THe soul of man is a certain divine Light, created after the image of the word, the cause of causes and first example, and the substance of God, figured by a seal whose Character is the eternall word; also the soul of man is a certain divine substance, individuall and wholly present in every part of the body, so produced by an incorporeall Author, that it dependeth by the power of the Agent only, not by the bosome of the matter: The soul is a substantiall number, uniform, conversive unto it self, and rationall, very far excelling all bodies and materiall things; the partition of which is not according to the matter, nor proceeding from inferiour and grosser things, but from the efficient cause: For it is not a quantitative number, but removed from all corporeall Laws, whence it is not divided nor multiplyed by parts. Therefore the soul of man is a certain divine substance, flowing from a divine fountain, carrying along with it self number: not that divine one by the which the creator hath disposed all things, but a rational number by the which seeing it hath a proportion to all things, it can understand all things: Therefore mans soul being such, according to the opinion of the Platonists, immediately proceeding from God, is joyned by competent means to this grosser body; whence first of all in its descent, it is involved in a Celestiall and aeriall body, which they call the celestiall vehicle of the soul, others the chariot of the soul: Through this middle thing, by the command of God who is the center of the world, it is first infused into the middle point of the heart, which is the center of mans body, and from thence it is diffufed through all the parts and members of his body, when it joyneth his chariot to the naturall heat, being a spirit generated from the heart by heat; by this it plungeth it self into the humours, by the which it inhereth in all the members, and to all these is made equally the nighest, although it be diffused through one to another; even as the heat of fire adhereth most nigh to the air and water, although it be transferred by the air to the water; thus it is manifest, how the immortal soul, by an immortall body, viz. an Etheriall vehicle, is included in a grosse and mortall body, but when by a disease or some mischief, these midle things are dissolved or fail, then the soul it self by these middle things recollecteth it self, and floweth back into the heart which was the first receptacle of the soul: but the spirit of the heart failing, and heat being extinct, it leaveth him, and man dieth, and the soul flieth away with this Celestiall vehicle, and the Genius his keeper and the Demon follow it being gone forth, and carry it to the Judge, where sentence being pronounced, God quietly leadeth forth the good souls to glory: the evil the fierce devill draggeth to punishment.
Book III, Chap. XXXVII. Of mans soul and through what means it is joyned to the body.
From Three Books of Occult Philosophy (Henry Cornelius Agrippa, translated by J. F. (probably John French), 1651), p. 465.