Many have said of Alchemy, that it is for the making of gold and silver. For me such is not the aim, but to consider only what virtue and power may lie in medicines.
For one country is different from another; its earth is different, as are its stones, wines, bread, meat, and everything that grows and thrives in a specific region.
Once a disease has entered the body, all parts which are healthy must fight it: not one alone, but all. Because a disease might mean their common death. Nature knows this; and Nature attacks the disease with whatever help she can muster.
However, anyone to whom this happens should not leave his room upon awakening, should speak to no-one, but remain alone and sober until everything comes back to him, and he recalls the dream.
Magic has power to experience and fathom things which are inaccessible to human reason. For magic is a great secret wisdom, just as reason is a great public folly.
We do not know it because we are fooling away our time with outward and perishing things, and are asleep in regard to that which is real within ourself.
But is not He who created it for the sake of the sick body more than the remedy? And is not He who cures the soul, which is more than the body, greater?
If we want to make a statement about a man’s nature on the basis of his physiognomy, we must take everything into account; it is in his distress that a man is tested, for then his nature is revealed.
