Theos-Talk Archives (March 2002 Message tt00242)

Part V - LAWS governing Elementals == Conversations on
Occultism

Offered by Dallas: These are extracts from Judge's article.

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7

LAWS GOVERNING ELEMENTALS

W. Q. Judge


STUDENT. - A materialist stated to me as his opinion that all
that is said about mantrams is mere sentimental theorizing, and
while it may be true that certain words affect people, the sole
reason is that they embody ideas distasteful or pleasant to the
hearers, but that the mere sounds, as such, have no effect
whatever, and as to either words or sounds affecting animals he
denied it altogether. Of course he would not take elementals into
account at all, as their existence is impossible for him.

Sage. - This position is quite natural in these days. There has
been so much materialization of thought, and the real scientific
attitude of leading minds in different branches of investigation
has been so greatly misunderstood by those who think they follow
the example of the scientific men, that most people in the West
are afraid to admit anything beyond what may be apprehended by
the five senses.

The man you speak of is one of that always numerous class who
adopt as fixed and unalterable general laws laid down from time
to time by well known savants, forgetting that the latter
constantly change and advance from point to point.

Student. - Do you think, then, that the scientific world will one
day admit much that is known to Occultists?

Sage. - Yes, it will. The genuine Scientist is always in that
attitude which permits him to admit things proven. He may seem to
you often to be obstinate and blind, but in fact he is proceeding
slowly to the truth - too slowly, perhaps for you, yet not in the
position of knowing all. It is the veneered scientist who swears
by the published results of the work of leading men as being the
last word, while, at the very moment he is doing so, his
authority may have made notes or prepared new theories tending to
greatly broaden and advance the last utterance.

It is only when the dogmatism of a priest backed up by law
declares that a discovery is opposed to the revealed word of his
god, that we may fear. That day is gone for a long time to come,
and we need expect no more scenes like that in which Galileo took
part. But among the materialistic minds to whom you referred,
there is a good deal of that old spirit left, only that the
"revealed word of God" has become the utterances of our
scientific leaders.

Student. - I have observed that within even the last quarter of a
century. About ten years ago many well-known men laughed to scorn
any one who admitted the facts within the experience of every
mesmerizer, while now, under the term "hypnotism," they are
nearly all admitted.

And when these lights of our time were denying it all, the French
doctors were collating the results of a long series of
experiments. It seems as if the invention of a new term for an
old and much abused one furnished an excuse for granting all that
had been previously denied. But have you anything to say about
those materialistic investigators? Are they not governed by some
powerful, though unperceived, law?

Sage. - They are. They are in the forefront of the mental, but
not of the spiritual, progress of the time, and are driven
forward by forces they know nothing of.

Help is very often given to them by the Masters, who, neglecting
nothing, constantly see to it that these men make progress upon
the fittest lines for them, just as you are assisted not only in
your spiritual life but in your mental also. These men,
therefore, will go on admitting facts and finding new laws or new
names for old laws, to explain them. They cannot help it.

Student. - What should be our duty, then, as students of truth?
Should we go out as reformers of science, or what?

Sage. - You ought not to take up the role of reformers of the
schools and their masters, because success would not attend the
effort. Science is competent to take care of itself, and you
would only be throwing pearls before them to be trampled under
foot. Rest content that all within their comprehension will be
discovered and admitted from time to time. The endeavor to force
them into admitting what you believe to be so plain would be due
almost solely to your vanity and love of praise.

It is not possible to force them, any more than it is for me to
force you, to admit certain incomprehensible laws, and you would
not think me wise or fair to first open before you things, to
understand which you have not the necessary development, and then
to force you into admitting their truth. Or if, out of reverence,
you should say, "These things are true," while you comprehended
nothing and were not progressing, you would have bowed to
superior force.

Student. - But you do not mean that we should remain ignorant of
science and devote ourselves only to ethics?

Sage. - Not at all. Know all that you can. Become conversant with
and sift all that the schools have declared, and as much more on
your own account as is possible, but at the same time teach,
preach, and practice a life based on a true understanding of
brotherhood. This is the true way. The common people, those who
know no science, are the greatest number. They must be so taught
that the discoveries of science which are unillumined by spirit
may not be turned into Black Magic.


TREASURE

Student. - In our last conversation you touched upon the guarding
of buried treasure by elementals. I should like very much to hear
a little more about that. Not about how to control them or to
procure the treasure, but upon the subject generally.

Sage. - The laws governing the hiding of buried treasure are the
same as those that relate to lost objects.

Every person has about him a fluid, or plane, or sphere, or
energy, which-ever you please to call it, in which are constantly
found elementals that partake of his nature. That is, they are
tinted with his color and impressed by his character. There are
numerous classes of these.

Some men have many of one class or of all, or many of some and
few of others. And anything worn upon your person is connected
with your elementals. For instance, you wear cloth made of wool
or linen, and little objects made of wood, bone, brass, gold,
silver, and other substances.

Each one of these has certain magnetic relations peculiar to
itself, and all of them are soaked, to a greater or less extent,
with your magnetism as well as nervous fluid. Some of them,
because of their substance, do not long retain this fluid, while
others do. The elementals are connected, each class according to
its substance, with those objects by means of the magnetic fluid.

And they are acted upon by the mind and desires to a greater
extent than you know, and in a way that cannot be formulated in
English. Your desires have a powerful grasp, so to say, upon
certain things, and upon others a weaker hold. When one of these
objects is suddenly dropped, it is invariably followed by
elementals. They are drawn after it, and may be said to go with
the object by attraction rather than by sight. In many cases they
completely envelop the thing, so that, although it is near at
hand, it cannot be seen by the eye. But after a while the
magnetism wears off and their power to envelop the article
weakens, whereupon it appears in sight. This does not happen in
every case. But it is a daily occurrence, and is sufficiently
obvious to many persons to be quite removed from the realm of
fable.

I think, indeed, that one of your literary persons has written an
essay upon this very experience, in which, although treated in a
comic vein, many truths are unconsciously told; the title of this
was, if I mistake not, "Upon the Innate Perversity of Inanimate
Objects."

There is such a nice balancing of forces in these cases that you
must be careful in your generalizations. You may justly ask, for
instance, Why, when a coat is dropped, it seldom disappears from
sight? Well, there are cases in which even such a large object is
hidden, but they are not very common. The coat is full of your
magnetism, and the elementals may feel in it just as much of you
as when it is on your back. There may be, for them, no
disturbance of the relations, magnetic and otherwise. And often
in the case of a small object not invisible, the balancing of
forces, due to many causes that have to do with your condition at
the time, prevents the hiding.

To decide in any particular case, one would have to see into the
realm where the operation of these laws is hidden, and calculate
all the forces, so as to say why it happened in one way and not
in another.

Student. - But take the case of a man who, being in possession of
treasure, hides it in the earth and goes away and dies, and it is
not found. In that instance the elementals did not hide it. Or
when a miser buries his gold or jewels. How about those?

Sage. - In all cases where a man buries gold, or jewels, or
money, or precious things, his desires are fastened to that which
he hides. Many of his elementals attach themselves to it, and
other classes of them also, who had nothing to do with him,
gather round and keep it hidden.

In the case of the captain of a ship containing treasure the
influences are very powerful, because there the elementals are
gathered from all the persons connected with the treasure, and
the officer himself is full of solicitude for what is committed
to his charge.

You should also remember that gold and silver - or metals - have
relations with elementals that are of a strong and peculiar
character. They do not work for human law, and natural law does
not assign any property in metals to man, nor recognize in him
any peculiar and transcendent right to retain what he has dug
from the earth or acquired to himself. Hence we do not find the
elementals anxious to restore to him the gold or silver which he
had lost.

If we were to assume that they occupied themselves in catering to
the desires of men or in establishing what we call our rights
over property, we might as well at once grant the existence of a
capricious and irresponsible Providence. They proceed solely
according to the law of their being, and, as they are without the
power of making a judgment, they commit no blunders and are not
to be moved by considerations based upon our vested rights or our
unsatisfied wishes. Therefore, the spirits that appertain to
metals invariably act as the laws of their nature prescribe, and
one way of doing so, is to obscure the metals from our sight.

ETHICS

Student. - Can you make any application of all this in the realm
of ethics?

Sage. - There is a very important thing you should not overlook.
Every time you harshly and unmercifully criticize the faults of
another, you produce an attraction to yourself of certain
quantities of elementals from that person. They fasten themselves
upon you and endeavor to find in you a similar state or spot or
fault that they have left in the other person. It is as if they
left him to serve you at higher wages, so to say.


THE ASTRAL LIGHT AS A PROVOCATIVE AGENT

Then there is that which I referred to in a preceding
conversation, about the effect of our acts and thoughts upon, not
only the portion of the astral light belonging to each of us with
its elementals, but upon the whole astral world.

If men saw the dreadful pictures imprinted there and constantly
throwing down upon us their suggestions to repeat the same acts
or thoughts, a millennium might soon draw near. The astral light
is, in this sense, the same as a photographer's negative plate,
and we are the sensitive paper underneath, on which is being
printed the picture. We can see two sorts of pictures for each
act. One is the act itself, and the other is the picture of the
thoughts and feelings animating those engaged in it. You can
therefore see that you may be responsible for many more dreadful
pictures than you had supposed. For actions of a simple outward
appearance have behind them, very often, the worst of thoughts or
desires.

Student. - Have these pictures in the astral light anything to do
with us upon being reincarnated in subsequent earth-lives?

Sage. - They have very much indeed. We are influenced by them for
vast periods of time, and in this you can perhaps find clues to
many operations of active Karmic law for which you seek.


ANIMALS and the ASTRAL LIGHT

Student. - Is there not also some effect upon animals, and
through them upon us, and vice versa?

Sage. - Yes. The animal kingdom is affected by us through the
astral light. We have impressed the latter with pictures of
cruelty, oppression, dominion, and slaughter. The whole Christian
world admits that man can indiscriminately slaughter animals,
upon the theory, elaborately set forth by priests in early times,
that animals have no souls. Even little children learn this and
very early begin to kill insects, birds, and animals, not for
protection, but from wantonness. As they grow up the habit is
continued, and in England we see that shooting large numbers of
birds beyond the wants of the table, is a national peculiarity,
or, as I should say, a vice. This may be called a mild
illustration. If these people could catch elementals as easily as
they can animals, they would kill them for amusement when they
did not want them for use; and, if the elementals refused to
obey, then their death would follow as a punishment. All this is
perceived by the elemental world, without conscience of course;
but, under the laws of action and reaction, we receive back from
it exactly that which we give.

Student. - Before we leave the subject I should like to refer
again to the question of metals and the relation of man to the
elementals connected with the mineral world. We see some persons
who seem always to be able to find metals with ease -- or, as
they say, who are lucky in that direction. How am I to reconcile
this with the natural tendency of elementals to hide? Is it
because there is a war or discord, as it were, between different
classes belonging to any one person?

Sage. - That is a part of the explanation. Some persons, as I
said, have more of one class attached to them than another. A
person fortunate with metals, say of gold and silver, has about
him more of the elementals connected with or belonging to the
kingdoms of those metals than other people, and thus there is
less strife between the elementals. The preponderance of the
metal-spirits makes the person more homogeneous with their
kingdoms, and a natural attraction exists between the gold or
silver lost or buried and that person, more than in the case of
other people.

Student. - What determines this? Is it due to a desiring of gold
and silver, or is it congenital?

Sage. - It is innate. The combinations in any one individual are
so intricate and due to so many causes that you could not
calculate them. They run back many generations, and depend upon
peculiarities of soil, climate, nation, family, and race. These
are, as you can see, enormously varied, and, with the materials
at your command now, quite beyond your reach. Merely wishing for
gold and silver will not do it.

Student. - I judge also that attempting to get at those
elementals by thinking strongly will not accomplish that result
either.

Sage. - No, it will not, because your thoughts do not reach them.
They do not hear or see you, and, as it is only by accidental
concentration of forces that unlearned people influence them,
these accidents are only possible to the extent that you possess
the natural leaning to the particular kingdom whose elementals
you have influenced.

Student. - I thank you for your instruction.

Sage. - May you be guided to the path which leads to light!

Path, September, 1888


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Dallas