account of the creation of the world, so many radiant beams of the hidden wonders of God and Nature can now plainly be seen to sparkle that the obscurity formerly hated through ignorance, and the opening lightly judged fabulous, are today admired and cherished by everyone. Even the most enlightened acknowledge them to be as pleasing and mysterious as if they had been produced by one of the prophets.