Vol. I. FEBRUARY, 1887. No. 11.
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The Elementals, the Elementary Spirits,
And the Relationship between them and Human Beings.
A paper read before the Aryan Theosophical Society of New York, December 14th, 1886.
BY C. H. A. BJERREGAARD.
(Continued.)
There are several designations for “angels” in the Bible, which clearly show that beings like the elementals of the Kabbala and the monads of Leibnitz, must be understood by that term rather than that which is commonly understood. They are called “morning stars,” (Job 38, 7); “flaming fires,” (Ps. 104, 4.); “the mighty ones,” (Ps. 103, 20) and St. Paul sees them in his cosmogonic vision (1 Col. 1, 16) as “principalities and powers.” Such names as these preclude the idea of personality, and we find ourselves compelled to think of them as impersonal existences, in the same way as we conceive the angel that troubled the waters of the pool of Bethesda, as an influence, a spiritual substance or conscious force.
I stated above that the Kabbala taught that all events in Nature and History were under the immediate superintendence of spirits, elementals and elementary. It was in harmony with such teachings, that the translators of the Septuagint translated Deuteronomy 32, 8-9, thus: “When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, he set the bounds of the Heathen according to the number of the spirits, but He Himself took His abode in Israel.”
According to this translation, which differs radically[167] from the orthodox, spirits i.e. Elementals and Elementary Spirits, are the rulers, the principalities and powers, among the heathen, i. e. all people outside of Israel. Whatever we may think of the exclusiveness of this passage, and the work given the “chosen people” to perform, we can verify this passage historically.
All people of the earth—so far as we know their religious and philosophical ideas—have drawn their spiritual life from sources very different from those whence the leaders of Israel derived their inspiration. I say the leaders of Israel, for the Israelites as a people, never comprehended the mission imposed upon them, they constantly fell back into what has been called the “idolatry” of the nations around. The people, as a people, were true to their natural instincts, which led them to follow the guiding influence of natural ideas, (i. e. Elementals and Elementary Spirits).