111. THE SPIRITS AND INHABITANTS OF THE MOON.
Certain spirits appeared above the head, and thence were heard voices like thunder; for they thundered with their voices like the thunder from the clouds after lightning. I asserted that it was a great multitude of spirits, who had the art of uttering voices attended with so loud a noise. The more simple spirits who were with me laughed at them, at which I greatly wondered. The cause of their laughter was presently discovered to be this, that the spirits who thundered were not many, but few, and were also as small as boys; and that before they had terrified them by such noises, and yet were unable to do them any harm. In order that I might know their quality, some of them let themselves down from on high where they were thundering; and what surprised me, one carried another on his back, and thus two of them approached me. Their faces appeared not unhandsome, but longer than the faces of other spirits. Their stature was like the stature of boys seven years old, but more robust; thus they were dwarfs. It was told me by the angels, that they were from the Moon. He who was carried on the other's back, on coming to me, applied himself to my left side under the elbow, and thence spoke with me, saying that whenever they utter their voices they thus thunder; and that thereby they terrify the spirits who wish to do them evil; and put some to flight, and that thus they go with security whithersoever they will. That I might know certainly that they made this sound, be retired from me to some others, but not entirely out of sight, and thundered in like manner. They showed, moreover, that the voice being uttered from the abdomen, like an eructation, made this thundering sound. It was perceived that this was owing to the fact, that the inhabitants of the Moon do not speak from the lungs like the inhabitants of other earths, but from the abdomen, and thus from some air there collected, by reason that the Moon is not encompassed with an atmosphere like that of other earths. I was instructed that the spirits of the Moon, in the Greatest Man, have relation to the ensiform or zyphoid cartilage, to which the ribs in front are joined, and from which descends the facia alba, which is the fulcrum of the abdominal muscles.