Theos-Talk Archives (February 2005 Message tt00140)

Feb 6 2005

Dear M and friends:

I think the following article by HPB will helping this matter of the
elementals or nature "spirits" in the astral light and their "powers"

DTB

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THOUGHTS ON THE ELEMENTALS
H. P. Blavatsky
YEARS have been devoted by the writer to the study of those invisible
Beings--conscious, semi-conscious and entirely senseless--called by a number
of names in every country under the sun, and known under the generic name of
"Spirits." The nomenclature applied to these denizens of spheres good or bad
in the Roman Catholic Church, alone, is--endless. The great kyriology of
their symbolic names--is a study. Open any account of creation in the first
Purâna that comes to hand, and see the variety of appellations bestowed upon
these divine and semi-divine creatures (the product of the two kinds of
creation--the Prakrita and the Vaikrita or Padma, the primary and the
secondary) all evolved from the body of Brahmâ. The Urdhwasrota only, of
the third creation, embrace a variety of beings with characteristics and
idiosyncrasies sufficient for a life-study. 
The same in the Egyptian, Chaldean, Greek, Phoenician or any other account.
The hosts of those creatures are numberless. The old Pagans, however, and
especially the Neo-Platonists of Alexandria knew what they believed, and
discriminated between the orders. None regarded them from such a sectarian
stand-point as do the Christian Churches. They dealt with them far more
wisely, on the contrary, as they made a better and a greater discrimination
between the natures of these beings than the Fathers of the Church did.
According to the policy of the latter, all those Angels that were not
recognised as the attendants upon the Jewish Jehovah--were proclaimed
Devils. 
The effects of this belief, afterwards erected into a dogma, we find
asserting themselves now in the Karma of the many millions of Spiritualists,
brought up and bred in the respective beliefs of their Churches. Though a
Spiritualist may have divorced himself for years from theological and
clerical beliefs; though he be a liberal or an illiberal Christian, a Deist
or an Atheist, having rejected very wisely belief in devils, and, too
reasonable to regard his visitors as pure angels, has accepted what he
thinks a reasonable mean ground--still he will acknowledge no other Spirits
save those of the dead. 
This is his Karma, and also that of the Churches collectively. In the latter
such a stubborn fanaticism, such parti pris is only natural; it is their
policy. In free Spiritualism, it is unpardonable. There cannot be two
opinions upon this subject. It is either belief in, or a full rejection of
the existence of any "Spirits." If a man is a sceptic and an unbeliever, we
have nothing to say. Once he believes in Spooks and Spirits at all--the
question changes. Where is that man or woman free from prejudice and
preconceptions, who can believe that in an infinite universe of life and
being--let us say in our solar system alone--that in all this boundless
space in which the Spiritualist locates his "Summer-land"--there are only
two orders of conscious beings--men and their spirits; embodied mortals and
disembodied Immortals. 
The future has in store for Humanity strange surprises, and Theosophy, or
rather its adherents, will be vindicated fully in no very distant days. No
use arguing upon a question that has been so fully discussed by Theosophists
and brought only opprobrium, persecution, and enmity on the writers.
Therefore we will not go out of our way to say much more. The Elementals and
the Elementaries of the Kabalists, and Theosophists were sufficiently
ridiculed. From Porphyry down to the demonologists of the past centuries,
fact after fact was given, and proofs heaped upon proofs, but with as little
effect as might be had from a fairy tale told in some nursery room. 
A queer book that of the old Count de Gabalis, immortalized by the Abbé de
Villars, and now translated and published in Bath. Those humorously inclined
are advised to read it, and to ponder over it. This advice is offered with
the object of making a parallel. The writer read it years ago, and has read
it now again with as much, and much more attention than formerly. Her humble
opinion as regards the work is--if any one cares to hear it--that one may
search for months and never find the demarcation in it between the "Spirits"
of the Séance rooms and the Sylphs and Undines of the French satire. 
There is a sinister ring in the merry quips and jests of its writer, who
while pointing the finger of ridicule at that which he believed, had
probably a presentiment of his own speedy Karma in the shape of
assassination. 
The way he introduces the Count de Gabalis is worthy of attention. 
"I was astonished one Remarkable Day, when I saw a man come in of a most
exalted mien; who, saluting me gravely, said to me in the French Tongue but,
in the accent of a Foreigner, 'Adore my son; adore the most great God of the
Sages; and let not thy self be puffed up with Pride, that he sends to thee
one of the children of Wisdom, to constitute thee a Fellow of their Society,
and make thee partaker of the wonders of Omnipotency." 
There is only one answer to be made to those who, taking advantage of such
works, laugh at Occultism. "Servitissimo" gives it himself in his own
chaffing way in his introductory "Letter to my Lord" in the above-named
work. "I would have persuaded him (the author of Gabalis) to have changed
the whole form of his work," he writes, "for this drolling way of carrying
it thus on does not to me seem proper to his subject. These mysteries of the
Cabal are serious matters, which many of my friends do seriously study . . .
the which are certainly most dangerous to jest with." Verbum sat sapienti. 
They are "dangerous," most undeniably. But since history began to record
thoughts and facts, one-half of Humanity has ever been sneering as the other
half and ridiculing its most cherished beliefs. This, however, cannot change
a fact into a fiction, nor can it destroy the Sylphs, Undines, and Gnomes,
if any, in Nature; for, in league with Salamanders, the latter are more
likely to destroy the unbelievers and damage Insurance companies,
notwithstanding that these believe still less in revengeful Salamanders than
in fires produced by chance and accident. 
Theosophists believe in Spirits no less than Spiritualists do, but, as
dissimilar in their variety as are the feathered tribes in the air. There
are bloodthirsty hawks and vampire bats among them, as there are doves and
nightingales. They believe in "Angels," for many have seen them 

. . . . . by the sick one's pillow--
Whose was the soft tone and the soundless tread!
Where smitten hearts were drooping like the willow,
They stood between the living and the dead.

But these were not the three-toed materialization of the modern medium. And
if our doctrines were all piece-mealed by the "drolleries" of a de Villars,
they would and could not interfere with the claims of the Occultists that
their teachings are historical and scientific facts, whatever the garb they
are presented in to the profane. Since the first kings began reigning "by
the grace of God," countless generations of buffoons appointed to amuse
Majesties and Highnesses have passed away; and most of these graceless
individuals had more wisdom at the bottoms of their hunches and at their
fingers' ends, than all their royal masters put together had in their
brainless heads. They alone had the inestimable privilege of speaking truth
at the Courts, and those truths have always been laughed at . . . . . . 
This is a digression; but such works as the Count de Gabalis have to be
quietly analyzed and their true character shown, lest they should be made to
serve as a sledge hammer to pulverize those works which do not assume a
humorous tone in speaking of mysterious, if not altogether sacred, things,
and say what they have to. And it is most positively maintained that there
are more truths uttered in the witty railleries and gasconades of that
"satire," full of pre-eminently occult and actual facts, than most people,
and Spiritualists especially, would care to learn. 
One single fact instanced, and shown to exist now, at the present moment
among the Mediums will be sufficient to prove that we are right. 
It has been said elsewhere, that white magic differed very little from
practices of sorcery except in effects and results--good or bad motive being
everything. Many of the preliminary rules and conditions to enter societies
of adepts, whether of the Right or the Left Path, are also identical in many
things. Thus Gabalis says to the author: "The Sages will never admit you
into their society if you do not renounce from this very present a Thing
which cannot stand in competition with Wisdom. You must renounce all carnal
Commerce with Women" (p. 27). 
This is a sine quâ non with practical Occultists--Rosicrucians or Yogis,
Europeans or Asiatics. But it is also one with the Dugpas; and Fadoos of
Bhutan and India one with the Voodoos and Nagals of New Orleans and Mexico,
with an additional clause to it, however, in the statutes of the latter. And
this is to have carnal commerce with male and female Djins, Elementals, or
Demons, call them by whatever names you will. 
"I am making known nothing to you but the Principles of the Ancient Cabal,"
explains de Gabalis to his pupil. And he informs him that the Elementals
(whom he calls Elementaries), the inhabitants of the four Elements, namely,
the Sylphs, Undines, Salamanders, and Gnomes, live many Ages, but that their
souls are not immortal. "In respect of Eternity . . . . they must finally
resolve into nothing." . . . . "Our Fathers, the philosophers," goes on the
soi-disant Rosicrucian, "speaking to God Face to Face, complained to him of
the Unhappiness of these People (the Elementals), and God, whose Mercy is
without Bounds, revealed to them that it was not impossible to find out a
Remedy for this Evil. He inspired them, that by the same means as Man, by
the Alliance which he contracted with God, has been made Partaker of the
Divinity: the Sylphs, the Gnomes, the Nymphs, and the Salamanders, by the
Alliance which they might Contract with Man, might be made Partakers of
Immortality. So a she-Nymph or a Sylph becomes Immortal and capable of the
Blessing to which we aspire, when they shall be so happy as to be married to
a Sage; a Gnome or a Sylphe ceases to be Mortal from the moment that he
Espouses one of our Daughters." 
Having delivered himself of this fine piece of advice on practical sorcery,
the "Sage" closes as follows: 
"No, no! Our Sages have never erred so as to attribute the Fall of the first
Angels to their love of women, no more than they have put Men under the
Power of the Devil. . . . There was nothing criminal in all that. They were
Sylphs which endeavored to become Immortal. Their innocent Pursuits, far
enough from being able to scandalize the Philosophers, have appeared so Just
to us that we are all resolved by common consent utterly to Renounce Women;
and entirely to give ourselves to Immortalizing of the Nymphs and Sylphs"
(p. 33). 
And so are certain mediums, especially those of America and France, who
boast of Spirit husbands and wives. We know such mediums personally, men and
women, and it is not those of Holland who will deny the fact, with a recent
event among their colleagues and co-religionists fresh in their memory,
concerning some who escaped death and madness only by becoming Theosophists.
It is only by following our advice that they got finally rid of their
spiritual consorts of both sexes. 
Shall we be told in this case also, that it is a calumny and an invention?
Then let those outsiders who are inclined to see, with the Spiritualists,
nought but a holy, an innocent pastime at any rate, in that nightly and
daily intercourse with the so-called "Spirits of the Dead," watch. Let those
who ridicule our warnings and doctrine and make merry over them--explain
after analysing it dispassionately, the mystery and the rationale of such
facts as the existence in the minds of certain Mediums and Sensitives of
their actual marriage with male and female Spirits. 
Explanations of lunacy and hallucination will never do, when placed face to
face with the undeniable facts of SPIRIT MATERIALIZATIONS. If there are
"Spirits" capable of drinking tea and wine, of eating apples and cakes, of
kissing and touching the visitors of Séance rooms, all of which facts have
been proven as well as the existence of those visitors themselves--why
should not those same Spirits perform matrimonial duties as well? And who
are those "Spirits" and what is their nature? Shall we be told by the
Spiritists that the spooks of Mme. de Sévigné or of Delphine _____, ___one
of which authoresses we abstain from naming out of regard to the surviving
relatives--that they are the actual "Spirits" of those two deceased ladies;
and that the latter felt a "Spiritual affinity" for an idiotic, old, and
slovenly Canadian medium and thus became his happy wife as he boasts
publicly, the result of which union is a herd of "spiritual" children bred
with this holy Spirit? And who is the astral husband--the nightly consort of
a well-known New York lady medium whom the writer knows personally? 
Let the reader get every information he can about this last development of
Spiritual (?!) intercourse. Let him think seriously over this, and then read
the "Count de Gabalis," especially the Appendix to it, with ; its Latin
portions; and then perchance he will be better able to appreciate the full
gravity of the supposed chaff, in the work in question, and understand the
true value of the raillery in it. He will then see dearly the ghastly
connection there is between the Fauns, Satyrs and Incubi of St. Hieronymus,
the Sylphs and Nymphs of the Count de Gabalis, the "Elementaries" of the
Kabalists--and all those poetical, spiritual "Lillies" of the "Harris
Community," the astral "Napoleons," and other departed Don Juans from the
"Summer-Land," the "spiritual affinities from beyond the grave" of the
modern world of mediums. 
Notwithstanding this ghastly array of facts, we are told week after week in
the Spiritual journals that, at best, we know not what we are talking about.
"Platon"--(a presumptuous pseudonym to assume, by the bye) a dissatisfied
ex-theosophist, tells the Spiritualists (see Light, Jan. 1, 1887) that not
only is there no re-incarnation--because the astral "spirit" of a deceased
friend told him so (a valuable and trustworthy evidence indeed), but that
all our philosophy is proved worthless by that very fact! Karma, we are
notified, is tom-foolery. "Without Karma re-incarnation cannot stand," and,
since his astral informant "has inquired in the realm of his present
existence as to the theory of re-incarnation, and he says he cannot get one
fact or a trace of one as to the truth of it . . . ." this "astral"
informant has to be believed. He cannot lie. For "a man who has studied
chemistry has a right to an opinion, and earned a right to speak upon its
various theories and facts . . . . especially if he, during earth-life, was
respected and admired for his researches into the mysteries of nature, and
for his truthfulness." 
Let us hope that the "astrals" of such eminent chemists as Messrs. Crookes
and Butlerof--when disembodied, will abstain from returning too often to
talk with mortals. For having studied chemistry so much and so well, their
post mortem communications would acquire a reputation for infallibility more
than would be good, perhaps, for the progress of mankind, and the
development of its intellectual powers. But the proof is sufficiently
convincing, no doubt for the present generation of Spiritualists, since the
name assumed by the "astral control of a friend" was that of a truthful and
honorable man. It thus appears that an experience of over forty years with
Spirits, who lied more than they told truth, and did far more mischief than
good--goes for nought. And thus the "spirit-husbands and wives" must be also
believed when they say they are this or that. Because, as "Platon" justly
argues: "There is no progress without knowledge, and the knowledge of truth
founded upon fact is progress of the highest degree, and if astrals
progress, as this spirit says they do, the philosophy of Occultism in regard
to re-incarnation is wrong upon this point; and how do we know that the many
other points are correct, as they are without proof?" 
This is high philosophy and logic. "The end of wisdom is consultation and
deliberation"--with "Spirits," Demosthenes might have added, had he known
where to look for them--but all this leaves still the question, "who are
those spirits"--an open one. For, "where doctors disagree," there must be
room for doubt. And besides the ominous fact that Spirits are divided in
their views upon reincarnation--just as Spiritualists and Spiritists are,
"every man is not a proper champion for the truth, nor fit to take up the
gauntlet in the cause of verity," says Sir T. Browne. This is no
disrespectful cut at "Platon," whoever he may be, but an axiom. An eminent
man of science, Prof. W. Crookes, gave once a very wise definition of Truth,
by showing how necessary it is to draw a distinction between truth and
accuracy. A person may be very truthful--he observed--that is to say, may be
filled with the desire both to receive truth and to teach it; but unless
that person have great natural powers of observation, or have been trained
by scientific study of some kind to observe, note, compare, and report
accurately and in detail, he will not be able to give a trustworthy,
accurate and therefore true account of his experiences. His intentions may
be honest, but if he have a spark of enthusiasm, he will be always apt to
proceed to generalizations, which may be both false and dangerous. In short
as another eminent man of science, Sir John Herschell, puts it, "The grand
and, indeed, the only character of truth, is its capability of enduring the
test of universal experience, and coming unchanged out of every possible
form of fair discussion." 

Now very few Spiritualists, if any, unite in themselves the precious
qualities demanded by Prof. Crookes; in other words their truthfulness is
always tempered by enthusiasm; therefore, it has led them into error for the
last forty years. In answer to this we may be told and with great justice,
it must be confessed, that this scientific definition cuts both ways; i.e.,
that Theosophists are, to say the least, in the same box with the
Spiritualists; that they are enthusiastic, and therefore also credulous. But
in the present case the situation is changed. The question is not what
either Spiritualists or Theosophists think personally of the nature of
Spirits and their degree of truthfulness; but what the "universal
experience," demanded by Sir John Herschell, says. Spiritualism is a
philosophy (if one, which so far we deny) of but yesterday. Occultism and
the philosophy of the East, whether true absolutely, or relatively, are
teachings coming to us from an immense antiquity: and since--whether in the
writings and traditions of the East; in the numberless Fragments, and MSS.
left to us by the Neo-Platonic Theosophists; in the life observations of
such philosophers as Porphyry and Iamblichus; in those of the mediæval
Theosophists and so on, ad infinitum,--since we find in all these, the same
identical testimony as to the extremely various, and often dangerous nature
of all those Genii, Demons, Gods, Lares, and "Elementaries," now all
confused into one heap under the name of "Spirits"; we cannot fail to
recognize in all this something "enduring the test of universal experience,
and "coming unchanged" out of every possible form of observation and
experience. 

Theosophists give only the product of an experience hoary with age;
Spiritualists hold to their own views, born some forty years ago, and based
on their unflinching enthusiasm and emotionalism. But let any impartial,
fair minded witness to the doings of the "Spirits" in America, one that is
neither a Theosophist nor a Spiritualist, be asked: "What may be the
difference between the vampire-bride from whom Apollonius of Tyana is said
to have delivered a young friend of his, whom the nightly succubus was
slowly killing, and the Spirit-wives and husbands of the mediums?" Surely
none--would be the correct answer. Those who do not shudder at this hideous
revival of mediæval Demonology and Witchcraft, may, at any rate, understand
the reason why of all the numerous enemies of Theosophy--which unveils the
mysteries of the "Spirit World" and unmasks the Spirits masquerading under
eminent names--none are so bitter and so implacable as the Spiritualists of
Protestant, and the Spiritists of Roman Catholic countries. 

"Monstrum horrendum informe cui lumen ademptum" . . . . is the fittest
epithet to be applied to most of the "Lillies" and "Joes" of the Spirit
World. But we do not mean at all--following in this the example of
Spiritualists, who are determined to believe in no other "Spirits" than
those of the "dear departed" ones--to maintain that save Nature Spirits or
Elementals, Shells, or Elementaries, and "Gods" and genii, there are no
other Spirits from the invisible realms; or no really holy and grand
Spirits--who communicate with mortals. For it is not so. What the Occultists
and Kabalists said all along, and the Theosophists now repeat, is, that holy
Spirits will not visit promiscuous séance-rooms, nor will they intermarry
with living men and women. 

Belief in the existence of invisible but too often present visitants from
better and worse worlds than our own, is too deeply rooted in men's hearts
to be easily torn out by the cold hand of Materialism, or even of Science.
Charges of superstition, coupled with ridicule, have at best served to breed
additional hypocrisy and social cant, among the educated classes. For there
are few men, if any, at the bottom of whose souls belief in such superhuman
and supersensous creatures does not lie latent, to awaken into existence at
the first good opportunity. Many are those Men of Science who, having
abandoned with their nursery pinafores belief in Kings of Elves and Fairy
Queens, and who would blush at being accused of believing in witchcraft,
have, nevertheless, fallen victims to the wiles of "Joes," and "Daisies,"
and other spooks and "controls." And once they have crossed the Rubicon,
they fear ridicule no longer. These Scientists defend as desperately the
reality of materialized and other Spirits, as if these were a mathematical
law. Those soul-aspirations that seem innate in human nature, and that
slumber only to awaken to intensified activity; those yearnings to cross the
boundary of matter that make many a hardened sceptic turn into a rabid
believer at the first appearance of that which to him is undeniable
proof--all these complete psychological phenomena of human temperament--have
our modern physiologists found a key to them? Will the verdict remain "non
compos mentis" or "victim to fraud and psychology"? &c., &c. When we say
with regard to unbelievers that they are "a handful" the statement is no
undervaluation; for it is not those who shout the loudest against degrading
superstitions, the "Occult craze" and so on, who are the strongest in their
scepticism. At the first opportunity, they will be foremost amongst those
who fall and surrender. And when one counts seriously the ever-increasing
millions of the Spiritualists, Occultists, and Mystics in Europe and
America, one may well refuse to lament with Carrington over the "Departure
of the Fairies." They are gone, says the poet: 
. . .
They are flown,

Beautiful fictions of our fathers, wove
In Superstition's web when Time was young,
And fondly loved and cherished--they are flown,
Before the Wand of Science! . . . .

We maintain that they have done nothing of the kind; and that on the
contrary it is these "Fairies"--the beautiful, far more than the
hideous--who are seriously threatening under their new masks and names to
disarm Science and break its "Wand." 

Belief in "Spirits" is legitimate, because it rests on the authority of
experiment and observation, it vindicates, moreover, another belief, also
regarded as a superstition: namely, Polytheism. The latter is based upon a
fact in nature: Spirits mistaken for Gods, have been seen in every age by
men--hence, belief in many and various Gods. Monotheism, on the other hand,
rests upon a pure abstraction. Who has seen GOD--that God we mean, the
Infinite and the Omnipotent, the one about whom Monotheists talk so much?
Polytheism--once man claims the right of divine interference on his
behalf--is logical and consistent with the philosophies of the East, all of
which, whether Pantheistic or Deistic, proclaim the ONE an infinite
abstraction, an absolute Something which utterly transcends the conception
of the finite. Surely such a creed is more philosophical than that religion,
whose theology, proclaiming in one place God, a mysterious and even
Incomprehensible Being, whom "no man shall see and live" (Exodus xxxiii.
20), shows him at the same time so human and so petty a God as to concern
himself with the breeches8 of his chosen people, while neglecting to say
anything definite about the immortality of their souls, or their survival
after death! 

Thus, belief in a Host and Hosts of Spiritual entities, dwelling on various
planes and spheres in the Universe, in conscious intra-Kosmic Beings, in
fact, is logical and reasonable, while belief in an extra-Kosmic God is an
absurdity. And if Jehovah, who was so jealous about his Jews and commanded
that they should have no other God save himself, was generous enough to
bestow upon Pharaoh Moses ("See I have made thee a God to Pharaoh, and Aaron
. . . . . thy prophet" Exodus vii. 7) as the Egyptian monarch's deity, why
should not "Pagans" be allowed the choice of their own Gods? Once we believe
in the existence of our Egos, we may well believe in Dhyan Chohans. As Hare
has it: "man is a mixed being made up of a spiritual and of a fleshly body;
the angels are pure Spirits, herein nearer to God, only that they are
created and finite in all respects, whereas God is infinite and uncreated."
And if God is the latter, then God is not a "Being" but an incorporeal
Principle, not to be blasphemously anthropomorphized. The angels or Dhyan
Chohans are the "Living Ones"; that Principle the "Self-Existent," the
eternal, and all pervading CAUSE of all causes, is only the abstract
noumenon of the "River of Life," whose ever rolling waves create angels and
men alike, the former being simply "men of a superior kind," as Young
intuitionally remarks. 

------------------------------------ also :

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.... 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.

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.

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." C on O.


Dallas