Page:Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia) (1651).djvu/100

 and the hair of a Horse taile put into Water, receiveth life, and is turned into a pernicious Worm. And there is an art wherewith by a Hen sitting upon Eggs may be generated a form like to a man, which I have seen, & knww how to make, which Magicians say hath in it wonderfull vertues, and this they call the true Mandrake. You must therefore know which, and what kind of matters are either of nature, or art, begun, or perfected, or compounded of more things, and what Celestiall influencies they are able to receive. For a Congruity of naturall things is sufficient for the receiving of influence from Celestiall; because when nothing doth hinder the Celestials to send forth their lights upon inferiours, they suffer no matter to be destitute of their vertue. Wherefore as much matter as is perfect, and pure, is not unfit to receive the Celestiall influence. For that is the binding and continuity of the matter to the soul of the world, which doth so daily flow in upon things naturall, and all things which nature hath prepared, that it is impossible that a prepared matter should not receive life, or a more noble form.

Platonists, together with Hermes, say, and Jarchus Brachmanus, and the Mecubals of the Hebrews confess, that all sublunary things are subject to generation, and corruption, and that also there are the same things in the Celestiall world, but after a Celestiall manner, as also in the intellectuall world, but in a far more perfect, and better fashion, and manner, but in the most perfect manner of all in the exemplary. And after this course, that every inferiour thing should in its kind answer its superiour, and through this the supream it self, and receive from heaven that Celestiall power they call the quintessence, or the spirit of the