1669. Those spirits said that they had never been clothed with a body, nor do they appear to each other in a bodily form, but in the form of a cloud, barely having a human shape. Some spirits have been portrayed to me in this way on several occasions, that is, as bright clouds in a roughly human shape, hardly recognizable as such. And when I asked them the cause of this, they said that they do not know, for they did not like it that they had ever had a body. From the fact that they spoke well of the spirits of the planet Jupiter, I was convinced that they had been from that earth, because they also completely scorn their own bodies [see 547], and like to live as spirits on earth, not as people clothed with a body. So they called those bodies worms, or worm food. And because they think in this way, and that thought slips into the spirits' mental imagery, therefore snake-like images are formed.
1669. The spirits above mentioned said that they had never been clothed with a body, nor did they appear to themselves in a bodily form, but rather in that of a cloud, in which the human form was scarcely discernible. Certain spirits were thus occasionally represented to me, to wit, as white clouds, with a rude and hardly perceptible resemblance to the human form. When I asked them the cause of this, they said they did not know; for they were unwilling to admit that they had ever been corporeal. I was hence persuaded, especially as they spoke well of the spirits of the earth Jupiter, that they were, in fact, from thence, inasmuch as the inhabitants of that earth despise their bodies, and would fain live as spirits on their earth, and not as invested with a body, wherefore they call those bodies worms, or the food of worms, and because they thus think, and that thought insinuates itself into the ideas of spirits, therefore the above-mentioned serpentine ideas [so to call them] were formed.
1669. Dicebant spiritus isti, quod nusquam fuerint corpore induti, nec appareant sibi 1
in corporis forma, sed modo in nubis, vix ad formam humanam, quidam spiritus aliquoties mihi ita repraesentati sunt, nempe ut candidae nubes, cum rudi forma humana, vix noscibili; cumque interrogarem unde, dicebant se non scire, nam non volebant se usquam 2
corporeos fuisse; persuadebar exinde, quod de spiritibus telluris Jovis bene loquuti sint, fuisse ab ea tellure, quia ii etiam contemnunt prorsus sua corpora, et volunt vivere sicut spiritus in tellure, non sicut corpore induti, quare vocabant corpora ista vermes, seu cibum vermiculorum, et quia ita cogitant, et cogitatio ista se insinuat in spirituum ideas, inde ideae formantur serpentinae.
Footnotes:
1. interpositum in the Manuscript supra sibi corporis
2. The Manuscript has usque