Giants

There are 2 more kinds that belong to the kind of nymphs and pygmies, namely, the giants and dwarfs, who are not born from Adam.

Although it is a fact that Saint Christopher was a giant, yet he took birth from human seed, and hence we shall not write about him. But we shall write about the other giants, referred to in the stories of Bern, Sigenott, Hiltbrant, Dittrich, etc., also about the dwarf Laurin and others.

Such stories are frequently rejected, but you must know that the same people who reject them, reject also much more important truth.

They distort Christ’s word and put themselves into the fore. They have much more right to disregard things that have happened in this field, but their disbelief is all the same.

The giants are too strong and too strange for us. They are beyond us, and hence we are inclined to deny their existence and to consider them ghosts.

There are 2 kinds:

1. Giants
2. Dwarfs

The giants come from the forest people

The dwarfs from the earth manikins.

They are monstra like the sirens from the nymphs. Thus these beings are born.

Although it happens rarely, yet it happened so often and under such marvellous circumstances that their existence is well known and remembered. They are strange in size and strength, giants and dwarfs. There is nothing to tell about their resembling the kind of the parents from whom they were born, because they do not resemble their kind but are monstra, beyond the kind from which they came.

Yet, they were not born in vain, but from divine order to signify something, and the significance is not small, but great. Hence, it is fair to describe their extrac- tion, and on some other occasion to describe also their signifi- cance, why God has let them be born from people, from what causes.

Their Soul

Their parents have no soul, yet they are human. These beings are born from beasts that are human.

Thus, they have not inherited souls from their parents.

They are monstra. They have less than their parents.

It follows that they had no soul, in spite of the fact that they have been found performing good deeds, works, etc., sincere to each other and with qualities usually associated with the soul.

But just as the parrot can talk and the monkey imitate man and many such things occur, their innate nature is equally able to perform and accomplish such things.

That they should have a soul, however, cannot be concluded from these facts. God who can endow with a soul whomever he wishes, may also give these people a soul as he did to others. We mentioned the union between man and God and that between nymphs and men. And yet, they have not been born for the sake of the soul, but for the sake of the creature that God may be recognized the more marvellously in his creations; not that God wanted souls that were giants, since one man is like another in the kingdom of God. This is why I still consider them beasts whose soul is unknown to me.

Although they have also performed good deeds, yet I cannot feel that they were seeking salvation; this would be hard to believe, but rather that they acted like clever animals. Truly, if a fox or a wolf could speak, they would not be very different.

One must concede a great deal to natural understanding that does not serve the purpose served by one who has a soul.

The forest people, that is, the air people, make the giants when they come together in intercourse, just as a conjunction produces a comet, an earthquake or similar happenings. When such a monster shall be born, it is not born following the course of nature, but against the rules, by special divine providence. There is no need to write about this here. Thus, these forest people join together and bear monsters, but we must write how and in what way.

It cannot be understood except as a divine work and order that can be explained only in analogy with astronomy, when we remember the comets and the produc- tion of things that are not in the regular course of nature, yet are produced, such as the earthquake and similar happenings.

They come and then do not recur for a long time. Thus we must also understand the giants. They are produced in the same way, by a constellation that is in men, not in heaven, for the heaven has nothing to do with the production of monsters such as these. The people are no concern to the heaven in its con- stellation, although they all live under the heaven and are con- fined by it, but they have a corpus and another chaos. There- fore the heaven cannot impress anything on them, for it does not stick.

But if you can understand the natural course of the heaven, you can understand also an independent one, its rise, death and decrease. Everyone must know that if a particularly tall or very small person is born among us, this must not be attributed to the heaven but to nature’s own course. There is no need to write about this here.

About the dwarfs you must know that they are born from the earth manikins in the mountains. Hence, they are not as tall as the giants but are smaller in the same proportion as the earth manikins are smaller than the forest people.

They are monsters also like the giants and their birth must be understood the same way. Thus we can highly appreciate the words of Saint John the Baptist who said to the Jews: And think not to say within yourselves, because you are the children of Abraham, you can resist God and defy him, as if you were not his own and he were nothing, as if he could not make other men.

God is able to raise up men from these stones.

We are from Adam, yet there are people who are not from Adam, such as giants and dwarfs who are greater and stronger than we.

If you do not do honest work, God can exterminate you in the root and let you all dry out like fruit on a tree, and create other people thereafter.

If it was possible for him to make Adam and his children from limus, it is also possible for him to make without limus other people such as nymphs, giants, etc., and to populate and maintain his world with them.

Thus, they stand as a warning that we are not alone and cannot force God.

If he can do one thing, he can do another also.

If he can make a man 7 feet long, he can also make him 20 or 30 feet long.

This is apparent with the giants and similar beings, that they all are warnings to make us realize that God is the Lord, who can do things and endow a being with a soul in one breath.

Giants and dwarfs can make human women pregnant because same likes to meet same, and nature may permit it.

Yet the monsters are not fertile, although they are monsters only so far as their strength and size is concerned; they are not misbuilt.

But they have only one seed available– they do not attain the third, fourth, etc. generation.

When they get into man’s kind, the result is uncertain.

If the child’s body takes after the mother it falls into her kind; if not, it becomes a beast like the father.

It is not possible for it to become a mixed being because the seed of one of the two always prevails.

It happens otherwise that both become one seed, but here not.

If it were one seed it would have to be qualified by the one partner who gives the soul. More is said about this subject in other philosophical treatises, and there is no need to tell it here. Their kind, however, has died out and they have left no descendants to replace them.

The comets, likewise, leave no seed behind them but come straight on and off at times, and at times up from below, all of a sudden, and then disappear.