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Preface I do not wish to assume for myself a title so sublime for the present. For He who is called a prophet now was once called a seer. Strictly speaking, my son, a prophet is one who sees things remote from the natural knowledge of men. And it can happen that the prophet, by means of the perfect light of the prophecy appearing before him, thinks he sees things divine as well as human; but this cannot be, for the effects of future prediction extend far.

12. For the incomprehensible secrets of God and their efficient virtue belong to a sphere very remote from human knowledge, deriving their immediate origin from the free will. They bring about the appearance of causes which of themselves could not attract enough attention to be known, neither by human augury, nor by any other hidden knowledge or virtue comprised under the concavity of heaven, even from the present fact of all eternity, which comes in itself to embrace all time: But through some indivisible eternity and by means of epyleptic agitation, the causes are made known by celestial movements.

13. Understand me well, my son. I do not say that the knowledge of this matter cannot yet impress itself upon your feeble brain, nor do I say that very distant events are not within the knowledge of reasoning man. If future events are merely the creation of the intellectual soul out of current events, they are not by any means too greatly hidden from him nor, on the other hand, can they be said to be revealed at all.

14. But the perfect knowledge of events cannot be acquired without divine inspiration, since all prophetic inspiration receives its prime motivating force from God the Creator, then from good fortune and nature. For this reason, the presage occurs in part, where it has been predicted, in proportion to the extent to which similar events have manifested themselves similarly or have failed to manifest themselves. For the human understanding, being created intellectually, cannot see hidden things unless aided by the voice coming from limbo via the thin flame, showing in what direction future events incline.

15. Furthermore, my son, I beg that you will never want to employ your understanding on such dreams and vanities as dry up the body, put the soul in perdition and cause trouble to the weak senses. I caution you especially against the vanity of the more than execrable magic, condemned of yore by the Holy Scriptures and by the Canons of the Church.

16. However, judicial astrology is excepted from this judgment. For it is by this, together with divine inspiration and revelation, and continual nightly watches and calculations, that we have reduced our prophecies to writing, Although this occult Philosophy was not condemned, I did not desire that you should ever be faced with their unbridled promptings. I had at my disposal many volumes which had been hidden for a great many centuries. But dreading what use might be made of them, after reading them I consigned them to the flames. As the fire came to devour them, the