Chapter LVIII, Section 1a

CHAPTER LVIII. Of the Reviving of the Dead, and of Sleeping or Hibernating (Wanting Victuals) Many Years Together . The Arabian philosophers agree that some men may elevate themselves above the powers of their body and above their sensitive powers; and, those being surmounted, they receive into themselves—by the perfection of the Heavens and the Celestial intelligences—A Divine Vigor. Seeing, therefore, that all the Souls of men are perpetual, and, also, that all the Spirits obey the perfect Souls, Magicians think that perfect men may, by the powers of their soul, repair their dying bodies (with other inferior souls, newly separated) and inspire them again: As a weasel, that is killed, is made alive again by the breath and cry of his dam; and as lions make alive their dead whelps by breathing upon them. And because, as they say, all like things, being applied to their like, are made of the same natures; and, also, every patient, subject, and thing that receives into itself the act of any agent is endowed with the nature of that agent and made conatural with it. Hence they think that to this vivification, or making alive, certain herbs, and Magical confections (such as, they say, are made of the ashes of the Phœnix and the cast skin of a Snake) do much conduce; which, indeed, to many may seem fabulous, and to some impossible, unless it could be accounted approved by an historical faith. For we read of some that have been drowned in water, others cast into the fire or put upon the fire, others slain in war, and others otherwise tried, and all these, after a few days were alive again, as Pliny testifies of Aviola, a man pertaining to the consul, of L. Lamia, Cælinus, Tubero, Corfidius, Gabienus, and many others. We read that Æsop, the tale-maker, Tindoreus, Hercules and Palicy, the sons of Jupiter, and Thalia, being dead, were raised to life again; also that many were, by physicians and magicians, raised from death again, as the historians relate of Æsculapius; and we have above mentioned, out of Juba, and Xanthus and Philostratus, concerning Tillo, and a certain Arabian, and Apollonius the Tyanean. Also we read that Glaucus, a certain man that was dead, the herb dragon-wort restored to life. Some say that he revived by the putting into his body a medicine made of honey, whence the proverb, Glaucus was raised from death by taking honey into his body. Apuleius, also, relating the manner of these kinds of restoring to life, saith of Zachla, the Egyptian prophet, that the prophet, being favorable, laid a certain herb upon the mouth of the body of a young man, being dead, and another upon his breast; then, turning toward the East, or rising of the propitious Sun, he prayed silently (a great assembly of people striving to see it), when, in the first place, the breast of the dead man did heave, then a beating in his veins, then his body filled with breath, after which the body rose and the young man spoke. If these accounts are true, the dying souls must, sometimes lying hid in their bodies, be oppressed with vehement extasies and be freed from all bodily action; so that the life, sense, and motion forsake the body, and also that the man is not yet truly dead, but lies astonied, and dead, as it were, for a certain time.