|
the secret teachings of all ages
The Elements And
Their Inhabitants
CHAPTER XIX
manly p. hall
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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, 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.
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.
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.
back to top |
