86 PARACELSUS 



soul which has no spiritual power to resist ! Therefore, 

 such conjurers do not deal with the spirits of the dead, 

 but with the powers of evil and the fathers of lies." ^ 



The Elementals are also the beings which may pro- 

 duce so-called " physical manifestations," cause the ap- 

 pearance and disappearance of objects, throw stones, &c. 

 In a fragment entitled " De Sagis et Earum Operibiis " 

 (On Witches and their Arts), cap. 3, he says: "In 

 regard to such things, you ought to know that they are 

 natural, and that no one can justly say otherwise but 

 that Nature produces them, because, if, for instance, a 

 blooming rose is brought in the midst of winter into a 

 country where there are no roses, an ordinary man will 

 think that such a thing took place in contravention to 

 Nature's laws ; but the Magus (the wise), who knows by 

 what process such phenomena are produced, knows that 

 they are produced according to the law of Nature, because 

 such a flower is brought from a country where it has 

 grown in a natural manner, and where there is no winter 

 at that time. Thus, ice or snow may be brought with 

 the same facility into a warm country in the midst of 

 summer from another country in which it is winter. 

 Ignorant persons should be informed that the Magus 

 creates neither roses nor snow, but that he can receive 

 them from places where they already exist." ^ 



1 This sentence may seem to throw discredit upon the practices of 

 modern spiritualists, but not all the practices of spiritualists consist in 

 dealing with the sidereal bodies of the dead. Such practices do not 

 deserve the name SpiritVAxLism, but ought to be looked upon as Spintism, 

 and when the laws upon which our modern Spiritualism and Spiritism are 

 based are known, it will be easy enough to make a distinction. Spirit- 

 ualism means a dealing with spiritual intelligences ; Spiritism, a dealing 

 with unintelligent or semi-intelligent invisible forms. A spiritualist 

 enters into the sphere of a spirit ; that is to say, he enters en rapport 

 with a certain mind, and writes or speaks in the spirit of the latter, 

 making himself a medium through which the intelligence of the latter 

 can act, and by which means he may obtain great truths. The spiritist 

 permits an invisible entity to enter bodily into his own physical form and 

 submits his body to the will of the invisible stranger. 



* The fact that such material objects are occasionally brought by 



