Page:Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia) (1651).djvu/513

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I doubt not but that that rich man is to be understood in the flames of pains, and that poor man in the refreshment of joyes; but how that flame of hell, that bosom of Abraham, that tongue of the rich man, that torment of thirst, that drop of cooling, are to be understood, it is hardly found out by the modest searcher, but by the contentious never; but these things being for this present omitted, we hasten to further matters and will dispute concerning the restitution of souls.

Chapter xlii. By what wayes the Magicians and Necromancers do think they can call forth the souls of the dead. By the things which have been already spoken, it is manifest that souls after death do as yet love their body which they left, as those souls do whose bodies want a due buriall: or have left their bodies by violent death, and as yet wander about their carkasses in a troubled and moist spirit, being as it were allured by something that hath an affinity with them; the means being known by the which in times past they were joyned to their bodi, they may easily be called forth & allured by the like vapours, liquors and savours, certain artificiall lights being also used, songs, sounds and such like, which do move the imaginative and spirituall Harmony of the soul; also sacred invocations, and such like, which belong to Religion, ought not to be neglected, by reason of the portion of the rationall soul, which is above nature: So the witch is said to have called up Samuel, and the Thessalian prophetesse in Lucan, to have caused a carcasse to stand upright: Hence we read in Poets, and those who relate these things, that the souls of the dead cannot be called up without blood and a carkasse: but their shadowes to be easily allured by the fumigations of these things; eggs being also used, and milk, honey, oil, wine, water, flowre, as it were yeelding a fit medicine for the souls to reassume their bodies, as you may see in Homer, where Circe at large instructeth Ulysses; yet they think, that these things can be done in those places only where these kinds of souls are known to be most conversant, either by reason of some affinity, as their dead body alluring them, or by reason of some affection imprinted in their life, drawing the soul itself to certain places, or by reason of some hellish nature of the place; and therefore fit for the punishing or purging of souls: places of this kind are best known by the meeting of nocturnall visions and incursions, and such like Phantasmes; Some are sufficiently known by themselves, as buriall places and places of execution, and where publike slaughters have lately been made, or where the carkasses of the slain, not as yet expiated, nor rightly buried, were some few yeers since put into the ground; for expiation and exorcisation of any place, and also the holy right of buriall being duely perfomeed to the bodies, oftentimes prohibiteth the souls themselves to come up, and driveth them farther off the places of judgement; Hence Necromancy hath its name, because it worketh on the bodies of the dead, and giveth answers by the ghosts and apparitions of the dead, and subterrany spirits, alluring