Alchymical and astrological chimera.

The Horoscope, a tale of the stars.

The Fated Parricide; an oriental tale of the stars.

Application of astrology to the prolongation of life, etc.

Advertisement.

Spring. \
Summer. |_ influences of,
Autumn. |
the winter quarter. /

CHAPTER X.

Oneirocritical presentiment, illustrating the cause, effects, principal
phenomena, and definition of dreams, etc.

Cause of Dreams.

Poetical illustrations of the effects of the imagination in dreams.

Principal phenomena in dreaming.

Definition of dreams.

CHAPTER XI.

On Incubation, or the art of healing by visionary divination.

CHAPTER XII.

On amulets, charms, talismans--Philters, their origin and imaginary
efficacy, etc.

Amulets used by the common people.

Eccentricities, caprices, and effects, of the imagination.

Doctrine of Effluvia--Miraculous cures by means of charms, amulets, etc.

CHAPTER XIII.

On talismans--some curious natural ones, etc.

CHAPTER XIV.

On the medicinal powers attributed to music by the ancients.

CHAPTER XV.

Presages, prodigies, presentiments, etc.

CHAPTER XVI.

Phenomena of meteors, optic delusions, spectra, etc.

CHAPTER XVII.

Elucidation of some ancient prodigies.

Magical pretensions of certain herbs, etc.

CHAPTER XVIII.

The practice of Obeah, or negro witchcraft--charms--their knowledge of
vegetable poison--secret poisoning.

CHAPTER XIX.

On the origin and superstitious influence of rings.

CHAPTER XX.

Celestial influences--omens--climacterics--predominations.--Lucky and
unlucky days.--Empirics, etc.

Absurdities of Paracelsus, and Van Helmont.

CHAPTER XXI.

Modern empiricism.

CHAPTER XXII.

The Rosicrucians or Theosophists.

THAUMATURGIA,

OR

ELUCIDATIONS OF THE MARVELLOUS.

CHAPTER I.

DEMONOLOGY--THE DEVIL, A MOST UNACCOUNTABLE PERSONAGE--WHO IS HE?--HIS
PREDILECTION FOR OLD WOMEN--TRADITIONS CONCERNING EVIL SPIRITS, &C.

Children and old women have been accustomed to hear so many frightful
things of the cloven-footed potentate, and have formed such diabolical
ideas of his satanic majesty, exhibiting him in so many horrible and
monstrous shapes, that really it were enough to frighten Beelzebub
himself, were he by any accident to meet his prototype in the dark,
dressed up in the several figures in which imagination has embodied him.
And as