Page:Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia) (1651).djvu/536

 is too dull and unpolished, that it cannot receive the species and representations which flow from the superior intellect, and retain them when received, this man is altogether unfit for the soothsaying by dreams. Therefore it is necessary, that he who would receive true dreams, should keep a pure, undisturbed, and an undisquieted imaginative spirit, and so compose it, that it may be made worthy of the knowledge and government by the mind and understanding: for such a spirit is most fit for prophesying, and (as Sinesius saith) is a most clear glass of all the Images which flow everywhere from all things: when therefore we are sound in body, not disturbed in mind, not dulled by meat or drink, nor sad through poverty, nor provoked by any vice of lust or wrath, but chastly going to bed, fall asleep, then our pure and divine soul being loosed from all hurtfull thoughts, and now freed by dreaming, is endowed with this divine spirit as an instrument, and doth receive those beams and representations which are darted down, and shine forth from the divine minde into it self; and as it were in a deifying glass, it doth far more certainly, clearly, and efficaciously behold all things, then by the Vulgar enquiry of the intellect, and by the discourse of reason; the divine power instructing the soul, being invited to their society by the opportunity of the nocturnal solitariness; neither further will that deity be wanting to him when he is awaked, which ruleth all his actions: whosoever therefore doth, by quiet and religious meditation, and by a diet temperate and moderated according to nature, preserve his spirit pure, doth very much prepare himself, that by this means he may become divine, and knowing all things; but whosoever, on the contrary, doth languish with a phantastick spirit, receiveth not perspicuous and distinct visions, but even as the divine sight, by reason of its weakness, Judgeth confusedly and indistinctly; and also when we are overcome with wine and drunkenness, then our spirit being oppressed with noxious vapours (as a troubled water is wont to appear in divers forms) is deceived, & waxeth dull; for which cause Amphiarus the Prophet (as we read in Philostratus) commanded those,