THE HIDDEN SIDE OF THINGS/PART 6

 

CHAPTER VI

 

BY NATURE-SPIRITS

 

AN EVOLUTION APART

 

ANOTHER factor which exercises great influence under certain restrictions is the nature-spirits. We may regard the nature-spirits of the land as in a sense the original inhabitants of the country, driven away from some parts of it by the invasion of man, much as the wild animals have been. Just like wild animals, the nature-spirits avoid altogether the great cities and all places where men most do congregate, so that in those their effect is a negligible quantity. But in all quiet country places, among the woods and fields, upon the mountains or out at sea, nature-spirits are constantly present, and though they rarely show themselves, their influence is powerful and all-pervading, just as the scent of the violets fills the air though they are hidden modestly among the leaves.

 

The nature-spirits constitute an evolution apart, quite distinct at this stage from that of humanity. We are familiar with the course taken by the Second Outpouring through the three elemental kingdoms, down to the mineral and upward through the vegetable and animal, to the attainment of individuality at the human level. We know that, after that individuality has been attained, the unfolding of humanity carries us gradually to the steps of the Path, and then onward and upward to Adeptship and to the glorious possibilities which lie beyond.

 

This is our line of development, but we must not make the mistake of thinking of it as the only line. Even in this world of ours the divine life is pressing upwards through several streams, of which ours is but one, and numerically by no means the most important. It may help us to realise this if we remember that while humanity in its physical manifestation occupies only quite a small part of the surface of the earth, entities at a corresponding level on other lines of evolution not only crowd the earth far more thickly than man, but at the same time populate the enormous plains of the sea and the fields of the air.

 

LINES OF EVOLUTION

 

At this present stage we find these streams running parallel to one another, but for the time quite distinct. The nature-spirits, for example, neither have been nor ever will be members of a humanity such as ours, yet the indwelling life of the nature-spirit comes from the same Solar Deity as our own, and will return to Him just as ours will. The streams may be roughly considered as flowing side by side as far as the mineral level, but as soon as they turn to commence the upward arc of evolution, divergence begins to appear. This stage of immetalisation is naturally that at which life is most deeply immersed in physical matter but while some of the streams retain physical forms through several of the further stages of their development, making them, as they proceed, more and more an expression of the life within, there are other streams which at once begin to cast off the grosser, and for the rest of their unfolding in this world use only bodies composed of etheric matter.

 

One of these streams, for example, after finishing that stage of its evolvement in which it is part of the mineral monad, instead of passing into the vegetable kingdom takes for itself vehicles of etheric matter which inhabit the interior of the earth, living actually within the solid rock. It is difficult for many students to understand how it is possible for any kind of creature thus to inhabit the solid substance of the rock or the crust of the earth. Creatures possessing bodies of etheric matter find the substance of the rock no impediment to their motion or their vision. Indeed, for them physical matter in its solid state is their natural element and habitat-- the only one to which they are accustomed and in which they feel at home. These vague lower lives in amorphous etheric vehicles are not readily comprehensible to us; but somehow they gradually evolve to a stage when, though still inhabiting the solid rock, they live close to the surface of the earth instead of in its depths, and the more developed of them are able occasionally to detach themselves from it for a short time.

 

These creatures have sometimes been seen, and perhaps more frequently heard, in caves or mines, and they are often described in mediaeval literature as gnomes. The etheric matter of their bodies is not, under ordinary conditions, visible to physical eyes, so that when they are seen one of two things must take place; either they must materialise themselves by drawing round them a veil of physical matter, or else the spectator must experience an increase of sensitiveness which enables him to respond to the wave-lengths of the higher aethers, and to see what is not normally perceptible to him.

 

The slight temporary exaltation of faculty necessary for this is not very uncommon nor difficult to achieve, and on the other hand materialisation is easy for creatures which are only just beyond the bounds of visibility; so that they would be seen far more frequently than they are, but for the rooted objection to the proximity of human beings which they share with all but the lowest types of nature-spirits. The next stage of their advancement brings them into the subdivision commonly called fairies-- the type of nature-spirits which usually live upon the surface of the earth as we do, though still using only an etheric body; and after that they pass on through the air-spirits into the kingdom of the angels in a way which will be explained later.

 

The life-wave which is at the mineral level is manifesting itself not only through the rocks which form the solid crust of the earth, but also through the waters of the ocean; and just as the former may pass through low etheric forms of life (at present unknown to man) in the interior of the earth, so the latter may pass through corresponding low etheric forms which have their dwelling in the depths of the sea. In this case also the next stage or kingdom brings us into more definite though still etheric forms inhabiting the middle depths, and very rarely showing themselves at the surface. The third stage for them (corresponding to that of the fairies for the rock-spirits) is to join the enormous host of water-spirits which cover the vast plains of the ocean with their joyous life.

 

Taking as they do bodies of etheric matter only, it will be seen that the entities following these lines of development miss altogether the vegetable and animal kingdoms as well the human. There are, however, other types of nature-spirits which enter into both these kingdoms before they begin to diverge. In the ocean, for example, there is a stream of life which, after leaving the mineral level, touches the vegetable kingdom in the form of seaweeds, and then passes on, through the corals and the sponges and the huge cephalopods of the middle deeps, up into the great family of the fishes, and only after that joins the ranks of water-spirits.

 

It will be seen that these retain the dense physical body as a vehicle up to a much higher level; and in the same way we notice that the fairies of the land are recruited not only from the ranks of the gnomes, but also from the less evolved strata of the animal kingdom, for we find a line of development which just touches the vegetable kingdom in the shape of minute fungoid growths, and then passes onward through bacteria and animalculae of various kinds, through the insects and reptiles up to the beautiful family of the birds, and only after many incarnations among these joins the still more joyous tribe of the fairies.

 

Yet another stream diverges into etheric life at an intermediate point, for while it comes up through the vegetable kingdom in the shape of grasses and cereals, it turns aside thence into the animal kingdom and is conducted through the curious communities of the ants and bees, and then through a set of etheric creatures closely corresponding to the latter-- those tiny humming-bird-like nature-spirits which are so continually seen hovering about flowers and plants, and play so large a part in the production of their manifold variations-- their playfulness being often utilised in specialisation and in the helping of growth.

 

It is necessary, however, to draw a careful distinction here, to avoid confusion. The little creatures that look after flowers may be divided into two great classes, though of course there are many varieties of each kind. The first class may properly be called elementals, for beautiful though they are, they are in reality only thought-forms, and therefore they are not really living creatures at all. Perhaps I should rather say that they are only temporarily living creatures, for though they are very active and busy during their little lives, they have no real evolving, reincarnating life in them, and when they have done their work, they just go to pieces and dissolve into the surrounding atmosphere, precisely as our own thought-forms do. They are the thought-forms of the Great Beings or angels who are in charge of the evolution of the vegetable kingdom.

 

When one of these Great Ones has a new idea connected with one of the kinds of plants or flowers which are under his charge, he often creates a thought-form for the special purpose of carrying out that idea. It usually takes the form either of an etheric model of the flower itself or of a little creature which hangs round the plant or the flower all through the time that the buds are forming, and gradually builds them into the shape and colour of which the angel has thought. But as soon as the plant has fully grown, or the flower has opened, its work is over and its power is exhausted, and, as I have said, it just simply dissolves, because the will to do that piece of work was the only soul that it had.

 

But there is quite another kind of little creature which is very frequently seen playing about with flowers, and this time it is a real nature-spirit. There are many varieties of these also. One of the commonest forms is, as I have said, something very much like a tiny humming-bird, and it may often be seen buzzing round the flowers much in the same way as a humming-bird or a bee does. These beautiful little creatures will never become human, because they are not in the same line of evolution as we are. The life which is now animating them has come up through grasses and cereals, such as wheat and oats, when it was in the vegetable kingdom, and afterwards through ants and bees when it was in the animal kingdom. Now it has reached the level of these tiny nature-spirits, and its next stage will be to ensoul some of the beautiful fairies with etheric bodies who live upon the surface of the earth. Later on they will become salamanders or fire-spirits, and later still they will become sylphs, or air-spirits, having only astral bodies instead of etheric. Later still they will pass through the different stages of the great kingdom of the angels.

 

OVERLAPPING

 

In all cases of the transference of the life-wave from one kingdom to another great latitude is allowed for variation; there is a good deal of overlapping between the kingdoms. That is perhaps most clearly to be seen along our own line of evolution for we find that the life which has attained to the highest levels in the vegetable kingdom never passes into the lower part of the animal kingdom at all, but on the contrary joins it at a fairly advanced stage. Let me recall the example which I have already given; the life which has ensouled one of our great forest trees could never descend to animate a swarm of mosquitoes, nor even a family of rats or mice or such small deer; while these latter would be quite appropriate forms for that part of the life-wave which had left the vegetable kingdom at the level of the daisy or the dandelion.

 

The ladder of evolution has to be climbed in all cases, but it seems as though the higher part of one kingdom lies to a large extent parallel with the lower part of that above it, so that it is possible for a transfer from one to the other to take place at different levels in different cases. That stream of life which enters the human kingdom avoids altogether the lowest stages of the animal kingdom; that is, the life which is presently to rise into humanity never manifests itself through the insects or the reptiles; in the past it did sometimes enter the animal kingdom at the level of the great antediluvian reptiles, but now it passes directly from the highest forms of the vegetable life into the mammalia. Similarly, when the most advanced domestic animal becomes individualised, he does not need to descend into the form of the absolutely primitive savage for his first human incarnation.

 

The accompanying diagram shows some of these lines of development in a convenient tabular form, but it must not be considered as in any way exhaustive, as there are no doubt other lines which have not yet been observed, and there are certainly all kinds of variations and possibilities of crossing at different levels from one line to another; so that all we can do is to give a broad outline of the scheme.

 

As will be seen from the diagram, at a later stage all the lines of evolution converge once more; at least to our dim sight there seems no distinction of glory among those Lofty Ones, though probably if we knew more we could make our table more complete. At any rate we know that, much as humanity lies above the animal kingdom, so beyond and above humanity in its turn lies the great kingdom of the angels, and that to enter among the angels is one of the seven possibilities which the Adept finds opening before him. That same kingdom is also the next stage for the nature-spirit, but we have here another instance of the overlapping previously mentioned, for the Adept joins that kingdom at a high level, omitting altogether three of its stages, while the next step of progress for the highest type of nature-spirit is to become the lowest class of angel, thus beginning at the bottom of that particular ladder instead of stepping on to it half-way up.

It is on joining the angel kingdom that the nature-spirit receives the divine Spark of the Third Outpouring, and thus attains individuality, just as the animal does when he passes into the human kingdom; and a further point of similarity is that just as the animal gains individualisation only through contact with humanity, so the nature-spirit gains it through contact with the angel-- through becoming attached to him and working in order to please him, until at last he learns how to do angel' s work himself.

 

The more advanced nature-spirit is therefore not exactly an etheric or astral human being, for he is not yet an individual; yet he is much more than an etheric or astral animal, for his intellectual level is far higher than anything which we find in the animal kingdom, and is indeed quite equal along many lines to that of average humanity. On the other hand, some of the earlier varieties possess but a limited amount of intelligence, and seem to be about on an equality with the humming-birds or bees or butterflies which they so closely resemble. As we have seen from our diagram, this one name of nature-spirit covers a large segment of the arc of evolution, including stages corresponding to the whole of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and to humanity up to almost the present level of our own race.

 

Some of the lower types are not pleasing to the aesthetic sense; but that is true also of the lower kinds of reptiles and insects. There are undeveloped tribes whose tastes are coarse, and naturally their appearance corresponds to the stage of their evolution. The shapeless masses with huge red gaping mouths, which live upon the loathsome etheric emanations of blood and decaying flesh, are horrible both to the sight and to the feeling of any pure-minded person; so also are the rapacious red-brown crustacean creatures which hover over houses of ill-fame, and the savage octopus-like monsters which gloat over the orgies of the drunkard and revel in the fumes of alcohol. But even these harpies are not evil in themselves, though repulsive to man; and man would never come into contact with them unless he degraded himself to their level by becoming the slave of his lower passions.

 

It is only nature-spirits of these and similar primitive and unpleasant kinds which voluntarily approach the average man. Others of the same sort, but a shade less material, enjoy the sensation of bathing in any specially coarse astral radiations, such as those produced by anger, avarice, cruelty, jealousy and hatred. People yielding themselves to such feelings can depend upon being constantly surrounded by these carrion crows of the astral world, who quiver in their ghastly glee as they jostle one another in eager anticipation of an outburst of passion, and in their blind, blundering way do whatever they can to provoke or intensify it. It is difficult to believe that such horrors as these can belong to the same kingdom as the jocund spirits next to be described.

 

FAIRIES

 

The type best known to man is that of the fairies, the spirits who live normally upon the surface of the earth, though, since their bodies are of etheric matter, they can pass into the ground at will. Their forms are many and various, but most frequently human in shape and somewhat diminutive in size, usually with a grotesque exaggeration of some particular feature or limb. Etheric matter being plastic and readily moulded by the power of thought, they are able to assume almost any appearance at will, but they nevertheless have definite forms of their own, which they wear when they have no special object to serve by taking any other, and are therefore not exerting their will to produce a change of shape. They have also colours of their own, marking the difference between their tribes or species, just as the birds have differences of plumage.

 

There are an immense number of subdivisions or races among them, and individuals of these sub-divisions vary in intelligence and disposition precisely as human beings do. Again like human beings, these divers races inhabit different countries, or sometimes different districts of the same country, and the members of one race have a general tendency to keep together, just as men of one nation do among ourselves. They are on the whole distributed much as are the other kingdoms of nature; like the birds, from whom some of them have been evolved, some varieties are peculiar to one country, others are common in one country and rare elsewhere, while others again are to be found almost anywhere. Again like the birds, it is broadly true that the most brilliantly coloured orders are to be found in tropical countries.

 

NATIONAL TYPES

 

The predominant types of the different parts of the world are usually clearly distinguishable and in a sense characteristic; or is it perhaps that their influence in the slow course of ages has moulded the men and animals and plants who lived near them, so that it is the nature-spirit who has set the fashion and the other kingdoms which have unconsciously followed it? For example, no contrast could well be more marked than that between the vivacious, rollicking, orange-and-purple or scarlet-and-gold mannikins who dance among the vineyards of Sicily and the almost wistful grey-and-green creatures who move so much more sedately amidst the oaks and the furze-covered heaths in Brittany, or the golden-brown “good people” who haunt the hill-sides of Scotland.

 

In England the emerald-green variety is probably the commonest, and I have seen it also in the woods of France and Belgium, in far-away Massachusetts and on the banks of the Niagara River. The vast plains of the Dakotas are inhabited by a black-and-white kind which I have not seen elsewhere, and California rejoices in a lovely white-and-gold species which also appears to be unique.

 

In Australia the most frequent type is a very distinctive creature of a wonderful luminous skyblue colour; but there is a wide diversity between the etheric inhabitants of New South Wales or Victoria and those of tropical Northern Queensland. These latter approximate closely to those of the Dutch Indies. Java seems specially prolific in these graceful creatures, and the kinds most common there are two distinct types, both monochromatic-- one indigo blue with faint metallic gleamings, and the other a study in all known shades of yellow-- quaint, but wonderfully effective and attractive.

 

A striking local variety is gaudily ringed with alternate bars of green and yellow, like a football jersey. This ringed type is possibly a race peculiar to that part of the world, for I saw red and yellow similarly arranged in the Malay Peninsula, and green and white on the other side of the Straits in Sumatra. That huge island also rejoices in the possession of a lovely pale heliotrope tribe which I have seen before only in the hills of Ceylon. Down in New Zealand their specialty is a deep blue shot with silver, while in the South Sea Islands one meets with a silvery-white variety which coruscates with all the colours of the rainbow, like a figure of mother-of-pearl.

 

In India we find all sorts, from the delicate rose-and-pale-green, or paleblue-and-primrose of the hill country to the rich medley of gorgeously gleaming colours, almost barbaric in their intensity and profusion, which is characteristic of the plains. In some parts of that marvellous country I have seen the black-and-gold type which is more usually associated with the African desert, and also a species which resembles a statuette made out of a gleaming crimson metal, such as was the orichalcum of the Atlanteans.

 

Somewhat akin to this last is a curious variety which looks as though cast out of bronze and burnished; it appears to make its home in the immediate neighbourhood of volcanic disturbances, since the only places in which it has been seen so far are the slopes of Vesuvius and Etna, the interior of Java, the Sandwich Islands, the Yellowstone Park in North America, and a certain part of the North Island of New Zealand. Several indications seem to point to the conclusion that this is a survival of a primitive type, and represents a sort of intermediate stage between the gnome and the fairy.

 

In some cases, districts close together are found to be inhabited by quite different classes of nature-spirits; for example, as has already been mentioned, the emerald-green elves are common in Belgium, yet a hundred miles away in Holland hardly one of them is to be seen, and their place is taken by a sober-looking dark-purple species.

 

ON A SACRED MOUNTAIN IN IRELAND

 

A curious fact is that altitude above the sea-level seems to affect their distribution, those who belong to the mountains scarcely ever intermingling with those of the plains. I well remember, when climbing Slieve-namon, one of the traditionally sacred hills of Ireland, noticing the very definite lines of demarcation between the different types. The lower slopes, like the surrounding plains, were alive with the intensely active and mischievous little red-and-black race which swarms all over the south and west of Ireland, being especially attracted to the magnetic centres established nearly two thousand years ago by the magic-working priests of the old Milesian race to ensure and perpetuate their domination over the people by keeping them under the influence of the great illusion. After half-an-hour' s climbing, however, not one of these red-and-black gentry was to be seen, but instead the hillside was populous with the gentler blue-and-brown type which long ago owed special allegiance to the Tuatha-de-Danaan.

 

These also had their zone and their well-defined limits, and no nature-spirit of either type ever ventured to trespass upon the space round the summit, sacred to the great green angels who have watched there for more than two thousand years, guarding one of the centres of living force that link the past to the future of that mystic land of Erin. Taller far than the height of man, these giant forms, in colour like the first new leaves of spring, soft, luminous, shimmering, indescribable, look forth over the world with wondrous eyes that shine like stars, full of the peace of those who live in the eternal, waiting with the calm certainty of knowledge until the appointed time shall come. One realises very fully the power and importance of the hidden side of things when one beholds such a spectacle as that.

 

But indeed it is scarcely hidden, for the different influences are so strong and so distinct that anyone in the least sensitive cannot but be aware of them, and there is good reason for the local tradition that he who spends a night upon the summit of the mountain shall awaken in the morning either a poet or a madman. A poet, if he has proved capable of response to the exaltation of the whole being produced by the tremendous magnetism which has played upon him while he slept; a madman, if he was not strong enough to bear the strain.

FAIRY LIFE AND DEATH

 

The life-periods of the different subdivisions of nature-spirits vary greatly, some being quite short, others much longer than our human lifetime. The universal principle of reincarnation obtains in their existence also, though the conditions naturally make its working slightly different. They have no phenomena corresponding to what we mean by birth and growth; a fairy appears in his world full-sized, as an insect does. He lives his life, short or long, without any appearance of fatigue or need of rest, and without any perceptible signs of age as the years pass.

 

But at last there comes a time when his energy seems to have exhausted itself, when he becomes somewhat tired of life; and when that happens his body grows more and more diaphanous until he is left as an astral entity, to live for a time in that world among the air-spirits who represent the next stage of development for him. Through that astral life he fades back into his group-soul, in which he may have (if sufficiently advanced) a certain amount of conscious existence before the cyclic law acts upon the group-soul once more by arousing in it the desire for separation. When this happens, its pressure turns the stream of its energy outward once more, and that desire, acting upon the plastic astral and etheric matter, materialises a body of similar type, such as is suitable to be an expression of the development attained in that last life.

Birth and death, therefore, are much simpler for the nature-spirit than for us, and death is for him quite free from all thought of sorrow. Indeed, his whole life seems simpler-- a joyous, irresponsible kind of existence, much such as a party of happy children might lead among exceptionally favorable physical surroundings. There is no sex among nature-spirits, there is no disease, and there is no struggle for existence, so that they are exempt from the most fertile causes of human suffering. They have keen affections and are capable of forming close and lasting friendships, from which they derive profound and never-failing joy. Jealousy and anger are possible to them, but seem quickly to fade before the overwhelming delight in all the operations of nature which is their most prominent characteristic.

 

THEIR PLEASURES

 

They glory in the light and glow of the sunshine, but they dance with equal pleasure in the moonlight; they share and rejoice in the satisfaction of the thirsty earth and the flowers and the trees when they feel the level lances of the rain, but they play just as happily with the falling flakes of snow; they are content to float idly in the calm of a summer afternoon, yet they revel in the rushing of the wind. Not only do they admire, with an intensity that few of us can understand, the beauty of a flower or a tree, the delicacy of its colour or the grace of its form, but they take ardent interest and deep delight in all the processes of nature, in the flowing of sap, in the opening of buds, in the formation and falling of leaves. Naturally this characteristic is utilised by the Great Ones in charge of evolution, and nature-spirits are employed to assist in the blending of colours and the arrangement of variations. They pay much attention, too, to bird and insect life, to the hatching of the egg and to the opening of the chrysalis, and they watch with jocund eye the play of lambs and fawns, of leverets and squirrels.

 

Another inestimable advantage that an etheric evolution possesses over one which touches the denser physical is that the necessity of eating is avoided. The body of the fairy absorbs such nourishment as it needs, without trouble and without stint, from the aether which of necessity always surrounds it; or rather, it is not, strictly speaking, that nourishment is absorbed, but rather that a change of particles is constantly taking place, those which have been drained of their vitality being cast out and others which are full of it being drawn in to replace them.

 

Though they do not eat, nature-spirits obtain from the fragrance of flowers a pleasure analogous to that which men derive from the taste of food. The aroma is more to them than a mere question of smell or taste, for they bathe themselves in it so that it interpenetrates their bodies and reaches every particle simultaneously.

 

What takes for them the place of a nervous system is far more delicate than ours, and sensitive to many vibrations which pass all unperceived by our grosser senses, and so they find what corresponds to a scent in many plants and minerals that have no scent for us.

Their bodies have no more internal structure than a wreath of mist, so that they cannot be torn asunder or injured, and neither heat nor cold has any painful effect upon them. Indeed, there is one type whose members seem to enjoy above all things to bathe themselves in fire; they rush from all sides to any great conflagration and fly upward with the flames again and again in wild delight, just as a boy flies again and again down a toboggan-slide. These are the spirits of the fire, the salamanders of mediaeval literature. Bodily pain can come to the nature-spirit only from an unpleasant or inharmonious emanation or vibration, but his power of rapid locomotion enables him easily to avoid these. So far as can be observed he is entirely free from the curse of fear, which plays so serious a part in the animal life which, along our line of evolution, corresponds to the level of the fairies.

 

THE ROMANCES OF FAIRYLAND

 

The fairy has an enviably fertile imagination, and it is a great part of his daily play with his fellows to construct for them by its means all kinds of impossible surroundings and romantic situations. He is like a child telling stories to his playmates, but with this advantage over the child that, since the playmates can see both etheric and lower astral matter, the forms built by his vivid thought are plainly visible to them as his tale proceeds.

 

No doubt many of his narrations would to us seem childish and oddly limited in scope, because such intelligence as the elf possesses works in directions so different from our own, but to him they are intensely real and a source of never-ending delight. The fairy who develops unusual talent in fiction wins great affection and honour from the rest, and gathers round him a permanent audience or following. When some human being chances to catch a glimpse of such a group, he usually imports into his account of it preconceptions derived from his own conditions, and takes the leader for a fairy king or queen, according to the form which that leader may for the moment happen to prefer. In reality the realm of nature-spirits needs no kind of government except the general supervision which is exercised over it, probably unconsciously to all but its higher members, by the Devarajas and their subordinates.

 

 

THEIR ATTITUDE TOWARDS MAN

 

Most nature-spirits dislike and avoid mankind, and we cannot wonder at it. To them man appears a ravaging demon, destroying and spoiling wherever he goes. He wantonly kills, often with awful tortures, all the beautiful creatures that they love to watch; he cuts down the trees, he tramples the grass, he plucks the flowers and casts them carelessly aside to die; he replaces all the lovely wild life of nature with his hideous bricks and mortar, and the fragrance of the flowers with the mephitic vapours of his chemicals and the all-polluting smoke of his factories. Can we think it strange that the fairies should regard us with horror, and shrink away from us as we shrink from a poisonous reptile?

Not only do we thus bring devastation to all that they hold most dear, but most of our habits and emanations are distasteful to them; we poison the sweet air for them (some of us) with loathsome fumes of alcohol and tobacco; our restless, ill-regulated desires and passions set up a constant rush of astral currents which disturbs and annoys them, and gives them the same feeling of disgust which we should have if a bucket of filthy water were emptied over us. For them to be near the average man is to live in a perpetual hurricane-- a hurricane that has blown over a cesspool. They are not great angels, with the perfect knowledge that brings perfect patience; they are just happy and on the whole well-disposed children-- hardly even that, many of them, but more like exceptionally intelligent kittens; again, I say, can we wonder, when we thus habitually outrage their best and highest feelings, that they should dislike us, distrust us and avoid us?

 

There are instances on record where, by some more than ordinarily unwarranted intrusion or annoyance on the part of man, they have been provoked into direct retaliation and have shown distinct malice. It speaks well for their kingdom as a whole that even under such unendurable provocation such cases are rare, and their more usual method of trying to repel an intruder is by playing tricks upon him, childish and mischievous often, but not seriously harmful. They take an impish delight in misleading or deceiving him, in causing him to lose his way across a moor, in keeping him walking round and round in a circle all night when he believes he is going straight on, or in making him think that he sees palaces and castles where no such structures really exist. Many a story illustrative of this curious characteristic of the fairies may be found among the village gossip of the peasantry in almost any lonely mountainous district.

GLAMOUR

 

They are greatly assisted in their tricks by the wonderful power which they possess of casting a glamour over those who yield themselves to their influence, so that such victims for the time see and hear only what these fairies impress upon them, exactly as the mesmerised subject sees, hears, feels and believes whatever the magnetiser wishes. The nature-spirits, however, have not the mesmerist' s power of dominating the human will, except in the case of quite unusually weak-minded people, or of those who allow themselves to fall into such a condition of helpless terror that their will is temporarily in abeyance.

 

The fairies cannot go beyond deception of the senses, but of that they are undoubted masters, and cases are not wanting in which they cast their glamour over a considerable number of people at once. It is by invoking their aid in the exercise of this peculiar power that some of the most marvellous feats of the Indian jugglers are performed, such as the celebrated basket trick, or that other in which a rope is thrown up towards the sky and remains rigid without support while the juggler climbs up it and disappears. The entire audience is in fact hallucinated, and the people are made to imagine that they see and hear a whole series of events which have not really occurred at all.

 

The power of glamour is simply that of making a clear, strong mental image, and then projecting that into the mind of another. To most men this would seem wellnigh impossible, because they have never made any such attempt in their lives, and have no notion how to set about it. The mind of the fairy has not the width or the range of the man' s, but it is thoroughly well accustomed to this work of making images and impressing them on others, since it is one of the principal occupations of the creature' s daily life.

 

It is not remarkable that with such constant practice he should become expert at the business, and it is still further simplified for him when, as in the case of the Indian tricks, exactly the same image has to be produced over and over again hundreds of times, until every detail shapes itself without effort as the result of unconscious habit. In trying to understand exactly how this is done, we must bear in mind that a mental image is a very real thing-- a definite construction in mental matter, as has been explained in Thought-Forms (p. 37); and we must also remember that the line of communication between the mind and the dense physical brain passes through the astral and etheric counterparts of that brain, and that the line may be tapped and an impression introduced at any of these points.

 

Certain of the nature-spirits not infrequently exercise their talent for mimicry and mischief by appearing at spiritualistic séances held for physical phenomena. Anyone who has been in the habit of attending on such occasions will recollect instances of practical joking and silly though usually good-natured horse-play; these almost always indicate the presence of some of these impish creatures, though they are sometimes due to the arrival of dead men who were senseless enough during earth-life to consider such inanities amusing, and have not learnt wisdom since their death.

 

INSTANCES OF FRIENDSHIP

 

On the other hand there are instances in which some nature-spirits have made friends with individual human beings and offered them such assistance as lay in their power, as in the well known stories told of Scotch brownies or of the fire-lighting fairies of spiritualistic literature; and it is on record that on rare occasions certain favoured men have been admitted to witness elfin revels and share for a time the elfin life. It is said that wild animals will approach with confidence some Indian yogis, recognising them as friends to all living creatures; similarly elves will gather round one who has entered upon the Path of Holiness, finding his emanations less stormy and more agreeable than those of the man whose mind is still fixed upon worldly matters.

 

Occasionally fairies have been known to attach themselves to little children, and develop a strong attachment for them, especially for such as are dreamy and imaginative, since they are able to see and delight in the thought-forms with which such a child surrounds himself. There have even been cases in which such creatures took a fancy to some unusually attractive baby, and made an attempt to carry it away into their own haunts-- their intention being to save it from what seems to them the horrible fate of growing up into the average human being! Vague traditions of such attempts account for part of the folk-lore stories about changelings, though there is also another reason for them to which we shall refer later.

 

There have been times-- more often in the past than in the present-- when a certain class of these entities, roughly corresponding to humanity in size and appearance, made it a practice frequently to materialise, to make for themselves temporary but definite physical bodies, and by that means to enter into undesirable relations with such men and women as chose to put themselves in their way. From this fact, perhaps, come some of the stories of fauns and satyrs in the classical period; though those sometimes also refer to quite a different sub-human evolution.

 

WATER-SPIRITS

 

Abundant as are the fairies of the earth' s surface almost anywhere away from the haunts of man, they are far outnumbered by the water-spirits-- the fairies of the surface of the sea. There is just as much variety here as on land. The nature-spirits of the Pacific differ from those of the Atlantic, and those of the Mediterranean are quite distinct from either; the types that revel in the indescribably glorious blue of tropical oceans are far apart from those that dash through the foam of our cold grey northern seas. Dissimilar again are the spirits of the lake, the river and the waterfall, for they have many more points in common with the land fairies than have the nereids of the open sea.

 

These, like their brothers of the land, are of all shapes, but perhaps most frequently imitate the human. Broadly speaking, they tend to take larger forms than the elves of the woods and the hills; the majority of the latter are diminutive, while the sea-spirit who copies man usually adopts his size as well as his shape. In order to avoid misunderstanding it is necessary constantly to insist upon the protean character of all these forms; any of these creatures, whether of land or sea or air, can make himself temporarily larger or smaller at will, or can assume whatever shape he chooses.

 

There is theoretically no restriction upon this power, but in practice it has its limits, though they are wide. A fairy who is naturally twelve inches in height can expand himself to the proportions of a man of six feet, but the effort would be a considerable strain, and could not be maintained for more than a few minutes. In order to take a form other than his own he must be able to conceive it clearly, and he can hold the shape only while his mind is fixed upon it; as soon as his thought wanders he will at once begin to resume his natural appearance.

 

Though etheric matter can readily be moulded by the power of thought, it naturally does not obey it as instantaneously as does astral matter; we might say that mental matter changes actually with the thought, and astral matter so quickly after it that the ordinary observer can scarcely note any difference; but with etheric matter one' s vision can follow the growth or diminution without difficulty. A sylph, whose body is of astral matter, flashes from one shape into another; a fairy, who is etheric, swells or decreases quickly but not instantaneously.

 

Few of the land-spirits are gigantic in size, while such stature seems quite common out at sea. The creatures of the land frequently weave from their fancies scraps of human clothing, and show themselves with quaint caps or baldrics or jerkins; but I have never seen any such appearance among the inhabitants of the sea. Nearly all these surface water-spirits seem to possess the power of raising themselves out of their proper element and floating in or flying through the air for a short distance; they delight in playing amidst the dashing foam or riding in upon the breakers. They are less pronounced in their avoidance of man than their brethren on land-- perhaps because man has so much less opportunity of interfering with them. They do not descend to any great depth below the surface-- never, at any rate, beyond the reach of light; so that there is always a considerable space between their realm and the domain of the far less evolved creatures of the middle deeps.

 

FRESH-WATER FAIRIES

 

Some very beautiful species inhabit inland waters where man has not yet rendered the conditions impossible for them. Naturally enough, the filth and the chemicals with which water is polluted near any large town are disgusting to them; but they have apparently no objection to the water-wheel in a quiet country nook, for they may sometimes be seen disporting themselves in a mill-race. They seem specially to delight in falling water, just as their brothers of the sea revel in the breaking of foam; for the pleasure which it gives them they will sometimes even dare a nearer approach than usual to the hated presence of man. At Niagara, for example, there are almost always some still to be seen in the summer, though they generally keep well out towards the centre of the Falls and the Rapids. Like birds of passage, in winter they abandon those northern waters, which are frozen over for many months, and seek a temporary home in more genial climes. A short frost they do not seem to mind; the mere cold has apparently little or no effect upon them, but they dislike the disturbance of their ordinary conditions. Some of those who commonly inhabit rivers transfer themselves to the sea when their streams freeze; to others salt water seems distasteful, and they prefer to migrate considerable distances rather than take refuge in the ocean.

 

An interesting variety of the fairies of the water are the cloud-spirits -- entities whose life is spent almost entirely among those “waters which be above the firmament”. They should perhaps be classified as intermediate between the spirits of the water and those of the air; their bodies are of etheric matter, as are the former, but they are capable of remaining away from the water for comparatively long periods. Their forms are often huge and loosely knit; they seem near of kin to some of the fresh-water types, yet they are quite willing to dip for a time into the sea when the clouds which are their favourite habitat disappear. They dwell in the luminous silence of cloudland, and their favourite pastime is to mould their clouds into strange, fantastic shapes or to arrange them in the serried ranks which we call a mackerel sky.

 

SYLPHS

 

We come now to the consideration of the highest type in the kingdom of the nature-spirits -- the stage at which the lines of development both of the land and sea creatures converge-- the sylphs, or spirits of the air. These entities are definitely raised above all the other varieties of which we have been speaking by the fact that they have shaken themselves free from the encumbrance of physical matter, the astral body being now their lowest vehicle. Their intelligence is much higher than that of the etheric species, and quite equal to that of the average man; but they have not yet attained a permanent reincarnating individuality. Just because they are so much more evolved, before breaking away from the group-soul they can understand much more about life than an animal can, and so it often happens that they know that they lack individuality and are intensely eager to gain it. That is the truth that lies at the back of all the widely-spread traditions of the yearning of the nature-spirit to obtain an immortal soul.

 

The normal method for them to attain this is by association with and love for members of the next stage above them-- the astral angels. A domestic animal, such as the dog or the cat, advances through the development of his intelligence and his affection which is the result of his close relationship with his master. Not only does his love for that master cause him to make determined efforts to understand him, but the vibrations of the master' s mind-body, constantly playing upon his rudimentary mind, gradually awaken it into greater and greater activity; and in the same way his affection for him arouses an ever-deepening feeling in return. The man may or may not definitely set himself to teach the animal something; in any case, even without any direct effort, the intimate connection between them helps the evolvement of the lower. Eventually the development of such an animal rises to the level which will allow him to receive the Third Outpouring, and thus he becomes an individual, and breaks away from his group-soul.

 

Now all this is also exactly what happens between the astral angel and the air-spirit, except that by them the scheme is usually carried out in a much more intelligent and effective manner. Not one man in a thousand thinks or knows anything about the real evolution of his dog or cat; still less does the animal comprehend the possibility that lies before him. But the angel clearly understands the plan of nature, and in many cases the nature-spirit also knows what he needs, and works intelligently towards its attainment. So each of these astral angels usually has several sylphs attached to him, frequently definitely learning from him and being trained by him, but at any rate basking in the play of his intellect and returning his affection. Very many of these angels are employed as agents by the Devarajas in their duty of the distributing of karma; and thus it comes that the air-spirits are often sub-agents in that work, and no doubt acquire much valuable knowledge while executing the tasks assigned to them.

The Adept knows how to make use of the services of the nature-spirits when he requires them, and there are many pieces of business which he is able to entrust to them. In the issue of Broad Views for February, 1907, there appeared an admirable account of the ingenious manner in which a nature-spirit executed a commission given to him in this way.

 

He was instructed to amuse an invalid who was suffering from an attack of influenza, and for five days he kept up an almost continuous entertainment of strange and interesting visions, his efforts being crowned with the most gratifying success, for the sufferer wrote that his ministrations “had the happy effect of turning what under ordinary circumstances would have been days of unutterable weariness and discomfort into a most wonderfully interesting experience”.

 

He showed a bewildering variety of pictures, moving masses of rock, seen not from the outside but from the inside, so that faces of creatures of various sorts appeared in them. He also exhibited mountains, forests and avenues, and sometimes great masses of architecture, portions of Corinthian columns, bits of statuary, and great arched roofs, often also the most wonderful flowers and palms, waving to and fro as if in a gentle breeze. Sometimes he seems to have taken the physical objects in the bedroom and woven them into a kind of magic transformation scene. One might indeed surmise, from the curious nature of the entertainment offered, the particular type to which belonged the nature-spirit who was employed in this charitable work.

The Oriental magician occasionally endeavours to obtain the assistance of the higher nature-spirits in his performances, but the enterprise is not without its dangers. He must adopt either invocation or evocation-- that is, he must either attract their attention as a suppliant and make some kind of bargain with them, or he must try to set in motion influences which will compel their obedience-- an attempt which, if it fails, will arouse a determined hostility that is exceedingly likely to result in his premature extinction, or at the least will put him in an extremely ridiculous and unpleasant position.

 

Of these air-spirits, as of the lower fairies, there are many varieties, differing in power, in intelligence and in habits as well as in appearance. They are naturally less restricted to locality than the other kinds which we have described, though like the others they seem to recognise the limits of certain zones of elevation, some kinds always floating near the surface of the earth, while others scarcely ever approach it. As a general rule they share the common dislike to the neighbourhood of man and his restless desires, but there are occasions when they are willing to endure this for the sake of amusement or flattery.

 

THEIR AMUSEMENT

 

They extract immense entertainment sometimes out of the sport of ensouling thought-forms of various kinds. An author in writing a novel, for example, naturally makes strong thought-forms of all his characters, and moves them about his miniature stage like marionettes; but sometimes a party of jocund nature-spirits will seize upon his forms, and play out the drama upon a scheme improvised on the spur of the moment, so that the dismayed novelist feels that his puppets have somehow got out of hand and developed a will of their own.

 

The love of mischief which is so marked a characteristic of some of the fairies persists to a certain extent among at least the lower types of the air-spirits, so that their impersonations are occasionally of a less innocent order. People whose evil karma has brought them under the domination of Calvinistic theology, but who have not yet the intelligence or the faith to cast aside its blasphemous doctrines, sometimes in their fear make awful thought-forms of the imaginary devil to which their superstition gives such a prominent role in the universe; and I regret to say that certain impish nature-spirits are quite unable to resist the temptation of masquerading in these terrible forms, and think it a great joke to flourish horns, to lash a forked tail, and to breathe out flames as they rush about. To anyone who understands the nature of these pantomime demons no harm is done; but now and then nervous children happen to be impressionable enough to catch a glimpse of such things, and if they have not been wisely taught, great terror is the result.

 

It is only fair to the nature-spirit to remember that, as he himself is incapable of fear, he does not in the least understand the gravity of this result, and probably considers the child' s fright as simulated, and as part of the game. We can hardly blame the nature-spirit for the fact that we permit our children to be bound by the chains of a grovelling superstition, and neglect to impress upon them the grand fundamental fact that God is love and that perfect love casteth out all fear. If our air-spirit occasionally thus terrifies the ill-instructed living child, it must on the other hand be set to his credit that he constantly affords the keenest pleasure to thousands of children who are what we call ` dead,' for to play with them and to entertain them in a hundred different ways is one of his happiest occupations.

 

The air-spirits have discovered the opportunity afforded to them by the spiritualistic séance, and some of them become habitual attendants, usually under some such name as Daisy or Sunflower. They are quite capable of giving a very interesting séance, for they naturally know a good deal about astral life and its possibilities. They will readily answer questions, truly enough as far as their knowledge goes, and with, at any rate, an appearance of profundity when the subject is somewhat beyond them. They can produce raps, tilts and lights without difficulty, and are quite prepared to deliver whatever messages they may see to be desired-- not in the least meaning in this way harm or deceit, but naively rejoicing in their success in playing the part, and in the wealth of awe-stricken devotion and affection lavished upon them as “dear spirits” and “angel helpers”. They learn to share the delight of the sitters, and feel themselves to be doing a good work in thus bringing comfort to the afflicted.

 

Living astrally as they do, the fourth dimension is a commonplace fact of their existence, and this makes quite simple for them many little tricks which to us appear wonderful, such as the removal of articles from a locked box or the apport of flowers into a closed room. The desires and emotions of the sitters lie open before them, they quickly acquire facility in reading any but abstract thoughts, and the management of a materialisation is quite within their power when adequate material is provided. It will therefore be seen that without any exterior assistance they are competent to provide a varied and satisfactory evening's entertainment, and there is no doubt that they have often done so. I am not for a moment suggesting that nature-spirits are the only entities which operate at séances; the manifesting  ‘spirit' is often exactly what he claims to be, but it is also true that he is often nothing of the kind, and the average sitter has absolutely no means of distinguishing between the genuine article and the imitation.

 

AN ABNORMAL DEVELOPMENT

 

As has already been said, the normal line of advancement for the nature-spirit is to attain individuality by association with an angel, but there have been individuals who have departed from that rule. The intensity of affection felt by the sylph for the angel is the principal factor in the great change, and the abnormal cases are those in which that affection has been fixed upon a human being instead. This involves so complete a reversal of the common attitude of these beings towards humanity that its occurrence is naturally rare; but when it happens, and when the love is strong enough to lead to individualisation, it detaches the nature-spirit from his own line of evolution and brings him over into ours, so that the newly developed ego will incarnate not as an angel but as a man.

Some tradition of this possibility lies at the back of all the stories in which a non-human spirit falls in love with a man, and yearns with a great longing to obtain an immortal soul in order to be able to spend eternity with him. Upon attaining his incarnation such a spirit usually makes a man of very curious type-- affectionate and emotional but wayward, strangely primitive in certain ways, and utterly without any sense of responsibility.

 

It has sometimes happened that a sylph who was thus strongly attracted to a man or a woman, but just fell short of the intensity of affection necessary to ensure individualisation, has made an effort to obtain a forcible entrance into human evolution by taking possession of the body of a dying baby just as its original owner left it. The child would seem to recover, to be snatched back from the very jaws of death, but would be likely to appear much changed in disposition, and probably peevish and irritable in consequence of the unaccustomed constraint of a dense physical body.

 

If the sylph were able to adapt himself to the body, there would be nothing to prevent him from retaining it through a life of the ordinary length. If during that life he succeeded in developing affection sufficiently ardent to sever his connection with his group-soul he would thereafter reincarnate as a human being in the usual way; if not, he would fall back at its conclusion into his own line of evolution. It will be seen that in these facts we have the truth which underlies the widely disseminated tradition of changelings, which is found in all the countries of north-western Europe, in China, and also (it is said) among the natives of the Pacific slope of North America.

 

THE ADVANTAGE OF STUDYING THEM

The kingdom of the nature-spirits is a most interesting field of study, to which but little attention has been paid. Though they are often mentioned in occult literature, I am not aware that any attempt has yet been made to classify them in scientific fashion. This vast realm of nature still needs its Cuvier or its Linnaeus; but perhaps when we have plenty of trained investigators we may hope that one of them will take upon himself this role, and furnish us as his life' s work with a complete and detailed natural history of these delightful creatures.

 

It will be no waste of labour, no unworthy study. It is useful for us to understand these beings, not solely nor even chiefly because of the influence they exert upon us, but because the comprehension of a line of evolution so different from our own broadens our minds and helps us to recognise that the world does not exist for us alone, and that our point of view is neither the only one nor the most important. Foreign travel has the same effect in a minor degree, for it demonstrates to every unprejudiced man that races in every respect as good as his own may yet differ widely from it in a hundred ways. In the study of the nature-spirits we find the same idea carried much further; here is a kingdom radically dissimilar-- without sex, free from fear, ignorant of what is meant by the struggle for existence-- yet the eventual result of its unfoldment is in every respect equal to that attained by following our own line. To learn this may help us to see a little more of the many-sidedness of the Solar Deity, and so may teach us modesty and charity as well as liberality of thought.

 

 

 

 CHAPTER VII