Page:Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia) (1651).djvu/408

 wisdom; and of the hair he saith, an hair of your head shall not perish; and in another place, the hairs of your head are numbred; for the Almighty God seeing he would have us to be his Images and like to himself, hath framed members, limbs, and figures after many ways laid open in us, according to the similitude of his hidden vertues, as it were signs keeping the same order and proportion to them: whence the Mecubals of the Hebrews say, that if a man capable of the Divine influence do make any member of his body clean and free from filthiness, then it becometh Habitale and proper seat of the secret limb of God, and of the vertue to the which the same name is ascribed: so that if that member want any thing, the name being invocated, whence it dependeth, it is presently heard effectually, according to that, I will hear him, because he hath known my name; and these are the great and hidden mysteries, concerning which it is not lawfull to publish more.

Chapter xiiii. Of the Gods of the gentiles, and souls of the Celestiall bodies, and what places were consecrated in times past, and to what Deities. The Philosophers have maintained, as we have shewed before, that the Heavens and Stars are Divine Animals, and their souls intellectuall, participating of the Divine mind; and they averre, that some separated substances are superior, others inferior to them, as it were governing and serving, which they call intelligences and Angels; moreover Plato himself affirmed, that Celestiall souls' are not confined to their bodies, as our souls to our bodies, but to be, where they will, and also that they rejoyce in the vision of God, and without any labor or pains do rule and move their bodies, and together in moving them do easily govern these inferior things; therefore they often called the souls of this kind, Gods, and appointed Divine honors for them, and dedicated prayers and