Ghostly Phenomena

by Elliott O'Donnell

All dreams, whether accompanied or unaccompanied by unconscious projections, are induced by Elementals.

THE CLOTHES OF PHANTASMS.

Again, and again, sceptics, with would-be smartness, have said to me, "Where do ghosts get their clothes? One can imagine the spirit of a person, but not the spirit of his garments. There are surely no tailoring establishments in the psychic world?" But this argument, if such it can be called, is of little value, since the Dead who appear would naturally assume those forms in which they were best known when living, and when on earth they were surely better known clothed than unclothed.

The clothes are not, of course, material clothes any more than the body is a material body—they are mere accessories assumed, so to speak, to make the image more complete, and to facilitate the question of identity. It is surely not difficult to understand that the Force which has the power to manifest itself at all, has the power to manifest itself in the most suitable guise. The phantasm is, after all, only the image of the spirit or soul; it is not actually the spirit or soul itself, any more than the man we see walking about Regent Street in a silk hat and frock-coat is actually the man himself; the latter is an abstract quantity, compounded of spirit, soul, and intelligence—what we see is merely an outward concrete form, whereby we are able to identify that abstract quantity. So it is with the superphysical ego. To identify it we must either see or feel it, and thus to those of us who have sight, it appears in a form with which some of us, at least, are familiar—the form that was once common to its material body; hence clothes—illusionary clothes—are necessary appendages.

It is not so with certain orders of Elementals: having no identity to prove, they manifest themselves—nude.

PHANTASMS OF THE MURDERED AND OF SUICIDES.

As I have already stated, where suicides and murdered people have led gross lives, the hauntings are undoubtedly due to their earth-bound spirits; but where they have been benevolent and pure-minded people, then the phenomena experienced after their deaths may be attributed to Elementals.

ELEMENTALS.

Elementals—namely, those spirits that have never had material bodies, human or animal—are either benevolent, antagonistic, or neutral, and are subjected to the supervision of those Higher Occult Forces that are responsible for the creation of Nature. I do not think it feasible that the same Powers (or Power) that created all that is beneficial to man, created also all that is obnoxious to him. If Man were the only sufferer, then one could attach some credence to the story of the Fall, though there would be little enough justice in it then; but when one considers the vast amount of suffering that has always been endured by all forms of animal life, the Biblical version of the Garden of Eden degenerates into a mere myth as unjust as it is fanciful. Whatever man may have done to have brought upon himself thousands of years of the most hideous sufferings, it is ludicrous to suppose that animals and insects also sinned! And therefore, since to me the terms Almighty and Merciful, and Almighty and Just, are utterly irreconcilable when applied to the Creator of this material world, I can only assume that there was not one Creative Force, but many, and that whilst some (probably the majority) of these Forces (none of which are supreme, for if one were Omnipotent, then the others would assuredly cease to exist) have always been diametrically opposed to one another in their attitude towards all forms of animal life, others have remained indifferent and neutral. Of these Creative Forces, some, whom I will designate the Benevolent Powers, wished both man and beast to live for ever in perfect happiness, whilst others, whom I will designate the Evil Powers, wished both man and beast to die. Some sort of a compromise was therefore arranged by which the contending Forces agreed that all forms of animal life should die, and that the material body should be succeeded by the superphysical, for the possession of which both Forces must contend. The Benevolent Powers would strive to transfer superphysical man, after subjecting him to the thorough process of spiritual evolution to their own particular sphere, namely, Paradise, whilst the Evil Powers would strive to keep superphysical man permanently bound to this Earth, namely, Purgatory; hence there would be a constant struggle between them, a struggle in which each opposing Force would resort to every conceivable device to secure the souls and spirits of both man and beast.

To the Benevolent Creative Powers, then, we owe everything that tends to man's happiness (and what is more necessary to real happiness than temperance and morality), whilst to the Evil Creative Powers are due all diseases, crimes, and cruelties—everything, in fact, that is injurious to health and responsible for suffering, either mental or physical.