1763. Souls of this vicious stamp, though they come into the world of spirits, and have the power of insinuating themselves before their true quality is made manifest, yet they are not tolerated [there], as they would infect the crowd of spirits with their own vicious state. Wherefore they first undergo this peculiar punishment, to wit: that a number of such are made to rotate from left to right at the outset, in a plane orbit, which presently in the course of circumrotation swells out, and afterwards the swelling is depressed, so that the orbit becomes as it were hollow, and the celerity is increased; while in the meantime and during the circumrotation a process of exploration is going on, whether they will persist in being such as they are. This circumrotation takes place in the world of spirits above the head, a little in front, which is administered to those who were of the character described; and because they persisted they were rolled over and over, and projected to the back under the occiput. There was, however, still another mode of circumrotation in which the swelling or bulging out [tuberositas] was quite prominent, and was turned by flexure into one, and that one was again intervolved, thus rendering the revolving motion confused; in fact, the orbit was inverted to a perpendicular, and the celerity at the same time greatly increased: usque ut propter celeritatem, dum appareret, ... ita ad imitamen talium tuberositatum, seu apostematum.* * As the reader will perceive, it is extremely difficult from the language employed to form a definite idea of the nature of the punishment here intended to be described. We confess to our entire inability to gather a clear conception of what the writer intended to convey, more especially in the closing sentence, which for that reason we had left untranslated. For the sake of our Latin readers, and in the faint hope that a truer version may be suggested, we subjoin the original:
"Quare subeunt primo eam poenam, nempe quod tales plures circumrotentur a sinistro in dextrum, sicut orbita primum plana, quae mox in circumrotatione extuberant, dein tuberositas ista deprimitur, ut cava fiat ista quasi orbits, et sic augetur celeritas, ac interea in circumrotatione exploratur, num persevenant tales esse; circumrotatio fit in spirituum mundo supra caput antrorsum paulo, quod factum est iis, qui tales fuerunt, et quia persistebant, circumvolvebantur et projiciebantur a tergum sub occipitium; verum circumrotatio fiebat quoque alia, tuberositas elevabatur satis alte, et flectebatur in unum et unus iste iterum intervolvebatur, et sic erat confusa volutio; imo invertebatur orbita ad perpendiculum, et celeriter quoque augebatur, usque ut propter celeritatem, dum appareret, . . . ita ad imitamen talium tuberositatum, seu apostematum."
1763 1/2. It was afterwards shown that all such lie as if dead, with their face and belly downwards, and that they are subsequently let down into the lower parts of the earth, that they may there pass their lives)) (((being thus detruded at once from the world of spirits and from the body into those lower regions of the earth, where they are to lead a most obscure kind of life apart from companions, being then in fact as if dead.
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