TRITHEMIUS
In 1516 Paracelsus came to Trithemius, Bishop of Sponheim, a great alchemist and Magus who had instructed Cornelius Agrippa. "Studies generate knowledge," Trithemius taught. "Knowledge bears love; love, likeness; likeness, communion; communion, virtue; virtue, dignity; dignity, power; and power performs the miracle. This is the unique path to magic perfection." Paracelsus learned the nature of elementals, the inner meaning of signs and the signatures of nature, bringing into focus the links between macrocosm and microcosm. "I have entered through the door of Nature," he wrote. "Her light, not the lamp of the apothecary's shop, has illuminated my way."
http://www.theosophytrust.org/tlodocs/articlesTeacher.php?d=Paracelsus.htm&p=95
The work of Basil Valentinus was continued by Trithemius, Abbot of the Benedictine Monastery of Spanheim, who was an Adept in the Secret Sciences and is said to have been initiated into the misteries of the Kabala by a pupil of Pico della Mirandola. He taught the seven stages of evolution, mentioned several secret cycles and made some important prophecies. His definition of Magic was purely Theosophical:
The art of Magic consists in the ability to perceive the essence of things in the light of Nature, and by using the soul-powers to produce things from the unseen Universe. In such operations the Microcosm and Macrocosm must be brought together and made to act harmoniously. — written in 1506
His pupils inquired what he meant by Nature. "Nature," Trithemius replied, "is a Unity, creating and forming everything. Such processes take place according to law. You will learn this Law if you first learn to know yourselves."
The fame of Trithemius was perpetuated by his two distinguished pupils, Paracelsus and Cornelius Agrippa. Agrippa was a statesman and linguist, physician and chemist, philosopher, Kabalist and Neoplatonist. He passed through life alternately patronized and persecuted, courted by the nobility and hunted down as a heretic by the Church. Although knighted by Margaret, Regent of the Netherlands, and honored by the Queen of France, he spent much of his life in dire poverty. Agrippa formed a secret association for the study of the occult sciences and wrote an esoteric interpretation of the New Testament. He taught the three-fold nature of the Universe, the identity of the Macrocosm and the Microcosm, and traced out the lines of correspondence between them. Space, he said, is threaded with invisible lines of magnetic force which unite men's principles with the occult forces of Nature. Hence:
The human being possesses, from the fact of its being of the same essence as all creation, a wonderful power. Truth can be made ever present to the eye of the soul. Time and space vanish before the eagle eye of the immortal soul. Her power is boundless. — De Occulto Philosophia