PNEUMATOLOGY 113 



body of their creator, and there is sometimes such an 

 intimate connection between them and the body of their 

 progenitors, that if an injury is inflicted upon the former, 

 it will be transmitted to the latter. They are parasites 

 drawing vitality out of the persons to whom they are 

 attracted, and they exhaust their vitality very soon, if 

 such persons are not very strong." ^ 



" Some such beings influence men according to their 

 qualities; they watch them, increase and deepen their 

 faults, find excuses for their mistakes, cause them to 

 wish for the success of evil actions, and gradually absorb 

 their vitality. They fortify and support the imagination 

 in the operations of sorcery ; they sometimes utter false 

 prophecies and give out misleading oracles. If a man 

 has a strong and evil imagination, and wishes to injure 

 another, such beings are always ready to lend a helping 

 hand for the accomplishment of his purpose." Such 

 beings render their victims insane, if the latter are too 

 weak to resist their influence. " A healthy and pure 

 person cannot become obsessed by them, because such 

 Larvae can only act upon men if they make room for 

 them in their minds. A healthy mind is a castle that 

 cannot be invaded without the will of its master; but 

 if lusts are allowed to enter, they excite the passions 

 of men and women, they create cravings in them, they 

 produce bad thoughts which act injuriously upon the 

 brain; they sharpen the animal intellect and suffocate 

 the moral sense. Evil spirits obsess only those human 

 beings in whom the animal nature is preponderating. 

 Minds that are illumined by the spirit of truth cannot 



* Paracelsus gives here a very good description of some of the modern 

 spirit-materialisation. The " airy appendix " (astral form) usually comes 

 out of the left side of the medium, in the region of the spleen. Mediums 

 need not necessarily be depraved persons, but there must be some fault in 

 their organisation, else the combination of their principles would be too 

 strong to part with some of their astral substance. Materialising mediums 

 may be very good people, but solitary lives and vicious habits lead to the 

 development of such mediumship, which proves t? be very injurious in 

 the end. 



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