THEOSOPHY – THE WORD

ELEMENTALS

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Men of science may term them Force or Forces generated by matter, or “modes of its motion,” if they will; Occultism sees in the effects “Elemental” (forces), and, in the direct causes producing them, intelligent DIVINE Workmen. The intimate connection of those Elementals (guided by the unerring hand of the Rulers) – their correlation we might call it – with the elements of pure Matter, results in our terrestrial phenomena, such as light, heat, magnetism, etc., etc. Of course we shall never agree with the American Substantialists who call every Force and Energy – whether Light, Heat, Electricity or Cohesion – an “Entity”;

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p146]

The “Elementals,” the Nature-Forces, are the acting, though invisible, or rather imperceptible, secondary Causes and in themselves the effects of primary Causes behind the Veil of all terrestrial phenomena. Electricity, light, heat, etc., have been aptly termed the “Ghost or Shadow of Matter in Motion,” i.e., supersensuous states of matter whose effects only we are able to cognize. To expand, then, the simile given above. The sensation of light is like the sound of the rolling wheels – a purely phenomenal effect, having no existence outside the observer; the proximate exciting cause of the sensation is comparable to the driver – a supersensuous state of matter in motion, a Nature-Force or Elemental. But, behind even this, stand – just as the owner of the carriage directs the driver from within – the higher and noumenal causes, the Intelligences from whose essence radiate these States of “Mother,” generating the countless milliards of Elementals or psychic Nature-Spirits, just as every drop of water generates its physical infinitesimal Infusoria.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p146]

The first group comprises three degrees of elementals, or nascent centres of forces – from the first stage of differentiation of (from) Mulaprakriti (or rather Pradhâna, primordial homogeneous matter) to its third degree – i.e., from full unconsciousness to semi-perception; the second or higher group embraces the kingdoms from vegetable to man; the mineral kingdom thus forming the central or turning point in the degrees of the “Monadic Essence,” considered as an evoluting energy. Three stages (sub-physical) on the elemental side; the mineral kingdom; three stages on the objective physical side – these are the (first or preliminary) seven links of the evolutionary chain.”

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p176]

Thus, corresponding to the Sephirothal Crown (or upper triad) there are the three elemental Kingdoms, which precede the Mineral ... and which, using the language of the Kabalists, answer in the Cosmic differentiation to the worlds of form and matter form the Super-Spiritual to the Archetypal.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p177]

In this Round – with the exception of the highest mammals after man, the anthropoids destined to die out in this our race, when their monads will be liberated and pass into the astral human forms (or the highest elementals) of the Sixth and the Seventh Races, and then into lowest human forms in the fifth Round – no units of either of the kingdoms are animated any longer by monads destined to become human in their next stage, but only by the lower Elementals of their respective realms.
Fn. These “Elementals” will become human Monads, in their turn, only at the next great planetary Manvantara.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p164]

When Karma has reached them at the stage of human evolution, they will have to drink it “to the last drop in the bitter cup of retribution. Then they become an active Force, and commingle with the Elementals, or progressed entities of the pure animal kingdom, to develop little by little the full type of humanity.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p188]

The sixth and seventh groups partake of the lower qualities of the Quaternary. They are conscious, ethereal Entities, as invisible as Ether, which are shot out like the boughs of a tree from the first central group of the four, and shoot out in their turn numberless side groups, the lower of which are the Nature-Spirits, or Elementals of countless kinds and varieties; from the formless and insubstantial – the ideal THOUGHTS of their creators – down to the Atomic, though, to human perception, invisible organisms. The latter are considered as the “Spirits of Atoms” for they are the first remove (backwards) from the physical Atom – sentient, if not intelligent creatures. They are all subject to Karma, and have to work it out through every cycle. For, as the doctrine teaches, there are no such privileged beings in the universe, whether in our or in other systems, in the outer or the inner worlds, as the angels of the Western Religion and the Judean.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p221]

In sober truth, as just shown, every “Spirit” so-called is either a disembodied or a future man. As from the highest Archangel (Dhyan Chohan) down to the last conscious “Builder” (the inferior class of Spiritual Entities), all such are men, having lived aeons ago, in other Manvantaras, on this or other Spheres; so the inferior, semi-intelligent and non-intelligent Elementals – are all future men. That fact alone – that a Spirit is endowed with intelligence – is a proof to the Occultist that that Being must have been a man, and acquired his knowledge and intelligence throughout the human cycle.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p277]

In this secondary Period, the three degrees of Elemental or Rudimental Kingdoms are evolved in this world, corresponding inversely in order to the three Prakritic creations during the Primary period of Brahmâ’s activity. As in that period, in the words of “Vishnu Purana”: “The first creation was that of Mahat (Intellect), the second, of Tanmatras (rudimental principles), and the third, that of the senses (Aindriyaka)”; in this one, the order of the Elemental Forces stands thus: (1) The nascent centres of Force (intellectual and physical); (2) the rudimental principles – nerve force, so to say; and (3) nascent apperception, which is the Mahat of the lower kingdoms, especially developed in the third order of Elementals; these are succeeded by the objective kingdom of minerals, in which latter that apperception is entirely latent, to redevelop only in the plants. The Mukhya “Creation,” then, is the middle point between the three lower and the three higher kingdoms, which represent the seven esoteric kingdoms of Kosmos, as of Earth.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p454-5]

.......

This attempt [to create man] was again a failure. It allegorizes the vanity of physical nature’s unaided attempts to construct even a perfect animal – let alone man. For the “Fathers,” the lower Angels, are all Nature Spirits and the higher Elementals also possess an intelligence of their own; but this is not enough to construct a THINKING man. “Living Fire” was needed, that fire which gives the human mind its self-perception and self-consciousness, or Manas; and the progeny of Pavaka and Suchi are the animal electric and solar fires, which create animals, and could thus furnish but a physical living constitution to that first astral model of man. The first creators, then, were the Pygmalions of primeval man: they failed to animate the statue – intellectually.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p102]

When a new solar system has to be evolved these Dhyani-Chohans are borne in by the influx ‘ahead’ of the elementals (Entities ... to be developed into humanity at a future time) and remain as a latent or inactive spiritual force in the aura of the nascent world ... until the stage of human evolution is reached ... then they become an active Force, and commingle with the Elementals... to develop little by little the full type of humanity. That is to say, to develop in, and endow man with, his Self-conscious mind, or Manas.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p233fn]

They [the “evil spirits”]are the Elementals generated or begotten by ignorance – Cosmic and human passions – or Chaos.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p386fn]

We answer that there are, in fact, only six principles in man; since his body is no principle, but the covering, the shell thereof. So with the planetary chain; speaking of which, esoterically, the Earth (as well as the seventh, or rather fourth plane, one that stands as the seventh if we count from the first triple kingdom of the Elementals that begin the formation) may be left out of consideration, being (to us) the only distinct body of the seven.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p616]

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... he would have (1) divided the Devas into two classes – and called them the “Rupa-devas” and the “Arupa-devas” (the “form” or objective, and the “formless” or subjective Dhyan Chohans) and (2) – would have done the same for his class of “men,” since there are shells, and “Mara-rupas” – i.e., bodies doomed to annihilation. All these are:
(1) “Rupa-devas” – Dhyan Chohans, having forms } Ex-men.
(2) “Arupa-devas” Dhyan Chohans, having no forms;
(3) “Pisachas” -- (two-principled) ghosts.
(4) “Mara-rupa” — Doomed to death (3 principled). } Future-men.
(5) Asuras – Elementals – having human form
(6) Beasts – Elementals 2nd class – animal Elementals
(7) Rakshasas (Demons) Souls or Astral Forms of sorcerers; men who have reached the apex of knowledge in the forbidden art. Dead or alive they have, so to say cheated nature; but it is only temporary – until our planet goes into obscuration, after which they have nolens volens to be annihilated.
It is these seven groups that form the principal divisions of the Dwellers of the subjective world around us. It is in stock No. 1 that are the intelligent Rulers of this world of Matter, and who, with all this intelligence are but the blindly obedient instruments of the ONE; the active agents of a Passive Principle.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 68, Chronological Edition or Letter 196, Barker Numbering.]

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The world is not prepared yet to understand the philosophy of Occult Sciences – let them assure themselves first of all that there are beings in an invisible world, whether “Spirits” of the dead or Elementals; and that there are hidden powers in man, which are capable of making a God of him on earth.

[C.W.I, p73]

To imagine that a human brain can conceive of anything that was never conceived of before by the “universal brain,” is a fallacy, and a conceited presumption. At best, the former can catch now and then stray glimpses of the “eternal thought” after these have assumed some objective form, either in the world of the invisible or visible universe. Hence the unanimous testimony of trained seers goes to prove that there are such creatures as the elementals; and that though the elementaries have been at some time human spirits, they, having lost every connection with the purer immortal world, must be recognized by some special term which would draw a distinct line of demarcation between them and the true and genuine disembodied souls which have henceforth to remain immortal. To the Kabalists and the adepts, especially in India, the difference between the two is all important, and their tutored minds will never allow them to mistake the one for the other; to the untutored medium they are all one.

[C.W.I, p268-9]

“Is it not probable that some of the elementary spirits of an evil type are those spirit-bodies which, only recently disembodied, are on the eve of an eternal dissolution, and which continue their temporary existence only by vampirizing those still in the flesh? They had existence; they never attained to being.” Note two things: that human elementaries are recognized as existing, apart from the gnomes, sylphs, undines and salamanders – beings purely elemental; and that annihilation of the soul is regarded as potential.

[C.W.I, p284]

Vicious elementals, or elementaries, are attracted to vicious parents; they bask in their atmosphere, and are thus afforded the chance by the vices of the parents to perpetuate in the child the paternal wickedness. The unintellectual “elementals” are draw in unconsciously to themselves; and in the order of nature, as component parts of the grosser astral body or soul, determine the temperament. They can as little resist as the animalcules can avoid entering into our bodies in the water we swallow.

[C.W.I, p285]

We allude to the experience, once so common among men, now so comparatively rare, of a world of real beings, whose abode is in the four elements, beings with probable though as yet ill-defined powers, and a perceptible existence. We are sorry for those who will pity us for making this admission; but fact is fact, science or no science. The realization of this inner world of the Elementals dates back to the beginning of our race, and has been embalmed in the verse of poets and preserved in the religious and historical records of the world. Granted that the perception of phenomena developed nature-worship, yet, unless our materialistic friends admit that the range of these phenomena included experiences with the spirits of the elements and the higher and noble realities of Psychology, it would trouble them to account for the universality of belief in the various races of the Unseen Universe.

[C.W.II, p259]

The power of a real, strongly charged medium will always prevail against the animal magnetism which may be adverse to it; but it cannot produce effects unless it receives a fresh supply of molecular force, an impress from the invisible body of those we call blind “Elementals” or Forces of Nature, and which the Spiritualists in every case regard as the “spirits of the dead.” Showers of stones have been known to take place where there was not a living soul – consequently no medium. The medium charged by the atmospheric legion of “correlations” (we prefer calling them by the new scientific term) will attract stones within the periphery of his force, but will at the same time repel them, the polaric condition of his body preventing the missiles from touching it. And his own molecular condition will temporarily induct with its properties all the other human and even non-sensitive bodies around it. Sometimes there may be an exception to the rule produced by some chance condition.

This explanatory postscript may be closed with the remark ... that we do not regard the Elementals of the Kabalists as properly “beings.” They are the active Forces and correlations of Fire, Water, Earth and Air, and their shape is like the hues of the chameleon which has no permanent colour of its own. Through the interplanetary and interstellar spaces, the vision of almost every clairvoyant can reach. But it is only the trained eye of the proficient in Eastern Occultism, that can fix the flitting shadows and give them a shape and a name.

[C.W.III, p247-8]

Alone the “Elementals” – those half-blind Forces of Nature – say the Kabalists – which are the coruscations of matter and of the rudimentary minds of the descending “spirits” who have failed on their downward way – have not yet lived but will live some day on earth.

[C.W.III, p270]

... Spiritualists have always opposed the allegations of Theosophists that such races of beings exist,... Mrs. Britten, incautiously, as we think, uses the word “Elementary,” to signify nature-spirits, or the forces of Nature. A clear distinction should be drawn between these nature-spirits, and the psychic shells of once living human beings, known in India as bhutas. To mark this difference and, if possible, avoid confusion, we applied, in Isis, the name “Elementals” to the nature-spirits, and used the word “Elementary” to designate the bhutas.

[C.W.III, p477]

This highly interesting particular should recall to the reader the article on “Stone-Showers” which appeared in The Theosophist for August, 1881. In that connection we protested against the theory of the Spiritualists that this class of phenomena is due to the agency of disembodied human spirits, and suggested that they went to prove the existence of prankish nature-elementals. The Jinnat or Jinn of the Oriental demonology are of this class, as the reader of the Arabian Nights will remember. They can be made subservient to one who has learned the secret of their subjugation by occult means. Only those who would believe that we consider them as beings of any sort – least of all intelligent beings – will be very much mistaken

[C.W.IV, p103]

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If we say that nature has in reality seven, not five or even four, elements, some of our readers may laugh at our ignorance, but an initiate would never do so, since he knows very well what we mean.

[C.W.IV, p166]

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We have learned by experience since to put implicit faith in our teachers; to discern between objective shells, men that were – and subjective genuine spirits; between elementaries (victims of accident, and suicides) and elementals – men that will be.

[C.W.IV, p590]

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The explanation in both classes of cases is that the fire-proof individual is a medium for these fire elementals, and contains in himself an unusual proportion of Salamandrine properties, the result of an abnormal combination of elemental forces in his foetal development. Normally, a human being contains the elementals of all the four kingdoms in almost equal proportions, any slight preponderance of one or the other determining the so-called “temperament.”

[C.W.V, p103]

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... “the beings which play the most important part in Arab romances are the finn, or Genii, which appear to correspond very closely to the beings known to us as the Elementals ... ” To this H. P. B. remarks:]
They are the Preta, Yaksha, Dakini – the lowest of the Hindu elementals, while the Gandharvas, Vidyadharas and even the Apsaras belong to the highest. Some of them – the former, are dangerously mischievous, while the latter are benevolent, and, if properly approached willing to impart to men useful knowledge of arts and sciences.

[C.W.VI, p169]

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IMPORTANT ESSAY

[C.W.VI, p184-201]

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A person may consciously and voluntarily submit his will to another being and become his slave. This other being may be a human being, and the medium will then be his obedient servant and may be used by him for good or bad purposes. This other “being” may be an idea, such as love, greediness, hate, jealousy, avarice, or some other passion, and the effect on the medium will be proportionate to the strength of the idea and the amount of self-control left in the medium. This “other being” may be an elementary or an elemental, and the poor medium become an epileptic, a maniac or a criminal. This “other being” may be the man’s own higher principle, either alone or put into rapport with another ray of the collective universal spiritual principle, and the “medium” will then be a great genius, a writer, a poet, an artist, a musician, an inventor, and so on. This “other being” may be one of those exalted beings, called Mahatmas, and the conscious and voluntary medium will then be called their “Chela.”

[C.W.VI, p235]

From the quotations made in the foregoing letter it is evident that by Devas, Drugs and Drug-nasus the ancient Zoroastrian writers meant, black-magicians, elementaries and elementals respectively. The other names cited by our correspondent indicate some of the various Sub-divisions of elementaries and elemental spirits. These words do not merely mean the magnetic aura of a living or dead body. The question of auric emanations is of course important in considering the case of these agencies.

[C.W.VI, p340]

... the following points have to be settled and studied by our Theosophists ...
1. The difference between a physiological hallucination and a psychic or spiritual clairvoyance and clairaudience.
2. Spirits, or the entities of certain invisible beings – whether ghosts of once living men, angels, spirits, or elementals – have they, or have they not, a natural though an ethereal and to us invisible body? Are they united to, or can they assimilate some fluidic substance that would help them to become visible to men?
3. Have they, or have they not, the power of so becoming infused among the atoms of any object, whether it be a statue (idol), a picture, or an amulet, as to impart to it their potency and virtue, and even to animate it?
4. Is it in the power of any Adept, Yogi or Initiate, to fix such entities, whether by White or Black magic, in certain objects?
5. What are the various conditions (save Nirvana and Avitchi) of good and bad men after death? etc., etc.
All this may be studied in the literature of the ancient classics, and especially in Aryan literature.

[C.W.VII, p225-6]

Student.— If I understand you, an elemental is a centre of force, without intelligence, without moral character or tendencies, but capable of` being directed in its movements by human thoughts, which may, consciously or not, give it any form, and to a certain extent intelligence; in its simplest form it is visible as a disturbance in a transparent medium, such as would be produced by “a glass fish, so transparent as to be invisible, swimming through the air of the room,” and leaving behind him a shimmer, such as hot air makes when rising from a stove. Also, elementals, attracted and vitalized by certain thoughts, may effect a lodgment in the human system (of which they then share the government with the ego), and are very hard to get out.

Sage.— Correct, in general, except as to their “effecting a lodgment.” Some classes of elementals, however, have an intelligence of their own and a character, but they are far beyond our comprehension and ought perhaps to have some other name.
That class which has most to do with us answers the above description. They are centres of force or energy which are acted on by us while thinking and in other bodily motions. We also act on them and give them form by a species of thought which we have no register of. 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. For there is a vast unknown country in each human being which he does not himself understand until he has tried, and then only after many initiations.
That “elementals ... may effect a lodgment in the human system, of which they then share the government, and are very hard to get out” is, as a whole, incorrect. It is only in certain cases that any one or more elementals are attracted to and “find lodgment in the human system.” In such cases special rules apply. We are not considering such cases. The elemental world interpenetrates this, and is therefore eternally present in the human system.
As it (the elemental world) is automatic and like a photographic plate, all atoms continually arriving at and departing from the “human system” are constantly assuming the impression conveyed by the acts and thoughts of that person, and therefore, if` he sets up a strong current of thought, he attracts elementals in greater numbers, and they all take on one prevailing tendency or colour, so that all new arrivals find a homogeneous colour or image which they instantly assume. On the other hand, a man who has many diversities of thought and meditation is not homogeneous, but, so to say, parti-coloured, and so the elementals may lodge in that part which is different from the rest and go away in like condition. In the first case it is one mass of elementals similarly vibrating or electrified and coloured, and in that sense may be called one elemental in just the same way that we know one man as Jones, although for years he has been giving off and taking on new atoms of gross matter.

Student.— If they are attracted and repelled by thoughts, do they move with the velocity of thought, say from here to the planet Neptune?

Sage.— They move with the velocity of thought. In their world there is no space or time as we understand those terms. If Neptune be within the astral sphere of this world, then they go there with that velocity, otherwise not; but that “if” need not be solved now.

[C.W.IX, p104-5]

Elementaries are not all bad, but, in a general sense, they are not good. They are shells, no doubt of that. Well, they have much automatic and seemingly intelligent action left if they are those of strongly material people who died attached to the things of life. If of people of an opposite character, they are not so strong.

[C.W.IX, p107]

I do not think any elementary capable of motive had ever any other than a bad one; the rest are nothing, they have no motive and are only the shades refused passage by Charon.

[C.W.IX, p108]

As to moral character of elementals, they have none: they are colourless in themselves – except in some classes – and merely assume the tint, so to speak, of the person using them.

[C.W.IX, p113]

Student.— Do some sorts of elementals have guard over hidden treasure?

Sage.— Yes, in every instance, whether never found or soon discovered. The causes for the hiding and the thoughts of the hider or loser have much to do with the permanent concealment or subsequent finding.

Student.— What happens when a large sum of money, say, such as Captain Kidd’s mythical treasure, is concealed, or when a quantity of coin is lost?

Sage.— Elementals gather about it. They have many and curious modes of causing further concealment. They even influence animals to that end. This class of elementals seldom, if ever, report at your spiritualistic séances. As time goes on the forces of air and water still further aid them, and sometimes they are able even to prevent the hider from recovering it. Thus in course of years, even when they may have altogether lost their hold on it, the whole thing becomes shrouded in mist, and it is impossible to find anything.

[C.W.IX, p116]

Sage.— ...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 the 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 and 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.

[C.W.IX, p126-7]

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.

[C.W.IX, p128]

Here is the key so much desired by enterprising – indeed all – students. It is by means of these correlations of colour, sound, form, number, and substance – that the trained will of the Initiate rules and uses the denizens of the elemental world. Many theosophists have had slight conscious relations with elementals, but always without their will acting, and, upon trying to make elementals see, hear, or act for them, a total indifference on the part of the nature spirit is all they have got in return. These failures are due to the fact that the elemental cannot understand the thought of the person; it can only be reached when the exact scale of being to which it belongs is vibrated whether it be that of colour, form, sound, or whatever else.

[C.W.IX, p240]

Because it then so happens that the created image is taken up and used by a “Shell.” Just as in séance-rooms when “images” of the dead – which may perhaps be lingering unconsciously in the memory or even the auras of those present – are seized upon by the Elementals or Elementary Shadows and made objective to the audience, and even caused to act at the bidding of the strongest of the many different wills in the room.

[C.W.X, p222]

There is not a single thing going on about us, no matter what, that elementals are not concerned in, because they constitute a necessary part of nature, just as important as the nerve currents in your body.

[C.W.X, p271]

It [Ireland] is packed full of a singular class of elementals;...
It is very interesting here [Central Park, New York]. I see a great number of Indians, and also their elementals, just as real as you seem to be. They do not see us, they are all spooks.

[C.W.X, p272]

Q. What is the difference between an Elemental and a Dhyan-Chohan or Dhyani-Buddha?
A. The difference is very great. Elementals are attached only to the four terrestrial Elements and only to the two lower kingdoms of nature – the mineral and the vegetable – in which they inmetalize and inherbalize, so to speak.

[C.W.X, p362]

The Devas are, so to say, the embodied powers of states of matter, more refined than those with which we are familiar.

[C.W.XII, p201]

We call them, Dhyan-Chohans, Devas, Pitris, Elementals high and low – and know them as the “Gods” of the Gentiles, imperfect at times, never wholly. Each order has its name, it place, its functions assigned to it in nature; and each host is the complement and crown of its own particular sphere, as man is the complement and crown of his globe; hence, a natural and logical necessity in Kosmos.

[C.W.XII, p205]

The mediumistic “spook,” the “departed angel,” fades out and vanishes also in its turn‡ as an entity or full image of the Personality that was, and leaves in the Kamalokic world of effects only the records of its misdeeds and sinful thoughts and acts, known in the phraseology of the Occultists as Tanhic or human “Elementals.” It is these Elementals which – upon entering into the composition of the “astral form” of the new body, into which the Ego, on its quitting the Devachanic state, is to enter according to Karmic decree – form that new astral entity which is born within the Auric Envelope, and of which it is often said “Karma, with its army of Skandhas, waits at the threshold of Devachan.”

[C.W.XII, p609]

... the Auric Egg furnishes the basis of the new Linga-Sariria and the Tanhic Elementals form it within the Auric Envelope, the continuity being thus preserved; it lies dormant in the foetal state, during the Devachan of the entity to whom it belongs, and enters, in due course, a woman’s womb.

[C.W.XII, p704]

“Elementals” used by the highest Adept to do mechanical, not intellectual work, as a physicist uses gases and other compounds.

[C.W.XIV, p118]

The clergy of these respective countries prove moreover what they teach, namely: that the practice of moral and physical purity, and of certain austerities, develops the vital soul-power of self-illumination. Affording to man the control over his own immortal spirit, it gives him truly magical powers over the elementary spirits inferior to himself.

[C.W.XIV, p311]

Indeed, one may fairly describe the two as the “high ceremonial Astrology” and “astrological Astrolatry.” The first depended on the knowledge by the Initiates of those (to us) immaterial Forces or Spiritual Entities that affect matter and guide it. Called by the ancient Philosophers the Archontes and the Cosmocratores, they were the types or paradigms on the higher planes of the lower and more material beings on the scale of evolution, whom we call Elementals and Nature-Spirits, to whom the Sabaeans bowed and whom they worshipped, without suspecting the essential difference. Hence the latter kind when not a mere pretence, degenerated but too often into Black Magic. It was the favourite form of popular or exoteric Astrology, entirely ignorant of the apotelesmatic principles of the primitive Science, the doctrines of which were imparted only at Initiation. Thus, while the real Hierophants soared like Demi-Gods to the very summit of spiritual knowledge, the hoi polloi among the Sabaeans crouched, steeped in superstition – ten millenniums back, as they do now – in the cold and lethal shadow of the valleys of matter

[C.W.XIV, p344-5]

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“We arrived very soon at the conviction that the forces at work – as Madame B. constantly told us – had to be divided into several distinct categories. While the lowest on the scale of invisible beings* produced most of the physical phenomena, the very highest among the agencies at work condescend but rarely to a communication or intercourse with strangers.”
* Elementals, of course, for we know that Mme. B. will have nought to do with shells or the Elementaries....

It is evident that while she could exercise a power over the Elementals, she had but to sit passive and quiet when the “higher intelligences” or as the author calls them agencies – i.e. the will of the living chelas or their Masters was the means by which the phenomena were produced.

[C.W.XIV, p478]

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Of these three classes the first two are invisible; their bodies are pure ether and fire (planetary spirits); the daemons of the third class are clothed with vapoury bodies; they are usually invisible, but sometimes making themselves concrete become visible for a few seconds. These are the earthly spirits, or our astral souls.

[Isis Unveiled Vol.I, pxxii]

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.

[Isis Unveiled Vol.I, p67]

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 harbors, 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.... With the same premises conceded, we may also see why, by such various aspects of the stars, shoals of friendly or hostile “elementals” might be poured in upon our atmosphere, or some particular portion of it, and make the fact appreciable by the effects which ensue.

[Isis Unveiled Vol.I, p284-5]

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, of which we will speak more categorically in other parts of this work. Suffice to say, for the present, that they are the larvæ, 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 the invisible antitypes of the men to be born. No form can come into objective existence – from the highest to the lowest – before the abstract ideal of this form – or, as Aristotle would call it, the privation of this form – is called forth. Before an artist paints a picture every feature of it exists already in his imagination; to have enabled us to discern a watch, this particular watch must have existed in its abstract form in the watchmaker’s mind. So with future men.

[Isis Unveiled Vol.I, p310]

Forms pass; ideas that created them and the material which gave them objectiveness, remain. 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 men.

[Isis Unveiled Vol.I, p311]

The highest among them were the twelve uper-ouranioi, or supercelestial gods, having whole legions of subordinate demons at their command. They are followed next in rank and power by the egkosmioi, the intercosmic gods, each of these presiding over a great number of demons, to whom they impart their power and change it from one to another at will. These are evidently the personified forces of nature in their mutual correlation, the latter being represented by the third class or the “elementals” we have just described.

[Isis Unveiled Vol.I, p312]

In the Jewish Kabala, the nature-spirits were known under the general name of Shedim and divided into four classes.

[Isis Unveiled Vol.I, p313]

Individual life can only be continued if sustained by this two-fold force. The least deviation from harmony damages it; when it is destroyed beyond redemption the forces separate and the form is gradually annihilated. 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.

[Isis Unveiled Vol.I, p319]

But we will now give a few historical instances going to show that some daimons, or elementary spirits, are afraid of sword, knife, or anything sharp.

[Isis Unveiled Vol.I, p362]

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