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perhaps more concerning the inner nature of Magic than any other writer, and does not even hesitate to give a minute description of the processes used in it. 1 He says: "To be observed concerning wax images: if I bear malice in my will against anyone, that malice must be carried out by some medium or corpus [body]. Thus it is possible for my spirit to stab or wound another person without help from my body in using a sword, merely by my fervent desire. Therefore it is also possible for me to convey my opponent's spirit into the image by my will and then to deform or paralyze it at pleasure. You must know, that the influence of the will is a great point in medicine. For if a man hate another and begrudge him anything good, it is possible that if he curse him, that curse may take effect. This occurs also with animals and more easily than with men; for the spirit of man has far greater power of resistance than that of animals." 2
And p. 375: "It follows from this, that one image has magic power over another, not by virtue of the characters or anything of that kind impressed on the virgin wax; but the imagination overcomes its own constellation, so as to become a means for fulfilling the will of its heaven, i.e. of its man."
p. 334: "All the imagining of man comes from his heart. The heart is the sun of the microcosm. And all the imagining of man passes from the small sun of the microcosm into the sun of the great Universe, into the heart of the macrocosm. Thus the imaginatio of the microcosm is a seed which becomes material," &c.
1 Theophrastus Paracelsus, Strassburg edition in two folio vols., 1603;
vol. i. pp. 91, 353, et segq. and p. 789; vol. ii. pp. 362, 496.
2 Vol. i. p. 19.
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