Adrian Johns recounts how, in a dream "at around the time of the outbreak of the Civil War," Henry More saw "a series of huge figures in the sky," including "that of an old man with a long beard ... [who] made a number of gestures with his arm," also noting More's theory as to the origin of this figure: "He had been reading Ptolemy's Geographia the evening before, and seeing a particular iconographic figure on the engraved frontispiece, 'my fancy it seems having laid hold on his venerable beard, drew in thereby the whole scene of things that presented themselves to me in my sleep."