Page:Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia) (1651).djvu/477

 Of the Animasticall order, and the Heros.

After the Quires of the blessed spirits, the Animastical order is the next, which the Hebrew Theologians call Issim, that is, strong and mighty men; the Magicians of the Gentiles, call Heroes and Demi-gods, or gods half men: whom Fulgentius, an Author not to be contemned, supposeth were so called, either because that for the meanness of their desert they are not judged worthy of Heaven, nor yet are accounted Terresterial for the reverence of Grace; of this kind in old time were Priapus, Hippo, Vertumnus; or because they being eminent in this life for divine vertues, and benefits for mankinde, after this mortal man put off, are translated into the quire of the blessed gods; alwayes providing for mortal men the same vertues and benefits which they long since had in this life: or because they were procreated from the secret seed of the superiors, whom they think were begotten by the mixture of Gods or Angels with men, & therefore obtaining a certain middle nature, so as they are neither Angels nor men: which opinion Lactantius also followeth; and there are even at this time those who have commerce and conjugall mixture with spirits; and all now believe that Merline, a British Prophet, was the son of a Spirit, and born of a virgin: and also they imagined, that Plato the Prince of wisdome was born of a virgin, impregnated by a phantasme of Apollo. And it is delivered in Histories, that certain women of the Gothes (which they call Alrumnæ) eminent both for beauty and ingenuity, long since at Filimire, or (as others say) at Idanthresie, going forth out of the tents of the King of the Gothes, wandred in the desarts of Scythia in Asia beyond the Marshes of Meotis, and there being Impregnated by Fanni and Satyres, brought forth the first Hunni; more over Psellus is the Author, that Spirits sometimes cast forth seed, from the which certain little