“All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is and God the soul.”.[1]
Pope
If we begin to realize that the whole of nature is the embodiment of soul, and that this soul becomes differentiated in various forms during the process of evolution, in the same way as we see universal “matter” differentiated in an endless variety of visible bodies, it will not be difficult to grasp the idea, that besides the visible inhabitants of this world there may be other kingdoms, invisible to our eyes, but nevertheless as “real” to their inhabitants as this world is real to us, and that these kingdoms are peopled with innumerable beings, each class and each individual having its own character and qualities, be they good or bad or indifferent. Lord Lytton says in his Zanoni:—
“Life is one all-pervading principle, and even the thing that seems to die and putrefy but engenders new life and changes to new forms of matter. Reasoning then by analogy—if not a leaf, if not a drop of water, but is no less than yonder star, an inhabitable and breathing world—common sense would suffice to teach that the circumfluent Infinite, which you call space—the boundless Impalpable which divides the earth from the moon and the stars is filled also with its correspondent and appropriate life.”
And further on he says:—
“In the drop of water you see animalculae vary; how vast and terrible are some of these monster motes as compared with others I Equally so with the inhabitants of the atmosphere. Some of surpassing wisdom, some of horrible malignity, some hostile as fiends to man, others gentle as messengers between Earth and Heaven.”
Such descriptions may perhaps be taken as the outcome of the imagination of some writer of fiction; but there is a long array of accounts of clairvoyants and scientific investigators in no way given to fiction, whose experiences have proved to them that all the four elements earth, water, air and fire (ether)— are peopled with beings, possessed of organisms adapted to their surroundings, and that these spirits of nature, under certain conditions, may even become visible and enter into intercourse with man.
Theophrastus Paracelsus describes these nature spirits as follows:—
“There are beings who live exclusively in only one element, while man exists in all four. Each of these elements is visible and tangible to the beings dwelling therein. Thus the Gnomes (the spirits of the earth) may know all that is going on in the interior of the earthly shell of our planet; this shell being to them what air is to us; the Undines (or water nymphs) thrive and breathe in their watery world; the Sylphs live in the air like fishes in water; and the Salamanders are happy in the element of fire (ether). To each nature spirit the element in which it lives is transparent, invisible and respirable, as the atmosphere is to ourselves. They cannot properly be called ‘spirits,’ because they have astral bodies made up of (astral) flesh, blood and bones; but there is a great difference between the substance composing their bodies and ours. They live and propagate; they eat and talk, act and sleep; they occupy a place between men and spirits, resembling men and women in their organization of form and being like spirits in regard to the rapidity of their locomotion. They have no higher principles, and are therefore not immortal. Neither water nor fire can injure them, and they cannot be locked up in prisons. They are, however, subject to diseases. Their costumes, actions, forms, ways of speaking, etc., are not very unlike those of human beings; but there are a great many varieties. They have only animal cunning, and are incapable of spiritual progress.”[2]
The Gnomes,
or “spirits of the earth,” are said to inhabit especially mountainous regions, rocks and subterraneous caves. And here it may be remarked, that what to us appears as solid rock may be to them a cave or even a palace; because their world is the product of their imagination, as ours is the ultimate product of our own will and thought, and if a sleeping man penetrates in his astral body into the residence of the gnomes their dwellings will appear perfectly natural to him, and on awakening he will perhaps fully believe that he has been there in his physical form. The gnomes are like little men and women, about one foot high; but they are able to change and elongate their bodies, so as to appear like giants. They build their own houses and strange-looking edifices; they can pass like a thought through grossly material substances just as easily as we can pass through the air. They have their leaders and authorities, their kings and queens; they beget children and resemble mankind in many ways. They see the sun and the sky the same as we, because each element is transparent to those who live in it. They are on the whole kindly disposed towards man, but they have an aversion against self-conceited and hypocritical persons or vulgar people of any kind. They love peace and tranquillity, and are often driven away from their homes by the noisy industrial activity of mankind invading their realm.
A Mysterious Mountain.
Whoever has visited the city of Salzburg in Austria knows the renowned Untersberg, of which mention is made in the books of Theophrastus Paracelsus and other writings. This mountain is known to every occultist in Germany, and as late as the year 1848 a certain society of Rosicrucians met once a year within its mysterious recesses, to celebrate their anniversary, presumably in their astral forms. I well remember having been acquainted in my youth with one of the members of that Society, who told me some wonderful stories about his experiences on such solemn occasions. He was a poor man, having no means to travel so far in his physical body, and there were no railways at that time. Nevertheless he showed me his picture in which he was represented as wearing the habit of his order together with its emblems and regalia, and this picture is still in the possession of one of my friends.
In my book Among the Gnomes in the Untersberg I gave a detailed description of that mountain, from which I extract the following:—
“Like a gigantic outpost of the Austrian Alps the ‘Untersberg’ stands on the frontier of Germany, overlooking the Bavarian plains which are dotted with hills, forests and lakes. Its summit dominates the valley, through which the Salzach river winds its way to the Danube. Seen from the north side, where the city of Salzburg is nestled among the hills, the mountain looks tame enough, as it rises in undulating, forest-covered lines up to a height of some 7,000 feet; but on the south side it exhibits an almost endless variety of perpendicular walls, formed of many colored marble rocks, thousands of feet high and interrupted by deep ravines and chasms, craggy cliffs, spurs and precipices, over which in the spring time, when the snow begins to melt, great avalanches come thundering down, and a sharp eye may detect in many inaccessible spots mysterious caves that seem to penetrate into the bowels of the mountain. There is no end of cataracts and labyrinths of boulders, where the inexperienced wanderer may lose his way, especially if he is misled by the gnomes. This may occur if his intentions are not pure.”
Here I may add that these actually inaccessible caves in the midst of some perpendicular wall are on certain nights of the year often seen illumined by strange floating lights wandering about in a manner unaccountable by any known scientific theory. These nights are usually such as precede some Catholic holidays. But this is not all. On certain nights processions of gnomes have been seen going to a solitary chapel. Presently the interior of the chapel becomes illumined, pious songs and hymns are heard; but when one opens the door and enters the building everything appears silent and dark. If you are on friendly terms with the human inhabitants of the surroundings, they will tell you plenty of stories of things they have experienced themselves or their parents; but to the curious reporter or skeptical investigator they have nothing to say, and he will extract nothing from them; for they are very averse to having ridicule thrown on their belief or their “superstitions” noised about.
One such story resembles to a certain extent that mentioned in the Occult Review concerning the adventure of two English ladies visiting Le Petit Trianon at Versailles and seeing the Queen Marie Antoinette and her court. In the year 1529 a peasant by the name of Lazarus Gitschner disappeared in some mysterious manner within the Untersberg, where he spent ten days as a guest of the gnomes. What he saw there he would never reveal to anybody except to the priest in the confessional; but he came out of the Untersberg entirely changed from what he was before he went in. He henceforth lived a sober life and absolutely refused to drink, and even the priest to whom he had confessed became sober and pious, and died not long afterwards in the odor of sanctity. It seems, however, to have leaked out that the gnomes showed to Lazarus Gitschner gorgeous marble halls and rich treasures of gold and silver and precious stones, and that he there saw the great German Emperor Barbarossa, who sleeps an enchanted sleep within these rocks, waiting for the liberation of his country. The time of his awakening will come when “the black ravens cease to fly about his head.” This, however, is probably to be taken as an allegory and the “black ravens” may represent the ecclesiastical dominion of certain black-robed gentlemen.
Moreover, there are many tales about gnomes having in olden times appeared among the inhabitants, taking part in their festivals and amusements. It is also said that they sometimes took peasant children with them into the Untersberg, treated them well, and after a certain time returned them to their parents, and incredible as it may appear, it is asserted that even marriages have taken place between certain inhabitants of our plane of existence and the gnomes; but I am not prepared to vouch for the veracity of such reports.
Some of these tales are evidently not intended to be taken literally; but are intended to illustrate certain truths and to convey a moral teaching. One such story is the following:—
Not far from the foot of the Untersberg, upon a hill covered with a forest of pines, stood in ancient times the castle of Tollenstein, of which at present only some remnants are left. The walls are in ruins, but these go to show that formerly they were parts of a palatial building. One remnant, composed of huge square stones, still indicates the extent of the large banqueting-hall, where festivals took place, and it is said that on certain nights the orgies which these stones witnessed are spectrally repeated and enacted in the astral light by the ghostlike shapes of deceased ladies and knights; while not far off there is a dilapidated tower of massive structure, enclosing a deep hole in the ground, where the subterranean dungeon was located, the oubliette, or living tomb, in which poor wretches for some offense were buried alive and “forgotten,” left to starve among horrid surroundings. It is also said that on certain nights when the ghosts in the banqueting hall hold gruesome carousals, cries and groans and wails may be heard coming from the bottom of that pit.
In ancient times the owner of that castle was Burkhart von Tollenstein, a youthful and valorous knight, admired by all the ladies in the country on account of the voluminous mass of golden hair which adorned his head. This, together with his manliness and beauty, gained for him the hearts of all those fair ladies, except one, and this was the very one for whose possession he craved, namely, the beautiful but proud Julia von Horst.
He had seen her only once, but that was enough to make him fall desperately in love with her face and figure. He would have been happy enough, had he not been so unfortunate as to have the tranquillity of his heart destroyed by the sight of her dark and languishing eyes. From that day forward an image of the beautiful Julia was formed in his mind, and its contemplation absorbed him so that he thought of nothing else. He sought to woo and to win her; but alas! his sighs and tears were in vain, because he was poor, and the proud Julia cared far more for money than for love. She knew that Burkhart’s fortune was too small to supply her with all the luxuries she desired, and when he offered her his heart she rejected it and sneeringly said—
“Of what use will be your heart to me, if starvation waits for me in your house?”
This offensive remark was more than Burkhart could bear, and cursing his poverty he went home in despair. From day to day he now became more morose, grieving about the insufficiency of his means. Finally, he determined to enrich himself by whatever means he might find, and if possible to rob the gnomes of the Untersberg of their gold.
In these times it was customary for every stupid knight to have a wise and faithful steward to give good advice. Burkhart’s steward tried his best to dissuade him from this wicked and dangerous undertaking; but in vain did old Bruno, for this was his name, entreat him to desist from his evil thoughts and to forget the proud Julia, as she was unworthy of his affection. The knight would not listen.
“The Lord be merciful to you!” exclaimed Bruno. “Shake off this delusion, O noble knight; think of your high descent and what your ancestors would say. Look upwards, to where your salvation rests; the spirits of the lower world will mislead and ruin you.”
But the knight answered: “I am not afraid of losing my life, which is worthless to me without the possession of Julia. More than once I have looked into the face of death while engaged in battle. I want the gold of the gnomes and must have it, let the consequences be what they may. If the gnomes are not willing to surrender their gold, I shall take it by force.”
Thus spurning good advice, the knight gave orders to bring his black warhorse forth. This he bestrode and trotted towards the Untersberg.
It was a gloomy evening in November; the leaves of the trees had turned yellow and red and rustled in the wind. Their voices seemed to warn him not to proceed, while the waving boughs motioned to him to return. Soon the queen of the night began to spread her mantle over the face of the earth, and there arose in the gloom like a gigantic shadow the outline of the mysterious mountain. For a moment fear overcame the youth, and he stopped; but his desire overcame his fear, and pronouncing an oath he spurred his horse, determined to push on. Just then the horse shied, and looking up Burkhart saw sitting by the roadside a dwarf clothed in a steelgrey gown. The dwarf looked steadily with glittering eyes at the knight.
“Avaunt!” exclaimed Burkhart angrily. “Why do you sit here, and frighten my horse?”
“Ho! ho!” laughed the dwarf. “Know, you creeping worm of the earth, I am Pypo, the king of the gnomes. Mine is the Untersberg with its treasures. What have you to seek in my territory?”
When Burkhart heard these words he deemed it prudent to speak politely to the king of the gnomes. He explained to him his situation and asked for the loan of a sum of money, for which he promised his everlasting gratitude.
The king began to laugh. “Confound your gratitude,” he said; “there would be plenty of beggars like you coming to borrow money from me if it could be had at such a cheap price.”
“What, then, do you demand?” asked the knight. “State your terms, and I will accept them, for I must have gold at any price.”
“Listen, then,” said the gnome; “it is not much that I ask. only one hair from your head for each thousand florins.” Thus saying, his eyes rested searchingly upon the face of the knight.
“Only one hair from my head?” exclaimed Burkhart in great astonishment. “A whole bunch of hair you shall have and be welcome to it if you only furnish me the money necessary to obtain the favor of Julia.”
“I am putting no limits to the amount you may draw,” laughed the king. “For each thousand florins which you receive from me you will have to leave me one hair from your head.”
“It is a bargain!” exclaimed the knight joyfully, and drawing his dagger, he was about to cut a lock of hair from his forehead to offer it to the king.
“Not so “ said Pypo. “Only one hair at a time, and I will have to pull it out myself by the root.”
The knight dismounted, and as he bent down the dwarf tore a single hair from his scalp, after which he threw a bag of gold at Burkhart’s feet.
“Thanks!” exclaimed the knight, as he hugged the bag and gloated over its contents.
“No thanks are wanted,” replied the gnome. “See to it that the hairs upon your head will not become too few in time to purchase enough gold for satisfying the greed of your Julia.’’
So saying the gnome vanished; but the knight returned joyfully with his bag of gold to his castle. He now began to enlarge his castle in exquisite style; he bought costly furniture, hired servants and cooks, sent out invitations for dinners and balls, and every evening he went to the Untersberg for another bag of gold, leaving in return one of his hairs.
Soon the news of the riches of Burkhart von Tollenstein began to spread, and everybody wondered and came to see and admire the luxury displayed by the knight. Now the consent of Julia was easily gained, and before many days the walls of the castle resounded with gay music, merrymaking and laughter; for the marriage of the valorous knight with the beautiful countess took place. All the nobility were invited, and took part in the revel.
Henceforth the castle of Tollenstein became the scene of an uninterrupted succession of costly festivities of all kinds. There was a round of gaieties and the doors were open day and night to visitors. Parasites of all kinds peopled the castle; dinners, dances, masquerades, tournaments, theatrical performances and hunting excursions followed each other without end, and the beautiful Julia had the sweet satisfaction of being surrounded by flatterers and admirers to her heart’s content; but her desires grew in proportion as they were gratified, her vanity in proportion as it was tickled; her whims were incalculable, but the resources of her husband seemed inexhaustible, and he was an object of envy to every one.
More and more frequent were his visits to the Untersberg, from each of which he returned with a thousand florins in gold, but with one hair less on his head; and for all that he seemed not happy, for he saw only too clearly that he had bought only the appearance of love, and that his wife loved not him, but only his money. Whenever he did not at once comply with her unreasonable and extravagant demands, she would treat him with contempt, so as to render life a burden to him. All this caused him a great deal of grief, which he sought to drown in the wine cup. Thus he became at least a confirmed drunkard and an object of disgust to his wife. All the evil germs in his nature began to grow luxuriantly and to bear fruit. He became a weakling, a cruel tyrant towards his subjects and an abject coward in the presence of his wife, who treated him as if he were a slave. His troubles caused him to grow prematurely old, and the hair upon his head grew thinner from day to day.
Thus a few years passed away in great misery, and at last poor Burkhart was entirely baldheaded. The last florin was gone, but the countess had ordered a great tournament and dinner, to which many noblemen and ladies of rank were invited. Once more Burkhart went to the Untersberg for the purpose of asking the king of the gnomes for money; but no more hair did he have to give in return. The gnome appeared, and the knight, removing his helmet, showed him the deplorable condition of his scalp, hoping to arouse the pity of the king.
“Ah, Burkhart,” exclaimed Pypo; “did I not tell you to beware that your hairs may not become too few?”
“I now see my folly,” sighed the knight; “but for pity’s sake let me have only one more bag of gold, to save myself from disgrace.”
“Ha! ha!” laughed the gnome. “Nothing brings nothing; no hair, no money. Our bargain is at an end.”
“Ask what you will!” cried the knight; “but hair I have none to give. Take my soul, but give me only one bag of money. Only one bag of gold I am asking of you!”
But in vain Burkhart implored the gnome; Pypo was inexorable and laughed at him. This exasperated the knight, and becoming enraged he cried: “Hell-bound! you have completed your devilish work. With each hair that you took from my head you robbed me of a part of my manhood. Now I recognize you as the fiend that you are. Give me back my lost energy. Give me back the beautiful golden hair of which you have despoiled me by means of your accursed gold. Give it back to me, or look out for the revenge of the Tollensteins.”
But the gnome laughed. “Fool!” he said, “do you wish to frighten me? Would you now curse the one from whom you received all that you asked? I laugh at you and your threats but if you wish your hair returned, be it so.”
So saying the gnome drew forth a cord twisted from Burkhart’s hair and threw it at the feet of the knight. He then disappeared within the depths of the Untersberg, while from all sides a mocking laughter shook the air, as if coming from a multitude of invisible spectators; but the knight went home and locked himself up in his bedroom.
At the castle of Tollenstein everything was in readiness for the beginning of the great tournament. Knights in glittering armor and ladies in costly dresses were thronging the halls; while in the courtyard below richly decked steeds, attended by grooms in bright colors, neighed and stamped the ground, impatient for the opening of the sham fight; for the beginning of which nothing was now needed but the presence of the host. The trumpets sounded, but nothing was seen of Burkhart. Repeatedly were messengers sent to his room, but they found the door locked and were not admitted. At last Julia, losing her patience, went up with clenched fists; but her knocks at the door elicited no reply. She therefore ordered the door to be forced open, and then a ghastly sight met her eyes. Burkhart von Tollenstein was lying dead on his bed, his features distorted as if he had died in great agony; around his neck was tied a cord of yellow human hair, with which he had been strangled; his eyes were protruding as if starting from their sockets; while his fingers were spasmodically closed around a bag containing a thousand florins of gold. This was the end of the Tollensteins.
(To Be Continued.)
PART II
Undines
The loveliest spirits of nature are undoubtedly the water-nymphs, or undines; their habitation is the “element” of water, which means to say, the ethereal part of it, of which visible water is the outward and visible manifestation. The belief in water-nymphs is almost universal among unsophisticated people living in solitary places near rivers or lakes, and it is said that persons born between the days of November 20 and 24 are sometimes endowed with the faculty of hearing their songs, it being the pleasure of these spirits to dance upon the waves at the time of sunset or during moonlit nights, and to enjoy themselves with singing, laughter and merriment. Those people who have watched them during their frolics describe them as being very beautiful and their voices as sounding like those of birds of paradise. Some clever and skeptical scientists, being intent to discover the source of this “vulgar superstition,” caught a dugong or halicore, and as this fish sometimes emits a noise resembling the barking of a dog, they though they had explained the mystery; but the halicore is a fish and the undines are water-spirits, whose voices resemble the noise made by a halicore no more than the song of the nightingale resembles the bellowing of an ox.
Theophrastus Paracelsus says:—
“As there are in our world water and fire, visible bodies and invisible essences, likewise these beings are varied in their constitution and have their own peculiarities and condition s of existence, for which human beings have little comprehension. Nevertheless, the two worlds, ours and theirs, intermingle and cast their shadows upon each other and thus it happens that events taking place in the invisible world may sometimes be seen in the visible one. As the fish lives in water, so each spirit lives in its own element. The element in which we breathe and live is the air, but to the Undines the water is what the air is to us, and if we are surprised that the water is their element, they may be surprised that we breathe the air. The human and animal kingdoms are not the only ones on the wide expanse of nature. The omnipotence of God is not limited to His taking care only of those, but abundantly able to take care also of the spirits of nature and of many other things, of which men know nothing.”
The nymphs and undines have human forms, and their ethereal residences and palaces within the ethereal element of water. They live in communities, but some may be found in isolated places in a secluded spot in some spring, or they may be seen in the foam or spray of some cataract. They are on the whole kindly disposed towards such human beings as are simpleminded and unsophisticated; but they avoid and fly from the presence of conceited and opinionated persons, inquisitive skeptics and quarrelsome or cantankerous men.
There are cases cited in which an undine has fallen in love with a man and married him, and had children by him who grew up as human beings. They are said to make very faithful wives but they are also jealous, and woe to the lover of an undine if he proves unfaithful to her. She will then not only return to her own element, but revenge herself upon her betrayer.
The nymphs have no human souls and are, therefore, not able to attain immortality; but they may become immortal by uniting themselves with man. For this reason they seem to be instinctively attracted to man.
There is a story told about a nobleman, Count Stauffenberg who was married to a nymph.
One evening towards sunset the Count was returning from a hunting excursion, and as he rode through the woods he heard a sweet voice singing very beautifully; he stopped and listened. The song was not in any human language; nevertheless, he understood its meaning, and it may be translated as follows:—
“Oh, what is this secret longing
Welling up within my heart?
Unknown powers, surging, thronging,
Rending solid rocks apart.
Newborn joys and dying sadness,
Bursting clouds and opening sight!
Something whispers full of gladness:
This is love, is life and light.”
As the Count listened, a strange feeling arose within his manly breast, which heretofore had been inaccessible to the promptings of love and affection; he stopped, and after descending from his horse he crept nearer and looking through the bushes he beheld a little lake and the songstress in the shape of a beautiful maiden combing her long streaming hair, while her naked body seemed to be clothed in a halo of glowing rose by the light of the setting sun. Now, for the first time in his life the Count felt the power of love and an exclamation of joy escaped his lips. The apparition vanished, but the Count, being now deeply in love, went day after day to that solitary lake, hoping to see the maiden again. His constancy was rewarded; for, after he had made many fruitless attempts to meet her, she at last appeared to him in a nebulous shape, which, however, grew denser and more visible every day, until at last she stood before him, a glorious material body, solid enough to be grasped in his embrace.
It does not take a long time for lovers to understand each other, and the Count took her to his castle and made her his wife. There was a great festival and all the guests admired the beauty and loveliness of the Countess Adalga von Stauffenberg and the amiability of her ways.
Thus the pair lived together in happiness for several months; but however constant and true the heart of woman may be, the heart of man often proves fickle and craves for new experiences and sensations. Thus it happened that the Count one day met a pretty peasant girl and fell in love with her. He now began to neglect his wife and thought of means for getting rid of his matrimonial obligations. Finally he consulted the parish priest and confided to him that his wife was a water-nymph and not a human being. The priest, who was a frequent guest at the castle, was only too willing to accommodate the Count and to gratify his wishes; so he pretended to be horrified and told him his wife was a devil, that no legal divorce was necessary, but that he should simply pay a certain sum as a penance to the Church and without hesitation drive the woman away. This the Count did and took to himself the peasant girl; but on the morning after their wedding they were both found strangled in their bed.
Sylphs
The spirits of the air consist of several classes and are, as a whole, not very communicative. There are giants among them and it is dangerous for mankind to deal with them, especially when they are connected with the spirits of fire; but there are also some of them kindly disposed towards man. The spirits of the air are not all alike, which is to say that the god of the winds manifests himself in different ways. We welcome him, when in the shape of a refreshing breeze he affectionately caresses our cheeks on a hot summer day; but we dislike his appearance when, surrounded by dark and threatening clouds, he appears with thunder and lightning as the god of storms and destruction. Every occultist knows, that behind every manifestation of power in nature there is hidden a conscious origin and that even the powers of the air may be propitiated by sacrifices or even subjugated by the power of the spirit, provided we have that divine power at our command. The Christspirit in us can control the storms of passion when they arise in our mind, and the same spirit may control the storms arising within the macrocosm if they arise within its dominion. Therefore, it is claimed that saints and adepts have in times of old given proofs of their power of controlling the elements, and the Secret Doctrine teaches that high planetary spirits guide all the cosmic forces in nature.
Another story is told about a certain gentleman who fell in love with a young and beautiful girl. She was a stranger and no one knew from whence she came or who were her parents. Nevertheless, he married her and the only condition she made for her consent was that he should never attempt to find out who she was; for she said: “The very moment you would find out who I am, I would have to part from you; you would lose me and never see me again.”
Now this girl was a water-nymph, and it was a condition of her existence, that on certain nights she should return to her native element. For a long time she lived happily with her husband; but in the course of time he became aware of her mysterious disappearances, and curious to know the secret of them. One night he therefore pretended to sleep, but watched her with half-closed eyes. Seeing how she transformed herself and assumed her natural state, he made a start of surprise, whereupon the lady, with a cry of despair, disappeared and was never more seen.
Salamanders, or Fire-spirits
The elemental spirits of fire are a dangerous class. They are sometimes the cause of otherwise unaccountable incendiarisms and conflagrations, as the following instance may go to show:—
During my stay in India in 1885 there occurred many apparently causeless house-burnings at a village named Vallam in the Tanjore district. Almost every year some of the thatched houses took fire spontaneously, while nothing of that kind took place in the neighboring villages, although the houses there were of the same construction; and it is said that such fires broke out before the eyes of observers and without any visible cause. Sometimes while the fire was being put out in one place, it broke out in some other part of the house. The inhabitants unanimously ascribed these phenomena to the action of a fire-elemental named Avâri Amman, to whom they make sacrifices at certain times of the year, and which is said to inhabit a little temple at the edge of the village. If these sacrifices are made promptly, all goes on well; but if the elemental finds himself neglected he takes his revenge by setting houses on fire.
These elementals seem sometimes to take possession of a mediumistic person and combine and co-operate with his will. I knew a poor miner in Colorado; he was a red-haired villain, a drunkard and beggar; but he seemed in possession of certain occult powers, or rather obsessed by them, for he told me that whenever it was his earnest desire that this or that house of the town where we lived should burn, it invariably took fire. He said that he had made several such experiments for the purpose of gratifying his curiosity to see whether he had actually such a power, and they invariably turned out to his own satisfaction.
If we study the history of witchcraft and modern spiritism, we find accounts of phenomena where some apparition or ghost has grasped some object and left the brand-marks of its fingers upon it. Devas of the fire or fire-elementals may sometimes be the cause of volcanic eruptions, a theory which does not exclude the known fact that such things can be explained by known physical or chemical causes; because each phenomenon requires certain conditions for its taking place. The cooking of a dinner can be explained by the action of the fire upon the hearth; but the presence of the cook should not be left out of consideration in investigating the subject.
The salamanders live in the element of fire and enjoy themselves therein. They may assume various forms. They seem to be of a low kind of intelligence, but perhaps they are lovers of musical sounds, because the flames of fire have been seen to rise and sink and dance to the tune of some song or whistling done by a person endowed with occult powers.
At the present time the city of Berlin seems to be visited by an epidemic of incendiarism. Fires break out daily in lofts and garrets of houses sometimes in several places at once, and the police has not yet been able to discover the incendiaries. l do not claim that this mischief is done by fire-elementals directly and without any human cooperation; but we might suggest that the perpetrators are weak-minded persons, who may be made subject to the influence of such elementals, without knowing it, and thus act accordingly. The spirits of nature have their dwellings within us as well as outside of us, and no man is perfectly master over himself unless he thoroughly knows his own nature and its inhabitants; for man is an exact image and counterpart of the great outside world, in his own nature is contained his heaven and also his hell.
Conclusion
With this discussion of the elemental spirits of nature, the subject under consideration is by no means exhausted; for there remains a great number of various classes of fairies and elves, hobgoblins and imps for our consideration, a description of which would require the writing of an encyclopedia, for the whole of the universe is a manifestation of life and consciousness expressed in innumerable different forms. There is nothing that lives without “soul” in the universe; because soul itself is the life. Some of the most lovely apparitions are, as may be imagined, the spirits of flowers, and I will, in concluding this article, mention the experience of one of my friends. He writes:—
“Last summer I had a flowerpot in my bedroom with a most beautiful campanula. The stem was covered with leaves and between them appeared the violet-colored buds, emitting a faint but very agreeable odor. One morning I awoke in a somewhat unusual manner. It seemed to me that I had been awakened by something. It was still dawn and a strong odor coming from the campanula pervaded the room; but it seemed as if this odor had become separated from the plant, and were resting like a cloud in the vicinity of my couch. The next morning the same thing happened again; but now that cloud had become less nebulous and taken the shape of a most beautiful female form, enveloped in a transparent violet veil. The face of that angelic being had an expression of indescribable loveliness and innocence, while she was looking at me with her blue eyes full of spiritual light, affection and tenderness. For a long time I regarded her, not daring to move, for fear that any motion on my part might cause the apparition to disappear; but finally the normal everyday consciousness took possession of me, and I fully awoke to the supposed realities of external life. For one moment more I beheld the fairy. She disappeared, and with her the cloud of that sweet odor was gone. Only the faint odor of the campanula was now perceptible. It seemed to me that the ethereal form of that fairy had withdrawn itself within the campanula, this being her material body. This experience was repeated for several days afterwards. Each morning the apparition grew stronger and I felt that a strong friendship existed between myself and the fairy of that campanula, which I loved so much. For some reason the plant had to be taken to another room after which it soon withered and faded away.”
Everybody knows that sympathies exist between human beings and plants and even minerals, and that those who love flowers seem to be loved by them and that the flowers keep fresh, while they soon fade in the hands of another. Thus it may be with all the elemental spirits of nature. Love binds all beings together, and if we wish to get acquainted with these spirits of nature, we must approach them not in a cold spirit of scientific investigation, mixed with suspicion and skepticism, but with a simple receptive mind and a heart full of love.
Notes:
[1] Some Remarks About the Spirits of Nature. Franz Hartmann, M. D. The Occult Review 14, no. 6 (December 1911), 316-326. Some Remarks About the Spirits of Nature. Franz Hartmann, M.D. Part II. The Occult Review 15, no. 1 (January 1912), 25-30. {This article was reformatted from the original, but with the content unchanged other than fixing minor typos. Translation from the German by Robert Hutwohl, ©2025}
[2] For more particulars, see F. Hartmann, Paracelsus. London: Kegan Paul, 1896.