Page:Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia) (1651).djvu/500

 I beseech thee (saith he) Ulysses, be mindful of mee, and leave mee not unburied; lest being unburied I become an object of the Gods wrath. But the spirit of a man, which is of a sacred nature, and divine offspring, because it is alwaies faultless, becomes uncapable of any punishment; But the soul if it hath done well, rejoyceth together with the spirit, and going forth with its Aerial Chariot, passeth freely to the quires of the Heroes, or reacheth heaven, where it enjoys all its senses, and powers, a perpetuall blessed felicity, a perfect knowledge of all things, as also the divine vision, and possession of the kingdom of heaven, and being made partaker of the divine power bestows freely divers gifts upon these inferiors, as if it were an immortal God. But if it hath done ill, the spirit judgeth it, and leaves it to the pleasure of the divel, and the sad soul wanders about Hell without a spirit, like an image, as Dido complaines in Virgil;

And now the great image of mee shall go   Under the earth -

Wherefore then this soul being voyde of an intelligible essence, and being left to the power of a furious phantasy, is ever subjected by the torment of corporeall qualities, knowing that it is by the just judgement of God, for ever deprived of the divine vision (to which it was created) for its sins: the absence of which divine vision, as the Scripture testifies, is the ground of all evils, and the most greivous punishment of all, which the Scripture calls the pouring down of the wrath of God. This image therefore of the soul enters into the ghost as an Aerial body, with which being covered doth sometimes advise friends, sometimes stir up enemies, as Dido threatens Aeneas in Virgil saying,

I'll hunt thee, and thee tortures I will give.

For when the soul is separated from the body, the perturbations of the memory and sense remain. The Platonists say, that the souls, especially of them that are slain, stir up enemies, mans indignation not so much doing of it, as the divine Nemesis and Demon foreseeing, and permitting of it. So the spirit of Naboth (as the masters of the Hebrews interpret it) because in the end of its life it went forth with a desire of revenge, was made to execute revenge, the spirit of a lye, and went forth, God permitting it, a lying spirit in the mouth of all the