Page:Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia) (1651).djvu/573

 favour, be clean, within and without, in a clean place, because it is written in Leviticus, Every man who shall approach those thing which are consecrated, in whom there is uncleanness, shall perish before the Lord; Therefore wash your selves oft, and at the daies appointed, according to the mysteries of number, put on clean clothes, and abstain from all uncleanness, pollution, and lust; for the Gods will not hear that man (as Porphyry saith) who hath not abstained many dayes from venereous Acts; Be not thou coupled to a polluted or menstruous woman, neither to her who hath the Hemorhoides, touch not an unclean thing; nor a Carkass, whence Porphyry saith, whosoever shall touch a dead man, may not approach the Oracles, perhaps, because that by a certain affinity of the funeral ill odour, the mind is corrupted and made unfit to receive divine influences; Thou shalt wash, and anoynt, and perfume thy self, and shalt offer sacrifices: for God accepteth for a most sweet odour those things which are offered to him by a man purified and well disposed, and together with that perfume condescendeth to your prayer and oblation, as the Psalmist singeth; Let my prayer, O Lord, be directed to thee, as incense in thy sight; Moreover, the soul being the offspring and Image of God himself, is delighted in these perfumes and odours, receiving them by those nostrils, by the which it self also entred into this corporeal man, and by the which (as Job testifieth) the most lively spirits are sometimes sent forth, which cannot be retained in mans heart, boyling either through choler, or labor; whence some think that the faculty of smelling is the most lively and spiritual of all the senses. Further, perfumes, sacrifice, and unction penetrate all things, and open the gates of the Elements and of the Heavens, that through them a man can see the secrets of God, Heavenly things, and those things which are above the Heavens, and also those which descend from the Heavens, as Angels, and spirits of deep pits, and profound places, apparations of desart places, and doth make them to come to you, to appear visibly, and obey you; and they pacify all spirits, and attract them as the Loadstone Iron, and joyn them with the elements, and cause the spirits to assume bodies: for truly the spiritual body is very much incrassated by them, and made more gross: for it liveth by vapours, perfumes and the odours of sacrifices: