inquit arcere si volunt viatores, clara voce Deum appellare aut pronam
facie terram contingente adorare oportet, et hoc amuletum majoribus nostris
acceptum ferre debemus_, &c., (whom if travellers wish to keep off they
must pronounce the name of God with a clear voice, or adore him with their
faces in contact with the ground, &c.); likewise they counterfeit suns and
moons, stars oftentimes, and sit on ship masts: _In navigiorum summitatibus
visuntur_; and are called _dioscuri_, as Eusebius _l. contra Philosophos,
c. xlviii_. informeth us, out of the authority of Zenophanes; or little
clouds, _ad motum nescio quem volantes_; which never appear, saith Cardan,
but they signify some mischief or other to come unto men, though some again
will have them to pretend good, and victory to that side they come towards
in sea fights, St. Elmo's fires they commonly call them, and they do likely
appear after a sea storm; Radzivilius, the Polonian duke, calls this
apparition, _Sancti Germani sidus_; and saith moreover that he saw the same
after in a storm, as he was sailing, 1582, from Alexandria to Rhodes.
[1178]Our stories are full of such apparitions in all kinds. Some think
they keep their residence in that Hecla, a mountain in Iceland, Aetna in
Sicily, Lipari, Vesuvius, &c. These devils were worshipped heretofore by
that superstitious Pyromanteia [1179]and the like.

Aerial spirits or devils, are such as keep quarter most part in the [1180]
air, cause many tempests, thunder, and lightnings, tear oaks, fire
steeples, houses, strike men and beasts, make it rain stones, as in Livy's
time, wool, frogs, &c. Counterfeit armies in the air, strange noises,
swords, &c., as at Vienna before the coming of the Turks, and many times in
Rome, as Scheretzius _l. de spect. c. 1. part 1._ Lavater _de spect. part.
1. c. 17._ Julius Obsequens, an old Roman, in his book of prodigies, _ab
urb. cond._ 505. [1181]Machiavel hath illustrated by many examples, and
Josephus, in his book _de bello Judaico_, before the destruction of
Jerusalem. All which Guil. Postellus, in his first book, _c. 7, de orbis