The word "Elementary" has been so loosely used that it has given rise
to a good deal of confusion. It is thus defined by H.P. Blavatsky:
Properly, the disembodied _souls_ of the depraved; these
souls having, at some time prior to death, separated from
themselves their divine spirits, and so lost their chance for
immortality. But at the present stage of learning it has been
thought best to apply the term to the spooks or phantoms of
disembodied persons, in general to those whose temporary
habitation is the Kâmaloka.... Once divorced from their
higher Triads and their bodies, these souls remain in their
Kâma Rûpic envelopes, and are irresistibly drawn to the earth
amid elements congenial to their gross natures. Their stay in
the Kâmaloka varies as to its duration; but ends invariably
in disintegration, dissolving like a column of mist, atom by
atom, in the surrounding elements.[25]
Students of this series of Manuals know that it is possible for the
lower Manas to so entangle itself with Kâma as to wrench itself away
from its source, and this is spoken of in Occultism as "the loss of
the Soul."[26] It is, in other words, the loss of the personal self,
which has separated itself from its Parent, the Higher Ego, and has
thus doomed itself to perish. Such a Soul, having thus separated
itself from the Immortal Triad during its earth-life, becomes a true
Elementary, after it has quitted the dense and etheric bodies. Then,
clad in its desire body, it lives for awhile, for a longer or shorter
time according to the vigour of its vitality, a wholly evil thing,
dangerous and malignant, seeking to renew its fading vitality by any
means laid open to it by the folly or ignorance of still embodied
souls. Its ultimate fate is, indeed, destruction, but it may work much
evil on its way to its self-chosen doom.
The word Elementary is, however, very often used to describe the lower
Manas in its garment the desire body, not broken away from the higher
Principles, but not yet absorbed into its Parent, the Higher Manas.
Such Elementaries may be in any stage of progress, harmless or
mischievous.
Some writers, again, use Elementary as a synonym for Shell, and so
cause increased confusion. The word should at least be restricted to
the desire body _plus_ lower Manas, whether that lower Manas be
disentangling itself from the kâmic elements, in order that it may be
re-absorbed into its source, or separated from the Higher Ego, and
therefore on the road to destruction.