Talk:Magia Naturalis

Title of the work

It seems to me that the title of the work by Giambattista della Porta is reported wrongly, as apparent from pictures of publications easily findable online. From what I understand, the title is instead be "Magiae Naturalis" which is gentitive in Latin and indicates that the book speaks "of" a certain topic. 130.226.173.104 (talk) 10:17, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

Rewrite and improvement

I have rewritten this page from scratch as the previous version was, put simply, ass. It was based first on a general source without proper inline attributions, and secondly, on a primary source, the English translation of 1658. It is clear that the original author of the page was not incredibly familiar with the subject matter, as it skirts away from describing the book as a work of natural magic (as the title implies and della Porta made clear), instead opting for the anachronistic and inaccurate appelation of 'popular science' (it is doubly inaccurate as it is clearly a work of aristocratic, elite scholarship rather than something geared towards non-specialists). This reeks of the sort of history of science that ignores messy or 'embarassing' facts like Newton's obsession with alchemy or Trithemius's very real ceremonial magic practice. This is to be expected, I suppose, as the English translation was heavily influenced by Baconian natural philosophers in England.

I've expanded the page with secondary scholarly sources and provided a bit of background on natural magic in the Renaissance, as well as noting some of the work's influence on scientists like Kepler and Bacon. wound theology◈ 07:09, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

About the title being Magia Naturalis rather than Magiae Naturalis: it is true that Magiae is usually in the genitive in the actual Latin versions, but the vast majority of English-language sources (and it seems Italian-language, too) still use Magia. wound theology◈ 07:10, 4 July 2026 (UTC)