148 PARACELSUS 



the Holy Ghost, and if you live in God He will over- 

 shadow you with that power, and it will teach you 

 the laws of God, and you will be guided like other 

 saints, even as the apostles Peter or Paul " {De Sanc- 

 toriom Beneficiis Vindictis). 



" Faith has a great deal more power than the physical 

 body. You are visible and corporeal, but there is 

 still an invisible man in you, and that invisible man 

 is yourself too. Each act performed by your body is 

 performed by the invisible man. The one acts in a 

 visible, the other in an invisible, manner. If an in- 

 jury is inflicted upon the invisible man, that injury will 

 be reproduced on his visible body.^ Such things can 

 be done, but it is very wrong to attempt them. Who- 

 ever attempts them is tempting God, and he who 

 succeeds will seriously injure his own soul. There have 

 been people who have made images of wax representing 

 certain persons of the opposite sex, and they melted 

 such forms by the heat of a light, to assist their own 

 evil imagination, and by using their faith they have 

 succeeded in enticing those persons into an unlawful 

 love. The Chaldseans and Egyptians used to make 

 images according to the constellations of the stars, and 

 these images moved and talked, but they did not know 

 the powers that acted in them. Such things are done 

 by faith, but it is not the true faith in God, but a 

 devilish faith, supported by the desire for evil ; because 

 a faith that kills and injures men is not good ; a true 

 faith can only come from the source of all good, in 



1 What a great field would be opened to the delight of our "physio- 

 logical institutes " and vivisectors for the gratification of their morbid 

 scientific curiosity if this art were taught, or if they believed in its 

 possibility ! Fortunately the scepticism of the fool is his own best pro- 

 tection against the evils that would arise from premature knowledge, 

 and also the best protection for mankind against the injury he would 

 otherwise inflict. But that such things can be done will be clear to 

 every intelligent student of mediaeval witchcraft, and they are still done 

 this very day, several such cases having recently come within the per- 

 gonal knowledge of the author. 



