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On Magic – Giordano Bruno

….airy spirits have bodies mixed with air and fire; aqueous spirits have bodies mixed with air and fire; terrestrial spirits have bodies mixed with water, air and fire. These substances are invisible because of their thinness.

Furthermore, terrestrial and aqueous spirits sometimes choose to make themselves visible by means of dense and concrete vapours, and they appear in the purer regions, where the air is more calm and quiet.

I, myself, have seen them at Mount Libero and at Mount Lauro. And they have appeared not just to me, but frequently to the local inhabitants to whom they are sometimes hostile (but only moderately so), by stealing and hiding the local animals, which they later return in a few days to their stables.

It is well-known and widely accepted as true that these spirits have also frequently appeared to workers in gold mines and in other underground places, for example, in the mountains of Gebenna. These spirits sometimes harmed them, sometimes helped them and sometimes predicted events. This same type of spirit is found near Nola in a desolate place near the temple of Portus, and under a certain cliff at the foot of Mount Cicada,  which was once used as a cemetery for plague victims.

I myself, as well as many others, have personally experienced them while walking through that place at night. I was bombarded with many stones which violently exploded at a very short distance from my head and other parts of my body, and this continued in a threatening manner for some time.

Nevertheless, these stones did not inflict any bodily injuries on me or on any of the others who reported the same experience.

These incidents are reported by Psellus in his book De daemonibus (On Demons), where he describes them as refugees from light and as throwers of stones, although their projectiles are harmless.