On Occult Philosophy

We should not act like the heathens, who, when they could not persuade a person by any means or force them to something, conjured them, as one finds many examples of this in the Scripture, so that he had to do it against his nature and will. Woe, however, to him and all those who follow them in this process; how bitter and difficult such things will become for them at their last end, how gruesome a register of the wrath of God will be proclaimed and held before them by the Devil, so that often if one were so reasonable afterwards and could speak, one would show such miserable, pitiful lamentation that many thousands would turn away from it and do penance.

III. Of Characters.

One should also not trust all characteribus characters/symbols, nor rely on them in any way, just as little as on the words. For the Nigromantische necromantic poets have exerted and busied themselves in such a way, and have filled all necromantic books with things they themselves have recklessly and baselessly invented from their own heads, in which there is neither foundation nor truth, and of which many thousands are not worth a nutshell, let alone the good paper and parchment that has been uselessly soiled and wasted thereby.