Count Gabalis, in the 17th Century, whose History is in every ones Hands, and whose Wife, as all true Adepts know, had Carnal Knowledge of, and was Impregnated by a certain invisible Dæmon, that call'd himself Ariel. I hope as this extraordinary particularity was the Case of Plato, Appollonius Tyanæus, the Earl of Poitiers, and other great Personages; and as the Mareschal de Bassompiere in his Memoirs, is so candid as to confess it also, of one of the Heads of his Family; it will not be consider'd as insolent or conceited in me, that I have own'd this Circumstance, especially since in all Probability, 'tis not a little owing to it, that I am able to enrich the World at present, with these Works, worthy of so celestial an Origin.
I was born also under the most fortunate of all Planets, and to make my Nativity still more Happy, in one of the Ember-Weeks, and with a Cawl, or certain Membrane about my Head; both which as the learned Jesuit Thyræus, (an Order I particularly Reverence) observes, in his Tract[1] de apparitione Spirituum, are Circumstances, that render
- ↑ Cap. 14. Num. 346.
such
