CHAPTER VIII

BEASTS AND ELEMENTALS

The apparitions customarily seen by those who are clairvoyant or psychic are those that take human form.

In many cases they represent known humans who have passed over, but sometimes we are brought into contact with non-human apparitions.

These may be semi-human or demoniac forms, they may be animal forms, or they may be simply manifestations of elemental forces. Discarding the trumpery attempts at classification that have been advanced by one or two writers of so-called “ghost stories,” it must be recognized that the occultist is faced with problems that cannot be readily reduced or explained by any logical hypothesis.

The Spiritualist approaches the question according to set theories. “Spirits,” says he, “can do anything. They take what shape they will. Why they do so is a mystery.”

The woman Spiritualist is usually as open to believe that the spirit of her beloved Pekingese or Pomeranian can return in astral form, and ascribes it to the influences of love. “Love me, love my dog,” appears to furnish as good an explanation of animal manifestation as any.

On the other hand, when you get some absolutely extraordinary manifestations such as the seal that appeared to Sir Garnet Wolseley,[38] or the materialization of vampire bats, partially developed monkeys or a full-sized goat,--and I have known all these to occur,--then the love theory falls down badly, and we must seek a more reasonable explanation.

If we accept the idea of discarnate spirit intelligences we certainly should not accept them all at face value as good. The bulk of humanity that has passed over has not been good, or for the matter of that, Christian.

Assuming that these spirits were human, but took bestial form for purposes of their own, we may find some glimmerings of support for a new theory when we realize that in the past and in the present idolatry prevails. The idols of savages are usually totemistic. And they held that the identity of soul persisted after death, not in a new human existence but as a rebirth in animal form.

To a large extent, totemistic paganism was mixed up with licentious and bestial festivals, useful in assuring the continuance and multiplication of a savage tribe, but evolving practices repugnant to Western ethics.

The beasts that come back--are beastly. The ghost dog that scratches and paws and leaps into its mistress’s lap is a very different thing to that which it pretends to be. When we reach the foulness of the goat or bat manifestations we feel with no shadow of doubt that we are in touch with the unmasked spirits of evil. Not only visible form, but touch and smell are present. We are brought into distinct contact with the sardonic mocking terror that lies on the other side of life.

The border between the brutal and blood-lusting savage and the demon, is a slender one. The conception of a singularly evil earth-bound negro spirit who has believed in an after-life in which his soul will inhabit the body of an ape or a leopard, comes very close to the accepted idea of a devil or demon.

We get something of the same basic conception in the idea of the wer-wolf or vampire, and there is a singular reinforcement of this theory in that in the Dark Ages when paganism was yielding reluctantly to the inroads of the Christian faith, the early fathers explicitly identified such animal manifestations with the sorcery of paganism. The fantastic gargoyles that ornament cathedrals are simply traditionalizations of that period when these beast incarnations in all their devilishness contended against the spread of a purer faith.

Sometimes it chances that we, in this twentieth century, by accident open a door through which a tenth-century devil can creep in.

Other occultists, notably those of the Viennese school, hold that the beast manifestations are not forms or shapes assumed by evil spirits that have been mortal, but are, as it were, living evil thought-forms, and are the incarnation of dead and evil cults on which a great deal of human thought-energy had been expended during some time in the world’s history.

Proof is not possible, and it is not yet the time to marshal the facts which would seem to indicate that a dead cultus can yet live on, supported, as it were, by the emotional sin of the present-day world, although the sin is divorced from its old ritual significance. This theory of the continuation of the sacrificial value of sin is of course one of the most serious aspects of the art of sorcery. Propitiation and symbolism are often linked up in a way that perplexes the most agile-witted student of the occult, and it may well be that certain seemingly innocent ritual acts have contributed their quota to the maintenance of life in certain forgotten cults--whose entities come suddenly into being again in a most alarming manner.

To the occultist who thinks this matter out, the identity of beast materializations with incarnate prototypes of sin will probably be manifest.

As it is, the essential quality of the evil that these entities typify and attempt to induce does not become apparent from a chance unsought materialization, but the medium who sees “animals” is suspect.

Repeated evocations of these entities lead to disaster. The beast becomes an obsession and is to all intents and purposes the old “familiar” of the days of witchcraft.

For reasons which are hinted at above, but which cannot be more fully expounded in a book of this nature, the beast materialization is a phenomenon which should be avoided at all costs. If such occurs at a séance, break off the sitting at once. If these phenomena appear to be connected with any particular medium, there are the gravest reasons for seeking another sensitive. Above all things, avoid people who claim that the spirits of pet animals have come back to them.

The cynic may contend that it is folly to be afraid of the spirits of poor dumb animals and yet invite communication with the mortal dead. The occultist and the mystic who know something of the mysteries will, however, see the reasons. To-day, when thousands are interested in psychical matters, knowledge has been forgotten or trampled underfoot. The well-meaning, loud-voiced blind lead myriads to a new heaven, acclaiming hell vanquished because in their rapturous exultation over new discoveries of old things they have forgotten the absolute rule of balance. Positive and Negative, Good and Bad, Strong and Weak, Plus or Minus.

There is balance in all things, and this sudden acclamation of the Unseen World as all good, all easy, and quite safe, is perfectly ridiculous.

Occultism is not either good, safe, nor amusing for the vast majority of people. Spiritualism as generally practised is a kind of beneficent bobbing into the Tom Tiddler’s ground of the Unseen. There is a pleasing conceit that if the Powers of Evil turn up it will be enough to utter a Protestant prayer and say that because you are “good” a bogy can’t touch you.

This is a rather childish way of treating the Powers--in point of fact, it does not work, it is very much like saying that lightning cannot strike you because you have rubber heels to your boots.

It is a melancholy reflection that the very people who go about reading little handbooks on “Knowledge is Power,” never realize that it is the right use of knowledge that means Power and that sometimes the coming of Power without knowledge spells catastrophe for all concerned.

Besides the dangerous and perplexing beast manifestations, there is a third class of phenomenon which is manifestly neither human nor animal, but bears a close relationship to Elemental Forces such as Fire, Air, or Water. These phenomena are the only ones properly described as due to elementals, but a certain confusion has arisen through the use of this word as applied to all spirit phenomena which were not broadly classifiable as human.

Ghosts, giant appearances, and ferocious and evil spirits of all kinds have been described as elementals, so that the word has lost its real precision. Originally all these outside spirits not known as the souls of mortals were classed as being spirits of Earth or Fire, Air, or Water, and by this arbitrary relation to the elements became known as Elementals.

In effect only phenomena where no apparent organic or physical materialization or incarnation of any kind occurs should be classified as purely elemental.

Of these the heat elemental is a phenomenon that is occasionally observed. Air or wind phenomena are also known, but I know of no case where earth or water phenomena apart from “apports” by a materialized presence claiming to be an earth or water elemental, have been noted. To my mind the organic presence destroys the evidential value of the latter accounts due to the effect of elementals as distinct from spirits.

The elementals are properly those intelligences (the word spirits conveys a wrong implication) that are termed in the old rituals the Powers of Fire, Air, Earth, and Water. In magic it was held that these Powers were served by spirits, but there is reason to suppose that this view rose from the too literal interpretation of the old rituals and maltranslation of the occult “Grimoires” of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The appearance of these elementals is rare and sporadic, usually associated with a place or an individual rather than with the sitting of a séance.

Sometimes the individual afflicted by the elemental is affected in a negative manner--that is to say, he is immune to the effect of fire or heat or has the power of inducing enormous draughts and air disturbances in confined space without knowing why.

These cases are difficult, and though a “fireproof” medium who can carry live coals in his hand may claim it to be due to the effect of a fire-elemental control, it must be remembered that in many cases autosuggestion will induce an extension of the protective ecto- or psychoplasm which is equally effective.[39] The South Sea and Indian fanatics who walk across red-hot stones indubitably possess this self-contained power.

I have only a second-hand instance of a pure heat elemental to relate. This was communicated to me by a very well-known mountain painter whom we will call Calvin Muir.

He had been down in the Welsh Marches where the low foothills of the mountains just change into stretches of rocky moors above the low-lying wooded valleys.

Muir was by habit and training a keen observer. He was also a Frater of the Rosicrucian Society and had a wide general knowledge of many strange aspects of occultism.

“I was staying down at Pwhyll-gor, a little hill village with a few cottages and two inns of small attractiveness,” said he. “I had been there some six weeks or so, sketching and wandering and doing a little trout fishing when the mood took me. One evening I found the taproom learnedly discussing the blight that was affecting an orchard in a nearby farm.

“According to them, half the affected trees appeared burnt or seared and there was great discussion whether lightning could strike without a concurrent storm or thunderclap.

“Others held that it was probably a mischievous trick by small boys, but one old man declared it had happened before in the same district in his father’s time and that it was due to ‘owl blasting.’

“This, it seemed, was a form of witchcraft or magic, but more closely related to the malevolent forces of nature than to mortal ill will. He was not communicative, but disclosed enough to make me determine to visit the farm next day.

“I found it up on the hillside in a little natural valley or gap where a few fertile acres had been reclaimed. It was a poor enough small homestead, bleak and barren, and the wretched little orchard was poor enough in all conscience without suffering supernatural violences.

“The farmer’s wife received me and made no secret of her troubles. Together we went out to view the damage, and I found two cider-apple trees whose foliage and fruit had been literally burnt in an area as large as a good-sized cart wheel.

“That was the queer thing about it, the close circular or rather spherical limits of the damage. It was just as if a red-hot round bite had been taken out of the thick of the tree, and left the neighbour twigs and leaves unsinged--unseared.

“They had no explanation to offer except lightning, and it was manifest they had no real belief in that. I suggested boys, but was told there was but one about the farm--even as I made the suggestion I knew it was futile; but what would you?

“I asked when the calamity occurred, and they told me in full daytime between dawn and lunch. In the morning all had been well in the orchard--by noon two trees half ruined, and no one had seen sight of smoke or flame, nor sound.

“The suggestion of ‘owl blasting’ brought no response. They were strangers to the country, having come some ten years ago from Swansea way.

“‘It’s the hills,’ said the woman.

“‘Well,’ said I, ‘another watcher will do no harm. Can you give me a shakedown, and to-morrow I will go out with my easel and stay sketching the orchard.’

“She assented without enthusiasm, and I spent that night at the farm.

“The farmer was no wiser and rather surlier than his wife, but both were manifestly oppressed with fear. Their boy alone was cheerful and unmoved.

“The next day I rose at cock-crow, passed through the orchard and out on to the hills to a patch of rock and heather some two hundred yards away.

“By seven o’clock I had watched in a good stretch of the farm and the orchard in which not a soul had moved. All at once, I stood with my brush poised in amazement, as there high above the trees was poised a small, blue-yellow lambent flame that seemed to drift sideways in the windless air.

“For a moment I thought it was a fire balloon, then saw my error. Without a thought I ran toward it just in time to see it settle down on to a tree whose leaves in a moment turned from green to darkening brown and burst almost immediately into crackling flame. My cries brought out the boy and the woman from the house and on their coming it vanished and we were left gazing at the damage it had done.

“I told them what I had seen, and the woman suddenly put her apron over her face and burst into tears. We sent the boy to fetch her husband, who came in a marked state of worry and agitation.

“I could not follow the quick interchange of Welsh words that ensued. The man then asked me who had told me of ‘owl blasting,’ and together we went to the village to find the old man.

“It appeared that a month or so back the farmer had used some old rocks which were part of the ring of a Cromlech to rebuild one of his stone walls. This, according to the old man, had brought down the ‘owl blasting’ upon him.

“Painstakingly they dragged the stones back to their original place, and I believe certain ceremonial was gone through at the next quarter of the moon.

“The precise things done were kept secret from me, for I was a stranger and suspect, but I gathered enough to understand that a mercenary destruction or disturbance of Druidic remains brought its own reward.

“All that I can say is that a ball of fire came out of clear sky quite slowly and destroyed part of the foliage of an apple tree under conditions precluding any human agency.”

The above is Calvin Muir’s account. To an occultist the connection between the Power of Fire and the violation of a Cromlech is convincing, but it is difficult to conceive in what manner the Powers were propitiated.

Scientific people have suggested slow-drying phosphorus solution as an explanation of an apparently supernatural occurrence. Muir, on the other hand, was positive that it was a true manifestation of a fire elemental, and that the old man who knew about “owl blasting” was not an interested or malevolent party in a peasant’s plot.

So far, no hypothesis that will serve as a rational explanation of all the facts has ever been advanced.

FOOTNOTES:

[38] Mr. Gambier Bolton, who was present, assures me of the reality of this inexplicable incident.

[39] The really genuine fire medium can hold a red-hot coal or glowing asbestos from the gas fire on the palm of the hand for two minutes. No shorter duration of time should be accepted.