The comet would announce a presence of “a marvelous being… who as yet lives not, and who shall reveal many things.” This being would be a master of all arts, bearing three divine gifts to change the face of the world.

Prophecies of comets, stars and rarely gifted beings did not ring as strangely in the ears of Elizabethans as they do in our ears today. (And we, in our time, do not treat them as scornfully as did our brothers 50 years ago.) Just who this great master of all arts would be only the gods in heaven could know for certain, but the one man of that time who came closest to fulfilling Paracelsus’ prophecy was our man of mystery, Francis Bacon.