Quote:
Originally Posted by vitruvian
Funny, the 1500s was the time of the historical Faust, Pico della Mirandola, Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus (from whom we get the term elementals), Nostradamus, John Dee, and Judah Loew (supposed creator of the Golem of Prague). The people of the time believed that it was a time of resurgence in magical knowledge, if anything.
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Agree with that, it's not for nothing that I mentioned Agrippa and Paracelsus and Nostradamus upthread.
It could be argued, however, that these people didn't see themselves as "wizards" in the medieval sense, nor as "sibyls" in the Roman sense; we're probably better off thinking that they had a broad definition of "natural sciences". Alchemists and astrologists, generally speaking, didn't think they were dealing with supernatural forces, but, rather, with natural ones that were not yet fully understood.