The Great Art, Book II, Part I.

Various effects of the passions.

As was said in the preceding sections, the imagination original: "phantasia" and melancholy In this period, "melancholy" was seen as a physical imbalance of "black bile" that caused delusions. cause the mind to wander. However, once the melancholic humor is dispersed, the mind is restored to clarity. Likewise, loves, fears, pains (or sadness), and pleasure (or joy) are all passions of the soul; for we experience fear and love through the soul as their starting point. Yet, in these states, we see the body suffer and change: those who fear turn pale; the envious waste away and turn a leaden color; lovers sigh. Others are shaken by different passions, which sometimes attack with such great symptoms original: "corsymptomatis"; likely referring to bodily manifestations of distress that, unless help is provided in time, they are cast into the clear dangers of death.

The ridiculous body of the Monkey was granted a ridiculous soul.

For since matter and form, or body and soul, are (as we have said) correlative in their very existence, it is necessary that when one is changed, the other is changed as well. Therefore, as the body is, so is the soul: the ridiculous body of the Monkey was granted a ridiculous soul to match. And this is the primary foundation of the marvelous operations that occur within the soul.

The quality of food has great power in the soul to stir up imaginative movements.

The second foundation is the quality of nourishment, which can sometimes have such power that it transforms a person into someone else entirely. Thus, gentle people can be changed into angry ones by things that sharpen the bile Choler or "yellow bile," the humor associated with anger.. Albertus Albertus Magnus (c. 1200–1280), a medieval scholar of natural science. testifies that this occurs if one drinks the blood of bears, lions, tigers, and similar ferocious beasts. For there lies hidden in the blood of said animals a certain "kindling" of ferocity and cruelty which, when consumed by a human, imprints those same qualities upon them and stimulates them toward the same impulses and affections. Conversely, Galen teaches in his book On Food that the fierce, cruel, and wild can be "degenerated" In the sense of being softened or brought down from a wild state. by things that extinguish the bile and increase the phlegm original: "pituitam"; the cold, moist humor associated with a calm or sluggish temperament.. Thus, the eating of "chaste lamb" likely referring to Agnus Castus, the chasteberry plant, believed to diminish libido and the frequent use of water lily original: "Nenupharis" turns the lustful into the continent. From the continent, however, the frequent eating of satyrions A type of orchid believed to be an aphrodisiac., skinks A type of lizard used in early modern medicine as a stimulant., and other lecherous animals makes them lustful; and so it goes for the rest. Thus, all imaginative operations seem to draw their origin from vapors, the vapors from a disordered disposition of the organs—the spleen, the

The foundation of Magic from the sequence of transmutations.

liver, the heart, and the brain—and these from the quality of the food. This quality then affects the "species" Mental images or representations. impressed upon the vapors of the brain with that same quality by which it represents the objects. Finally, through its own reflection, it alters the imagination, and the imagination further alters the entire soul.

First Corollary.

The foundation of oneiromancy.

From all this, it is clearly evident by what means dreams are formed in the sick as well as the healthy, and how one can divine the constitution of bodies from them. Likewise, it shows how a human being, by the mere illusion of the imagination, can be naturally transformed from one thing into another. But whoever desires more on this Magic, let him read our treatise Oedipus Aegyptiacus regarding the Magic and Sacrifices of the ancient Egyptians, where we bring forward many unheard-of things on this subject from the discipline of hieroglyphics.

Second Corollary.

It also follows from these things how pregnant women, by means of the imagination, imprint signs of desired things upon their fetuses. But since we have treated this extensively and exactly in our Magnetic Art, Book 3, in the chapter on the Magnetism of the Imagination, we refer the reader there. Let it suffice here to have demonstrated in a few words that all things are shaped according to the logic of light and shadow. Furthermore, this great force of the imagination shines forth in animals themselves. Indeed, I find that hens possess such a strong power of imagination that at the mere sight of a string, they remain motionless, as if struck by a kind of stupor. The truth of this will be taught to you by the following experiment.

A Marvelous Experiment,

Concerning the Imagination of a Hen.

Place a hen with its feet tied on any floor. At first, feeling itself a captive, it will struggle in every way to shake off the bonds cast upon it by flapping its wings and moving its entire body...