and the separation of interests was accentuated, the natural man
forcibly realized an antagonism with the elemental spirits. As violence
increased in man, these spirits waxed strong in their way, and, true to
their natures, which had been outraged by the neglect of those who were
in a sense their guardians, they automatically responded with
resentment. No longer could man rely upon the power of love or harmony
to guide others, because he himself had ceased to be impelled solely by
its influence; distrust had marred the symmetry of his inner self, and
beings who could not perceive but only _receive impressions projected
towards them_, quickly adapted themselves to the altered conditions."
(Elementals as _forces_, respond to forces, or are swayed by them; man,
as a superior force, acts upon them, therefore, injuriously, or
beneficially, and they in their turn, poisoned by his baleful influence,
when he is depraved, become injurious forces to him by the laws of
reaction.) "At once nature itself took on the changed expression; and
where all before was gladness and freshness there were now indications
of sorrow and decay. Atmospheric influences hitherto unrecognized began
to be noted; there was felt a chill in the morning, a dearth of magnetic
heat at noon-tide, and a universal deadness at the approach of night,
which began to be looked upon with alarm. For a change in the object
must accompany every change in the subject. Until this point was reached
there was nothing to make man afraid of himself and his surroundings.
"And as he plunged deeper and deeper into matter, he lost his
consciousness of the subtler forms of existence, and attributed all the
antagonism he experienced to unknown causes. The conflict continued to
wax stronger, and, in consequence of his ignorance, man fell a readier
victim. There were exceptions among the race then, as there are now,
whose finer perceptive faculties outgrew, or kept ahead, of the
advancing materialization; and they alone, in course of events, could
feel and recognize the influences of these earliest progeny of the
earth.
"Time came when an occasional appearance was viewed with alarm, and was
thought to be an omen of evil. Recognizing this fear on the part of man,
the elementals ultimately came to realize for him the dangers he
apprehended, and they banded together to terrify him." (They reflected
back to him his own fears in a concrete form, sufficiently intelligent,
perhaps, to take some malicious pleasure in it, for man in propelling
into space a force of any kind is met by a reactionary force, which
seems to give exactly what his mind foreshadowed. In the negative
coldness of fear, he lays himself open to infesting molecules or atoms
which paralyze life, and he falls a victim to his own lack of faith,
cheerful courage and hope.) "They found strong allies in an order of
existence which was generated when physical death made its appearance"
(_i.e._, elementaries, or shells); "and their combined forces began to
manifest themselves at night, for which man had a dread as being the
enemy of his protector, the sun.[19]
[Footnote 19: _Fragments of Forgotten History._]
"The elementaries galvanized into activity by the elemental beings began
to appear to man under as many varieties of shape as his hopes and fears
allowed. And as his ignorance of things spiritual became denser, these
agencies brought in an influx of error, which accelerated his spiritual
degeneration. Thus, it will be seen that man's neglect of his duty to
the nature-spirits is the cause which has launched him into a sea of
troubles, that has shipwrecked so many generations of his descendants.
Famines, plagues, wars, and other catastrophes are not so disconnected
with the agency of nature-spirits as it might appear to the sceptical
mind."[20]
[Footnote 20: _Fragments of Forgotten History._]
It is therefore evident that the world of man exercises a controlling
power over this invisible world of elementals. Even in the most remote
and inaccessible haunts of nature, where we may imagine halcyon days of
an innocent bliss elapsing in poetic peace and beauty for the more
harmless of these irresponsible, evanescent offspring of nature's
teeming bosom, they must inevitably, sooner or later, yield up their
peaceful sovereignty to the greater monarch, man, who usually comes with
a harsh and discordant influence, like the burning sirocco of the
desert, like the overwhelming avalanche from the silent peaks of snow,
or the earthquake, convulsing and tearing to atoms the beauty of
gardens, palaces, cities. It is said that elementals _die_; it is
presumable that at such times they die by myriads, when the whole
surface of the earth becomes changed from the unavoidable passing away
of nature's wildernesses, the peaceful homes of bird and beast, as the
improving, commercial, money-grasping man--that contradiction of God,
that industrious destroyer, who lives at war with beauty, peace, and
goodness--appears upon the scene. These may be called poetical
rhapsodies; yet poetry is, in a mysterious way, closely allied to that
hidden truth which has its birth on the soul-plane, and the imagination
of man is, according to Eliphas Levi, a clairvoyant and magical
faculty--"the wand of the magician."
To speak of elementals _dying_, is to use a word which expresses for us
_change of condition_; the passing from one sphere of life to another,
or from one plane of consciousness to another. This to the sensual man
is "death." But there is _no_ death--it is merely a passing from one
phase of existence to another. Hence the elementals lose the forms they
once held, changing their plane of consciousness, and appearing in other
forms.
We have shown somewhat of the mysterious way in which man acts upon
these invisible denizens of his soul-world, and by which he incurs a
certain responsibility. By the dynamic power of thought and will it is
done--as everything is done. The elementals pushed by man, as by a
superior force, off that equilibrium of harmony with pure, innocent
nature, which they originally maintained when our planet was young, have
been transformed into powers of evil, which man brings upon himself as
retribution--the reaction of that force he ignorantly sets in motion
when he breaks the beneficent laws of nature. Originally dependent upon
him, and capable of aiding him in a thousand ways when he is wise and
good, they have become his enemies, who thwart him at every turn, and
guard the secrets of their abodes with none the less implacable
sternness because they are probably only semi-conscious of the functions
they perform. It is nature acting through them--the great cosmic
consciousness, which forbids that desecrating footsteps shall invade the
holy precincts of her stupendous life-secrets. But to the spiritual
man--the god--these secrets open of themselves, like a hand laden with
gifts, readily unclosing to a favorite and deserving child.
Giving forth a current of evil, and sinking therefrom into a state of
bestial ignorance, man has enveloped himself in clouds of darkness which
assume monstrous shapes threatening to overwhelm him. A wicked man is
generally a coward because he lives in a state of perpetual dread of the
reactionary effect of the evil forces he has set in motion. These are
volumes of elemental forms banded together, and swaying like the
thunder-clouds of a gathering storm.
To disperse these, his own spiritual mind must ray forth the light
reflected from the source of light--omniscience. In the astral
atmospheres of the spiritual man, there are no clouds, and fear is
unknown. In the mental world of the innocent and pure, those are only
forms of gracious beauty, as lovely as the shapes of nature's innocent
embryons, which reveal themselves in the forests, the running streams,
the floating breeze, and in company with the birds and flowers, to the
clairvoyant sight of those nature-lovers before whom she withdraws her
veils, communing with their souls by an intuitional speech which fills
them with rapturous admiration. It is not only the learned scientist who
may read nature's marvelous revelations; for she whispers them with
maternal tenderness into the open ears of babes, where they remain ever
safe from desecration, and are cherished as the soul's innocent delights
in hours of isolation from the busy, jarring world.
The spiritual soul is ever looking beneath nature's material veils for
_correspondences_. Every natural object _means_ something else to such
penetrating vision--a vision which begins to be spontaneously exercised
by the soul when it has fairly reached that stage of spiritual
evolution; and to this silent exploration many a secret meaning reveals
itself by object-pictures, which awaken reflection and inquiry as to the
why and wherefore. Thus the spiritual man drinks, as it were, from
nature's own hand the pure waters of an inexhaustible spring--that
occult knowledge which feeds his soul, and aids in forming for him a
beautiful and powerful astral body. And nature becomes invested to his
penetrating sight with a beauty she never wore before, and which the
clay-blinded eyes of animal man can never behold. Such a man would enter
the isolated haunts of the purer nature-spirits with gentle footsteps,
and loving thoughts. To him the breeze is wafted wooingly, the streams
whisper music, and everything wears an aspect of loving joyousness, and
inviting confidence. Beside the rigid material forms, he sees their
_aromal counter-parts_; everything is life; the very stones live, and
have a consciousness suited to their state; and he feels as if every
atom of his own body vibrated in unison with the living things about
him--as if _all were one flesh_. To injure a single thing would be
impossible to him. Such is the soul-condition of the perfect man, to
whom evil has become impossible.
An adept has written--"Every thought of man upon being evolved passes
into another world and becomes an active entity by associating
itself--coalescing, we might term it--with an elemental; that is to say,
with one of the semi-intelligent forces of the kingdoms. It survives as
an active intelligence--a creature of the mind's begetting--for a longer
or shorter period, proportionate with the original intensity of the
cerebral action which generated it. Thus, a good thought is perpetuated
as an active, beneficent power, an evil one as a maleficent demon. And
so man is continually peopling his current in space with the offspring
of his fancies, desires, impulses, and passions; a current which
re-acts upon any sensitive or nervous organization which comes in
contact with it, in proportion to its dynamic intensity. The adept
evolves these shapes consciously, other men throw them off
unconsciously."
Therefore, man must be held responsible not only for his outward
actions, but his secret thoughts, by which he puts into existence
irresponsible entities of more or less maleficent power, if his thoughts
be of an evil nature. These are revelations of a deep and abstruse
character; but would they have come at all if man had not reached that
stage of evolution when it is necessary he should step up into his
spiritual kingdom, and rule as a master over his lower self, and as a
beneficent god over every department of unintelligent nature?
We note the closing words of the adept's letter: "The adept evolves
these shapes consciously, other men throw them off unconsciously." In
the adept's soul-world then--the man who has ascended, by self-conquest
primarily, into his spiritual kingdom, and who has graduated through
years of probation and study in spiritual or occult science--_i.e._, the
White Magician, the Son of God, the inheritor by spiritual evolution, of
divinity--there would reign peace, happiness, beauty, order, absolute
harmony with nature on the side of good. No discordant note, no deformed
astral production to embarrass or obstruct the current of divine
magnetism he emanates into space--the delicious, soul-purifying,
healing, and uplifting aura which radiates from him as from a center of
beneficence to the lower world of struggling humanity. The
semi-intelligent forces of nature, the innocent nature spirits would in
such a soul-world, find an appropriate and harmonious habitat,
clustering in waiting obedience upon the behests of a master whose every
thought-breath would be as an uplifting life.
To such a state and condition of complete harmony with God and nature
must the truly perfect spiritual man ascend by evolution.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ELEMENTALS AND ELEMENTARIES
From the similarity of the terms used to designate two classes of astral
beings who are able to communicate with man, a certain confusion has
arisen in the public mind, which it would be as well, perhaps, to aid in
removing.
_Elementals_ is a term applied to the nature spirits, the living
existences which belong peculiarly to the elements they inhabit; "beings
of the _mysteria specialia_," according to Paracelsus, "soul-forms,
which will return into their chaos, and who are not capable of
manifesting any higher spiritual activity because they do not possess
the necessary kind of constitution in which an activity of a spiritual
character can manifest itself.... Matter is connected with spirit by an
intermediate principle which it receives from this spirit. This
intermediate link between matter and spirit belongs to all the three
kingdoms of nature. In the mineral kingdom it is called Stannar, or
Trughat; in the vegetable kingdom, Jaffas; and it forms in connection
with the vital force of the vegetable kingdom, the Primum Ens, which
possesses the highest medicinal properties.... In the animal kingdom,
this semi-material body is called Evestrum, and in human beings it is
called the Sidereal Man. Each living being is connected with the
Macrocosmos and Microcosmos by means of this intermediate element of
soul, belonging to the Mysterium Magnum from whence it has been
received, and whose form and qualities are determined by the quality and
quantity of the spiritual and material elements." From this we may infer
that the _Elementals_, properly speaking, are the _Soul-forms_ of the
elements they inhabit--the activities and energies of the _world-soul_
differentiated into forms, endowed with more or less consciousness and
capacities for feeling, and hours of enjoyment, or pain. But these,
never or rarely, entering any more deeply into dense matter than enabled
so to do by their aerial invisible bodies, do not appear upon our gross
physical plane otherwise than as forces, energies, or influences. Their
soul-forms are the intermediate link between matter and spirit,
resembling the soul-forms of animals and men, which also form this
intermediate link, the difference being that the souls of animals and
men have enveloped themselves in a casing of dense matter for the
purposes of existence upon the more external planes of life.
Consequently, after the death of the external bodies of men and animals,
there remain astral remnants which undergo gradual disintegration in the
astral atmospheres. These have been termed _elementaries_; _i.e._, "the
astral corpses of the dead; the ethereal counterpart of the once living
person, which will sooner or later be decomposed into its astral
elements, as the physical body is dissolved into the elements to which
it belongs. The elementaries of good people have little cohesion and
evaporate soon; those of wicked people may exist a long time; those of
suicides, etc., have a life and consciousness of their own as long as a
division of principles has not taken place. These are the most
dangerous."
In the introduction to _Isis Unveiled_, we find the following definition
of elemental spirits:
"The creatures evolved in the four kingdoms of earth, air, fire, and
water, and called by the Kabalists gnomes, sylphs, salamanders, and
undines. They may be termed the forces of nature, and will either
operate effects as the servile agents of general law, or may be employed
by the disembodied spirits--whether pure or impure--and by living adepts
of magic and sorcery, to produce desired phenomenal results. _Such_
beings never become men." (But there are classes of elemental spirits
who do become men, as we shall see further on.)
"Under the general designation of fairies and fays, these spirits of the
elements appear in the myth, fable, tradition, and poetry of all
nations, ancient and modern. Their names are legion--peris, devs, djins,
sylvans, satyrs, fawns, elves, dwarfs, trolls, kobolds, brownies,
stromkarls, undines, nixies, salamanders, goblins, banshees, kelpies,
prixies, moss people, good people, good neighbors, wild women, men of
peace, white ladies, and many more. They have been seen, feared,
blessed, banned, and invoked in every quarter of the globe and in every
age. These elementals are the principal agents of disembodied but never
visible spirits at seances, and the producers of all the phenomena
except the 'subjective.'"--(Preface xxix, vol. I.)
"In the Jewish Kabala the nature spirits were known under the general
name of _Shedim_, and divided into four classes. The Persians called
them _devs_; the Greeks indistinctly designated them as _demons_; the
Egyptians knew them as _afrites_. The ancient Mexicans, says Kaiser,
believed in numerous spirit-abodes, into one of which the shades of
innocent children were placed until final disposal; into another,
situated in the sun, ascended the valiant souls of heroes; while the
hideous specters of incorrigible sinners were sentenced to wander and
despair in subterranean caves, held in the bonds of the
earth-atmosphere, unwilling and unable to liberate themselves. They
passed their time in communicating with mortals, and frightening those
who could see them. Some of the African tribes know them as
Yowahoos."--(P. 313, vol. I.)
Of the ideas of Proclus on this subject it is said in _Isis Unveiled_:
"He held that the four elements are all filled with demons, maintaining
with Aristotle that the universe is full, and that there is no void in
nature. The demons of earth, air, fire, and water, are of an elastic,
ethereal, semi-corporeal essence. It is these classes which officiate as
intermediate agents between the gods and men. Although lower in
intelligence than the sixth order of the higher demons, these beings
preside directly over the elements and organic life. They direct the
growth, the inflorescence, the properties, and various changes of
plants. They are the personified ideas or virtues shed from the heavenly
_ule_ into the inorganic matter; and, as the vegetable kingdom is one
remove higher than the mineral, these emanations from the celestial gods
take form in the plant, and become _its soul_. It is that which
Aristotle's doctrine terms the _form_ in the three principles of natural
bodies, classified by him as _privation_, matter, and form. His
philosophy teaches that besides the original matter, another principle
is necessary to complete the triune nature of every particle, and this
is _form_; an invisible, but still, in an ontological sense of the word,
a substantial being, really distinct from matter proper. Thus, in an
animal or a plant, besides the bones, the flesh, the nerves, the brains,
and the blood in the former; and besides the pulpy matter, tissues,
fibers, and juice in the latter, which blood and juice by circulating
through the veins and fibers nourish all parts of both animal and plant;
and besides the animal spirits which are the principles of motion, and
the chemical energy which is transformed into vital force in the green
leaf, there must be a substantial form, which Aristotle called in the
horse, the _horse's soul_; and Proclus, the _demon_ of every mineral,
plant, or animal, and the medieval philosophers, the _elementary
spirits_ of the four kingdoms."--(P. 312, vol. I.)
"According to the ancient doctrines, the soulless elemental spirits were
evolved by the ceaseless motion inherent in the astral light. Light is
force, and the latter is produced by _will_. As this will proceeds from
an intelligence which cannot err, for it has nothing of the material
organs of human thought in it, being the super-fine pure emanation of
the highest divinity itself--(Plato's _Father_)--it proceeds from the
beginning of time, according to immutable laws, to evolve the
elementary fabric requisite for subsequent generations of what we term
human races. All of the latter, whether belonging to this planet or to
some other of the myriads in space, have their earthly bodies evolved in
the matrix out of the bodies of a certain class of these elemental
beings which have passed away in the invisible worlds." (P. 285, vol.
I.)
Speaking of Pythagoras, Iamblichus, and other Greek philosophers, _Isis_
says:
"The universal ether was not, in their eyes, simply a something
stretching, tenantless, throughout the expanse of heaven; it was a
boundless ocean peopled, like our familiar seas, with monstrous and
minor creatures, and having in its every molecule the germs of life.
Like the finny tribes which swarm in our oceans and smaller bodies of
water, each kind having its 'habitat' in some spot to which it is
curiously adapted; some friendly and some inimical to man; some pleasant
and some frightful to behold; some seeking the refuge of quiet nooks and
land-locked harbors, and some traversing great areas of water, the
various races of the elemental spirits were believed by them to inhabit
the different portions of the great ethereal ocean, and to be exactly
adapted to their respective conditions." (P. 284, vol. I.)
"Lowest in the scale of being are those invisible creatures called by
the Kabalists the _elementary_. There are three distinct classes of
these. The highest, in intelligence and cunning, are the so-called
terrestrial spirits, the _larvae_, or shadows of those who have lived on
earth, have refused all spiritual light, remained and died deeply
immersed in the mire of matter, and from whose sinful souls the
immortal spirit has gradually separated. The second class is composed of
invisible antitypes of men _to be_ born. No form can come into objective
existence, from the highest to the lowest, before the abstract idea of
this form, or as Aristotle would call it, the privation of this form is
called forth.... These models, as yet devoid of immortal spirits, are
elementals properly speaking, _psychic embryos_--which when their time
arrives, die out of the invisible world, and are borne into this visible
one as human infants, receiving _in transitu_ that divine breath called
spirit which completes the perfect man. This class cannot communicate
objectively with man.
"The third class of elementals proper never evolve into human beings,
but occupy, as it were, a specific step of the ladder of being, and, by
comparison with the others, may properly be called nature-spirits, or
cosmic agents of nature, each being confined to its own element, and
never transgressing the bounds of others. These are what Tertullian
called 'the princes of the powers of the air.'