PNEUMATOLOGY 109 



the source of all good with all our heart, mind, and 

 desire, we may be sure never to fall into the power of 

 evil ; but priestly ceremonies — the sprinkling of water, 

 the burning of incense, and the singing of incantations — 

 are the inventions of clerical vanity, and they therefore 

 take their origin from the source of all evil. Ceremonies 

 have been instituted originally to give an external form 

 to an internal act ; but where the internal power to 

 perform such acts does not exist, a ceremony will be of 

 no avail except to attract such spirits as may love to 

 mock at our foolishness " (Fhilosophia Occulta). 



Another class consists of the Incubi and Succubi, of 

 which rabbinical traditions speak in an allegorical manner 

 as having been created by the spilling of the seed of 

 Adam (the animal man) while engaged with Lilith, his 

 first wife (meaning a morbid imagination). Paracelsus 

 says in his book, " De Origine Morborum Invisibilium," 

 lib. iii : " Imagination ^ is the cause of Incubi and Suc- 

 cubi and fluidic Larvae. The Incubi are male and the 

 Succubi female beings. Tbey are the outgrowths of an 

 intense and lewd imagination of men or women, and after 

 they take form they are carried away. They are formed of 

 the sperma found in the imagination of those who commit 

 the unnatural sin of Onan in thought and desire. Coming 

 as it does from the imagination alone, it is no true 

 sperma, but only a corrupted salt (essence). Only a 

 seed that enters the organs which Nature provided for 

 its development can grow into a body.^ If seed is not 



^ The word "imagination" ought not to be mistaken for empty fancy ; 

 it means the power of the mind to form into a substantial image the in- 

 fluences which are actually present. 



^ It is here not the question of merely visible and tangible things, but 

 of the products of the mind, which are also substantial, and which may 

 become visible and tangible under certain conditions. 



"The invisible body as well as the terrestrial body act each in its own 

 way. That which the visible body performs is done with its hands ; the 

 inner man works by means of his imagination and will. The works of 

 the former appear to us real ; those of the latter like shadows " {Morb, 

 Jnvisib., iii.). 



