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The revival of a dead bird.
The spagyric generation of a human.
The generation of a human through beasts.
It is also naturally possible for humans to be born from animals, and this has natural causes; yet it cannot occur without impiety and heresy. For if a man mates with an animal, and that animal, as a female, receives the man’s sperm into its womb with appetite and desire, conceives and retains it, the sperm necessarily putrefies, and through the body’s continuous heat a human, rather than an animal, is born from it. The fruit that arises always corresponds to the seed sown; if this did not happen it would be contrary to the light of nature and to philosophy. The plant that grows therefore corresponds to its seed. An onion grows again from onion seed, not a rose, a nut or a lettuce. Spelt grows from spelt, barley from barley and oats from oats. It is the same with every other fruit which has seed and is sown, and so forth.
As the seed is, so is the fruit.
What a woman’s imagination can do.
Likewise it is possible, and not contrary to nature, for an irrational animal to be born from a woman and a man. Here the woman must not be judged as the man was: she must not on that account be held a heretic as though she had acted against nature. It is to be attributed to her imagination, for her imagination is very often the cause. A pregnant woman’s imagination is so effective that, when she conceives seed within her body, she can transform the fetus in various ways, because her inner stars are directed so strongly toward it that they produce an impression and influence. During its formation the child in the mother’s womb is thus placed in her hand and will, like clay in a potter’s hand, which the potter forms and fashions as desired. So the pregnant woman forms the fruit within her body according to her imagination and the condition of her stars. Thus cattle or other dreadful monsters are often born from male seed, according to the force with which the mother’s imagination is directed toward the embryo, and so forth.
As you have now heard that many different things are generated and brought to life through putrefaction, you must also understand that various animals arise from many plants through putrefaction, as those skilled in these matters know. Every animal born and made in and from putrefaction contains some poison and is poisonous, though one much more strongly and effectively than another, and one in a different form from another. You see this in serpents, vipers, toads, frogs, scorpions, basilisks, spiders, wild bees, ants and many worms, such as caterpillars, flies and grubs, and so forth: all these arise in and from putrefaction. Many monsters also arise among animals. There are also monsters which do not arise by themselves from putrefaction but are made through art in glass, as was said. They very often appear in an extraordinarily marvellous shape and a form dreadful to behold: with many heads, feet, tails or colours, or as worms with fish tails or feathers, or in some other unfamiliar form unlike anything seen before. Thus not only animals which have no parents and are not born from their like are monsters, but also those born from other things.
All animals arising from putrefaction are poisonous.
What monsters are and of what kinds.
The artificial generation of the basilisk.