The Anatomy of Melancholy

as the angel carried Habakkuk to Daniel, and as Philip the deacon was carried away by the Spirit after baptizing the eunuch. Pythagoras and Apollonius likewise transported themselves and others, among many similar feats. These writers also believe that spirits can show mortal eyes castles in the air, palaces, armies, apparitions, portents and other strange sights; produce smells, tastes and so on; and deceive all the senses.

They believe, too, that spirits can foretell future events and perform many strange miracles. Juno’s image spoke to Camillus, and Fortune’s statue to the Roman matrons, among many such cases. Zanchi, Bodin, Spondanus and others think that spirits produce real transformations: Nebuchadnezzar was actually changed into a beast, Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt, and Ulysses’ companions into pigs and dogs by Circe’s spells.

They change themselves and others, as they turn witches into cats, dogs, hares, crows and so on. Strozzi Cicogna gives many examples in book 3, chapters 4 and 5 of his Universal Magic, and there refutes them; Augustine does the same in book 18 of The City of God.

Psellus says that they can be seen whenever they choose, in whatever form they choose and by whomever they choose—“although I have never seen anything of the kind, nor wish to see it.” They sometimes have sexual intercourse with women and men, as I shall demonstrate more fully elsewhere.

Many people will not believe that spirits can be seen. If anyone says, swears and firmly insists that he has seen them, however sensible, wise, judicious and learned he may be, they consider him a timid fool, a melancholic simpleton, a weak-minded fellow, a dreamer, a sick man or a madman. They despise him and laugh him to scorn; yet Marcus assured Psellus on his word that he had often seen them.

And the Frenchman Leo Suavius, in section 8 of his commentary on book 1 of Paracelsus’s On Long Life, follows certain Platonists in holding that the air is as full of spirits as the sky is of falling snow, and that they can be seen. He also explains how people may see them: “If they keep their eyes steadily fixed upon the sky while the sun is shining,” and so on. He adds that he tried it—“I tested the things just described”—and found the Platonists’ statement true.

Paracelsus states that he saw them several times and talked with them; so does Alessandro d’Alessandro, who says that experience established what he had previously doubted. Many deny it, says Lavater in On Apparitions, part 1, chapter 2, and part 2, chapter 11, because they have never seen spirits themselves.

But as he reports at length throughout his book, especially in part 1, chapter 19, they are often seen and heard, and associate familiarly with human beings. Vives assures us of this; innumerable records, histories and testimonies demonstrate it in every age, time and place, as do all travellers. In the West Indies and our northern regions, “Nothing is more common than to see spirits in the countryside and towns, and to hear them forbidding and commanding,” and so on.

Jerome in his Life of Paul, Basil in Sermon 40, Nicephorus, Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomen, Jean-Jacques Boissard in his treatise On Apparitions of Spirits, Pierre Le Loyer in his book On Apparitions, and Weyer in book 1 offer an endless variety of examples of such appearances of spirits. Anyone who still doubts may read them and find ample satisfaction.