Theosophy - The Difference between Elementals and Elementaries - by Nizida [Likely - Louise Off]
THE
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
ELEMENTALS AND ELEMENTARIES
by NIZIDA [Likely - Louise Off]
reprinted from “Theosophical
Siftings” Volume - 1 - 1888
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 spetialia" 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 or Soul, belonging to the
Mysterium [Page
16] 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 etherial 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 longtime; 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 neighbours, 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 séances, and the [Page
17] producers
of all the phenomena except the 'subjective'
". — ("Isis", preface xxix., vol. 1).
"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 spectres 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".—(" Isis," page 313, volume 1).
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 work, a substantial being, really distinct
from matter proper. This, 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, fibres,
and juice in the latter, which blood and juice, by circulating
through the veins and fibres, nourishes 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 mediaeval philosophers,
the elementary spirits of the four kingdoms". — ("Isis," page
312, vol. 1)
"According
to the ancient doctrines, the soulless elemental spirits
were evolved by the ceaseless motion inherent in the
astral light. Light is [Page
18] 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 superfine 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". — (" Isis," page 285, Vol.1.)
Speaking
of Pythagoras, lamblichus, 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 harbours, 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 " (page 284, Vol.
1)
"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 born 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, which 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 [Page
19] transgressing
the bounds of others. These are what Tertullian called
'the princes of the powers of the air'.
"This
class is believed to possess but one of the three attributes
of man. They have neither immortal souls nor tangible bodies;
only astral forms, which partake, in a distinguishing degree,
of the element to which they belong, and also of the Ether.
They are a combination of sublimated matter and a rudimental
mind. Some are changeless, but still have no separate individuality,
acting collectively so to say. Others, of certain elements
and species, change form under a fixed law which Kabalists
explain. The most solid of their bodies is ordinarily just
immaterial enough to escape perception by our physical
eyesight, but not so unsubstantial but that they can be
perfectly recognised by the inner or clairvoyant vision.
They not only exist, and can all live in ether, but can
handle and direct it for the production of physical effects,
as readily as we can compress air or water for the same
purpose by pneumatic or hydraulic apparatus; in which occupation
they are readily helped by the 'human elementary'. More
than this; they can so condense it as to make to themselves
tangible bodies, which by their Protean powers they can
cause to assume such likenesses as they choose, by taking
as their models the portraits they find stamped in the
memory of the persons present. It is not necessary that
the sitter should be thinking at the moment of the one
represented. His image may have faded away years before.
The mind receives indelible impression even from chance
acquaintance, or persons encountered but once" (pages 310-311,
Vol. 1).
"If
Spiritualists are anxious to keep strictly dogmatic in
their notions of the Spirit-World, they must not set scientists to
investigate their phenomena in the true experimental spirit.
The attempt would most surely result in a partial re-discovery
of the magic of old — that of Moses and Paracelsus.
Under the deceptive beauty of some of their apparitions,
they might find some day the sylphs and fair undines of
the Rosicrucians playing in the currents of psychic and odic force".
"Already
Mr. Crookes, who fully credits the being, feels
that under the fair skin of Katie, covering a simulacrum
of heart borrowed partially from the medium and the circle,
there is NO SOUL !. And the learned authors of the "Unseen
Universe", abandoning their "electro-biological" theory,
begin to perceive in the universal ether the possibility that
it is a photographic album of En-Soph the Boundless".
(Isis, page 67, Vol. 1)
" We
are far from believing that all the spirits that communicate
at circles are of the classes called ‘Elemental'
and 'Elementary' . " Many, especially among those who
control the medium subjectively to speak, write, and
otherwise act in various ways, are human, disembodied
spirits. Whether the majority of such spirits are good
or bad, largely depends on the private morality
of the medium, much on the circle present, and a[Page
20] great
deal on the intensity and object of their purpose. .
. . But in any case, human spirits can never materialize
themselves in propria persona, &c. [ By
which it is, doubtless, meant that the full individually
is not present: the higher principles, the true spirit,
having ascended to its appropriate house, from which
there is no attraction to earth. That which materialises
would be an elemental, or elementals moulding their fluidic
forms in the likeness of the departed human being; or,
on the other hand, considering and revivifying, the atomic
remnants of the sidereal encasement, or astral body,
still left undissipated in the soul-world] (page
67, Vol.1 ).
In "Art
Magic" we find the following pertinent remarks, page 322: "There
are some features of mediumship, especially amongst those
persons known as 'physical force mediums’, which
long since should have awakened the attention of philosophical
spiritualists to the fact that there were influences kindred
only with animal natures at work somewhere, and unless
the agency of certain classes of Elemental Spirits was
admitted into the category of occasional control, humanity
has at times assumed darker shades than we should be willing
to assign to it. Unfortunately in discussing these subjects,
there are many barriers to the attainment of truth on this
subject. Courtesy and compassion alike protest against
pointing to illustrations in our own time, whilst prejudice
and ignorance intervene to stifle inquiry respecting phenomena,
which a long lapse of time has left us free to investigate".
"The
judges whose ignorance and superstition disgraced the Witchcraft
trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, found
a solvent for all occult, or even suspicious circumstances,
in the control of 'Satan and his imps'. The modern Spiritualists,
with few exceptions, are equally stubborn in attributing
everything that transpires in Spiritualistic circles, even
to the wilful cunningly contrived preparations for deception on
the part of pretended media, to the influence of disembodied
human spirits — good, bad, or indifferent; but the
author's own experience, confirmed by the assurances of
wise-teaching spirits, impels him to assert that the tendencies
to exhibit animal proclivities, whether mental, passional,
or phenomenal, are most generally produced by Elementals."
"The
rapport with this realm of beings is generally due to certain
proclivities in the individual; or, when whole communities
are affected, the cause proceeds from revolutionary movements
in the realms of astral fluid; these continually affect
the Elementals, who, in combination with low undeveloped
spirits of humanity (Elementaries), avail themselves of
magnetic epidemics to obsess susceptible individuals, and
sympathetically affect communities."
In
the introduction to "Isis Unveiled", we find the following
definition of Elementary Spirits: —
" Properly,
the disembodied souls of the depraved: these souls,
having at some time prior to death, separated from themselves
their divine spirits, [Page
21] and
so lost their chance of immortality. Eliphas Levi and
some other Kabalists make little distinction between
Elementary Spirits, who have been men, and those beings
which people the elements and are the blind forces of
nature. Once divorced from their bodies, these souls
(also called "astral bodies") of purely materialistic
persons, are irresistibly attracted to the earth, where
they live a temporary and finite life amid elements congenial
to their gross natures. From having never, during their,
natural lives, cultivated this spirituality, but subordinated
it to the material and gross, they are now unfitted for
the lofty career of the pure, disembodied being, for
whom the atmosphere of earth is stifling and mephitic,
and whose attractions are all away from it. After a more
or less prolonged period of time these material souls
will begin to disintegrate, and finally, like a column
of mist, be dissolved, atom by atom, in the surrounding
elements." — (Preface xxx., Vol. 1).
"After
the death of the depraved and the wicked, arrives the critical
moment. If during life the ultimate and desperate effort
of the inner-self to reunite itself with the faintly-glimmering
ray of its divine parent is neglected; if this ray is allowed
to be more and more shut out by the thickening crust of
matter, the soul, once freed from the body, follows its
earthly attractions, and is magnetically drawn into and
held within the dense fogs of the material atmosphere.
Then it begins to sink lower and lower, until it finds
itself, when returned to consciousness, in what the ancients
termed Hades. The annihilation of such a soul is never
instantaneous; it may last centuries perhaps; for nature
never proceeds by jumps and starts, and the astral soul,
being formed of elements, the law of evolution must bide
its time. Then begins the fearful law of compensation,
the Yin-Youan of the Buddhists. This class of spirits
are called the Terrestrial, or earthly elementary,
in contradistinction to the other classes." (They frequent
séance rooms, &c.) — ("Isis," page 319,
Vol. 1)
Of
the danger of meddling in occult matters before understanding
the elementals and elementaries, " Isis" says, in the case
of a rash intruder :—
" The
spirit of harmony and union will depart from the elements,
disturbed by the imprudent hand; and the currents of
blind forces will become immediately infested by numberless
creatures of matter and instinct — the bad daemons
of the theurgists, the devils of theology; the gnomes,
salamanders, sylphs, and undines will assail the rash
performer under multifarious aerial forms. Unable to
invent anything, they will search your memory to its
very depths; hence the nervous exhaustion and mental
oppression of certain sensitive natures at spiritual
circles. The Elementals will bring to light long-forgotten
remembrances of the past; forms, images, sweet mementos,
and familiar sentences, long since faded from our own
remembrance, but vividly preserved in the inscrutable
depths of our memory and on the astral tablets of the
imperishable ' BOOK OF LIFE'
". — (Page 343, Vol. 1) [Page
22]
Paracelsus
speaks of Xeni Nephidei: '' Elemental spirits
that give men occult powers over visible matter, and then
feed on their brains, often causing thereby insanity".
"Man
rules potentially over all lower existences than himself",
says the author of "Art Magic" (page 333), but woe to him,
who by seeking aid, counsel, or assistance, from lower
grades of being, binds himself to them; henceforth he
may rest assured they will become his parasites and associates,
and as their instincts — like those of the animal
kingdom — are strong in the particular direction
of their nature, they are powerful to disturb, annoy, prompt
to evil, and avail themselves of the contact induced by
man's invitation to drag him down to their own level. The
legendary idea of evil compacts between man and the 'Adversary'
is not wholly mythical. Every wrong-doer signs that compact
with spirits who have sympathy 'with his evil actions'.
"Except
for the purposes of scientific investigation, or with a
view of strengthening ourselves against the silent and
mysterious promptings to evil that beset us on every side,
we warn mere curiosity-seekers, or persons ambitious to
attach the legions of an unknown world to their service,
against any attempts to seek communion with Elemental spirits,
or beings of any grade lower than man. Beings below
mortality can grant nothing that mortality
ought to ask. They can only serve man in some embryonic
department of nature, and man must stoop to their state
before they can thus reach him." ..." Knowledge is only
good for us when we can apply it judiciously. Those who
investigate for the sake of science, or with a view of
enlarging the narrow boundaries of man's egotistical opinions,
may venture much further into the realms of the unknown
than curiosity-seekers, or persons who desire to apply
the secrets of being to selfish purposes. It may be as
well also for man to remember that he and his planet are
not the all of being, and that, besides the revelations
included in the stupendous outpouring called 'Modern Spiritualism',
there are many problems yet to be solved in human life
and planetary existences, which spiritualism does not cover,
nor ignorance and prejudice dream of." . . .
"Besides these considerations, we would warn man of the many
subtle, though invisible, enemies which surround him, and,
rather by the instinct of their embryotic natures than through malice prepense,
seek to lay siege to the garrison of the human heart. We
would advise him, moreover, that into that sacred entrenchment
no power can enter, save by invitation of the soul itself.
Angels may solicit, or demons may tempt, but none can compel
the spirit within to action, unless it first surrenders the will to
the investing power." — (" Art Magic," page 335).
From
the "Theosophist " of July 1886, we make the following
extract, bearing upon the subject of the loss of immortality
by soul-death, and the dangers of Black Magic,[Page
23]
" It is necessary to say a few words as regards the real
nature of soul-death, and the ultimate fate of a black magician.
The soul, as we have explained above, is an isolated drop
in the ocean of cosmic life. This current of cosmic life
is but the light and the aura of the Logos. Besides the Logos,
there are innumerable other existences, both spiritual and
astral, partaking of this life and living in it. These beings
have special affinities with particular emotions of the human
soul, and particular characteristics of the human mind. They
have, of course, a definite individual existence of their
own, which lasts up to the end of the Manwantara. There are
three ways in which a soul may cease to retain its special
individuality. Separated from its Logos, which is, as it
were, its source, it may not acquire a strong and abiding
individuality of its own, and may in course of time be reabsorbed
into the current of universal life. This is real soul-death.
It may also place itself en rapport with a spiritual
or elemental existence by evoking it, and concentrating its
attention and regard upon it for purposes of black magic
and Tantric worship. In such a case it transfers its individuality
to such existence and is sucked up into it, as it were. In
such a case the black magician lives in such a being, and
as such a being he continues until the end of Manwantara."
A
good deal of highly interesting information on the subject
of Elementals and Elementaries is to be found in the numbers
of THE PATH for May, June, and July, of this year. A few
of the points contained in these articles maybe mentioned
here, but the reader is strongly recommended to study these
articles, entitled "Conversations on Occultism", for himself.
According to the writer:—
An
Elemental is a centre of force, without intelligence,
as we understand the word, without moral character or
tendencies similar to ours, but capable of being directed
in its movements by human thoughts, which may, consciously
or not, give it any form, and endow it to a certain extent
with what we call intelligence. We give them form by
a species of thought which the mind does not register — involuntary
and unconscious thought — "as one person
might shape an Elemental so as to seem like an insect,
and not be able to tell whether he had thought of such
a thing or not". The Elemental world interpenetrates
this one and Elementals are constantly being attracted
to, or repelled from, human beings, taking the prevailing
colour of their thoughts. Time and space, as we understand
them, do not exist for Elementals. They can be seen clairvoyantly
in the shapes they assume under different influences,
and they do many of the phenomena of the séance room. Light and the concentrated attention of anyone
make a disturbance in the magnetism of a room, interfering
with their work in that respect. At séances Elementaries
also are present; these are “shells," or half-dead
human beings. The Elementaries are not all bad, however,
but the worst are the strongest, because the most attracted [Page
24] to
material life. They are all helped and galvanized into
action by Elementals.
Contact
with these beings has a deteriorating effect in all cases.
Clairvoyants see in the astral light surrounding a person
the images of people or events that have made an impression
on that person's mind, and they frequently mistake these
echoes and reflections for astral realities; only the trained
seer can distinguish. The whole astral world is full of
illusions.
Elementals
have not got being such as mortals have. There are
different classes for the different planes of nature. Each
class is confined to its own plane, and many can never
be recognised by men. The Elemental world is a strong factor
in Karma. Formerly, when men were less selfish and more
spiritual, the elementals were friendly. They have become
unfriendly by reason of man's indifference to, and want
of sympathy with, the rest of creation. Man has also coloured
the astral world with his own selfish and brutal thoughts,
and produced an atmosphere of evil which he himself breathes,
When men shall cultivate feelings of brotherly affection
for each other, and of sympathy with Nature, the Elementals
will change their present hostile attitude for one of helpfulness.
Elementals
aid in the performance of phenomena produced by adepts.
They also enter the sphere of unprotected persons, and
especially of those who study occultism, thus precipitating
the results of past Karma.
The
adepts are reluctant to speak of elementals for two reasons.
Because it is useless, as people could not understand the
subject in their present state of intellectual and spiritual
development; and because, if any knowledge of them were
given, some persons might be able to come into contact
with them to their own detriment and that of the world.
In the present state of universal selfishness and self-seeking,
the elementals would be employed to work evil, as they
are in themselves colourless, taking their character from
those who employ them. The adepts, therefore, keep back
or hide the knowledge of these beings from men of science,
and from the world in general. By and bye, however, material
science will rediscover black magic, and then will come
a war between the good and evil powers, and the evil powers
will be overcome, as always happens in such cases. Eventually
all about the Elementals will be known to men — when
they have developed intellectually, morally, and spiritually
sufficiently to have that knowledge without danger.
Elementals
guard hidden treasures; they obey the adepts, however,
who could command the use of untold wealth if they cared
to draw upon these hidden deposits
N.B.—"Nizida" has
quoted from "Man: Fragments
of Forgotten History."
The T.P.S. desires to say that while some of the statements
contained in that work are correct, there is also in it a
large admixture of error. Therefore, the T.P.S. does not
recommend this work to the attention of students who have
not yet learned enough to be able to separate the grain from
the husk. The same may be said of "Art-Magic".
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