Since such results as have been described above have been achieved by
the thought-force of men who were entirely in the dark as to what they
were doing, it will readily be imagined that a magician who
understands the subject, and can see exactly what effect he is
producing, may wield immense power along these lines. As a matter of
fact occultists of both the white and dark schools frequently use
artificial elementals in their work, and few tasks are beyond the
powers of such creatures when scientifically prepared and directed
with knowledge and skill; for one who knows how to do so can maintain
a connection with his elemental and guide it, no matter at what
distance it may be working, so that it will practically act as though
endowed with the full intelligence of its master. Very definite and
very efficient guardian angels have sometimes been supplied in this
way, though it is probably very rarely that Karma permits such a
decided interference in a person's life as that would be. In such a
case, however, as that of a pupil of the Adepts, who might have in the
course of his work for them to run the risk of attack from forces with
which his unaided strength would be entirely insufficient to cope,
guardians of this description have been given, and have fully proved
their sleepless vigilance and their tremendous power. By some of the
more advanced processes of black magic, also, artificial elementals of
great power may be called into existence, and much evil has been
worked in various ways by such entities. But it is true of them, as of
the previous class, that if they are aimed at a person whom by reason
of his purity of character they are unable to influence they react
with terrible force upon their creator; so that the mediæval story of
the magician being torn to pieces by the fiends he himself had raised
is no mere fable, but may well have an awful foundation in fact.
Such creatures occasionally, for various reasons, escape from the
control of those who are trying to make use of them, and become
wandering and aimless demons, as do some of those mentioned under the
previous heading under similar circumstances; but those that we are
considering, having much more intelligence and power, and a much
longer existence, are proportionately more dangerous. They invariably
seek for means of prolonging their life either by feeding like
vampires upon the vitality of human beings, or by influencing them to
make offerings to them; and among simple half-savage tribes they have
frequently succeeded by judicious management in getting themselves
recognized as village or family gods. Any deity which demands
sacrifices involving the shedding of blood may always be set down as
belonging to the lowest and most loathsome class of this order; other
less objectionable types are sometimes content with offerings of rice
and cooked food of various kinds. There are parts of India where both
these varieties may be found flourishing even at the present day, and
in Africa they are probably comparatively numerous. By means of
whatever nourishment they can obtain from the offerings, and still
more by the vitality they draw from their devotees, they may continue
to prolong their existence for many years, or even centuries,
retaining sufficient strength to perform occasional phenomena of a
mild type in order to stimulate the faith and zeal of their followers,
and invariably making themselves unpleasant in some way or other if
the accustomed sacrifices are neglected. For example, it was asserted
recently that in one Indian village the inhabitants had found that
whenever for any reason the local deity did not get his or her regular
meals, spontaneous fires began to break out with alarming frequency
among the cottages, sometimes three or four simultaneously, in cases
where they declared it was impossible to suspect human agency; and
other stories of a more or less similar nature will no doubt recur to
the memory of any reader who knows something of the out-of-the-way
corners of that most wonderful of all countries.
The art of manufacturing artificial elementals of extreme virulence
and power seems to have been one of the specialities of the magicians
of Atlantis--"the lords of the dark face". One example of their
capabilities in this line is given in _The Secret Doctrine_ (vol. ii.,
p. 427), where we read of the wonderful speaking animals who had to be
quieted by an offering of blood, lest they should awaken their masters
and warn them of the impending destruction. But apart from these
strange beasts they created other artificial entities of power and
energy so tremendous, that it is darkly hinted that some of them have
kept themselves in existence even to this day, though it is more than
eleven thousand years since the cataclysm which overwhelmed their
original masters. The terrible Indian goddess whose devotees were
impelled to commit in her name the awful crimes of Thuggee--the
ghastly Kâlî, worshipped even to this day with rites too abominable to
be described--might well be a relic of a system which had to be swept
away even at the cost of the submergence of a continent, and the loss
of sixty-five million human lives.