Nature Spirits (or Elementals)
Nature Spirits (or Elementals)
According to Theosophy, nature spirits have bodies composed of the finer kinds of matter. There are countless hosts of them, divided into seven classes, which, allowing for two unmanifested forms, belong to the ether, air, fire, water, and earth—the last four being called by followers of the Kabala, sylphs, salamanders, undines, and gnomes respectively. At the head of each class is a deva or inferior god.
Nature spirits are said to work in unsuspected ways, sometimes lending their aid to human beings in the form of certain faculties, while those in the astral world are engaged in the creation of form out of the matter that the outpouring of the Logos has quickened, hence they form minerals, flowers, and other aspects of nature.
These nature spirits of the astral worlds of course have bodies of astral matter, and they frequently form mischievous or other impulses and change the appearance of these bodies. They are just beyond the limits of normal human vision, but many sensitives of more acute vision can see them, while the action of drugs is also believed to make them visible.
(See also elementary spirits ; fairies )