In Barrett's "Magus or Celestial Intelligencer,"[186] the author gives the Key to Ceremonial Magic with Conjurations for every day in the week—to be used in calling up familiars and spirits. Many of these appear in animal form, namely, as a cow, a small doe, a goose, and many others.
The familiar forms of the spirits of Mars, according to Barrett,[187] "appear in a tall body and choleric, having a filthy countenance, of colour brown, swarthy, or red, having horns like harts, and griffins' claws and bellowing like wild bulls." Sometimes they take the shape of a she-goat, a horse, or a stag. The spirits of Mercury are more affable and human, though they cause horror and fear to those that call them. Sometimes they appear as a dog, a she-bear, or a magpie. When the familiar forms of the spirits of Jupiter are called, there will appear about the circle men who shall seem to be devoured by lions, and the demons may take the shape of bulls, stags, or peacocks. On Friday, for instance, the conjuration may bring a camel, a dove, or a she-goat, on Saturday a hog, a dragon, or an owl, but it must always be borne in mind that apparitions in human shape exceed in authority and power those that come as animals.
The raising of ghosts by fumes is discussed by Cornelius Agrippa.[188]
"If Coriander, Smallage, henbane, and hemlock be made a fume, spirits will presently come together, hence they are called the spirit herbs. Also it is said that a fume made of the root of herb sagapen with the juice of hemlock and henbane, and the herb tapsus barbatus, red sanders and black poppy makes spirits and strange shapes appear.
"Moreover, it is said that by certain fumes certain animals are gathered together, and put to flight, as Pliny mentions concerning the stone Leparis, that with the fumes thereof all beasts are called out; so the bones in the upper part of the throat of a hart, being burnt, gather all the serpents together, but the horn of the hart being burnt doth with its fume chase them all away. The same doth a fume of the feathers of peacocks."
"Hags and goblins," says Agrippa, "inoffensive to them that are good, but hurtful to the wicked, appear sometimes in thinner bodies, another time in grosser, in the shape of divers animals and monsters whose conditions they had in their lifetime.
"Then divers forms and shapes of brute appear,
For he becomes a tiger, swine, and bear,
A scaly dragon and a lioness,
Or doth from fire a dreadful noise express,
He doth transmute himself to divers looks,
To fire, wild beasts, and into running brooks.
"For the impure soul of man, who in this life contracted too great a habit to its body, doth by a certain inward affection of the elemental body frame another body to itself of the vapours of the elements, refreshing as it were from an easy matter as it were with a suck that body which is continually vanishing...."
These souls sometimes do inhabit not these kind of bodies only, but by a too great affection of flesh and blood transmute themselves into other animals, and seize upon the bodies of creeping things, and brutes, entering into them what kind soever they be of, possessing them like demons.