Francis Barret
The Magus. Book II
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Table of contents
MAGNETISM.
CHAP. I. THE MAGNETIC, OR ATTRACTIVE POWER OR FACULTY
CHAP. II. OF SYMPATHETIC MEDICINES
CHAP. III. OF THE MAGNETIC OR SYMPATHETIC UNGUENT...
CHAP. IV. OF THE ARMARY UNGUENT, OR WEAPON SALVE, ETC
CHAP. V.
CHAP. VI. OF WITCHCRAFT
CHAP. VII. OF THE VITAL SPIRIT, ETC
CHAP. VIII. OF THE MAGICAL POWER, ETC
CHAP. IX. OF THE EXCITING OR STIRRING UP THE MAGICAL VIRTUE
CHAP. X. OF THE MAGICAL VIRTUE OF THE SOUL, AND THE MEDIUMS BY WHICH IT ACTS
THE CABALA
CHAP. I. OF THE CABALA, ETC
CHAP. II. WHAT DIGNITY AND PREPARATION IS ESSENTIALLY NECESSARY TO HIM WHO WOULD BECOME A TRUE MAGICIAN
CHAP. III. THAT THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE TRUE GOD IS NECESSARY FOR A MAGICIAN
CHAP. IV.
CHAP. V. OF THE POWER AND VIRTUE OF THE DIVINE NAMES
CHAP. VI. OF INTELLIGENCES AND SPIRITS...
CHAP. VII. OF THE ORDER OF EVIL SPIRITS, AND THEIR FALL, AND DIFFERENT NATURES
CHAP. VIII. OF THE ANNOYANCE OF EVIL SPIRITS, AND THE PRESERVATION WE HAVE FROM GOOD SPIRITS
CHAP. IX. THAT THERE IS A THREEFOLD KEEPER OF MAN, AND FROM WHENCE EACH OF THEM PROCEED
CHAP. X. OF THE TONGUE OF ANGELS, AND OF THEIR SPEAKING AMONGST THEMSELVES AND WITH US
CHAP. XI. OF THE NAMES OF SPIRITS...
CHAP. XII. THE CABALISTS DRAW FORTH THE SACRED NAMES OF ANGELS...
CHAP. XIII. OF FINDING OUT THE NAMES OF SPIRITS AND GENII, FROM THE DISPOSITION OF THE CELESTIAL BODIES
CHAP. XIV. OF THE CALCULATING ART OF SUCH NAMES BY THE TRADITION OF CABALISTS
CHAP. XV. OF THE CHARACTERS AND SEALS OF SPIRITS
CHAP. XVI. ANOTHER WAY OF MAKING CHARACTERS, ACCORDING TO THE CABALISTS
CHAP. XVII. THERE IS ANOTHER KIND OF CHARACTERS, OR MARKS OF SPIRITS, WHICH ARE RECEIVED ONLY BY REVELATION
CHAP. XVIII. ON THE BONDS OF SPIRITS, AND THEIR ADJURATIONS, AND CASTINGS OUT
CHAP. XIX. BY WHAT MEANS MAGICIANS AND NECROMANCERS CALL FORTH THE SOULS OF THE DEAD
CHAP. XX. OF PROPHETICAL DREAMS
THE PERFECTION AND KEY OF THE CABALA, OR CEREMONIAL MAGIC
OF MAGIC PENTACLES AND THEIR COMPOSITION
OF THE CONSECRATION OF ALL MAGICAL INSTRUMENTS AND MATERIALS WHICH ARE USED IN THIS ART
THE CONSECRATION OF WATER
CONSECRATION OF FIRE
THE CONSECRATION OF OIL
OF THE BENEDICTION OF LIGHTS, LAMPS, WAX, ETC
THE CONSECRATION OF PLACES, GROUND, CIRCLE, ETC
OF THE INVOCATION OF EVIL SPIRITS, AND THE BINDING, OF, AND CONSTRAINING OF THEM TO APPEAR
AN INVOCATION OF THE GOOD SPIRITS
THE PARTICULAR FORM OF THE LAMEN
OF ORACLES BY DREAMS
OF THE METHOD OF RAISING EVIL OR FAMILIAR SPIRITS...
OF THE PARTICULAR COMPOSITION OF THE MAGICAL CIRCLE
CONSIDERATIONS AND CONJURATIONS FOR EVERY DAY IN THE WEEK
OF THE MAKING OF THE CRYSTAL AND THE FORM OF PREPARATION FOR A VISION
BIOGRAPHIA ANTIQUA
MAGNETISM.
CHAP. I. THE MAGNETIC, OR ATTRACTIVE POWER OR FACULTY
AS
concerning an action locally at a distance, wines do suggest a
demonstration unto us: for, every kind of wine, although it be bred
out of co-bordering provinces, and likewise more timely blossoming
elsewhere, yet it is troubled while our country vine flowereth;
neither doth such a disturbance cease as long as the flower shall not
fall off from our vine; which thing surely happens, either from a
common motive-cause of the vine and wine, or from a particular
disposition of the vine, the which indeed troubles the wine, and doth
shake it up and down with a confused tempest: or likewise, because
the wine itself doth thus trouble itself of its own free accord, by
reason of the flowers of the vine: of both the which latter, if there
be a fore-touched conformity, consent, co-grieving, or
congratulation; at least, that cannot but be done by an action at a
distance: to wit, if the wine be troubled in a cellar under ground,
whereunto no vine perhaps is near for some miles, neither is there
any discourse of the air under the earth, with the flower of the
absent vine; but, if they will accuse a common cause for such an
effect, they must either run back to the stars, which cannot be
controuled by our pleasures and liberties of boldness; or, I say, we
return to a confession of an action at a distance: to wit, that some
one and the same, and as yet unknown spirit, the mover, doth govern
the absent wine, and the vine which is at a far distance, and makes
them to talk and suffer together. But, as to what concerns the power
of the stars, I am unwilling, as neither dare I, according to my own
liberty, to extend the forces, powers, or bounds of the stars beyond
or besides the authority of the sacred text, which faith (it being
pronounced from a divine testimony) that the stars shall be unto us
for signs, seasons, days, and years: by which rule, a power is never
attributed to the stars, that wine bred in a foreign soil, and
brought unto us from far, doth disturb, move, or render itself
confused: for, the vine had at some time received a power of
encreasing and multiplying itself before the stars were born: and
vegetables were before the stars, and the imagined influx of these:
wherefore also, they cannot be things conjoined in essence, one
whereof could consist without the other. Yea, the vine in some places
flowereth more timely; and, in rainy, or the more cold years, our
vine flowereth more slowly, whose flower and stages of flourishing
the wine doth, notwithstanding, imitate; and so neither doth it
respect the stars, that it should disturb itself at their beck.In
the next place, neither doth the wine hearken unto the flourishing or
blossoming of any kind of capers, but of the wine alone: and
therefore we must not flee unto an universal cause, the general or
universal ruling air of worldly successive change; to wit, we may
rather run back unto impossibilities and absurdities, than unto the
most near commerces of resemblance and unity, although hitherto
unpassable by the schools.Moreover,
that thing doth as yet far more manifestly appear in ale or beer:
when, in times past, our ancestors had seen that of barley, after
whatsoever manner it was boiled, nothing but an empty ptisana or
barley-broth, or also a pulp, was cooked; they meditated, that the
barley first ought to bud (which then they called malt) and next,
they nakedly boiled their ales, imitating wines: wherein, first of
all, some remarkable things do meet in one; to wit, there is stirred
up in barley, a vegetable bud, the which when the barley is dried,
doth afterwards die, and loseth the hope of growing, and so much the
more by its changing into meal, and afterwards by an after-boiling,
it despairs of a growing virtue; yet these things nothing hindering,
it retains the winey and intoxicating spirit of aqua vitæ, the which
notwithstanding it doth not yet actually possess: but at length, in
number of days, it attaineth it by virtue of a ferment: to wit, in
the one only bosom of one grain one only spirit is made famous with
diverse powers, and one power is gelded, another being left: which
thing indeed, doth as yet more wonderfully shine forth; when as the
ale or beer of malt disturbs itself while the barley flowereth, no
otherwise than as wine is elsewhere wont to do: and so a power at a
far absent distance is from hence plain to be seen: for truly there
are cities from whom pleasant meadows do expel the growing of barley
for many miles, and by so much the more powerfully do ales prove
their agreement with the absent flowering barley; in as much as the
gelding of their power hath withdrawn the hopes of budding and
increasing: and at length the aqua vitae being detained and shut up
within the ale, hogshead, and prison of the cellar, cannot with the
safety of the ale or beer wandering for some leagues unto the
flowering ear of barley, that thereby, as a stormy retainer, it may
trouble the remaining ale with much confusion. Certainly there is a
far more quiet passage for a magnetical or attractive agreement among
some agents at a far distance from each other, than there is to dream
an aqua vitæ wandering out of the ale of a cellar, unto the
flowering barley, and from thence to return unto the former
receptacles of its pen-case, and ale: But the sign imprinted by the
appetite of a woman great with child, on her young, doth fitly, and
alike clearly confirm a magnetism or attractive faculty and its
operation at a distance: to wit, let there be a woman great with
child, which desires another cherry, let her but touch her forehead
or any other place with her finger; without doubt, the young is
signed in its forehead with the image of the cherry, which afterwards
doth every year wax green, white, yellow, and at length looks red,
according to the tenor of the trees: and it much more wonderfully
expresses the same successive alteration of maturities in Spain than
in Germany: and so hereby an action
at a distance is
not only confirmed, but also a conformity or agreement of the
essences of the cherry tree, in its wooden and fleshly trunk; a
consanguinity or near affinity of a being impressed
upon the part by on instantaneous imagination, and by a successive
course of the years of its kernel: surely the more learned ought not
to impute those things unto evil spirits, which, through their own
weakness, they are ignorant of; for these things do on all sides
occur in nature, the which, through our slenderness, we are not able
to unfold; for to refer whatsoever gifts of God are in nature
(because our dull capacity does not comprehend the same rightly) to
the devil, shews both ignorance and rashness, especially when, as all
demonstration of causes from a former thing or cause is banished from
us, and especially from Aristotle, who was ignorant of all nature,
and deprived of the good gifts which descends from the Father of
Lights; unto whom be all honour and glory.Note.
We may, by the aforesaid chapter, see the wonderful working power of
the attractive or universal spirit, which can by no other means be so
clearly demonstrated as by the sympathies in natural things, which
are inherent throughout all nature; and, upon this principle of
sympathy and antipathy, we say is founded that spiritual power which
tends to things and objects remote one from the other, i.
e. a
magnetic attraction, which does actually exist, as we shall clearly
prove by experiment, where we fully shew the action and passion that
is between natural spirits, by which means wonderful effects are
produced which have ignorantly been attributed to divers
superstitions, as Sorcery,
Inchantment, Nigromancy,
or the
Black Art,
&c.
CHAP. II. OF SYMPATHETIC MEDICINES
IN
the year 1639, a little book came forth, whose title was, 'The
Sympathetical Powder of Edricius Mohynus, of Eburo,' whereby wounds
are cured without application of the medicine unto the part
afflicted, and without superstition; it being sifted by the sieve of
the reasons of Galen and Aristotle; wherein it is Aristotetically,
sufficiently, proved, whatsoever the title of it promises; but it
hath neglected the directive
faculty,
or virtue,
which may bring the virtues of the sympathetical powder, received in
the bloody towel or napkin, unto the distant wound.Truly,
from a wound, the venal blood, or corrupt pus, or sanies, from an
ulcer, being received in the towel, do receive, indeed, a balsam from
a sanative or healing being; I say, from the power of the vitriol, a
medicinal power connected and limited in the aforesaid mean; but the
virtues of the balsam received are directed unto the wounded object,
not indeed by an influential virtue of the stars, and much less do
they fly forth of their own accord unto the object at a distance:
therefore the ideas of him that applieth the sympathetical remedy are
connected in the mean, and are made directresses of the balsam unto
the object of his desire: even as we have above also minded by
injections concerning ideas of the desire. Mohyns supposed that the
power of sympathy depends upon the stars, because it is an imitator
of influences: but I draw it out of a much nearer subject: to wit,
out of directing ideas, begotten by their mother Charity, or a desire
of goodwill: for, from hence does that sympathetic powder operate
more successfully, being applied by the hand of one than another:
therefore I have always observed the best process where the remedy is
instituted by a desire of charity; but, that it doth succeed, with
small success, if the operator be a careless or drunken person; and,
from hence, I have more esteemed the stars of the mind, in
sympathetical remedies, than the stars of heaven: but that images,
being conceived, are brought unto an object at a distance, a pregnant
woman is an example of, because she is she who presently transfers
all the ideas of her conception on her young, which dependeth no
otherwise on the mother than from a communion of universal
nourishment. Truly, seeing such a direction of desire is plainly
natural, it is no wonder that the evil spirit doth require the ideas
of the desires of his imps to be annexed unto a mean offered by him.
Indeed, the ideas of the desire are after the manner of the
influences of heaven cast into a proper object how locally remote
soever; that is, they are directed by the desire, especially pointing
out an object for itself, even as the sight of the basilisk, or touch
of the torpedo, is reflected on their willed object; for I have
already shewn in its place, that the devil doth not attribute so much
as any thing in the directions of things injected; but that he hath
need of a free, directing, and operative power or faculty. But I will
not disgrace sympathetical remedies because the devil operates
something about things injected into the body: for what have
sympathetical remedies in common? Although Satan doth co-operate in
injections by wicked natural means required from his bond slaves; for
every thing shall be judged guilty, or good, from its ends and
intents: and it is sufficient that sympathetical remedies do agree
with things injected in natural means, or medicines.
CHAP. III. OF THE MAGNETIC OR SYMPATHETIC UNGUENT...
OF
THE MAGNETIC OR SYMPATHETIC UNGUENT, THE POWDER OF SYMPATHY, ARMARY
UNGUENT, CURING OF WOUNDS, ECSTASIES, WITCHCRAFT, MUMMIES, &C.WE
shall now show some remarkable operations that are effected by
magnetism, and founded upon natural sympathy and antipathy, likewise
how by these means some extraordinary cures may be performed.The
goodness of the Creator every where extended, created every thing for
the use of ungrateful man; neither did he admit any of the
theologists, or divines, as assistants in council, how many or how
great virtues he should infuse into things natural. But there are
those who venture to measure the wonderful works of God by their own
sharpened and refined wit, whereby they deny God to have given such
virtue to things; as though man (a worm) was able, by his narrow and
limited capacity, to comprehend Omniscience; he therefore measures
the minds of all men by his own, who think that cannot be done, which
they cannot understand. They therefore
can only develope the mysteries of nature, who being versed in the
art of Cabala, Fire, and Magic, examined the properties of things,
and draw, from darkness into light, the lurking powers of Man,
Animals, Vegetables, Minerals,
and Stones,
and, separating the crudities, dregs, poisons, heterogenities, that
are the thorns implanted in virgin nature from the curse. For an
observer of nature sees daily she doth distil,
sublime, calcine, ferment, dissolve, coagulate, fix,
&c. therefore we who are the ministers of nature do separate, &c.
finding out the causes and effects of every phenomena she produces.Now,
as magnetism is ordained for the use of man, and for the curing of
the various disorders incident to human nature, we shall first touch
upon the grand subject of magnetism, known to possess wonderful
properties, and which are not only evident to every eye, but shew us
sufficient grounds for our admitting the possibility and reality of
magnetism in general.The
loadstone possesses an eminent medicinal faculty, against many
violent and implacable disorders. Helmont says, that the back of the
loadstone, as it repulses iron, so also it removes gout, swellings,
rheum, &c. that is of the nature or quality of iron. The iron
attracting faculty, if it be joined to the mummy of a woman, and the
back of the loadstone be put within her thigh, and the belly of the
loadstone on her loins, it safely prevents a miscarriage, already
threatened; but the belly of the loadstone applied within the thigh
and the back to her loins, it doth wonderfully facilitate her
delivery.Likewise
the wearing the loadstone cases and prevents the cramp, and such like
disorders and pains.Uldericus
Balk, a dominican friar, published a book at Frankfort in the year
1611, concerning the lamp of life; in which we shall find (taken from
Paracelsus) the true magnetical cure of many diseases, viz. the
dropsy, gout, jaundice, &c. For if thou shalt enclose the warm
blood of the sick in the shell and white of an egg, which is exposed
to a nourishing warmth, and this blood, being mixed with a piece of
flesh, thou shalt give to a hungry dog, the disorder departs from
thee into the dog; no otherwise than the leprosy of Naaman passed
over into Gehazi through the execration of the prophet.If
women, weaning their infants, shall milk out their milk upon hot
burning coals, the breast soon dries.If
any one happens to commit nuisance at thy door, and thou wilt prevent
that beastly trick in future, take the poker red-hot, and put it into
the excrement, and, by magnetism, his posteriors shall become much
scorched and inflamed.Make
a small table of the lightest, whitest, and basest kind of lead; and
at one end put a piece of amber, and, three spans from it, lay a
piece of green vitriol; this vitriol will soon lose its colour and
acid: both which effects are found in the preparation of amber. The
root of the Caroline thistle being plucked up when full of juice and
virtue, and tempered with the mummy of a man, will exhaust the powers
and natural strength out of a man, on whose shadow thou shalt stand,
into thyself.
CHAP. IV. OF THE ARMARY UNGUENT, OR WEAPON SALVE, ETC
THE
principal ingredient in this confection, is the moss of a dead man's
skull, which Van Helmont calls the excrescencies or superfluities of
the stars. Now the moss growing on the skull of a dead man, seeing it
has received its seed from the heavens, but its increase from the
mummial marrow of the skull of man, or tower of the microcosm, has
obtained excellent astral and magnetic powers beyond the common
condition of vegetables, although herbs, as they are herbs, want not
their own magnetism.Now,
the magnetism of this unguent draws out that strange disposition from
the wound (which otherwise, by a disunion of the parts that held
together, and by which, I say, strange disposition and foreign
quality is produced) from whence it slips, not being overburdened or
oppressed by any accident, suddenly grow together; and this is
effected by the armary unguent, or weapon salve. From this it appears
that the unguent, or weapon salve, its property is to heal suddenly
and perfectly without pain, costs, peril, or loss of strength; hence
it is manifest that the magnetical virtue is from God.It
is now seasonable to discover the immediate cause of magnetism in the
unguent.First
of all, by the consent of mystical divines, we divide man into the
external and internal man, assigning to both the powers of a certain
mind, or intelligence: for so there doth a will belong to flesh and
blood, which may not be either the will of man or the will of God;
and the heavenly Father also reveals some things unto the more inward
man, and some things flesh and blood reveals, that is, the outward
and sensitive, or animal man. For, how could the service of idols,
envy, &c. be rightly numbered among the works of the flesh,
seeing they consist only in the imagination, if the flesh had not
also its own imagination and elective will?Furthermore,
that there are miraculous ecstasies belonging to the more inward man,
is beyond dispute. That there are also ecstasies in the animal man,
by reason of an intense, or heightend imagination, is, without doubt.
Martin del Ris, an elder of the society of Jesus, in his Magical
Disquisitions or Enquiries, makes mention of a certain young man in
the city Insulis that was transported with so violent a desire of
seeing his mother, that through the same intense desire, as if being
rapt up by an ecstasy, he saw her perfectly, although many miles
absent from thence; and, returning again to himself, being mindful of
all that he had seen, gave many true signs of his true presence with
his mother.Now
that desire arose from the more outward man, viz. from
blood and sense, or flesh, is certain; for, otherwise, the soul being
once dislodged, or loosened from the bonds of the body, cannot,
except by miracle, be reunited to it; there is therefore in the blood
a certain ecstatical or transporting power, which, if at any time
shall be excited or stirred up by an ardent desire and most strong
imagination, it is able to conduct the spirit of the more outward man
even to some absent and far distant object, but then that power lies
hid in the more outward man, as it were, in potentia,
or by way of possibility; neither is it brought into act, unless it
be roused up by the imagination, inflamed and agitated by a most
fervent and violent desire.
CHAP. V.
OF
THE IMAGINATIVE POWER AND THE MAGNETISM OF THE NATURAL SPIRITS,
MUMMIAL ATTRACTION, SYMPATHIES OF ASTRAL SPIRITS, WITH THEIR BODIES,
UPON WHICH THE WHOLE ART OF NECROMANCY IS FOUNDED.MOREOVER,
when as the blood is after some sort corrupted, then indeed all the
powers thereof which, without a foregoing excitation of the
imagination, were before in possibility, are of their own accord,
drawn forth into action; for, through corruption of the grain, the
seminal virtue, otherwise drowsy, and barren, breaks forth into act;
because, that seeing the essences of things, and their vital spirits,
know not how to putrify by the dissolution of the inferior harmony,
they sprung up as surviving afresh. For, from thence it is that every
occult property, the compact of their bodies being by foregoing
digestion, (which we call putrifaction) now dissolved, comes forth
free to hand, dispatched, and manifest for action.Therefore
when a wound, through the entrance of air, hath admitted of an
adverse quality, from whence the blood forthwith swells with heat or
rage in its lips, and otherwise becomes mattery, it happens, that the
blood in the wound just made, by reason of the said foreign quality,
doth now enter into the beginning of some kind of corruption (which
blood being also then received on the weapon or splinter thereof, is
besmeared with the magnetic unguent) the which entrance of
corruption, mediating the ecstatical power lurking potentially in the
blood, is brought forth into action; which power, because it is an
exiled returner unto its own body, by reason of the hidden ecstasy;
hence that blood bears an individual respect unto the blood of its
whole body. Then indeed the magnetic or attractive faculty is busied
in operating in the unguent, and through the mediation of the
ecstatical power (for so I call it for want of an etymology) sucks
out the hurtful quality from the lips of the wound, and at length,
through the mummial, balsamical, and attractive virtue, attained in
the unguent, the magnetism is perfected.So
thou hast now the positive reason of the natural magnetism in the
unguent, drawn from natural magic, whereunto the light of truth
assents; saying, "where the treasure is there is the heart
also."For
if the treasure be in heaven, then the heart, that is, the spirit of
the internal man, is in God, who is the paradise, who alone is
eternal life.But
if the treasure be fixed or laid up in frail and mortal things, then
also the heart and spirit of the external man is in fading things;
neither is there any cause of bringing in a mystical sense, by taking
not the spirit, but the cogitation and naked desire, for the heart;
for that would contain a frivolous thing, that wheresoever a man
should place his treasure in his thought or cogitation, there his
cogitation would be.Also
truth itself doth not interpret the present text mystically, and also
by an example adjoined, shews a local and real presence of the eagles
with the dead carcass, so also that the spirit of the inward man is
locally in the kingdom of God in us, which is God himself; and that
the heart or spirit of the animal or outward sensitive man is locally
about its treasure.What
wonder is it, that the astral spirits of carnal or animal men should,
as yet, after their funerals, shew themselves as in a bravery,
wandering about their buried treasure, whereunto the whole of
Necromancy (or art of divination by the calling of spirits) of the
antients hath enslaved itself?I
say, therefore, that the internal man is an animal or living
creature, making use of the reason and will of blood: but, in the
mean time, not barely an animal, but moreover the image of God.Logicians
therefore may see how defectively they define a man from the power of
rational discourse. But of these things more elsewhere.I
will therefore adjoin the magnetism of eagles to carcasses; for
neither are flying fowls endowed with such an acute smelling, that
they can, with a mutual consent, go from Italy into Africa unto
carcasses.For
neither is an odour so largely and widely spread; for the ample
latitude of the interposed sea hinders it, and also a certain
elementary property of consuming it nor is there any ground that thou
shouldest think these birds do perceive the dead carcasses at so far
a distance, with their sight, especially if those birds shall lie
southwards behind a mountain.But
what need is there to enforce the magnetism of fowls by many
arguments, since God himself, who is the becoming and end of
philosophy, doth expressly determine the same process to be of the
heart and treasure, with these birds and the carcass, and so
interchangeably between these and them?For
if the eagles were led to their food, the carcasses, with the same
appetite whereby four-footed beasts are brought on to their pastures,
certainly he had said, in one word, that living creatures flock to
their food even as the heart of man to his treasure; which would
contain a falsehood: for neither doth the heart of man proceed unto
its treasure, that he may be filled therewith as living creatures do
to their meat; and therefore the comparison of the heart of man and
of the eagle lies not in the end for which they tend or incline to a
desire, but in the manner of tendency; namely that they are allured
and carried on by magnetism, really and locally.Therefore
the spirit and will of the blood fetched out of the wound, having
intruded itself into the ointment by the weapon being anointed
therewith, do tend towards their treasure, that is, the rest of the
blood as yet enjoying the life of the more inward man: but he saith
by a peculiar testimony, that the eagle is drawn to the carcass,
because she is called thereunto by an implanted and mummial spirit of
the carcass, but not by the odour of the putrifying body: for indeed
that animal, in assimilating, appropriates to himself only this
mummial spirit: for from thence it is said of the eagle, in a
peculiar manner, "my youth shall be renewed as the eagle's."For
truly the renewing of her youth proceeds from an essential extraction
of the mummial spirit being well refined by a certain singular
digestion proper to that fowl, and not from a bare eating of the
flesh of the carcass; otherwise dogs also and pies would be renewed,
which is false.Thou
wilt say, that it is a reason far-fetched in behalf of magnetism; but
what wilt thou then infer hereupon? If that which thou confesseth to
be far remote for thy capacity of understanding, that shall also with
thee be accounted to be fetched from far. Truly the book of Genesis
avoucheth, that in the blood of all living creatures doth their soul
exist.For
there are in the blood certain vital powers 1 ,
the which, as if they were soulified or enlivened, do demand revenge
from Heaven, yea, and judicial punishment from earthly judges on the
murderer; which powers, seeing they cannot be denied to inhabit
naturally in the blood, I see not why they can reject the magnetism
of the blood, as accounting it among the ridiculous works of Satan.This
I will say more, to wit, that those who walk in their sleep, do, by
no other guide than the spirit of the blood, that is, of the outward
man, walk up and down, perform business, climb walls, and manage
things that are otherwise impossible to those that are awake. I say,
by a magical virtue, natural to the more outward man; that Saint
Ambrose, although he was for distant in his body, yet was visibly
present at the funeral solemnities of Saint Martin; yet was he
spiritually present at those solemnities, in the visible spirit of
the external man, and no otherwise: for inasmuch as in that ecstasy
which is of the more internal man, many of the saints have seen many
and absent things. This is done without time and place, through the
superior powers of the soul being collected in unity, and by an
intellectual vision, but not by a visible presence; otherwise the
soul is not separated from the body, but in good earnest, or for
altogether; neither is it re-connected thereunto, which re-connexion,
notwithstanding, is otherwise natural or familiar to the spirit of
the more outward man.It
is not sufficient in so great a paradox, to have once, or by one
single reason, touched at the matter; it is to be further propagated,
and we must explain how a magnetical attraction happens also between
inanimate things, by a certain perceivance or feeling; not indeed
animal or sensitive, but natural.Which
thing, that it may be the more seriously done, it behoves us first to
shew what Satan can, of his own power, contribute to, and after what
manner he can co-operate in the merely wicked and impious actions of
witches: for, from thence it will appear unto what cause every effect
may be attributed.In
the next place, what that spiritual power may be which tends to a far
remote object; or what may be the action, passion, and skirmishing
between. natural spirits, or what may be the superiority of man as to
other inferior creatures; and, by consequence, why indeed our
unguent, being compounded of human mummies, do thoroughly cure horses
also. We will explain the matter in the following chapter.