io6 Paracelsus 



separation of their higher and lower principles takes 

 place. Up to that time they possess their astral bodies. 

 Such bodies are invisible to us, but they are visible to 

 them, and have sensation and perceptive faculties,^ and 

 they perform in their thoughts that which they have 

 been in the habit of performing during life, and believe 

 that they are performing it physically. They still remain 

 in the earth sphere, and Paracelsus calls them Cdballi, 

 LemureSy &c. They are still in full possession of their 

 earthly desires and passions : they attempt to satisfy 

 them, and are instinctively attracted to persons in whom 

 they find corresponding desires and passions, and to such 

 places where they may hope to satisfy them, by entering 

 into sympathy with such persons (mediums), and they are 

 therefore often inclined to instigate such mediumistic 

 persons to the commission of crimes and immoralities; 

 neither can they avoid doing so, because, by losing their 

 physical bodies, they have lost the necessary amount of 

 energy and will-power to exercise self-control and to 

 employ their reasoning faculties. They often haunt the 

 places where they used to spend their time during life,^ 

 thus attempting to find relief from their burning thirst 

 after the gratification of their desires. Wherever their 

 thoughts attract them, there they will go. If they have 

 committed some crime, they will be bound by repentance 

 to that place where it was perpetrated ; if they have a 

 treasure buried, care for their money will hold them 

 there; hatred, or desire for revenge, will tie them to 



* Sensation is an attribute of life. If life resides in the astral body, be 

 astral body will have sensation, and as long as that body is connected 

 sympathetically with the dead physical body, it may even feel any injury 

 inflicted upon the latter. The physical body, if it is inanimate, has no 

 sensation ; the latter belongs to the inner man. Wherever the centre of 

 consciousness is established, there is sensation. 



2 Books might be filled with reliable accounts of obsessions, of haunted 

 houses, and instances in which such ghosts have been seen are exceedingly 

 numerous. Some persons, that may not be able to see them, may feel 

 them instinctively, or even physically, like a cold wind, or like a current 

 of electricity passing through the body {see " Borderland "). 



