Page:Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia) (1651).djvu/507

 not unlike to this, taken out of the interpreters of the Delphi; viz. that there was a certain infernall Demon, which they called Eurinomus, who would eat the flesh of dead men, and devour it so that the bones would scarce be left. We read also in the Chronicles of the Cretensians, that the ghosts which they call Catechanæ were wont to return back into their bodies, and go to their wives, and lie with them; for the avoyding of which, and that they might annoy their wives no more, it was provided in the common lawes that the heart of them that did arise should be thrust thorow with a nail, and their whole carcasse be burnt. These without doubt are wonderfull things, and scarce credible, but that those lawes, and ancient Histories make them credible. Neither is it altogether strange in Christian Religion that many souls were restored to their bodies, before the universall resurrection. Moreover we beleeve that many by the singular favour of God are together with their bodies received to glory, and that many went down alive to hell. And we have heard that oftentimes the bodies of the dead were by the devils taken from the graves, without doubt for no other use then to be imprisoned, and tomented in their hands. And to these prisons and bonds of their bodies there are added also the possessions of most filthy and abominable places, where are Aetnean fires, gulfes of water, the shakings of thunder, and lightening, gapings of the Earth, and where the region is void of light, and receives not the rayes of the Sun, and knows not the light of the Stars, but is alwayes dark. Whither Ulysses is reported in Homer to come, when he sings,

Here people are that be Cymmerian nam'd,   Drown'd in perpetuall darkness, it is fam'd,    Whom rising, nor the setwthng Sun doth see, But with perpetuall night oppressed be.

Neither are those mere fables which many have recorded of the cave of Patricius, of the den of Vulcan of the Aetnean caves, and of the den of Nursia, many that have seen and known