1T8 At)VAS*c£:iiEKT OP LtAb^^IifQ. fr.OOrt W. 



the Deity's presence, wliicli tlie ancients called by the iian.e 

 of sacred fury, whereas in native divination the souJ. is 

 rather at its ease and free. 



Fascination is the power and intense act of the imagina- 

 tion upon the body of another. And here the school of 

 Paracelsus, and the pretenders to natural magic, abusively 

 so called, have almost made the force and apprehension (>f 

 the imagination equal to the power of faith, and capable 

 of working miracles ; others keeping nearer to truth, and 

 attentively considering the secret energies and impressions of 

 things, the irradiations of the senses, the transmissions of 

 thought from one to another, and the conveyances of mag- 

 netic virtues, are of opinion that impressions, conveyances, 

 and communications, might be made from spirit to spirit, 

 because spirit is of all things the most powerful in opera- 

 tion and easiest to work on; whence many opinions have 

 spread abroad of master spirits, of men ominous and un- 

 lucky, of the strokes of love, envy, and the like. And this 

 is attended with the inquiry, how the imagination may be 

 heightened and fortified ; for if a strong imagination has 

 such power, it is worth knowing by what means to exalt 

 and raise it.^ 



But here a palliative or defence of a great part of cere- 

 monial magic would slily and indirectly insinuate itself, under 

 a specious pretence that ceremonies, characters, charms, ges- 

 ticulations, amulets, and the like, have not their power from 

 any tacit or binding contract with evil spirits, but that these 

 serve only to strengthen and raise the imagination of such 

 as use them, in the same manner as images have prevailed 

 in religion for fixing men's minds in the contemplation of 

 things and raising the devotion in prayer. But allowing 

 the force of imagina,tion to be great, and that ceremonies 

 do raise and strengthen it; allowing also, that ceremonies 

 may be sincerely used to that end, as a physical remedy, 

 without the least design of thereby procuring the assist- 

 since of spirits; yet ought they still to be held unlawful, 



' Tlie ways of working upon or with the imagination, are touched 

 by the author, in his " Sylva Sylvarum," under the article Imaginatioi.. 

 See more to this purpose in "Des Cartes upon the Passions," " Ca- 

 saubou upon Enthusiasm," Father Malbranche's " Recherclie de 1« 

 V^rit^," and Lord Shaftesbury's " Lv'jtter upon Enthusiasm." Shaw, 



