Page:Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia) (1651).djvu/504

 being carried abroad, through woods, seas, fire, air, and through fearfull infernall places, and sometimes of being taken, and tormented by devils. All which we conceive happens to them after death no otherwise then in this life to those who are taken with a phrensie, and some other melancholy distemper, or to those who are affrighted with horrible things seen in dreams, and are thereby tormented, as if those things did really happen to them, which truely are not reall, but only species of them apprehended in imagination: even so do horrible representations of sins terrifie those souls after death as if they were in a dream, and the guilt of wickedness drives them headlong through divers places; which therefore Orpheus calls the people of dreams, saying, the gates of Pluto cannot be unlocked; within is a people of dreams; such wicked souls therefore enjoying no good places, when wandring in an Aeriall body, they represent any form to our sight, are called hags, and goblins, inoffensive to them that are good, but hurtfull to the wicked, appearing one while in thinner bodies, another time in grosser, in the shape of divers animals, and monsters, whose conditions they had in their life time, as sings the Poet,

Then divers forms, and shapes of brutes appear; For he becomes a tyger, swine, and bear, A skalie dragon, and a lionesse, Or doth from fire a dreadfull noise expresse; He doth transmute himself to divers looks, To fire, wild beasts, and into running brooks.

For the impure soul of a man, who in this life contracted too great a habit to its body, doth by a certain inward affection of the elementall body frame another body to it self of the vapours of the elements, refreshing as it were from an easie matter as it were with a suck, that body which is continually vanishing; to which being moreover enslaved as to a prison, and sensible instrument by a certain divine Law, doth in it suffer cold, and heat, and whatsoever annoys the body, spirit, and sense, as stinks,