ABSTRACT
Before the Restoration, few people felt the need to prove that the soul was in the body. This chapter encounters the vampirism of the soul which Ficino had advised for the elderly, and which the Pope's physician have relied. People have reference to spirit, and to an 'immateriate virtue' or power-the latter term being an accurate label for the soul itself. Only when the soul observed the face of the corpse begin to change in the process of decay did it give up hope and go on its way'. It has been suggested already that Egyptian mummies were especially well-suited to those who wanted the raw matter of the body transformed-both by the human art of the embalmers, and the long alchemy of time. As people have seen, Egyptian mummy viewed as the natural alchemy of time, with these bodies having exhaled off their cruder material qualities, leaving them both purified and densely inspirited.
