Furthermore, there were the Acthnici, constituted of “Acthna,” an invisible subterranean fire, who, whenever they manifested themselves in forms and became visible, appeared like fiery globes and balls of lightning. They were, on the whole, stupid and dangerous, and it was said that on more than one occasion some of them had entered dreamland—as they called our world—and been seen by the spooks and returned no more; all of which may, perhaps, have been only a fable, believed only by the children of the gnomes. The Acthnici were said to create heat and cause upheavings of the earth, and some of our ancient philosophers believed them to cause explosions in our mines. However that may be, I never saw them at work, for they were uncouth fellows, and I loved to avoid their society.
There were also the Sagani, and they were the cleverest of all. They were tall and well-formed, resembling the human shape in stature and form whenever they assumed a body. They were from three to five feet high, but they had the power to elongate themselves from the normal size up to a length of twenty-five feet and more. Their principal occupation was to construct the astral models of plants after a certain type for each species, which they did by the power of their imagination (I have no other suitable word); and here I beg to add in parenthesis that, according to my observation among the gnomes, every plant, stone, or tree upon the Untersberg had its “Leffahs,” as it is called by the gnomes, or astral type within the astral body of that mountain; each being in some way which I am unable to explain, connected with the physical part of the corresponding organism; so that the physical and (to us) visible product was always the exact image and corporeal representation of its ethereal progenitor and counterpart that is invisible to us but visible to the gnomes.
All the gnomes could at all times and at their own pleasure live in their ethereal states without any definite form, comparable to air or clouds or mists; or they could by an effort of will assume material and corporeal forms, each one according to his or her innate qualities. In their ethereal shape they could travel with the velocity of a thought, and penetrate through the most solid rocks like a current of electricity passing through a bar of iron; but in their corporeal state their locomotion was comparatively slow, and the atmospheric air, not being their own element, caused great obstacles to their locomotion. For the purpose of passing through air, they had to employ cutting and blasting and other methods similar to those which we use for tunnelling rocks.
It is believed by some people that when our bodies are asleep, our spirits are free to roam consciously through space, and experience things which we do not remember when we awake, but which appear to us at best as a dream. Something similar was the case with the gnomes. In their ethereal states they were individual powers, as distinct from each other as electricity is distinct from light, or heat from sound, and as such they were in possession of consciousness and perception of a spiritual kind, and capable of remembering all they had experienced while condensed into a corporeal form. But whenever they assumed corporeal bodies, they had no distinct recollection of what they had been doing while in a state of dissolution, and this was explained to me by the fact that while in their ethereal state their brains were not solidified enough to register and retain the impressions which they received; but the higher impressions which they received while in their corporeal forms they remembered also in their ethereal state, and whenever a gnome entered into the ethereal state he knew all that he had been doing in the same state before. Moreover, there was a state in which they lived in a semi-corporeal and semi-ethereal condition, and this was when they had not fully dissolved their forms, but merely assumed the shape of a globe of light.
From all this it will appear that it is as difficult for a gnome to penetrate into our world as it is for us to penetrate into theirs, and even, as it often may happen, a gnome, while in his incorporeal form, visits mankind, he will not remember anything about it when he returns, or it will appear to him like a dream, and this may be the reason that our world has gained the reputation among the gnomes as being a dreamland, and nothing more. It may be a dreamland to them as theirs is to us. But they appeared to me to live and exist in their own sphere as much as we in ours. As to the rest, they were born, ate, drank, slept, married, and evaporated after death.
Each family and each tribe of gnomes had its own head and leaders, whom they implicitly obeyed, without even knowing the possibility of disobedience, because they were not given to arguing, and all were ruled by Bimbam I. The administration of the kingdom was very simple; there were no taxes to pay, and everyone had what he wanted, because nobody wanted more than he had. The king took whatever he needed, and never more than he cared to have. Custom-house duties, monopolies, privileges, and corporation nuisances were entirely unknown, and there was no newspaper to disseminate gossip, cause dissensions, and ruin characters for the sake of getting up a sensation. There were no shams. The nobility consisted of gnomes that were truly noble, and not merely pretended to be so; the doctors actually knew something, and did not merely make believe that they were in possession of knowledge; the goodness of the good could be estimated by the amount of light that radiated from their stars, and their character was indicated by the colour of the star. Consequently each individual sphere of light slowly changed when a new emotion or virtue grew in a gnome. Anger made them red, love blue, intelligence yellow, sensuality green, wisdom violet, and so forth.
The ladies of the gnomes occupied positions similar to those of our wives and daughters. The lower classes joined the males in their work; the higher ones were of a more ornamental character, and protectors of arts. The world of gnomes, the same as ours, would have been dreary without female beauty and loveliness. Many of the gnomesses were exceedingly beautiful and ethereal, others were homely; but all of them were very amiable, because they acted in a natural manner, made no attempt of disguising their feelings, and knew of no such thing as deceit; neither did they disfigure their forms by absurd fashions in dress.
Love-making and wooing were carried on among the gnomes as it is with us, only with the exception that the females had the same right as the males to bestow their affection and to make proposals; neither was it considered a disgrace for any lady to do so; on the contrary, it would have been a disgrace for her to pretend to have other sentiments than she had, and it would have injured her beauty and destroyed her light. There was, however, no such thing as what is understood among us as “women’s rights,” for their natural instincts taught them that not everything that becomes a male also becomes a female; these gnomes made no attempt to overstep the limits drawn by nature, for this would have caused them to become degraded and unnatural. On account of their simple-mindedness immorality was entirely unknown, because true morality has its basis in the instinctive perception of truth, and requires no artificially concocted systems and shams. One may be very moral without even knowing that moral doctrines exist, and another may know all the moral prescriptions by heart, and be a rascal for all that.
There was one class of females distinguished from the rest. They were such as, having attained a certain age, were still without children. They corresponded to what is in our world called “old maids”; but they were neither old nor ugly. In fact, they were on the whole very charming, and could sing beautiful songs, as everyone knows who has lived for a certain time in the vicinity of the Untersberg, and heard them sing. Their songs are usually of a sad character, and alluring; they express their loneliness and longing for children. The love for production exists in all departments of nature, and also among the gnomes. A gnome having no knowledge of his own, is always happy to stuff his head with theories belonging to others, and loves them as if they were his own children. The same is the case with the so-called “wild women” of the Untersberg. Their love for offspring sometimes causes them to come out of the Untersberg and appropriate to themselves children of men, such as they find lost or astray within their realm. For this reason they are called “wild,” although I wish to gracious that I would never meet with anything less wild than they. I always found them very lovely, and I now understand the meaning of those popular tales which speak of children of peasants that have been abducted by these spirits, and taken into the Untersberg, where they lived among the “wild women,” who treated them kindly, and played with them; and after a certain time sent them back to their parents loaded with gifts.