Agrippa: The Philosophy of Natural Magic, Chapter LVIII — Of the Reviving of the Dead, and of Sleeping or Hibernating (Wanting Victuals) Many Years Together
§ About this work
Agrippa opens by positing a three-fold World—Elementary, Celestial, Intellectual—ascended toward the First cause (I), then defines Magic as the chief Science comprehending Natural, Mathematical, and Theological Philosophy (II). He treats the four Elements, their qualities, orders, and the properties of Fire and Earth, Water and Air, their compounded bodies, and their presence in all things up to God (III–VIII). He distinguishes elementary, secondary, and occult virtues, tracing the latter to Ideas, the Soul of the World, and celestial situation (IX–XIV), then how virtues move to their like, infuse likeness, form friendships and enmities, and reside in species, individuals, whole substances, parts, and life or death (XV–XXI). He assigns things to Sun, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, planetary governments, kingdoms, Signs, stars, and Characters (XXII–XXXIII), then shows how virtues are drawn down through conformable things, mixtions, prepared matter, correspondence of Worlds, and animated Images (XXXIV–XXXVIII). Turning operative, he treats raising spirits (XXXIX), bindings, sorceries, catamenia, suffumigations and their recipes, collyries and unguents, alligations, rings, and virtues of places (XL–XLVIII). He describes light, fascination, wonder-working acts, and gestures and bodily figures (XLIX–LII), then divinations—Auguria and Auspicia, birds and beasts, lightnings and prodigies, and the four elemental divinations (LIII–LVII)—and reviving of bodies (LVIII). He treats dreams and prophetic madness (LIX–LX), then man's body, senses, mind, and passions, how the phantasy alters one's own and another's body, and how passions gain power through Heaven, faith, and the stars' minds (LXI–LXVIII). He closes with the power of words, proper names, sentences, enchantments, writing, and the Hebrew letters ordered to Signs, Planets, and Elements, ending the first book (LXIX–LXXIV).
Arabian philosophers agree some men elevate above bodily and sensitive powers and receive a Divine Vigor. Magicians hold that perfect souls may revive dying bodies, as a weasel is revived by its dam's breath and lions revive their whelps. Herbs and confections of Phoenix ashes and snake skin conduce. Pliny testifies of Aviola, Lamia, and others revived; Aesop, Hercules, Aesculapius, Apollonius the Tyanean are cited; Glaucus is restored by dragon-wort or honey. Apuleius tells of Zachla reviving a young man. Dying souls may lie hidden in ecstasy, not truly dead. Rabbit Moises, from Galen, notes suffocation and lost pulse cases. The Marsi and Psilli restore serpent-stung men. Dormice and crocodiles sleep through winter. Long sleepers are cited: Pliny's boy, Epimenides, Damascenus's countryman, the seven sleepers, the Norvegian cave. Xenocrates and Marcus Damascenus debate causes. Elias fasted forty days; Bocatius, Theoprastus, and the Scythian herb are noted regarding prolonged fasting.
Chapter LVIII, Section 1aChapter LVIII, Section 1bChapter LVIII, Section 1c