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It was
an invention ascribed to AEolus himself, from whom this sect is
denominated, and who, in honour of their founder's memory, have to
this day preserved great numbers of those barrels, whereof they fix
one in each of their temples, first beating out the top. Into this
barrel upon solemn days the priest enters, where, having before duly
prepared himself by the methods already described, a secret funnel
is also conveyed to the bottom of the barrel, which admits new
supplies of inspiration from a northern chink or cranny. Whereupon
you behold him swell immediately to the shape and size of his
vessel. In this posture he disembogues whole tempests upon his
auditory, as the spirit from beneath gives him utterance, which
issuing ex adytis and penetralibus, is not performed without much
pain and griping. And the wind in breaking forth deals with his
face as it does with that of the sea, first blackening, then
wrinkling, and at last bursting it into a foam. It is in this guise
the sacred AEolist delivers his oracular belches to his panting
disciples, of whom some are greedily gaping after the sanctified
breath, others are all the while hymning out the praises of the
winds, and gently wafted to and fro by their own humming, do thus
represent the soft breezes of their deities appeased.
It is from this custom of the priests that some authors maintain
these AEolists to have been very ancient in the world, because the
delivery of their mysteries, which I have just now mentioned,
appears exactly the same with that of other ancient oracles, whose
inspirations were owing to certain subterraneous effluviums of wind
delivered with the same pain to the priest, and much about the same
influence on the people. It is true indeed that these were
frequently managed and directed by female officers, whose organs
were understood to be better disposed for the admission of those
oracular gusts, as entering and passing up through a receptacle of
greater capacity, and causing also a pruriency by the way, such as
with due management has been refined from carnal into a spiritual
ecstasy. And to strengthen this profound conjecture, it is further
insisted that this custom of female priests is kept up still in
certain refined colleges of our modern AEolists {122}, who are
agreed to receive their inspiration, derived through the receptacle
aforesaid, like their ancestors the Sybils.
And whereas the mind of man, when he gives the spur and bridle to
his thoughts, does never stop, but naturally sallies out into both
extremes of high and low, of good and evil, his first flight of
fancy commonly transports him to ideas of what is most perfect,
finished, and exalted, till, having soared out of his own reach and
sight, not well perceiving how near the frontiers of height and
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