The Best Psychic Stories Part 23

Diving into the unseen by the light of the new spiritual knowledge now radiating into all minds, we learn that there are three degrees of life in man, the material, the aerial, and the ethereal, corresponding to body, soul, and spirit; and that there are three corresponding planes of existence inhabited by beings suited to them.

The subject of our paper will limit us at present to the aerial, or soul-plane--the next contiguous, or astral world. The beings that more especially live in this realm of the soul, have by common consent been termed _elementals_. Nature in illimitable s.p.a.ce teems with life in forms ethereal, evanescent as thought itself, or more objectively condensed and solidified, according to the inherent attraction which holds them together; enduring according to the force, energy, or power which gave them birth; intelligent, or non-intelligent, from the same source, which is mental. These spirits of the soul-world are possessed of aerial bodies, and their world has its own firmament, its own atmosphere and conditions of existence, its own objects, scenes, habitations. Yet their world and the world of man intermingle, interpenetrate, and "throw their shadows upon each other," says Paracelsus. Again, he says: "As there are in our world water and fire, harmonies and contrasts, visible bodies and invisible essences, likewise these beings are varied in their const.i.tution, and have their own peculiarities, for which human beings have no comprehension."

Matter, as known to men in bodies, is seen and felt by means of the physical senses; but to beings not provided with such senses, the things of our world are as invisible and intangible as things of more ethereal substance are to our grosser senses. Elementals which find their habitat in the interior of the earth's sh.e.l.l, usually called _gnomes_, are not conscious of the density of the element of earth as we perceive it; but breathe in a free atmosphere, and behold objects of which we cannot form the remotest conception. In like manner exist the _undines_ in water, _sylphs_ in air, and _salamanders_ in fire. The elementals of the air, sylphs, are said to be friendly towards man; those of the water, undines, are malicious. The salamanders can, but rarely do, a.s.sociate with man, "on account of the fiery nature of the element they inhabit."

The pigmies (gnomes) are friendly; but as they are the guardians of treasure they usually oppose the approach of man, baffling by many mysterious arts the selfish greed of seekers for buried wealth. We, however, read of their alluring miners either by stroke of pick, or hammer, or by floating lights to the best mineral "leads." Paracelsus says of these subterranean elementals that they build houses, vaults, and strange-looking edifices of certain immaterial substances unknown to us. "They have some kind of alabaster, marble, cement, etc., but these substances are as different from ours as the web of a spider is different from our linen."

These inhabitants of the elements, or "nature-spirits," may, or may not be, conscious of the existence of man; oftentimes feeling him merely as a force which propels, or arrests them; for by his will and by his thought, he acts upon the astral currents of the aerial world in which they live; and by the use of his hands he sways the material elements of earth, fire, and water wherein they are established. They perceive the soul-essence of man with its "currents and forms," and they also are capable of reading such thoughts as do not spiritually transcend their powers of discernment. They perceive the states of feeling and emotions of men by the "_colors_ and impressions produced in their auras," and may thus irresistibly be drawn into overt action upon man's plane of life. They are the invisible _stone-throwers_ we hear of so frequently, supposed to be _human_ spirits; the perpetrators of mischief, such as destruction of property in the habitations of men, noises, and mysterious nocturnal annoyances.

Of all writers upon occult subjects to whose works we have as yet gained access, Paracelsus throws the greatest light upon these tricky sprites celebrated in the realm of poesy, and inhabiting that disputed land popularly termed fairydom. From open vision, and that wonderful insight of the master or adept into the secrets of nature, Paracelsus is able to give us the most positive information concerning their bodily formation, the nature of their existence, and other extraordinary particulars, which proves that he has actually seen and observed them, and doubtless also employed them as the obedient servants of his purified will; a power into which the spiritual man ascends by a species of right, when he has thrown off, or conquered, the thraldom of matter in his own body, and stands open-eyed at "the portals of his deep within."

We will quote certain extracts from the pages of this wonderful interpreter of nature. "There are two kinds of flesh. One that comes from Adam, and another that does not come from Adam. The former is gross material, visible and tangible for us; the other one is not tangible and not made from earth. If a man who is a descendant from Adam wants to pa.s.s through a wall, he will have first to make a hole through it; but a being who is not descended from Adam needs no hole nor door, but may pa.s.s through matter that appears solid to us without causing any damage to it. The beings not descended from Adam, as well as those descended from him, are organized and have substantial bodies; but there is as much difference between the substance composing their bodies as there is between matter and spirit. Yet the elementals are not spirits, because they have flesh, blood, and bones; they live and propagate offspring; they eat and talk, act and sleep, etc., and consequently they cannot be properly called spirits. They are beings occupying a place between man and spirits, resembling men and women in their organization and form, and resembling spirits in the rapidity of their locomotion. They are intermediary beings or composita, formed out of two parts joined into one; just as two colors mixed together will appear as one color, resembling neither one nor the other of the two original ones. The elementals have no higher principles; they are therefore not immortal, and when they die they perish like animals. Neither water nor fire can injure them, and they cannot be locked up in our material prisons. They are, however, subject to diseases. Their costumes, actions, forms, ways of speaking, etc., are not very unlike those of human beings; but there are a great many varieties. They have only animal intellects, and are incapable of spiritual development."

In saying the elementals have "no higher principles," and "When they die they perish like animals," Paracelsus does not stop to explain that the higher principles in them are absolutely latent, as in plants; and that animals in "peris.h.i.+ng" are not destroyed, but the psychical or soul-part of the animal pa.s.ses, by the processes of evolution, into higher forms.

"Each species moves only in the element to which it belongs, and neither of them can go out of its appropriate element, which is to them as the air is to us, or the water to fishes; and none of them can live in the element belonging to another cla.s.s. To each elemental being the element in which it lives is transparent, invisible, and respirable, as the atmosphere is to ourselves."

"As far as the personalities of the elementals are concerned, it may be said that those belonging to the element of water resemble human beings of either s.e.x; those of the air are greater and stronger; the salamanders are long, lean, and dry; the pigmies (gnomes) are the length of about two spans, but they may extend or elongate their forms until they appear like giants.

"Nymphs (undines, or naiads) have their residences and palaces in the element of water; sylphs and salamanders have no fixed dwellings.

Salamanders have been seen in the shape of fiery b.a.l.l.s, or tongues of fire running over the fields or appearing in houses;" or at psychical seances as starry lights, darting and dancing about.

"There are certain localities where large numbers of elementals live together, and it has occurred that a man has been admitted into their communities and lived with them for a while, and that they have become visible and tangible to him."

Poets, in their moments of exaltation, have an unconscious soul-vision before which nature's invisible worlds lie like an open volume, and they translate her secrets into language of mystic meanings whose harmonies are re-interpreted by sympathetic minds. The poet Hogg, in his _Rapture of Kilmeny_, would seem to have had a vision of some such visit as that described above, into the fairyland of pure, peaceful _elementals_.

"Bonny Kilmeny gaed up the glen"--and is represented as having fallen asleep. During this sleep she is transported to "a far countrye," whose gentle, lovely inhabitants receive her with delight. The following lines reveal the poet's power of inner vision, as will be seen by the words italicized. They are in wonderful accord with the descriptions given by Paracelsus from the actual observation of a _conscious seer_:

"They lifted Kilmeny, they led her away, And she walk'd _in the light of a sunless day_; The sky was _a dome of crystal bright_, The _fountain of vision and fountain of light_; The emerald fields _were of dazzling glow_, And the _flowers of everlasting blow_."

It needs but a brus.h.i.+ng away of the films of flesh, which occurs in moments of rapt inspiration, for the soul, escaping from its prison-house, to revel in the innocent, peaceful scenes of its own inner world, and give a true description of what it beholds. The inner meanings of things, the symbolical correspondences are revealed in a flash of light, and the poet-soul becomes revelator and prophet all in one. He sets it down to imagination and fancy, when he returns into his normal state, and it is what we call "a flight of genius"--the power of the soul to enter its own appropriate world. Certainly _les ames de boue_ have no such power. It is, however, a _proof that world exists_, if we will but understand it aright.

There has never existed a poet with a truer conception of "elemental"

life than Shakespeare. What more exquisite creation of the poet's fancy, which _might be every word of it true_, for in no particular does it surpa.s.s the truth, than that of _Ariel_, whom the "foul witch Sycorax,"

"by help of her more potent ministers, and in her most unmitigable rage," did confine "into a cloven pine;" for Ariel, the good elemental, was "a spirit too delicate to act her earthly and abhorred commands."

When Prospero, the Adept and White Magician, arrived upon the scene, by his superior art he liberated the delicate Ariel, who afterwards becomes his ministering servant for _good_, not for evil.

In the _Midsummer Night's Dream_, t.i.tania transports a human child into her elemental world, where she keeps him with so jealous a love as to refuse to yield him even to her "fairy lord," as Puck calls him. Puck himself is almost as exquisite a realization of elemental life as Ariel.

As Shakespeare unfolds the lovely, innocent tale of the occupations, sports and pranks of this aerial people, he introduces us to the elementals of his own beautiful thought world; and, although indulging in the "sports of fancy," there is so broad a foundation of truth, that, being enlightened by the revelations of Paracelsus, we no longer think we are merely entertained by the poetical inventions of a master of his art, but may well believe we have been witnesses of a charming reality beheld through the "rift in the veil" of the poet's unconscious inner sight. Indeed, one of the tenets of occult science is that there is nothing on earth, nor that the mind of man can conceive, which is not already existent in the unseen world.

We reflect in the translucence, or _diaphane_ of our mental world those concrete images of things which we attract by the irresistible magnetism of _desire_ working through the thought. It is a spontaneous, unconscious mental process with us; but there is no reason why it should not become a perfectly conscious process regulated by a divine wisdom to functions of harmony with nature's laws, and to productions of beauty and beneficence for the good of the whole world. As the world is the concreted emanation of divine thought, so it is by thought that man, the microcosm, _creates_ upon his petty, finite plane. Given the desire--even if it be only as the lightest breath of a summer zephyr upon the sleeping bosom of the ocean, scarcely ruffling its surface--it becomes a center of attraction for suitable molecules of thought-substance floating in s.p.a.ce, which immediately "agglomerate round the idea proceeding to reveal itself," _by means_ of clothing itself in substance. By these silent processes in the invisible world wherein our souls draw the breath of life, we form our mental world, our personal character, even our very physical bodies. The _perisprit_, or astral body, the vehicle for _formless spirit_, is essentially builded up from the mental life, and grows by the accretion of those atoms or molecules of thought-substance which are a.s.similable by the mind. Hence a good man, a man of lofty aspirations, forms, as the _nearest_ external clothing of his inner spirit, a beautiful soul-body, which irradiates through and beautifies the physical body. The man of low and groveling mind will, on the contrary, attract the depraved and poisoned substances of the lower astral world; the malarial emanations thrown off by other equally depraved beings, by which his mind becomes embruted, his soul diseased, whilst his physical form presents in a concrete image the ugliness of his inner nature. Such a man never ascends above the dense, mephitic vapors of the sin-laden world, nor takes into his soul the slightest breath of pure, vitalizing air. He is diseased by invisible astral _microbes_, being most effectually self-inoculated with them by the operation of desires which never transcend the earth. Did we lift the veil which shrouds from mortal sight the elemental world of such a moral pervert, we should behold a world teeming with hideous forms, and as actively working as the _bacteria_ of fermentation revealed by a powerful microscope, elementals of destruction, death, and decay, which must pa.s.s out into other forms for the purification of the spiritual atmosphere; creatures produced by the man's own thoughts, living upon and in him, and reflecting, like mirrors, his hideousness back again to himself. It is from the presence of innumerable foci of evil of this kind that the world is befouled, and the moral atmosphere of our planet tainted. They emit poisoned astral currents, from which none are safe but those who are in the _positive_ condition of perfect moral health.

From the fountain of life we draw in the materials of life, and become, upon our lower plane, other living fountains, which from liberty of choice, and freedom of will, have the power of so muddying the pure stream, that in its turbidness and foulness it becomes death instead of life, and produces h.e.l.l instead of heaven. When we, by self-purification, and that constant mental discipline which trains us upwards, clinging to our highest ideal by the tendrils of faith, and love, and continual aspiration, as the vine would cling to a rock--have eliminated all that is impure in our thought world, we become fountains of life, and make our own heavens, wherein are reflected only images of divine beauty. The whole elemental world on our immediate astral plane becomes gradually transformed during the progress of our evolution into the higher spiritual grades of being. And as humanity _en ma.s.se_ advances, throwing off the moral and spiritual deformity of the selfish, ignorant ego, the astral atmospheres belonging to our planet world become filled with elementals of a peaceful, loving character, of beautiful forms, and of beneficent influences. The currents of evil force which now act with a continually jarring effect upon those striving to maintain the equilibrium of harmony with nature upon the side of _good_, would cease. That depression, agitation, and distress which now, from inscrutable causes, a.s.sail minds otherwise rejoicing in an innocent happiness, forewarning them of some impending calamity, or of some evil presence it seems impossible to shake off, would become unknown. The horrible demons of war, with which humanity, in its sinful state of _separateness_, is continually threatening itself--as if the members of one body were self-opposed, and revolting from that state of agreement that can alone ensure the well-being of the whole--would no longer be held, like ravenous bloodhounds chafing against their leashes, ready to spring, at a word, upon their h.e.l.lish work; but they will have pa.s.sed away, like other hideous deformities of evil; and the serene astral atmospheres would no longer reflect ideas of cruel wrongs to fellow-beings, revenge, l.u.s.t of power, injustice, and ruthless hatred.

We are taught that around an "idea" agglomerate the suitable molecules of soul-substance--"Monads," as Leibnitz terms them, until a concrete form stands created, the production of a mind, or minds. All the hideous man-created beings, powers or forces, which now act like ravaging pestilences and storms in the astral atmospheres of our planet will have disappeared like the monstrous phantoms of a frightful dream, when the whole of humanity has progressed into a state of higher spiritual evolution. It is well to reflect that _each individual_, however humble and apparently insignificant his position in the great human family, can aid by his life, by the silent emanation of his pure and wise thoughts, as well as by his active labors for humanity, in bringing nearer this halcyon period of peace, harmony, and purity--that millennium, in short, we are all looking forward to, as a dream we can never hope to see realized.

In _Man: Fragments of Forgotten History_, we read: "Violence was the most baneful manifestation of man's spiritual decadence, and it rebounded upon him from the elemental beings, whom it was his duty to develop"--those _sub-mundanes_, towards whom man is now learning that he incurs _responsibilities_ of which he is at present utterly unconscious, but of which he will indubitably become more and more aware as he ascends the ladder of spiritual evolution.

To continue our extract from _Fragments_. "When this duty was ignored, 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. .h.i.therto 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 s.p.a.ce 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 sh.e.l.ls); "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 s.h.i.+pwrecked 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 pa.s.sing away of nature's wildernesses, the peaceful homes of bird and beast, as the improving, commercial, money-grasping man--that contradiction of G.o.d, 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sing 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 G.o.d--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 b.e.s.t.i.a.l ignorance, man has enveloped himself in clouds of darkness which a.s.sume 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 pa.s.ses into another world and becomes an active ent.i.ty by a.s.sociating 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 s.p.a.ce with the offspring of his fancies, desires, impulses, and pa.s.sions; 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 ent.i.ties 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 embarra.s.s or obstruct the current of divine magnetism he emanates into s.p.a.ce--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, cl.u.s.tering 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 G.o.d 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 cla.s.ses 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 const.i.tution 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 quant.i.ty 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 cla.s.ses 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 princ.i.p.al 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 cla.s.ses. 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 pa.s.sed 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_: