Library of the Sages — Valentine, Khunrath, Hollandus, Bernard

innocent to death; the vision of the angels who
appeared to the shepherds at the nativity of Christ
and to the women who were at the sepulcher of the Lord
to visit his body where it had been placed, this
cannot be held as natural. There are also many more
supernatural things that have often been done
through the divination of Prophets and saints,
likewise the voice of the donkey when it spoke to
Balaam, which is not ordinary according to common
nature, just as the explanation of dreams
that Joseph performed was supernatural. God
also often guards us through good and holy angels
against great accidents, and delivers us from great
dangers that otherwise would be naturally
impossible. All this, therefore, and what could be
more, belongs to theology and other
celestial things upon which the soul must aim. After
this follow still more the supernatural things
of the visible celestial creatures, as we
see and notice in the firmament the planets
and stars with the elements, which is also beyond
our understanding, the course of which we only
notice through calculation and speculation. This
belongs, therefore, to astronomy, which is a
visible substance, yet impalpable, which
performs its operations through a magnetic nature

and by this means many wonders are
found and known that are entirely supernatural.
Notice also that Heaven operates in the earth, and
the earth gives correspondence to celestial things,
for the earth also has seven celestial planets only
through a spiritual influence and impression, for
the stars operate upon all metals. This is done, therefore,
spiritually; that is why it is held to be
non-natural. In the same way, as two person-
-s who love each other, the persons are visible,
but the love they bear for one another is
invisible. The body of the person is spiritual and
natural, but love is invisible, spiritual, im-
-palpable, and supernatural, and is not to be compared
to anything other than a magnetic attraction;
for the invisible love that has been drawn to itself
spiritually through the imagination of desire is
accomplished by execution. It is the same with
heaven when it bears a friendship for the earth and the earth
an affection and friendship for man, as the
macrocosm great world to the microcosm small world, given that the small
world was taken from the great world. And when the
earth draws to itself through the desire of its
insensible imagination such love from heaven, there is made
thereby a conjunction of the superiors and inferiors,
just as man and woman being joined