The Author to the Reader

Excluding Eternity, the composition was subject to dissolution. Ignorance gave this release the name of Death, but properly it is the Soul's Birth, and a charter that grants her Liberty. She has several ways to "break up house" original: "break up house"; a metaphor for the soul leaving the body, but her best way is without a disease. This is her mystical walk, an exit only to return. When she takes air at this door, it is without prejudice to her tenement original: "tenement"; here meaning the physical body as a temporary dwelling.

The Magicians tell me, The soul of one being goes out, and enters into another original: "Anima unius Entis egreditur, & aliud ingreditur". Some have examined this and state it is an expenditure of influences, as if the Soul exercised her Royalty at the eye, or had some blind jurisdiction in the pores. But this is to measure Magical positions by the fleeting, superficial structures of common Philosophy. It is an age of intellectual slaveries. If people meet anything extraordinary, they commonly prune it with distinctions referring to the overly technical logical categories used in Scholasticism or daub it with false interpretations original: "Glosses" until it looks like the traditions of Aristotle. His...