THERE IS REASON to suppose that devils inhabit our provinces as comfortably as they inhabit the ocean depths, crepuscular forests, precipices or deserts. They have been seen gathering for the sabbat in Westphalia and Thuringia and at the Spirato della Mirandola in Italy and in the Carpathians on the Babia Gora, streaming thence and elsewhere out of their apartments in earth’s inaccessible pockets with little regard to distance. Pliny avows that he saw with his own eyes the birth of cinnabar from the blood shed on sandy soil by an elephant and a dragon locked in mortal combat—which many dispute. But facts do not cease to exist by virtue of being ignored, and I have observed demons fornicate not only upon each other but with complaisant humans, which admixture produces cambions. Is nature to blame for divergencies? I do not know.
I HAVE SEEN how the demon of lust Osmodeus seizes possession of aching bodies for an instant of carnal enjoyment. Later, with passion assuaged, he discards this abused and mutilated flesh. And because I have seen our proclivity to rummage for wealth amid putrescence, I wonder if we may seek resurrection atop a dung-heap. But that is theology’s hospice.
VENAL MALAISE OR bewitchment—how might it be cured? Noisome vapors from smouldering waste compel the animus to withdraw, alleviating symptoms because phlogiston lapidifies the brain. Still, such counteractives may prove useless due to opacities that frequently develop among women of exquisite temperament, some of whom will contrive to poison the aliment they prepare for their husbands, being drugged or stupefied with licentious imagery. Women of this type should be dissuaded from suckling and from playing with receptive children because of debauched or meditative coercions. I do not know how women so possessed are to be helped. They seem to know more than I—deceitfully pretending to ask advice. I would grasp the blind root of a universe were I able to address such darkness.
HOW IS THE salacious female to be considered? I am uncertain because I think the status of woman honorable and significant insofar as she is man’s instrument of pleasure, experienced at oestrus, mistress of the night, ripe with magic property, more passionate than the dawn. Yet she is an uncontrollable ungovernable wind tumbling down a hill. She is like the tree bearing fruit, and man is like the fruit she has borne. If we consider what injuries the tree can sustain but how much less its fruit, by so much is she superior.
THAT WOMEN GROW lascivious and preoccupied with venery after marriage has long been established and could be the result of evil spirits drawn to submissive subjects. Women recently wed have been known to whisper throughout the night and to dream of splendid fish seeking entrance to the moon. Women deprived of husbands will gibber and babble, or mouth foreign languages. Also, it has been established that young girls may sprout hair by the age of ten and at twelve go raging after a man, but how this latent force emerges I know not. So might we look in vain for the source of a mighty river. Why concupiscence would thus manifest itself seems beyond understanding and without bottom, like a Portuguese harbor. Lust seems as imperious as the flame which orders everything aside—burning dwellings and forests, withering lakes. Actaeon the hunter when he surprised Artemis bathing was caught by the hounds of his own distracted thought. Endymion wished to sleep forever on the slope of Mount Latmus that he might re-visit Selene. How does perversity restore us? Are we inclined toward what we oppose? The animosity of love I would compare with the fly Cantharides—golden wings affixed to a body indurated by poison.
I WONDER THAT men marry nymphs, which are threatening because their intellects and minds preserve the similitude of our own and through us they become immortal. But still they have not immortal souls, so any man who would take a nymph as his wife must be careful neither to offend nor insult her, nor abandon her beside the shore of a lake with her crisp hair glittering, because she will vanish into her element.
MEN AND WOMEN appear to rejoice at correspondences of form, much as dissimilar things move toward each other to embrace. Yet there is one pleasure of a horse, another of a dog. Cattle differ upon their choice. Arguments persuasive to one to the next look unconvincing, even as that truth acceptable to Hans may seem offensive to Kurt, according to temperament or training. Therefore, if like is to meet and act upon like we anticipate concord, whereas if the actor and acted-upon stand at sword-point we look toward contagion or virulence. Often there will be wrath and bile, just as we
