Page:Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia) (1651).djvu/498

 of this kinde is Adrastia, viz. an inevitable power of divine laws, by the which in courses to come, is recompensed to every one according to the reason and merits of his former life; so as he who unjustly ruled in the former life, in the other life should relapse into a servile state; he which hath polluted his hands with blood, should be compelled to undergo retaliation; he that lived a brutish life, should be precipitated and revolved into a brutish body; of these things Plotinus writeth in his book of the proper Genius of every one; saying, whosoever have kept humane propriety, do again arise men: but whosoever have used sense only, do return brute animals: yet so, as those who use sense especially together with wrath, do arise wild beasts; but whosoever use sense by concupisence and pleasure, do return lecherous and gluttenous beasts: but if they shall live, not by sense together with them, so much as by the degeneration of sense, plants grow up again with them; for the vitals only, or chiefly, are living, & all their care was that they might be turned into plants. But they which have lived being too much allured by musick, not being depraved in other things, are born again musical animals; and they which have raigned without reason, become Eagles, unles they have been tainted with any wickedness. But he which hath lived civilly and vertuously, returnes a man. And Solomon himself in the Proverbs calls man sometimes a Lion, Tiger, Bear, a Boare. Sometimes a Hare, a hunting dog, a Cony; sometimes a Pismire, a Hedghog, a Serpent, a Spider; sometimes an Eagle, a Stork, a Cock, or any other bird, and many such as these. But the Cabalists of the Hebrews do not admit that souls are turned into brutes: Yet they do not deny but that they that have wholly lost their reason, shall in an other life be left to a brutish affection and imagination: they assert also that souls are revolved hither thrice, and no more; because this number seems sufficiently to suffice for the purgation of sins, according to that of Job, He hath delivered my soul that it should not proceed to death, but should live, and see the light. Behold all these things doth God work three times through each, that he might reduce their souls from