Gilt and paper presentations of their tombs are borne with shouting and wailing, music, torches, and yells, through the principal thoroughfares of the City; which fakements are called tazias.
Early on they described themselves as “most sagacious investigators of the arcanities of nature and dedicated to the Paracelsan disciplines,” in an allusion to the influential Swiss doctor known as Paracelsus.
He was dead to the law. Whatever account others might make of it, yet, for his part, he was dead to it. […] But though he was thus dead to the law, yet he […] was far from thinking himself discharged from his duty to God' on the contrary, he was dead to the law, that he might live unto God.
[A] country-ship from China to Bombay, standing into the strait at noon with a strong tide and scant wind, stood too near Pedro Branco before tacking, and was totally lost, by the tide horsing her upon the rock whilst in stays.
