The Power of Imagination is Illusion

To the physical causes which involved pretended sorcerers in deplorable errors, was added an auxiliary which alone is sufficient to produce the evil — namely, Imagination.

Such is its power, that some men have ascribed to its wanderings the origin of all magical illusions ; but this is going too far. Imagination combines the impressions it has received ; it does not create.

Imagination combines the impressions it has received ; it does not create.In the phantoms of sleep or the reveries of waking hours, it presents nothing which has not either been seen, or felt, or heard. Terror, melancholy, uneasiness, or preoccupation of mind, easily produces that intermediate state between waking and sleeping, in which dreams become actual visions.

-- The Occult Sciences