ANIMAL ELEMENTALS
Suggestion no doubt plays a large part in producing a belief in the
power to change form at will, and the occult aspect of transformation
is perhaps more interesting than any other view of the subject.
Incantations, salves, herbs, drugs, perfumes, and other accessories of
ritual are merely employed to strengthen concentrative force and to
induce a suitable state of mind. In this sense the highest scientific
method of transformation is known to the Yogi who, by performing
_samyama_ on the powers of any animal, acquires those powers.[173]
_Samyama_ is the technical name for three inseparable processes taken
collectively. The three processes are, firstly, contemplation, or the
fixing of the mind on something, external or internal; secondly, the
unity of the mind with its absorption, in which the mind is conscious
only of itself and the object; and thirdly, trance, when the mind is
conscious only of the object, and as though unconscious of itself.
Trance proper is the forgetting of all idea of the act, and, still
more important, the becoming of the object (such as the animal)
thought upon. Thus, the three stages, contemplation, absorption, and
trance, are in fact stages of contemplation, for the thing thought
upon, the thinker, and the instrument (together with other things
which are to be excluded), are all present in the first; all except
the last are present in the second, and nothing but the object is
present in the third.[174]
The Yogi believes that the mind can enter into another body by
relaxation of the cause of bondage, and by knowledge of the method of
passing. The bondage is the mind's being bound to a particular body.
The cause of limiting the otherwise all-pervading mind to a particular
spot is _karma_ or _dharma_ and _adharma_, i.e. good or bad deeds.
When by constant _samyama_ on these, the effect of the cause is
neutralised and the bonds of confinement loosened, then the mind is
free to enter any dead or living organism and perform its functions
through it. But for this purpose a knowledge of effecting this
transfer is equally necessary....
We always think in relation to the ego within us, and therefore in
relation to the body. Even when we direct our mind somewhere out of
the body, it is still in relation with the thinking self. When this
relation is entirely severed and the mind exists as it were
spontaneously, outside and independent of the body, the Yogi finds the
state of internal mind most favourable for passing from one corporeal
shape into another, for it is nothing more than the _vrtti_ (or soul)
severed from the body that travels from one place to another. The act
of the mind cognising objects, or technically speaking, taking the
shape of objects presented to it, is called _vrtti_, or
transformation. Those familiar with the so-called
spirit-materialisations will readily comprehend the somewhat obscure
sense of this aphorism.[175]
Animal elementals or thought-forms were employed by magicians in the
remote ages, and believed to be created entities which persisted
throughout time and might be sent forth, somewhat in the nature of a
familiar, to wreak harm on others. Such animal thought-forms are
regarded as natural or possible by many occultists to-day and two
modern stories exemplify this belief.
A certain Miss Carter went to have tea at a friend's house where she
met a lady whom she knew, a Miss Thory, the sister of an eminent
philosopher. Miss Carter asked this lady whether she would be kind
enough to tell her fortune from the cards, but Miss Thory declined,
saying that she felt tired. Shortly afterwards Miss Carter went away
and, as soon as her back was turned, Miss Thory said to her hostess, "My
dear, don't have much to do with that young lady, because she goes about
telling people that she is beloved by an archangel who kisses her on the
lips, but I have seen the creature which hovers about her, and which she
takes to be an archangel, and it has the shape of a crocodile and is
trying to influence people through her. It is an evil elemental."
The other story concerns two friends, Mrs. Harper and Miss Sylvester,
who, travelling together on the astral plane, decided to visit the
bottom of the sea. They believed they arrived there and saw an
enormous octopus which was floating about amongst the wreckage on the
ocean bed. Miss Sylvester immediately made the protective sign of the
Pentacle and suffered no inconvenience, but Mrs. Harper neglected to
take this precaution and the monstrous animal followed her about. They
did not mention these strange experiences to anyone, and they were
well-nigh forgotten when some time later it happened that Miss
Sylvester introduced Mrs. Harper to one of her friends, a very
well-known poet. Meeting Miss Sylvester a few days afterwards, he said
to her quite frankly, "I suppose I ought not to say so to you, but I
did not much care for your friend, Mrs. Harper. The night after you
introduced me to her I could not sleep and whenever I thought about
her I was aware of some elemental creature crawling beneath my bed. It
had the shape of an octopus with horrible tentacles!"
Phenomena of this character are explained by the occultist as follows:--
The elemental essence which surrounds us is singularly susceptible to
the influence of human thought. The action of the mere casual wandering
thought upon it causes it to burst into a cloud of rapidly-moving,
evanescent forms. Thought, seizing upon the plastic essence, moulds it
instantly into a living being of appropriate form--"a being which when
once thus created is in no way under the control of its creator, but
lives out a life of its own, the length of which is proportionate to the
intensity of the thought or wish which called it into existence. It
lasts, in fact, just as long as the thought-force holds it together.
Most people's thoughts are so fleeting and indecisive that the
elementals created by them last only a few minutes or a few hours, but
an often repeated thought or an earnest wish will form an elemental
whose existence may extend to many days.... A man who frequently dwells
upon one wish often forms for himself an astral attendant, which,
constantly fed by fresh thought, may haunt him for years, ever gaining
more and more strength and influence over him...."
It is said that a magician who understands the subject and knows what
effect he is producing may acquire great power along these lines and
can call into existence artificial elementals which, if he be not
careful, escape from his control and become wandering demons.
The magicians of Atlantis brought into being wonderful speaking animals
who had to be appeased by an offering of blood lest they should awaken
their masters and warn them of impending destruction.[176]
An even more terrible, psychic animal-being is described by occultists
as the Dweller on the Threshold. In answer to the question, What kind
of an animal is a human creature born soulless? Madame Blavatsky[177]
explains that "the future of the lower Manas is terrible, and still
more terrible to humanity than to the now animal man. It sometimes
happens that, after the separation, the exhausted soul, now become
supremely animal, fades out in Kama Loka, as do all other animal
souls. But seeing that the more material is the human mind, the longer
it lasts, even in the intermediate stage, it frequently happens that
after the present life of the soulless man is ended, he is again and
again reincarnated into new personalities, each one more abject than
the other. The impulse of _animal life_ is too strong: it cannot wear
itself out in one or two lives only. In rarer cases, however, when the
lower Manas is doomed to exhaust itself by starvation: when there is
no longer hope that even a remnant of a lower light will, owing to
favourable conditions--say, even a short period of spiritual
aspiration and repentance--attract back to itself its Parent Ego, and
Karma leads the Higher-Ego back to new incarnations, then something
far more dreadful may happen. The Kama-Manasic spook may become that
which is called in Occultism, the 'Dweller on the Threshold.'...
"Bereft of the guiding Principles, but strengthened by the material
elements, Kama-Manas, from being a 'derived light,' now becomes an
independent entity, and thus, suffering itself to sink lower and lower
on the animal plane, when the hour strikes for its earthly body to
die, one of two things happens; either Kama-Manas is immediately
reborn in Myalba, the state of Avitchi on earth, or, if it becomes too
strong in evil--'immortal in Satan' is the occult expression--it is
sometimes allowed, for Karmic purposes, to remain in an active state
of Avitchi in the terrestrial Aura. Then through despair and loss of
all hope, it becomes like the mythical 'devil' in its endless
wickedness; it continues in its elements, which are imbued through and
through with the essence of Matter; for evil is coevil with Matter
rent asunder from Spirit. And when its Higher-Ego has once more
reincarnated, evolving a new reflection, or Kama-Manas, the doomed
lower Ego, like a Frankenstein's monster, will ever feel attracted to
its Father who repudiates his son, and will become a regular 'Dweller
on the Threshold' of terrestrial life."
Concerning the evolution of man-animal and animal-man, Madame
Blavatsky[178] declares, "it is most important to remember that the
Egos of the Apes are entities compelled by their Karma to incarnate in
the animal forms, which resulted from the bestiality of the _latest_
Third and the earliest Fourth Race men. They are entities who had
already reached the 'human stage' before this Round. Consequently they
form an exception to the general rule. The numberless traditions about
Satyrs are no fables, but represent an extinct race of animal men. The
animal 'Eves' were their foremothers, and the human 'Adams' their
forefathers; _hence the Kabalistic allegory of Lilith or Lilatu_,
Adam's _first_ wife, whom the Talmud describes as a _charming_ woman
with _long wavy hair_, i.e. a female hairy animal of a character now
unknown, still a female animal, who in the Kabalistic and Talmudic
allegories is called the female reflection of Samael, Samael-Lilith,
or man-animal united, a being called _Hayo Bischat_, the Beast or Evil
Beast (Zohar). It is from this unnatural union that the present apes
descended. The latter are truly 'speechless men' and will become
speaking animals (or men of a lower order) in the Fifth Round, while
the adepts of a certain school hope that some of the Egos of the apes
of a higher intelligence will reappear at the close of the Sixth-Root
race. What their form will be is of secondary consideration. The form
means nothing. Species and genera of the flora, fauna, and the highest
animal, its crown--man--change and vary according to the environments
and climatic variations, not only with every Round, but every
Root-Race likewise, as well as after every geological cataclysm that
puts an end to, or produces a turning-point in the latter. In the
Sixth Root-Race the fossils of the Orang, the Gorilla and the
Chimpanzee will be those of extinct quadrumanous mammals and new
forms--though fewer and ever wider apart as ages pass on and the
close of the Manvantara approaches--will develop from the 'cast-off'
types of the human races as they revert once again to astral, out of
the mire of physical life. There were none before man and they will be
extinct before the Seventh Race develops. Karma will lead on the
monads of the unprogressed men of our race and lodge them in the newly
evolved human frames of this physiologically regenerated baboon.
"This will take place, of course, millions of years hence. But the
picture of this cyclic procession of all that lives and breathes now on
earth, of each species in its turn, is a true one, and needs no 'special
creation' or miraculous formation of man, beast or plant _ex nihilo_.
"This is how Occult Science explains the absence of any link between
ape and man and shows the former evolving from the latter."
The Indians believe that sinners are reborn as animals. "After having
suffered the torments in the hells, the evil-doers pass into animal
bodies,"[179] and their classification of such punishment has been
carefully worked out.
Mortal sinners enter the bodies of worms or insects. Minor offenders
enter the bodies of birds. Criminals in the fourth degree enter the
bodies of the aquatic animals. Those who have committed a crime
effecting loss of caste, enter the bodies of amphibious animals. Those
who have committed a crime degrading to a mixed caste enter the bodies
of deer. Those who have committed a crime rendering them unworthy to
receive alms, enter the bodies of cattle. Those who have committed one
of the miscellaneous crimes enter the bodies of miscellaneous wild
carnivorous animals (such as tigers).
A thief (of other property than gold) becomes a falcon.
One who has appropriated a broad passage, becomes a serpent or other
animal living in holes.
One who has stolen grain becomes a rat.
One who has stolen water becomes a water-fowl.
One who has stolen honey becomes a gad-fly.
One who has stolen milk becomes a crow.
One who has stolen juice (of the sugar-cane or other plants) becomes a
dog.
One who has stolen clarified butter becomes an ichneumon.
One who has stolen meat becomes a vulture.
One who has stolen fat becomes a cormorant.
One who has stolen oil becomes a cockroach.
One who has stolen salt becomes a cricket.
One who has stolen sour milk becomes a crane.
One who has stolen silk becomes a partridge.
One who has stolen linen becomes a frog.
One who has stolen cotton cloth becomes a curlew.
One who has stolen a cow becomes an iguana.
One who has stolen sugar becomes a Valguda (kind of bat).
One who has stolen perfumes becomes a musk-rat.
One who has stolen vegetables becomes a peacock.
One who has stolen prepared grain becomes a boar.
One who has stolen undressed grain becomes a porcupine.
One who has stolen fire becomes a crane.
One who has stolen household utensils becomes a wasp.
One who has stolen dyed cloth becomes a partridge.
One who has stolen an elephant becomes a tortoise.
One who has stolen a horse becomes a tiger.
One who has stolen fruit or blossoms becomes an ape.
One who has stolen a woman becomes a bear.
One who has stolen a vehicle becomes a camel.
One who has stolen cattle becomes a vulture.
He who has taken by force any property belonging to another or eaten
food not first presented to the gods, inevitably enters the body of
some beast.
Women who have committed similar thefts, receive the same ignominious
punishment: they become females to those male animals.
Then having undergone the torments inflicted in the hells and having
passed through the animal bodies the sinners are born as human beings
with marks indicating their crime.
These transformations came about by the insistent wickedness of human
thoughts and deeds. Eliphas Levi discusses the magic power of the
spoken word in bringing changes of shape to pass. "In the opinion of
the vulgar," he says,[180] "transformations and metamorphosis have
ever been the very essence of magic.... Magic really changes the
nature of things, or rather modifies their appearances at pleasure,
according to the strength of the operator's will and the fascination
of aspiring adepts. Speech creates forms, and when a person reputed
infallible gives anything a name, he really transforms the object into
the substance which is signified by the name that he gives it....
"The life of creatures is a progressive transformation, having forms
which may be determined and renewed, preserved longer, or else
destroyed sooner. If the motion of metempsychosis were true, might we
not say that debauch, represented by Circe, changes men really and
materially into swine, for the chastisement of vices would on this
hypothesis be a lapse into those animal forms which correspond to
them? Now metempsychosis, which has been frequently misunderstood, has
a perfectly true side. Animal forms communicate their sympathetic
imprints to the astral body of man and are soon reflected on his
features, according to the force of his habits. A man of intelligent
and passive mildness assumes the ways and inert physiognomy of a
sheep; in somnambulism, however, it is no longer a person of
sheep-like appearance but a sheep itself that is seen, as the ecstatic
and learned Swedenborg experienced times out of number. Thus we can
really change men into animals--it is all a question of will-power."
"The fatal ascendancy of one person over another is the true rod of
Circe," he continues. "Almost every human countenance bears some
resemblance to an animal. That is, it has the signature of a
specialised instinct. Now instincts are balanced by contrary
instincts, and dominated by others which are stronger. To govern
sheep, the dog evokes the fear of the wolf. If you are a dog and would
be loved by a pretty little cat, be metamorphosed into a cat, and you
will win her. But how is the change to be accomplished? By
observation, imitation, and imagination.... By polarising one's own
animal light in equilibrated antagonism with an opposite pole."[181]
Paracelsus has written at length on the same aspect of the subject.
"Men have two spirits," he explains,[182] "an animal spirit and a
human spirit in them. A man who lives in his animal spirit is like an
animal during life, and will be an animal after death: but a man who
lives in his human spirit will remain human. Animals have
consciousness and reason, but they have no spiritual intelligence. It
is the presence of the latter that raises man above the animal, and
its absence makes an animal of what once appeared to be a man. A man
in whom the animal reason alone is active is a lunatic, and his
character resembles that of some animal. One man acts like a wolf,
another like a dog, another like a hog, a snake or a fox, etc. It is
their animal principle that makes them act as they do, and their
animal principle will perish like the animals themselves. But the
human reason is not of an animal nature, but comes from God, and being
a part of God, it is necessarily immortal."
"The animal soul of man is derived from the cosmic animal elements,"
he writes elsewhere,[183] "and the animal kingdom is therefore the
father of the animal man. If man is like his animal father, he
resembles an animal; if he is like the Divine Spirit that lives within
his animal elements, he is like a god. If his reason is absorbed by
his animal instincts, it becomes animal reason; if it rises above his
animal desires, it becomes angelic. If a man eats the flesh of an
animal, the animal flesh becomes human flesh; if an animal eats human
flesh, the latter becomes animal flesh. A man whose human reason is
absorbed by his animal desires is an animal, and if his animal reason
becomes enlightened by wisdom he becomes an angel.
"Animal man is the son of the animal elements out of which his soul
was born, and animals are the mirrors of man. Whatever animal elements
exist in the world exist in the soul of man, and therefore the
character of one man may resemble that of a fox, a dog, a snake, a
parrot, etc. Man need not, therefore, be surprised that animals have
animal instincts that are so much like his own; it might rather be
surprising for the animals to see that their son (animal man)
resembles them so closely....
"A man who loves to lead an animal life is an animal ruled by his
interior animal heaven. The same stars (qualities) that cause a wolf to
murder, a dog to steal, a cat to kill, a bird to sing, etc., make a man
a singer, an eater, a talker, a lover, a murderer, a robber, or a thief.
These are animal attributes and they die with the animal elements to
which they belong; but the divine principle in man, which constitutes
him a human being, comes from God. Man should therefore live in harmony
with his divine parent, and not in the animal elements of his soul."
The object of human life is therefore to realise that one is not an
animal, but a god-like being inhabiting a human animal form. If man
once realises what he actually is, he will be able to use his divine
powers and be himself a creator of forms.[184]
The same writer describes beings which are neither animal nor man, but
which have characteristics of both, and which he calls Nature-spirits or
Elementals. To these he gives the names of the Gnomes, the Nymphs or
Undines, the Sylphs or Sylvestres, the Salamanders, the Pigmies and the
Sirens. He attributes to them curious qualities and shapes. They can,
for instance, pass through matter, yet they are not spirits, rather
occupying a place "between men and spirits." They are not immortal, and
when they die they perish like animals. They have only animal intellects
and are incapable of spiritual development. The Nymphs live in the
element of water, the Sylphs in that of the air, the Pigmies in the
earth, and the Salamanders in the fire. Each species moves only in the
element to which it belongs. To each elemental being the element in
which it lives is transparent, invisible, and respirable. The Gnomes
have no intercourse with the Undines or Salamanders, nor the Sylvestres
with either. Animals receive their clothing from Nature, but the spirits
of Nature prepare it themselves. The Elementals belonging to the element
of water resemble human beings of either sex; those of the air are
greater and stronger; the Salamanders are long, lean and dry; the
Pigmies are of the length of about two spans, but they can extend or
elongate their forms until they appear like giants. The Elementals of
air and water, the Sylphs and Nymphs, are kindly disposed towards man;
the Salamanders cannot associate with him on account of the fiery nature
of the element wherein they live, and the Pigmies are usually of a
malicious nature.
Men live in the exterior elements and the Elementals live in the
interior elements. They are sometimes seen in various shapes.
Salamanders have been seen in the shapes of fiery balls, or tongues of
fire running over the fields or appearing in houses. Nymphs have been
known to adopt the human shape, clothing, and manner, and to enter
into a union with man. The Undines appear to man but not man to them.
They may meet him on the physical plane, marry him and keep house with
him and the children will be human beings and not Undines, because
they receive a human soul from the man. If an Undine becomes united to
man she will thereby receive the germ of immortality. As an Undine
without her union with man dies like an animal, likewise man is like
an animal if he severs his union with God. If any man has a Nymph for
a wife, let him take care not to offend her while she is near the
water, as in such case she might return to her own element.
The Sirens are merely a kind of monstrous fish, and are related to the
Undines much as giant and dwarf monsters are related to the Sylvestres
and Gnomes. The monsters have no spiritual souls and are comparable to
monkeys rather than to human beings.
Such creatures seem almost too elusive to be labelled as human-animals,
but the description given of them by the great occultist at least opens
the mind to the possibilities of classifying beings not defined by
material limitations or by animal senses. Of this character are the
spirits or elementals called up in strange, and sometimes even gruesome,
animal form by magicians when at work casting spells.
FOOTNOTES:
[173] "The Yoga-Sutra of Patanjali." Translated by Manilal Nabhubhai
Dvivedi, 1890, p. 66.
[174] _Ibid._, p. 56.
[175] _Ibid._, p. 71 and pp. 73-4.
[176] "The Secret Doctrine," Vol. II, p. 247.
[177] _Ibid._, 1897, Vol. III, pp. 524-6.
[178] _Ibid._, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 262-3.
[179] "The Sacred Books of the East," ed. by F. Max Muller, 1880, The
Institutes of Vishnu, Vol. VII, pp. 144-5.
[180] "Mysteries of Magic," 1897, pp. 233-4.
[181] _Ibid._, pp. 237-40.
[182] "De Lunaticus."
[183] Hartmann, F., "Life of Paracelsus and Substance of his
Teaching," 1896, pp. 60-2.
[184] _Ibid._, p. 62.