The Heavens lay open and the Moon was full.

The heavens lay open and the Moon was full, and the clock had just struck nine. With friends I'd spent the evening at Clamard, near Paris, where Monsieur de Guigy, seigneur of that place, generously regaled us, and now together we passed our journey in quiet contemplation of that saffron ball in the sky.

We drowned our eyes in the great star before us, which looked to us our attic window opening into heaven, to another perhaps the shining dish in which Diana dressed Apollo's curls, to yet another as if the Sun, having taken off and put away its rays for the day, peered down at us through a window, to see what we are up to when it is not around.

But I - say I - I who want to stir my fantasies into your own, I believe, and not frivolously as you believe, to tickle time along, I believe the Moon is a world like ours, and our world is a moon to theirs.

Some of my company loosed great gales of laughter.

Quite so, but perhaps they look at us and make fun of the one who says ours here is a world like theirs.

I assured them this was the opinion of many learned heads, but alas, this only moved them to further fits.

However, this brave notion appealed to me, and its contradiction only strengthened my conviction. For the rest of the journey, then, I plunged deep down into it, so deep my belly swelled with a thousand ideas regarding the Moon to which I could not yet give birth.

So earnestly did I entertain this burlesque that I almost accepted it myself, so persuasive was my reasoning. But, I don't know, call it miracle or happenstance, Providence or Fortune, vision, fiction, chimera or delusion, what you will; fact is, the opportunity presented itself for me to embark upon this Discourse you now read.

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Robert Plot, first Keeper of the Ashmolean, on mysterious circles, from 'The Natural History of Staffordshire' (Oxford, 1686).

And here perchance, by the way, it may be no great digression to enquire into the nature and efficient cause of those rings we find in the grass, which they commonly call fairy circles, whether they are caused by lighning, or are indeed the rendezvouzes of witches , or the dancing places of those little pygmy spirits they call elves or fairies . And the rather because, 1 - a question - perhaps by reason of the difficulty - scarce yet attempted, and 2 - because I met with the largest of their kind - that perchance were ever heard of - in this county; one of them showed me in the grounds between Handsworth Church and the heath being near forty yards diameter, and I was told of another by that ingenious gent. - one of the most cordial encouragers of this work - the Worshipful Sir Henry Gough, Knight, that there was one in his grounds near Pury-Hall but few years since - now indeed plowed up - of a much larger size, he believed near fifty. Whereas,...

Carrying about them the Lively Image of Satan in Serpentine Colours.

THE ROUTING OF THE RANTERS Being a full relation of their uncivil carriages and blasphemous words and actions at their mad meetings, their several kind of music, dances and riotings, and their belief and opinions concerning heaven and hell. With their examinations taken before a Justice of Peace, and a letter or summons sent to their sisters or fellow creatures in the name of the Devil, requiring them to meet Belzebub, Lucifer, Pluto and twenty more of the infernal spirits at the time and place appointed. Also, a true description how they may be known in all companies, and the names of the chief ringleaders of this new generation that excel all others in wickedness. Published by authority and printed by K.A. The Ranters' Ranting or A True Relation of a sort of people called Ranters, with some of their abominable and wicked carriages and behaviour at their private meetings. I shall in the first place give you my friends a brief character of a sort of people (whereof you desire sat...

Give me thy cake! Signs and Wonders from Heaven (1645).

Signs and Wonders from Heaven, with a true relation of a monster born in Ratcliffe Highway at the sign of the Three Arrows, Mistress Bullock the midwife delivering here thereof. Also, showing how a cat kittened a monster in Lombard Street in London. Likewise, a new discovery of witches in Stepney parish, and how twenty witches more were executed in Suffolk this last assize. Also, how the Devil came to Soffam to a farmer's house in the habit of a gentlewoman on horseback. With divers other strange remarkable passages. Printed at London by I.H. 1645. IT IS a known thing to all Christian people which are capable of understanding how that the sins of the world have in a high degree offended the world's maker, and provoked the Lord to anger, yet has the Devil so blinded the eyes, and hardened the hearts of many men and women, that they cannot or will not see nor take notice of their own iniquities, but rather seem to excuse themselves of those errors which they everyd...

Paul Summers Young

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