BAPTISM AS AN INITIATORY RITE AROUND THE WORLD by Dudley Wright

There are many people who, despite recent researches into the field of Comparative Religion, still believe and maintain that the ordinance of Baptism is essentially a Christian institution, the inauguration of which they attribute to John the Baptist as the herald or forerunner of the Founder of Christianity.

As a matter of fact, Christianity did not introduce any fresh ordinance, though it dispensed with, at least, one — Circumcision.

Baptism was known and practised, not only by the Jews, but so far as research can prove, it was known and practised by every nation on the face of the earth, and was regarded as one of the ceremonies of initiation into what are known as pagan religions.

It would appear to have had its origin in the observation of one of the phenomena of nature. The nightly disappearance of the sun, apparently into the waters, was succeeded by its reappearance with new life and vigour on the following dawn. So the doctrine of the revival of life from a decayed or deceased husk is found in the most ancient mythology.

From these and other phenomena it was argued that at the conclusion of certain periods of time the earth resolved itself into its original chaotic condition, but that  it again emerged from its deathlike state and came forth endowed with new life and splendour.

This, in the opinion of Faber (Pagan Idolatry) and other writers, is the explanation of the origin of the baptismal rite and its adoption by all religions (Pagan as well as Christian) as one of their initiatory rites.

The unbiased student of religious systems looks upon the eternal squabble between the immersionists and sprinklers with a feeling somewhat akin to amusement. The term “baptism” can have no other meaning than immersion.

-      "What do you understand by the term baptism?” was the question put recently to an eminent Jewish rabbi by the writer.

-      "Baptism is baptism — immersion, of course," was the immediate reply

And this is the interpretation of the term by practically every nation and religious system since the world began. Its meaning was, and is, to symbolize the washing away of sin and the inauguration of a new life.

The Hindu believed that the sins of a lifetime might be removed by a plunge into the Ganges, a process known to the superstitious Roman, whom Juvenal satirized for washing away his sins by dipping his head three times in the waters of the Tiber.

Legendary lore has it that people bathed in sacred rivers for the purpose of changing their sex, and young women, to avoid the attentions of an amorous god, threw themselves into a river, when they were immediately metamorphosed into nymphs or naiads.

Thales taught that water was the first principle of all things, that it had the greatest share in the production of bodies, that it made nature fruitful and prevented the earth from becoming a sterile mass. The oceans, seas and rivers thus became objects of religious worship.

In the religion of Isis, the rite of initiation included baptism, with godfathers or sponsors. After the ceremony the initiated were regarded as regenerated.

In Mithraism, also, baptism by immersion was one of the ceremonies attendant upon initiation. After initiation repeated ablutions, to which frequent flagellations were added, became necessary before the votary dare approach the altar. The initiates believed themselves purified of their guilt by these ritual ablutions, and baptism lightened the conscience of the weight of their heavy responsibility.

In the Phoenician religion baptism was regarded as the similitude of drowning, the baptized person rising out of the waters to a new life.

Baptism was practised by the Manichaeans and Mandaeans, and total immersion was also practised by the Greek Church. Initiates into Druidism had to pass through the waters as one of the initiatory rites.

In Brahmanism, one of the many ceremonies which the candidate for initiation had to undergo was plunging into the waters to represent the fish-god who descended to the bottom of the ocean to recover the stolen Vedas.

Part of the ceremonial attached to initiation into the Grecian mysteries consisted in placing the candidate in a well for a specified period as the medium of regeneration.  Even after this, the candidate, whether male or female, was carefully purified in the pellucid waters of a running stream.

There was a primitive belief that no spirit or evil could cross running water, and it is a Moslem custom, to the present day, always to wash in running water.

In the mysteries of Bacchus the place of initiation was always a range of caverns, through various parts of which streams of water ran into which the candidate was plunged for the purpose of purification.

In the Gothic mysteries the candidate was ordered to plunge into a sluggish stream and cross to the opposite bank — the stream being called the water of purification.

Among the orthodox Jews, down to the present day, baptism is as obligatory upon a proselyte as circumcision.

The custom in former days was for the three teachers who had instructed the neophyte in the Law to become his sponsors and conduct him to a pool, where he stood up to his neck in water while the Commandments were recited to him. He then gave his promise to keep these. A blessing was pronounced, at the conclusion of which he plunged beneath the water, taking care to be entirely submerged.

In the Story of Adam and Eve it is stated that Adam stood up to his neck in the Jordan for forty days and Eve in the Tigris for thirty-seven days.

According to Pirke Rabbi El, Adam stood for forty-nine days up to his neck in the river Gihon.

Baptism was the public form of admission into the brotherhood of the Essenes, an open acknowledgment that the initiate renounced his old ideas and beliefs, was willing to forsake sinfulness and enter upon the obligations attached to his new life. This was called by the Essenes “the new birth." The Essenes also practised a daily baptism every morning, in order that they might pronounce the name of God with perfect purity.

Baptism by total immersion is one of the ceremonies of admission into the faith of the Mormons, or Latter-Day Saints. Amongst modem orthodox Jews also total immersion as a sign of cleansing from impurity is practised at stated periods by the Jewish women.

In Egypt the Copts used to observe the eve of the Epiphany as a great river festival, plunging into the Nile as a memorial of the baptism of Christ, believing that on that night it could prevent and cure all illnesses.

(Occult Review, September 1914, p.160-162)

ON THE ALLEGED TIBETAN SOURCE OF ALICE BAILEY'S WRITINGS BY DAVID REIGLE

David Reigle is a very good researcher of oriental texts and I admire his work very much, but there is also something where I do not agree with him, and it is in his defense of Alice Bailey.

In 1997, Reigle published an article in which he explained the reasons why he considers that Alice Bailey is genuine and his article you can read here.

And below I summarize the reasons he gave, and I add the reasons why I disagree with him:

1) The first reason is because Alice Bailey's books are structured through themes divided into subtopics and these subtopics divided into sub-subtopics, and so on. And Reigle says that this peculiar way of structuring a text is very characteristic of Tibetan writings and very unusual in English-language writings.

But the detail is that there are also Westerners who write this way. For example, when I write a very long and complex article, I structure it in this way and I know other Western researchers who do the same, such as David Pratt or José Ramón Sordon, and our texts are not of Tibetan origin.

2) His second reason is because the five initiations mentioned by Alice Bailey have several similarities with the "Fivefold Path to Buddhahood" which is one of the most defining teachings of Tibetan Buddhism. And David Reigle argues that this idea of the five initiations taught by Leadbeater and Bailey is not found in Blavatsky's writings.

And on this point I cannot tell you if what he says is true or not, because I have not yet compiled the theosophical information that was written about the initiations, but even assuming that it is true, knowing that Leadbeater lived for several months with Colonel Olcott, who was a great scholar of Buddhism, who knew several important lamas, and who was instructed by Master Morya himself, it is quite possible that Colonel Olcott knew about these five initiations and mentioned them to Leadbeater, who later published them in his books and then Alice Bailey copied them.

3) And as a third reason David Reigle wrote:

« Perhaps the greatest objection maintained by the Theosophists against the Tibetan origin of Alice Bailey's writings is the frequent use of the word "God". »

And then he gave an argument to invalidate this objection, and I agree with him that some masters are more open to the religious beliefs of the people (as for example is the case of Master Pasteur) and it is likely that for many Theosophists this is their main objection.

But for those of us who have studied the original Theosophy, our main objection to Alice Bailey is not that, but the fact that her work is filled with the lies and falsehoods that Leadbeater invented, and while the three previous arguments mentioned by David Reigle could leave some doubt, this last statement completely eliminates the possibility that the books of Bailey were transmitted by a master of the Orient.

Because it makes no sense that a great Tibetan master who lives in the Himalaya and who is in close contact and collaboration with the Transhimalayan masters, instead of transmitting the Eastern esoteric teaching that these Masters taught to Blavatsky, to William Judge and to Henry Olcott, he repeats exactly all the falsehoods that an ex-Anglican priest had just invented on the other side of the world.

And therefore it is much more logical to consider that Alice Bailey, ignoring the deceit of Leadbeater, copied the lies that he invented without realizing his mistake, and to give more prestige to his books, she pretended that these were dictated telepathically by a great Tibetan master.

IS CORRECT THE LIST OF SACRED PLANETS THAT TEACHES ALICE BAILEY?

In a previous article, I showed that the list of the sacred planets taught by Alice Bailey is incorrect and she relied on the lies that Leadbeater invented to elaborate her false classification (see link).

But a defender of Alice Bailey called Patrick Chouinard replied me:

« You are mistaken. Bailey did not base her classification on Leadbeater. Even HPB wrote that the Sun is a veil for Vulcan and/or Uranus. Bailey rejected much that Leadbeater wrote. For example, in A Treatise on Cosmic Fire (1925) she rejects Leadbeater's claim that Mars and Mercury are part of the Earth chain. There is solid basis for Bailey's classification in HPB's writings. See https://m.facebook.com/groups/363230130479134?view=permalink&id=595953133873498&refid=18&__tn__=-R »

I clicked this link, but there, he proves nothing, he only lucubrate putting some excerpts from what Alice Bailey wrote about the sacred planets, plus other excerpts from what Blavatsky wrote, and an excerpt from what the researcher David Pratt wrote.

But at no time does he prove that Alice Bailey's list is correct!

Instead, I am going to prove that his statements are false.

1. Because to start, I ask Patrick Chouinard to tell us exactly in which part of the book "A Treatise on the Cosmic Fire" Alice Bailey rejects Leadbeater's claim that Mars, Earth and Mercury belong to the same planetary chain, because I have read this book several times and nowhere I have found that, but on the contrary I have found that Alice Bailey also claimed the same lie in her book, since she wrote:

« Systemic kundalini goes forward to the vivification of these centres, and at this stage of development certain centres are more closely allied than others. Just as in connection with our planetary Logos, the three etheric planets of our chain—Earth, Mercury and Mars—form a triangle of rare importance. »

(This is in the first part, section E-V-2, p.181)

And there, clearly Alice Bailey says that our planetary chain is composed by Earth, Mercury and Mars.

But if Alice Bailey had studied a little more Theosophy than just copying what Leadbeater had written, she would know that this statement is a monumental absurdity, because the planetary chain is the equivalent to our septenary structure.

And to affirm that these three planets form part of the terrestrial chain, it would be the same as to affirm that we are composed of three different physical bodies and only four subtle bodies, which do not make any sense.

In addition, Blavatsky, William Judge and Master Kuthumi, all stated that this concept was false and those who claimed it were wrong. And this shows that Alice Bailey and Leadbeater lied when they said they were in communication with the masters because if that had been the case, then they would not have made such a mistake such huge.

2. And secondly, although it is true that Blavatsky explained that from the list of the sacred planets enunciated by the ancient sages (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Sun and Moon), three of those celestial bodies (Mars, Sun and Moon) are substitutes for three sacred planets whose identity remains secret.

And based on this asseveration, Patrick Chouinard wants to convince his readers that Alice Bailey has revealed the real list by replacing those three celestial bodies substitutes by the planets Vulcan, Uranus and Neptune, since Alice Bailey had assured that the sacred planets are:

Vulcan, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

But the detail is that if Patrick Chouinard would have read what Blavatsky had explained and not just copy a little excerpt, then he would have noticed that Blavatsky had also pointed out that Uranus and Neptune are NOT sacred planets, since she wrote:

« Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury, and Venus, the four exoteric planets, and the three others, which must remain unnamed, were the heavenly bodies in direct astral and psychic communication with the Earth, its Guides, and Watchers — morally and physically; the visible orbs furnishing our Humanity with its outward and inward characteristics, and their “Regents” or Rectors with our Monads and spiritual faculties.

But in order to avoid creating new misconceptions, let it be stated that among the three secret orbs (or star-angels) [i.e., the three sacred planets that have not yet been revealed] neither Uranus nor Neptune entered; not only because they were unknown under these names to the ancient Sages, but because they, as all other planets, however many there may be, are the gods and guardians of other septenary chains of globes within our systems. Nor do the two last discovered great planets depend entirely on the Sun like the rest of the planets. »

(Secret Doctrine I, p.575)

~ * ~

And this is an example of how the Alice Bailey’s defenders manipulate the information to coax other people and to avoid confronting to the sad reality that much of what Alice Bailey wrote are pure falsehoods.

WHO IS CHRIST? (according to Alice Bailey)

Alice Bailey describes Christ as follows:

« Bodhisattva is the name of the office which is at present occupied by the Lord Maitreya, Who is known in the Occident as the Christ.  This office might be translated as that of World Teacher.  The Bodhisattva is the Head of all the religions of the world, and the Master of the masters and the Teacher of angels and of men. »

(Book "Letters on occult meditation", glossary)

« Around Him—in that High Place on Earth where He has His abiding place [in the Himalayas] are gathered today all His great Disciples, the Masters of the Wisdom, and they stand ready to carry out His bidding and to obey Him, the Master of all the Masters and the Teacher alike of Angels and of men. »

(Book "The reappearance of Christ", chapter 3, p.37)

« Master Kuthumi is in line for the office of World Teacher when the present holder of that office [Lord Christ-Maitreya] vacates it for higher work, and the sixth root-race comes into being. »

(Book "Initiation human and solar", chapter 6, p.54)

« Christ used the body of the initiate Jesus, taking possession of it at the time of the Baptism. »

(Book "Treatise on the Cosmic Fire", 2nd part, section E-VI-2)

So we see that Alice Bailey describes Christ as a very evolved human currently embodied in a physical body, living in the Himalayan region and who is the Master of the masters, and his chief lieutenant is Master Kuthumi, who in the future will take his place as the "World Teacher".

BUT IT RESULTS THAT ALL THESE ALICE BAILEY’S AFFIRMATIONS ABOUT CHRIST ARE FALSE!

Because in the true esoteric teaching Christ is NOT a person, is a Divine Consciousness, and that Blavatsky specified several times since she wrote:

« Christ is neither the God personified of the Churches, nor yet the Jesus of the Gospels; it is only an impersonal Principle. »

(Article "The Kabalah and Kabalists")

« No true theosophist will accept the existence of a carnalised Christ. »

(Article "On Pseudo-Theosophy")

« Christ in the esoteric philosophy is an impersonal principle entirely distinct from any carnalised messiah. »

(Note in response to Abbe Roca)

« I have continually written that the divine Christ (or Christos) has never existed under a human form outside the imagination of individuals who have materialized that universal and entirely impersonal principle. »

(Reply to the misconceptions of Abbe Roca)

And this was also specified by Master Kuthumi who wrote:

« The real Christ is the Vach (the "mystical voice") while the man Jeshu was a human like us, but who became a great adept more by his purity and ignorance of real Evil, than by what he had learned with his initiated Rabbis. »

(ML59, p.344)

And not only the Theosophical instructors affirm this, but also affirm this other instructors that I respect, such as the case of Master Pasteur who mentioned the following:

« I would like so much to bring into your minds the notion of universality and omnipresence, so that you understand that Christ is everywhere. And Christ is in Jesus, but he is also in each of the great spiritual Teachers who have come to guide you.

Understand that you cannot limit what has not limits, and to seek Christ by idolizing his form is to move away from where he is. »

(Conference 24.06.87)

And this was also affirmed by the angels in the book Talking with Angels because in this book the angels said:

« Christ is the divine Light that shines above everything. »
(Dialogue 75)

And that is why this Divine Consciousness which is known in the West as Christ needs a highly evolved human when he needs to descend on Earth, because this Divine Consciousness cannot be incarnated in a physical body because his very high level does not allow it.

And that was the task of Jesus two thousand years ago to have served as a "vehicle" for Christ.

So why does Alice Bailey describe Christ as if he were a person?

And the answer is because she copied this lie to Charles Leadbeater, who deformed the esoteric concept of Christ as a cosmic principle, to invent a fictional character, which he says is the chief of all the masters and he is called "Lord Christ-Maitreya" or "Maitreya the Christ".

And as proof, here is what Leadbeater wrote about this character:

« Lord Maitreya the Christ is currently carrying a body of the Celtic sub-race. He is the current Bodhisattva, the Instructor of the world, and he lives in the Himalayas.

Master Kuthumi is his chief lieutenant and in many centuries he will succeed Lord Christ-Maitreya in his highest office, and Kuthumi will become the Instructor of the world and the Bodhisattva of the sixth root-race.

The Lord Christ-Maitreya has been called repeatedly the Instructor of angels and men, and when he deems it necessary, he sends one of his disciples to teach a new modality of eternal truths, or in other words, to found a new religion.

And that is why the Lord Christ occupied the body of Jesus two thousand years ago. »

(Book "The masters and the path")

And as you can see, Alice Bailey repeats exactly the same falsehoods as Leadbeater wrote. But not satisfied with repeating the lies that this trickster invented, still Alice Bailey began to invent many more lies, and some of them very delirious as ensuring that Christ would take a plane from Himalayas to come to the West:

« The Christian concept of the return of a triumphant Christ, coming in the clouds of heaven to Jerusalem, there to reign for a thousand years, is true in one way and utterly false as to design, location and method.

Christ will return; the Jerusalem referred to (literally "the place of peace"). His coming in the air might be interpreted literally to mean that at the right time He will come by plane from the place on earth where He has been for many generations, watching over the sons of men.

To the orthodox Christian, the above will sound like the rankest blasphemy, but the question immediately arises: Why should it be blasphemy for Him to use modern methods? »

(Book “The externalisation of the hierarchy”, p.575-576)

CONCLUSION

When Alice Bailey talks about "Christ," she is not referring to the manifestation of that Divine Consciousness that mentions esotericism, or the somewhat distorted interpretation that Christianity points to, but to the fictional character that Leadbeater invented, and demonstrating with it also her own cheat.

THE FAIRY CREATURES EXPLAINED BY FRANZ HARTMANN

In his autobiography, Franz Hartmann wrote the following:

« I always had a peculiar liking for the spirits of Nature, especially for the gnomes and the water nymphs.  Some of my experiences with the gnomes I have embodied in my book An Adventure among the Rosicrucians, which was published at Boston, Mass., and some of those with the gnomes were mentioned in another entitled Among the Gnomes of the Untersberg, published by T. Fisher Unwin (London).  Both of these books are now out of print.

I am not a “medium,” and my clairvoyant powers are very limited.  Nevertheless I am quite convinced that these spirits of Nature have a real existence, as real as ours, although the conditions of their existence are difficult for us to understand.  It seems that their element is the ether of space, the etheric part of water and of the earth.

The gnomes pass as easily through the most solid rocks as we move through air, but it seems that they cannot pass through water, nor the nymphs through the earth.  The interior of mountains and rocks is not dark for the gnomes; the sunlight comes to them just as the Röntgen rays penetrate solid flesh.  The gnomes are mostly little, about two feet high; the nymphs and undines have often very perfect human forms, but can change them at will. »

(Occult Review, January 1908, p.34)

And later Franz Hartmann wrote an entire article about the spirits of nature:

SOME REMARKS ABOUT THE SPIRITS OF NATURE

"All are but parts of one stupendous whole.

Whose body nature is and God the soul."

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! 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. »

(For more particulars, see F. Hartmann, Paracelsus. London: Kegan Paul, 1896.)

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 tranquility, and are often driven away from their homes by the noisy industrial activity of mankind invading their realm.

(Note: Franz Hartmann gave some anecdotes about the gnomes which you can read in the three articles below this.)

THE 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 its 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 sceptical 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 thought 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 conditions 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 sceptics 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.

New-born 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.

THE 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 oar command. The Christ-spirit 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.

THE SALAMANDERS

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 neighbouring 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 Avari 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 modem 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 five in the element of fire and enjoy them­ selves 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. I do not claim that this mischief is done by fire-elementals directly and without any human co-operation; 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 flower-pot in my bedroom with a most beautiful campanula. The stem was covered with leaves and between them appeared the violet-coloured buds, emitting a faint but very agreeable odour. 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 odour coming from the campanula pervaded the room; but it seemed as if this odour 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 every-day 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 odour was gone.  Only the faint odour 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 scepticism, but with a simple receptive mind and a heart full of love.

(Occult Review, December 1911, p.316-318, and January 1912, p.25-30. And you can download the facsimile here.)