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p. 105
The Elements and
Their Inhabitants
FOR the most comprehensive and
lucid exposition of occult pneumatology (the branch of philosophy dealing with
spiritual substances) extant, mankind is indebted to Philippus Aureolus
Paracelsus (Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim), prince of alchemists and
Hermetic philosophers and true possessor of the Royal Secret (the
Philosopher's Stone and the Elixir of Life). Paracelsus believed that each of
the four primary elements known to the ancients (earth, fire, air, and water)
consisted of a subtle, vaporous principle and a gross corporeal substance.
Air is, therefore, twofold in
nature-tangible atmosphere and an intangible, volatile substratum which may be
termed spiritual air. Fire is visible and invisible, discernible and
indiscernible--a spiritual, ethereal flame manifesting through a material,
substantial flame. Carrying the analogy further, water consists of a dense
fluid and a potential essence of a fluidic nature. Earth has likewise two
essential parts--the lower being fixed, terreous, immobile; the higher,
rarefied, mobile, and virtual. The general term elements has been applied to
the lower, or physical, phases of these four primary principles, and the name
elemental essences to their corresponding invisible, spiritual constitutions.
Minerals, plants, animals, and men live in a world composed of the gross side
of these four elements, and from various combinations of them construct their
living organisms.
Henry Drummond, in Natural
Law in the Spiritual World, describes this process as follows: "If we
analyse this material point at which all life starts, we shall find it to
consist of a clear structureless, jelly-like substance resembling albumen or
white of egg. It is made of Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen. Its name is
protoplasm. And it is not only the structural unit with which all living
bodies start in life, but with which they are subsequently built up.
'Protoplasm,' says Huxley, 'simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all
life. It is the clay of the Potter.'"
The water element of the
ancient philosophers has been metamorphosed into the hydrogen of modern
science; the air has become oxygen; the fire, nitrogen; the
earth, carbon.
Just as visible Nature is
populated by an infinite number of living creatures, so, according to
Paracelsus, the invisible, spiritual counterpart of visible Nature (composed
of the tenuous principles of the visible elements) is inhabited by a host of
peculiar beings, to whom he has given the name elementals, and which have
later been termed the Nature spirits. Paracelsus divided these people of the
elements into four distinct groups, which he called gnomes, undines,
sylphs, and salamanders. He taught that they were really living
entities, many resembling human beings in shape, and inhabiting worlds of
their own, unknown to man because his undeveloped senses were incapable of
functioning beyond the limitations of the grosser elements.
The civilizations of Greece,
Rome, Egypt, China, and India believed implicitly in satyrs, sprites, and
goblins. They peopled the sea with mermaids, the rivers and fountains with
nymphs, the air with fairies, the fire with Lares and Penates, and the earth
with fauns, dryads, and hamadryads. These Nature spirits were held in the
highest esteem, and propitiatory offerings were made to them. Occasionally, as
the result of atmospheric conditions or the peculiar sensitiveness of the
devotee, they became visible. Many authors wrote concerning them in terms
which signify that they had actually beheld these inhabitants of Nature's
finer realms. A number of authorities are of the opinion that many of the gods
worshiped by the pagans were elementals, for some of these invisibles
were believed to be of commanding stature and magnificent deportment.
The Greeks gave the name
dæmon to some of these elementals, especially those of the higher orders,
and worshiped them. Probably the most famous of these dæmons is the
mysterious spirit which instructed Socrates, and of whom that great
philosopher spoke in the highest terms. Those who have devoted much study to
the invisible constitution of man realize that it is quite probable the dæmon
of Socrates and the angel of Jakob Böhme were in reality not elementals, but
the overshadowing divine natures of these philosophers themselves. In his
notes to Apuleius on the God of Socrates, Thomas Taylor says:
"As the dæmon of Socrates,
therefore, was doubtless one of the highest order, as may be inferred from the
intellectual superiority of Socrates to most other men, Apuleius is justified
in calling this dæmon a God. And that the dæmon of Socrates indeed was divine,
is evident from the testimony of Socrates himself in the First Alcibiades: for
in the course of that dialogue he clearly says, 'I have long been of the
opinion that the God did not as yet direct me to hold any conversation with
you.' And in the Apology he most unequivocally evinces that this dæmon is
allotted a divine transcendency, considered as ranking in the order of dæmons."
The idea once held, that the
invisible elements surrounding and interpenetrating the earth were peopled
with living, intelligent beings, may seem ridiculous to the prosaic mind of
today. This doctrine, however, has found favor with some of the greatest
intellects of the world. The sylphs of Facius Cardin, the philosopher of
Milan; the salamander seen by Benvenuto Cellini; the pan of St. Anthony; and
le petit homme rouge (the little red man, or gnome) of Napoleon
Bonaparte, have found their places in the pages of history.
Literature has also perpetuated
the concept of Nature spirits. The mischievous Puck of Shakespeare's
Midsummer Night's Dream; the elementals of Alexander Pope's Rosicrucian
poem, The Rape of the Lock, the mysterious creatures of Lord Lytton's
Zanoni; James Barrie's immortal Tinker Bell; and the famous bowlers
that Rip Van Winkle encountered in the Catskill Mountains, are well-known
characters to students of literature. The folklore and mythology of all
peoples abound in legends concerning these mysterious little figures who haunt
old castles, guard treasures in the depths of the earth, and build their homes
under the spreading protection of toadstools. Fairies are the delight of
childhood, and most children give them up with reluctance. Not so very long
ago the greatest minds of the world believed in the existence of fairies, and
it is still an open question as to whether Plato, Socrates, and Iamblichus
were wrong when they avowed their reality.
Paracelsus, when describing the
substances which constitute the bodies of the elementals, divided flesh into
two kinds, the first being that which we have all inherited through Adam. This
is the visible, corporeal flesh. The second was that flesh which had not
descended from Adam and, being more attenuated, was not subject to the
limitations of the former. The bodies of the elementals were composed of this
transubstantial flesh. Paracelsus stated that there is as much difference
between the bodies of men and the bodies of the Nature spirits as there is
between matter and spirit.
"Yet," he adds, "the Elementals
are not spirits, because they have flesh, blood and bones; they live and
propagate offspring; they cat and talk, act and sleep, &c., and consequently
they cannot be properly called 'spirits.' They are beings occupying a place
between men and spirits, resembling men and spirits, resembling men and women
in their organization and form, and resembling spirits in the rapidity of
their locomotion." (Philosophia Occulta, translated by Franz Hartmann.)
Later the same author calls these creatures composita, inasmuch as the
substance out of which they are composed seems to be a composite of spirit and
matter. He uses color to explain the idea. Thus, the mixture of blue and red
gives purple, a new color, resembling neither of the others yet composed of
both. Such is the case with the Nature spirits; they resemble neither
spiritual creatures nor material beings, yet are composed of the substance
which we may call spiritual matter, or ether.
Paracelsus further adds that
whereas man is composed of several natures (spirit, soul, mind, and body)
combined in one unit, the elemental has but one principle, the ether
out of which it is composed and in which it lives. The reader must remember
that by ether
A SALAMANDER, ACCORDING TO PARACELSUS.
From Paracelsus' Auslegung
von 30 magischen Figuren.
The Egyptians, Chaldeans, and
Persians often mistook the salamanders for gods, because of their radiant
splendor and great power. The Greeks, following the example of earlier
nations, deified the fire spirits and in their honor kept incense and altar
fire, burning perpetually.
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is meant the spiritual essence
of one of the four elements. There areas many ethers as there are elements and
as many distinct families of Nature spirits as there are ethers. These
families are completely isolated in their own ether and have no intercourse
with the denizens of the other ethers; but, as man has within his own nature
centers of consciousness sensitive to the impulses of all the four ethers, it
is possible for any of the elemental kingdoms to communicate with him under
proper conditions.
The Nature spirits cannot be
destroyed by the grosser elements, such as material fire, earth, air, or
water, for they function in a rate of vibration higher than that of earthy
substances. Being composed of only one element or principle (the ether in
which they function), they have no immortal spirit and at death merely
disintegrate back into the element from which they were originally
individualized. No individual consciousness is preserved after death, for
there is no superior vehicle present to contain it. Being made of but one
substance, there is no friction between vehicles: thus there is little wear or
tear incurred by their bodily functions, and they therefore live to great age.
Those composed of earth ether are the shortest lived; those composed of air
ether, the longest. The average length of life is between three hundred and a
thousand years. Paracelsus maintained that they live in conditions similar to
our earth environments, and are somewhat subject to disease. These creatures
are thought to be incapable of spiritual development, but most of them are of
a high moral character.
Concerning the elemental ethers
in which the Nature spirits exist, Paracelsus wrote: "They live in the four
elements: the Nymphæ in the element of water, the Sylphes in that of the air,
the Pigmies in the earth, and the Salamanders in fire. They are also called
Undinæ, Sylvestres, Gnomi, Vulcani, &c. 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 class. To each
elemental being the element in which it lives is transparent, invisible and
respirable, as the atmosphere is to ourselves." (Philosophia Occulta,
translated by Franz Hartmann.)
The reader should be careful
not to confuse the Nature spirits with the true life waves evolving through
the invisible worlds. While the elementals are composed of only one etheric
(or atomic) essence, the angels, archangels, and other superior,
transcendental entities have composite organisms, consisting of a spiritual
nature and a chain of vehicles to express that nature not unlike those of men,
but not including the physical body with its attendant limitations.
To the philosophy of Nature
spirits is generally attributed an Eastern origin, probably Brahmanic; and
Paracelsus secured his knowledge of them from Oriental sages with whom he came
in contact during his lifetime of philosophical wanderings. The Egyptians and
Greeks gleaned their information from the same source. The four main divisions
of Nature spirits must now be considered separately, according to the
teachings of Paracelsus and the Abbé de Villars and such scanty writings of
other authors as are available.
THE GNOMES
The elementals who dwell in
that attenuated body of the earth which is called the terreous ether are
grouped together under the general heading of gnomes. (The name is
probably derived from the Greek genomus, meaning earth dweller. See
New English Dictionary.)
Just as there are many types of
human beings evolving through the objective physical elements of Nature, so
there are many types of gnomes evolving through the subjective ethereal body
of Nature. These earth spirits work in an element so close in vibratory rate
to the material earth that they have immense power over its rocks and flora,
and also over the mineral elements in the animal and human kingdoms. Some,
like the pygmies, work with the stones, gems, and metals, and are supposed to
be the guardians of hidden treasures. They live in caves, far down in what the
Scandinavians called the Land of the Nibelungen. In Wagner's wonderful opera
cycle, The Ring of the Nibelungen, Alberich makes himself King of the
Pygmies and forces these little creatures to gather for him the treasures
concealed beneath the surface of the earth.
Besides the pygmies there are
other gnomes, who are called tree and forest sprites. To this group belong the
sylvestres, satyrs, pans, dryads, hamadryads, durdalis, elves, brownies, and
little old men of the woods. Paracelsus states that the gnomes build houses of
substances resembling in their constituencies alabaster, marble, and cement,
but the true nature of these materials is unknown, having no counterpart in
physical nature. Some families of gnomes gather in communities, while others
are indigenous to the substances with and in which they work. For example, the
hamadryads live and die with the plants or trees of which they are a part.
Every shrub and flower is said to have its own Nature spirit, which often uses
the physical body of the plant as its habitation. The ancient philosophers,
recognizing the principle of intelligence manifesting itself in every
department of Nature alike, believed that the quality of natural selection
exhibited by creatures not possessing organized mentalities expressed in
reality the decisions of the Nature spirits themselves.
C. M. Gayley, in The Classic
Myths, says: "It was a pleasing trait in the old paganism that it loved to
trace in every operation of nature the agency of deity. The imagination of the
Greeks peopled the regions of earth and sea with divinities, to whose agency
it attributed the phenomena that our philosophy ascribes to the operation of
natural law." Thus, in behalf of the plant it worked with, the elemental
accepted and rejected food elements, deposited coloring matter therein,
preserved and protected the seed, and performed many other beneficent offices.
Each species was served by a different but appropriate type of Nature spirit.
Those working with poisonous shrubs, for example, were offensive in their
appearance. It is said the Nature spirits of poison hemlock resemble closely
tiny human skeletons, thinly covered with a semi-transparent flesh. They live
in and through the hemlock, and if it be cut down remain with the broken
shoots until both die, but while there is the slightest evidence of life in
the shrub it shows the presence of the elemental guardian.
Great trees also have their
Nature spirits, but these are much larger than the elementals of smaller
plants. The labors of the pygmies include the cutting of the crystals in the
rocks and the development of veins of ore. When the gnomes are laboring with
animals or human beings, their work is confined to the tissues corresponding
with their own natures. Hence they work with the bones, which belong to the
mineral kingdom, and the ancients believed the reconstruction of broken
members to be impossible without the cooperation of the elementals.
The gnomes are of various
sizes--most of them much smaller than human beings, though some of them have
the power of changing their stature at will. This is the result of the extreme
mobility of the element in which they function. Concerning them the Abbé de
Villars wrote: "The earth is filled well nigh to its center with Gnomes,
people of slight stature, who are the guardians of treasures, minerals and
precious stones. They are ingenious, friends of man, and easy to govern."
Not all authorities agree
concerning the amiable disposition of the gnomes. Many state that they are of
a tricky and malicious nature, difficult to manage, and treacherous. Writers
agree, however, that when their confidence is won they are faithful and true.
The philosophers and initiates of the ancient world were instructed concerning
these mysterious little people and were taught how to communicate with them
and gain their cooperation in undertakings of importance. The magi were always
warned, however, never to betray the trust of the elementals, for if they did,
the invisible creatures, working through the subjective nature of man, could
cause them endless sorrow and probably ultimate destruction. So long as the
mystic served others, the gnomes would serve him, but if he sought to use
their aid selfishly to gain temporal power they would turn upon him with
unrelenting fury. The same was true if he sought to deceive them.
The earth spirits meet at
certain times of the year in great conclaves, as Shakespeare suggests in his
Midsummer Night's Dream, where the elementals all gather to rejoice in the
beauty and harmony of Nature and the prospects of an excellent harvest. The
gnomes are ruled over by a king, whom they greatly love and revere. His name
is Gob; hence his subjects are often called goblins. Mediæval mystics
gave a corner of creation (one of the cardinal points) to each of the four
kingdoms of Nature spirits, and because of their earthy character the gnomes
were assigned to the North--the place recognized by the ancients as the source
of darkness and death. One of the four main divisions of human disposition was
also assigned to the gnomes, and because so many of them dwelt in the darkness
of caves and the gloom of forests their temperament was said to be melancholy,
gloomy, and despondent. By this it is not meant that they themselves are of
such disposition, but rather that they have special control over elements of
similar consistency.
The gnomes marry and have
families, and the female gnomes are called gnomides. Some wear clothing
woven of the element in which they live. In other instances their garments are
part of themselves and grow with them, like the fur of animals. The gnomes are
said to have insatiable appetites, and to spend a great part of the rime
eating, but they earn their food by diligent and conscientious
CONVENTIONAL GNOMES.
From Gjellerup's Den Ældre
Eddas Gudesange.
The type of gnome most
frequently seen is the brownie, or elf, a mischievous and grotesque little
creature from twelve to eighteen inches high, usually dressed in green or
russet brown. Most of them appear as very aged, often with long white beards,
and their figures are inclined to rotundity. They can be seen scampering out
of holes in the stumps of trees and sometimes they vanish by actually
dissolving into the tree itself.
p. 107
labor. Most of them are of a
miserly temperament, fond of storing things away in secret places. There is
abundant evidence of the fact that small children often see the gnomes,
inasmuch as their contact with the material side of Nature is not yet complete
and they still function more or less consciously in the invisible worlds.
According to Paracelsus, "Man
lives in the exterior elements and the Elementals live in the interior
elements. The latter have dwellings and clothing, manners and customs,
languages and governments of their own, in the same sense as the bees have
their queens and herds of animals their leaders." (Philosophia Occulta,
translated by Franz Hartmann.)
Paracelsus differs somewhat
from the Greek mystics concerning the environmental limitations imposed on the
Nature spirits. The Swiss philosopher constitutes them of subtle invisible
ethers. According to this hypothesis they would be visible only at certain
times and only to those en rapport with their ethereal vibrations. The
Greeks, on the other hand, apparently believed that many Nature spirits had
material constitutions capable of functioning in the physical world. Often the
recollection of a dream is so vivid that, upon awakening, a person actually
believes that he has passed through a physical experience. The difficulty of
accurately judging as to the end of physical sight and the beginning of
ethereal vision may account for these differences of opinion.
Even this explanation, however,
does not satisfactorily account for the satyr which, according to St. Jerome,
was captured alive during the reign of Constantine and exhibited to the
people. It was of human form with the horns and feet of a goat. After its
death it was preserved in salt and taken to the Emperor that he might testify
to its reality. (It is within the bounds of probability that this curiosity
was what modern science knows as a monstrosity.)
THE UNDINES
As the gnomes were limited in
their function to the elements of the earth, so the undines (a name given to
the family of water elementals) function in the invisible, spiritual essence
called humid (or liquid) ether. In its vibratory rate this is close to the
element water, and so the undines are able to control, to a great degree, the
course and function of this fluid in Nature. Beauty seems to be the keynote of
the water spirits. Wherever we find them pictured in art or sculpture, they
abound in symmetry and grace. Controlling the water element--which has always
been a feminine symbol--it is natural that the water spirits should most often
be symbolized as female.
There are many groups of
undines. Some inhabit waterfalls, where they can be seen in the spray; others
are indigenous to swiftly moving rivers; some have their habitat in dripping,
oozing fens or marshes; while other groups dwell in clear mountain lakes.
According to the philosophers of antiquity, every fountain had its nymph;
every ocean wave its oceanid. The water spirits were known under such names as
oreades, nereides, limoniades, naiades, water sprites, sea maids, mermaids,
and potamides. Often the water nymphs derived their names from the streams,
lakes, or seas in which they dwelt.
In describing them, the
ancients agreed on certain salient features. In general, nearly all the
undines closely resembled human beings in appearance and size, though the ones
inhabiting small streams and fountains were of correspondingly lesser
proportions. It was believed that these water spirits were occasionally
capable of assuming the appearance of normal human beings and actually
associating with men and women. There are many legends about these spirits and
their adoption by the families of fishermen, but in nearly every case the
undines heard the call of the waters and returned to the realm of Neptune, the
King of the Sea.
Practically nothing is known
concerning the male undines. The water spirits did not establish homes in the
same way that the gnomes did, but lived in coral caves under the ocean or
among the reeds growing on the banks of rivers or the shores of lakes. Among
the Celts there is a legend to the effect that Ireland was peopled, before the
coming of its present inhabitants, by a strange race of semi-divine creatures;
with the coming of the modem Celts they retired into the marshes and fens,
where they remain even to this day. Diminutive undines lived under lily pads
and in little houses of moss sprayed by waterfalls. The undines worked with
the vital essences and liquids in plants, animals, and human beings, and were
present in everything containing water. When seen, the undines generally
resembled the goddesses of Greek statuary. They rose from the water draped in
mist and could not exist very long apart from it.
There are many families of
undines, each with its peculiar limitations, it is impossible to consider them
here in detail. Their ruler, Necksa, they love and honor, and serve
untiringly. Their temperament is said to be vital, and to them has been given
as their throne the western corner of creation. They are rather emotional
beings, friendly to human life and fond of serving mankind. They are sometimes
pictured riding on dolphins or other great fish and seem to have a special
love of flowers and plants, which they serve almost as devotedly and
intelligently as the gnomes. Ancient poets have said that the songs of the
undines were heard in the West Wind and that their lives were consecrated to
the beautifying of the material earth.
THE SALAMANDERS
The third group of elementals
is the salamanders, or spirits of fire, who live in that attenuated, spiritual
ether which is the invisible fire element of Nature. Without them material
fire cannot exist; a match cannot be struck nor will flint and steel give off
their spark without the assistance of a salamander, who immediately appears
(so the mediæval mystics believed), evoked by friction. Man is unable to
communicate successfully with the salamanders, owing to the fiery element in
which they dwell, for everything is resolved to ashes that comes into their
presence. By specially prepared compounds of herbs and perfumes the
philosophers of the ancient world manufactured many kinds of incense. When
incense was burned, the vapors which arose were especially suitable as a
medium for the expression of these elementals, who, by borrowing the ethereal
effluvium from the incense smoke, were able to make their presence felt.
The salamanders are as varied
in their grouping and arrangement as either the undines or the gnomes. There
are many families of them, differing in appearance, size, and dignity.
Sometimes the salamanders were visible as small balls of light. Paracelsus
says: "Salamanders have been seen in the shapes of fiery balls, or tongues of
fire, running over the fields or peering in houses." (Philosophia Occulta,
translated by Franz Hartmann.)
Mediæval investigators of the
Nature spirits were of the opinion that the most common form of salamander was
lizard-like in shape, a foot or more in length, and visible as a glowing
Urodela, twisting and crawling in the midst of the fire. Another group was
described as huge flaming giants in flowing robes, protected with sheets of
fiery armor. Certain mediæval authorities, among them the Abbé de Villars,
held that Zarathustra (Zoroaster) was the son of Vesta (believed to have been
the wife of Noah) and the great salamander Oromasis. Hence, from that time
onward, undying fires have been maintained upon the Persian altars in honor of
Zarathustra's flaming father.
One most important subdivision
of the salamanders was the Acthnici. These creatures appeared only as
indistinct globes. They were supposed to float over water at night and
occasionally to appear as forks of flame on the masts and rigging of ships
(St. Elmo's fire). The salamanders were the strongest and most powerful of the
elementals, and had as their ruler a magnificent flaming spirit called Djin,
terrible and awe-inspiring in appearance. The salamanders were dangerous and
the sages were warned to keep away from them, as the benefits derived from
studying them were often not commensurate with the price paid. As the ancients
associated heat with the South, this corner of creation was assigned to the
salamanders as their drone, and they exerted special influence over all beings
of fiery or tempestuous temperament. In both animals and men, the salamanders
work through the emotional nature by means of the body heat, the liver, and
the blood stream. Without their assistance there would be no warmth.
THE SYLPHS
While the sages said that the
fourth class of elementals, or sylphs, lived in the element of air, they meant
by this not the natural atmosphere of the earth, but the invisible,
intangible, spiritual medium--an ethereal substance similar in composition to
our atmosphere, but far more subtle. In the last: discourse of Socrates, as
preserved by Plato in his Phædo, the condemned philosopher says:
"And upon the earth are animals
and men, some in a middle region, others (elementals] dwelling about the air
as we dwell about the sea; others in islands which the air flows round, near
the continent; and in a word, the air is used by them as the water and the sea
are by us, and the ether is to them what the air is to us. More over, the
temperament of their seasons is such that they have no disease [Paracelsus
disputes this], and live much longer than we do,
A MERMAID.
From Lycosthenes'
Prodigiorum ac Ostentorum Chronicon.
Probably the most famous of the
undines were the mythological mermaids, with which early mariners peopled the
Seven Seas. Belief in the existence of these creatures, the upper half of
their bodies human in form and the lower half fishlike, may have been inspired
by flocks of penguins seen at great distance, or possibly seals. In mediæval
descriptions of mermaids, it was also stated that their hair was green like
seaweed and that they wore wreaths twisted from the blossoms of subaqueous
plants and sea anemones.
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and have sight and bearing and
smell, and all the other senses, in far greater perfection, in the same degree
that air is purer than water or the ether than air. Also they have temples and
sacred places in which the gods really dwell, and they hear their voices and
receive their answers, and are conscious of them and hold converse with them,
and they see the sun, moon, and stars as they really are, and their other
blessedness is of a piece with this." While the sylphs were believed to live
among the clouds and in the surrounding air, their true home was upon the tops
of mountains.
In his editorial notes to the
Occult Sciences of Salverte, Anthony Todd Thomson says: "The Fayes and
Fairies are evidently of Scandinavian origin, although the name of Fairy is
supposed to be derived from, or rather [is] a modification of the Persian Peri,
an imaginary benevolent being, whose province it was to guard men from the
maledictions of evil spirits; but with more probability it may be referred to
the Gothic Fagur, as the term Elves is from Alfa, the general appellation for
the whole tribe. If this derivation of the name of Fairy be admitted, we may
date the commencement of the popular belief in British Fairies to the period
of the Danish conquest. They were supposed to be diminutive aerial beings,
beautiful, lively, and beneficent in their intercourse with mortals,
inhabiting a region called Fairy Land, Alf-heinner; commonly appearing on
earth at intervals--when they left traces of their visits, in beautiful
green-rings, where the dewy sward had been trodden in their moonlight dances."
To the sylphs the ancients gave
the labor of modeling the snowflakes and gathering clouds. This latter they
accomplished with the cooperation of the undines who supplied the moisture.
The winds were their particular vehicle and the ancients referred to them as
the spirits of the air. They are the highest of all the elementals, their
native element being the highest in vibratory rate. They live hundreds of
years, often attaining to a thousand years and never seeming to grow old. The
leader of the sylphs is called Paralda, who is said to dwell on the
highest mountain of the earth. The female sylphs were called sylphids.
It is believed that the sylphs,
salamanders, and nymphs had much to do with the oracles of the ancients; that
in fact they were the ones who spoke from the depths of the earth and from the
air above.
The sylphs sometimes assume
human form, but apparently for only short periods of time. Their size varies,
but in the majority of cases they are no larger than human beings and often
considerably smaller. It is said that the sylphs have accepted human beings
into their communities and have permitted them to live there for a
considerable period; in fact, Paracelsus wrote of such an incident, but of
course it could not have occurred while the human stranger was in his physical
body. By some, the Muses of the Greeks are believed to have been sylphs, for
these spirits are said to gather around the mind of the dreamer, the poet, and
the artist, and inspire him with their intimate knowledge of the beauties and
workings of Nature. To the sylphs were given the eastern corner of creation.
Their temperament is mirthful, changeable, and eccentric. The peculiar
qualities common to men of genius are supposedly the result of the cooperation
of sylphs, whose aid also brings with it the sylphic inconsistency. The sylphs
labor with the gases of the human body and indirectly with the nervous system,
where their inconstancy is again apparent. They have no fixed domicile, but
wander about from place to place--elemental nomads, invisible but ever-present
powers in the intelligent activity of the universe.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
Certain of the ancients,
differing with Paracelsus, shared the opinion that the elemental kingdoms were
capable of waging war upon one another, and they recognized in the battlings
of the elements disagreements among these kingdoms of Nature spirits. When
lightning struck a rock and splintered it, they believed that the salamanders
were attacking the gnomes. As they could not attack one another on the plane
of their own peculiar etheric essences, owing to the fact that there was no
vibratory correspondence between the four ethers of which these kingdoms are
composed, they had to attack through a common denominator, namely, the
material substance of the physical universe over which they had a certain
amount of power.
Wars were also fought within
the groups themselves; one army of gnomes would attack another army, and civil
war would be rife among them. Philosophers of long ago solved the problems of
Nature's apparent inconsistencies by individualizing and personifying all its
forces, crediting them with having temperaments not unlike the human and then
expecting them to exhibit typical human inconsistencies. The four fixed signs
of the zodiac were assigned to the four kingdoms of elementals. The gnomes
were said to be of the nature of Taurus; the undines, of the nature of
Scorpio; the salamanders exemplified the constitution of Leo; while the sylphs
manipulated the emanations of Aquarius.
The Christian Church gathered
all the elemental entities together under the title of demon. This is a
misnomer with far-reaching consequences, for to the average mind the word
demon means an evil thing, and the Nature spirits are essentially no more
malevolent than are the minerals, plants, and animals. Many of the early
Church Fathers asserted that they had met and debated with the elementals.
As already stated, the Nature
spirits are without hope of immortality, although some philosophers have
maintained that in isolated cases immortality was conferred upon them by
adepts and initiates who understood certain subtle principles of the invisible
world. As disintegration takes place in the physical world, so it takes place
in the ethereal counterpart of physical substance. Under normal conditions at
death, a Nature spirit is merely resolved back into the transparent primary
essence from which it was originally individualized. Whatever evolutionary
growth is made is recorded solely in the consciousness of that primary
essence, or element, and not in the temporarily individualized entity of the
elemental. Being without man's compound organism and lacking his spiritual and
intellectual vehicles, the Nature spirits are subhuman in their rational
intelligence, but from their functions--limited to one element--has resulted a
specialized type of intelligence far ahead of man in those lines of research
peculiar to the element in which they exist.
The terms incubus and
succubus have been applied indiscriminately by the Church Fathers to
elementals. The incubus and succubus, however, are evil and unnatural
creations, whereas elementals is a collective term for all the
inhabitants of the four elemental essences. According to Paracelsus, the
incubus and succubus (which are male and female respectively) are parasitical
creatures subsisting upon the evil thoughts and emotions of the astral body.
These terms are also applied to the superphysical organisms of sorcerers and
black magicians. While these larvæ are in no sense imaginary beings,
they are, nevertheless, the offspring of the imagination. By the ancient sages
they were recognized as the invisible cause of vice because they hover in the
ethers surrounding the morally weak and continually incite them to excesses of
a degrading nature. For this reason they frequent the atmosphere of the dope
den, the dive, and the brothel, where they attach themselves to those
unfortunates who have given themselves up to iniquity. By permitting his
senses to become deadened through indulgence in habit-forming drugs or
alcoholic stimulants, the individual becomes temporarily en rapport
with these denizens of the astral plane. The houris seen by the
hasheesh or opium addict and the lurid monsters which torment the victim of
delirium tremens are examples of submundane beings, visible only to those
whose evil practices are the magnet for their attraction.
Differing widely from the
elementals and also the incubus and succubus is the vampire, which is defined
by Paracelsus as the astral body of a person either living or dead (usually
the latter state). The vampire seeks to prolong existence upon the physical
plane by robbing the living of their vital energies and misappropriating such
energies to its own ends.
In his De Ente Spirituali
Paracelsus writes thus of these malignant beings: "A healthy and pure person
cannot become obsessed by them, because such Larvæ can only act upon men if
the later make room for them in their minds. A healthy mind is a castle that
cannot be invaded without the will of its master; but if they are allowed to
enter, they excite the passions of men and women, they create cravings in
them, they produce bad thoughts which act injuriously upon the brain; they
sharpen the animal intellect and suffocate the moral sense. Evil spirits
obsess only those human beings in whom the animal nature is predominating.
Minds that are illuminated by the spirit of truth cannot be possessed; only
those who are habitually guided by their own lower impulses may become
subjected to their influences." (See Paracelsus, by Franz Hartmann.)
A strange concept, and one
somewhat at variance with the conventional, is that evolved by the Count de
Gabalis concerning the immaculate conception, namely, that it
represents the union of a human being with an elemental. Among the offspring
of such unions he lists Hercules, Achilles, Æneas, Theseus, Melchizedek, the
divine Plato, Apollonius of Tyana, and Merlin the Magician.
A SYLPH.
From sketch by Howard Wookey.
The sylphs were changeable
entities, passing to and fro with the rapidity of lightning. They work through
the gases and ethers of the earth and are kindly disposed toward human beings.
They are nearly always represented as winged, sometimes as tiny cherubs and at
other times as delicate fairies.
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