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CHAP. IX.

OF THE EXCITING OR STIRRING UP THE MAGICAL VIRTUE.

EVERY magical virtue therefore stands in need of an excitement, by which a certain spiritual vapour is stirred up, by reason whereof the phantasy which profoundly sleeps is awakened, and there begins an action of the corporeal spirit, as a medium, which is that of Magnetism, and is excited by a fore-going touch.

There is a magical virtue, being as it were abstracted from the body, which is wrought by the stirring up of the power of the soul, from whence there are made most potent procreations, and most famous impressions, and strong effects, so that nature is on every side a magicianness, and acts by her own phantasy; and by how much the more spiritual her phantasy is, so much the more powerful it is, therefore the denomination of magic is truly proportionable or concordant.

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Now the highest sort of magic is that which is stirred up from an intellectual conception, and indeed that of the inward man is only to be excited by the Holy Spirit, and by his gift the Cabala; but that of the external man is stirred up by a strong imagination, by a daily and heightened speculation, and, in witches, by the devil.

But the magical virtue of the exhaled spirituous vapour, or subtil spirits sent from the body, which before lay in potentia, or by way of possibility only, is either excited by a more strong imagination, the magician making use of the blood as a medium, and establishing his kindled entity thereon, or by the ascending phantasy of the weapon salve, the exciteress of the property lying in the blood; else by a foregoing appointment or disposition of the blood unto corruption, viz. whereby the elements are disposed unto a separation, and the essences (which cannot putrify) and the essential phantasies, which lay hid in the properties come forth into action.

The phantasy therefore, of any subject whatsoever has obtained a strong appetite to the spirit of another thing, for the moving of some certain thing in place, for the attracting, repelling, or expulsion thereof; and there and not elsewhere we acknowledge magnetism as the natural magical endowment of that thing firmly planted in it by God.

There is therefore a certain formal property separated from sympathetical and abstruse qualities; because the motive phantasy of these qualities do not directly fly unto a local motion, but only to an alternative motion of the object. Now it is sufficient that (if a man happens to receive many wounds in his body) blood be had only from one of these wounds, and from this one the rest are cured also, because that blood keeps a concordant harmony with the spirit of the whole, and draws forth from the same the offensive quality communicated, not only to the lips of the wound, but to the whole man, for from one wound only the whole man is liable to grow feverish.

Therefore the outchased blood being received on the weapon is introduced into the magnetic unguent.

For then the phantasy of the blood, being otherwise as yet drowsy and slow to action, being stirred up by the virtue of the magnetic unguent, and there finding

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the balsamic virtue of it, desires the quality induced into it, to be bestowed on itself throughout, and from thence by a spiritual magnetism to draw out all the strange tincture of the wound, which, seeing it cannot fitly enough effect by itself, it implores the aid of the moss, blood, fat, and mummy, which are conjoined together into such a balsam, which not but by its own phantasy becomes also medicinal, magnetical, and is also a tractor of all the strange qualities out of the body, whose fresh blood, abounding with spirit, is carried unto it, whether it shall be that of a man or any other living creature. The phantasy therefore is a returner, or reducible and ecstatical, from part of the blood that is fresh and newly brought unto the unguent; but the magnetic attraction began in the blood is perfected by the medicinal virtue of the unguent; not that the unguent draws the infirmity of the wound unto itself, but it alters the blood newly brought unto it, in its spirit, and makes it medicinal, and stirs up the power thereof: from thence it contracts a certain medicinal virtue, which returns unto its whole body to correct the spirit of the blood throughout the whole man. Now, to manifest a great mystery, viz. to shew that in man there is placed a great efficacy whereby he may be able only by his beck, (as we before mentioned) nod or phantasy, to act out of himself, and to imprint a virtue, a certain influence which afterwards perseveres, or constantly subsists by itself, and acts upon objects at a very great distance; by which only mystery, those things which we have spoken (relative to ideal entity conveyed in a spiritual fewel, and departing far from home to execute its offices, concerning the magnetism of all things begotten in the imagination of man, as in that which is proper to every thing, and also concerning the magical superiority of men over all other bodies,) will plainly and conspicuously appear.