Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/385

 agere extra se et imprimere virtutem aliquam influentiam deinceps perseverantem et agentem in obiectum longissime absens.

ANIMAL MAGNETISM AND MAGIC. 353

[Hitherto I have refrained from proclaiming the immense mystery, thus from showing clearly that there resides in man an energy in virtue of which he is able by his mere will and imagination to act outside himself and to express force, as also an influence, which persists and can reach an object however remote.]

P. Pomponatius also says: Sic contigit tales esse homines, qui habeant eiusmodi vires in potentia, et per vim imaginativam et desiderativam cum actu operantur, talis virtus exit ad actum, et afficit sanguinem et spiritum, quae per evaporationem petunt ad extra et producunt tales effectus. 1 [And so it happens that there are humans who have in their power such forces; and when they actually become evident through imagination and appetitive power, such virtue comes into action and influences blood and spirit. By exhalation such forces press outward, and produce effects like this.]

Jane Leade, an English mystic visionary of Cromwell's time and pupil of Pordage, has given us some very curious disclosures of this kind. She is led to Magic in a very singular way. For, as the doctrine of their becoming one with the God of their religion is a fundamental characteristic of all Mystics, so is it with Jane Leade also. Now, with her however, the human will has its share in the omnipotence of the Divine will as a consequence of the two having become one, and accordingly acquires magic power. What other magicians therefore believe to be due to a compact with the Devil, she attributes to her becoming one with her God. Her Magic is therefore in the highest sense white Magic. Besides, this alters nothing as to the practice and results. She is reserved and mysterious, as people had to be in those times; still it is easy to see that the thing is not a mere theoretical corollary, but that it has sprung from knowledge and experience obtained in another way.

It is in her Revelation of Revelations 2 that we find the chief passage; but the following one, which is rather an abridgment than a literal quotation and is contained in [M. Gregor Conrad] Horst's Zauberbibliothek, 3 comes from the same book: "Magic power enables its possessor to rule over

1 De incantationibus, Opera Basiliensa. 1567, p. 44.

2 Offenbarung der Offenbarung, German translation, Amsterdam, 1695, pp. 126 to 151, especially the pages headed "the power of calm will."

3 Horst, Zauberbibliothek [Library of Magic], 1820–1821, vol. i. p. 325.

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