Page:Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia) (1651).djvu/524

 is an illustration of the soul coming from the Gods, or Demons. Whence this verse of Ovid,

"God is in us, Commerces of the throne of God, that spirit from above came down."

Plato defines this by alienation, and binding; for he abstracts from those by which the corporeal senses are stirred up, and being estranged from an animal man, adheres to a diety from whom it receives those things which it cannot search into by its own power; for when the minde is free, and at liberty, the reines of the body being loosed, and going forth as out of a close prison, transcends the bonds of the members, and nothing hindring of it, being stirred up by its own instigations, and instigated by a divine spirit, comprehends all things, and foretells future things. Now there are four kinds of divine phrensie proceeding from several dieties, viz. from the Muses, from Dionysius, from Apollo, and from Venus. The first phrensie therefore proceeding from the Muses, stirs up and tempers the mind, and makes it divine by drawing superior things to inferior things by things natural. Now Muses are the souls of the celestial spheres, according to which there are found several degrees, by which there is an attraction of superior things to inferior. The inferior of these resembling the sphear of the Moon, possesseth those things which are from vegetables, as plants, fruits of trees, roots, and those which are from harder matters, as Stones, Metals, their alligations, and suspensions. So it is said that the stone Selenites i.e. Moon-Stone, and the stone of the Civet-cat cause divination; also Vervain, and the Hearb Theangelis cause soothsaying, as hath been ahove said. The second degree resembling Mercury, possesseth those things which are from animals, and which are compounded of the mixtion