The Magus, Book I: The Celestial Intelligencer: Chapter III: Of The Water And Air

THE other two elements, viz. water and air, are not less efficacious than the former; neither is Nature wanting to work wonderful things in them. There is so great a necessity of water, that without it nothing can live--no herb nor plant whatsoever without the moistening of water, can bring forth; in it is the seminary virtue of all things, especially of animals, whose seed is manifestly waterish. The seeds, also, of trees and plants, although they are earthy, must, notwithstanding, of necessity be rotted in water before they can be fruitful; whether they be imbibed with the moisture of the earth, or with dew, or rain, or any other water that is on purpose put to them.--For Moses writes, that only earth and water can bring forth a living soul; but he ascribes a two-fold production of things to water, viz. of things swimming in the water, and of things flying in the air above the earth; and

Josephus also makes relation of the wonderful nature of a certain river betwixt Arcea and Raphanea, cities of Syria, which runs with a full channel all the Sabbath-day, and then on a sudden stops, as if the springs were stopped, and all the six days you may pass over it dry-shod; but again, on the seventh day, no man knowing the reason of it, the waters return again, in abundance as before! wherefore the inhabitants thereabout called it the Sabbath-day River) because of the seventh day, which was holy to the Jews.--The Gospel, also, testifies of a sheep-pool, into which whosoever stepped first after the water was troubled by the Angel, was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. The same virtue and efficacy, we read, was in a spring of the Ionian Nymphs, which was in the territories belonging to the town of Elis, at a village called Heradea, near the river Citheron, which whosoever stepped into, being diseased, came forth whole, and cured of all his diseases. Pausanias also reports, that in Lyceus, a mountain of Arcadia, there was a