Page:Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia) (1651).djvu/157

men have slept for many yeers together, and in the time of sleep, untill they awaked, there was no alteration in them, as to make them seem older: The same doth Pliny testifie of a certain boy, whom he saith, being wearied with heat, and his journey, slept fifty seven yeers in a Cave. We read also that Epimenides Gnosius slept fifty seven yeers in a Cave. Hence the proverb arose, To outsleep Epimenides. M. Damascenus tels, that in his time a certain country man being wearied in Germany, slept for the space of a whole Autumn, and the Winter following, under a heap of hay, untill the Summer, when the hay began to be eaten up, then he was found awakened as a man halfe dead, and out of his wits. Eclesiasticall Histories confirm this opinion concerning the seven sleepers, whom they say slept 196 yeers. There was in Norvegia a Cave in a high Sea shore, where, as Paulus Diaconus, and Methodius the Martyr write, seven men lay sleeping a long time without corruption, and the people that went in to disturb them were contracted, or drawn together, so that after a while, being forewarned by that punishment, they durst not hurt them. Now Xenocrates, a man of no mean repute amongst Philosophers was of opinion, that this long sleeping was appointed by God as a punishment for some certain sins. But Marcus Damascenus proves it by many reasons to be possible, and naturall, neither doth he think it irrationall, that some should without meat, and drink, and avoyding excrements, without consuming, or corruption, sleep many moneths. And this may befall a man by reason of some poisonous potion, or sleepy disease, or such like causes, for certain dayes, moneths, or years, according to the intention, or remission of the power of the medicine, or of the passions of their mind. And Physitians say that there are some Antidotes, of which they that take too great a potion, shall be able to endure hunger a long time, as Elias in former time being fed with a certain food by an Angell, walked, and fasted in the strength of that meat, fourty dayes. And John Bocatius makes mention of a man in his time, in Venice, who would every yeer fast four dayes without any meat. But that was a greater wonder, that there was