What is an elemental? It is only when the mystic has advanced in her studies that she discovers how manifold evolution is, and how small a part humanity really fills in the economy of nature.
When the microscope is used myriads of germs of life, unsuspected by us, are revealed; even so the invisible planes connected with this earth contain myriads of forms of life, of whose existence most of us are unconscious. When we read of a "good or bad elemental" it must always be either an artificial entity, or one of the many varieties of nature spirits that is meant. I will deal now with a case of the artificial variety.
Such elementals are formed out of the elemental essence lying behind the mineral kingdom. It is the monadic essence, or material used in creation, or it may be called the outpouring of Divine force into matter. This elemental essence is marvelously sensitive to human thought, however fleeting. It responds instantly to the vibrations set up consciously or unconsciously by human will or desire. The influence of thought can mold a living force, good or evil, into an existence, evanescent or lasting. Such shapes possess a certain appropriateness to the character of the desire which calls them into existence, though they generally possess distortions, either unpleasant or terrifying.
Persons who play with, or use for some malign purpose, Black Magic, generally have a swarm of such semi-intelligent entities surrounding them, and professional Black Magicians can call artificial elementals of great power into existence, and use them for their fell designs.
As a rule, however, the enormous inchoate mass of entities, known as elementals, are beings of human thought creation, created in no malicious spirit, but more often the result of curiosity, and tampering with a very dangerous power, as yet little understood. The amateur magician on passing over to the other side by no means loses his taste for the grotesque and abnormal, and often continues to play pranks on those left behind, by means of the dangerous powers he has acquired whilst on earth.
I was visiting some old friends in the South of England. Some years before they had succeeded to a fine inheritance, and it was the first time that I had stayed with them in that house. I did not experience any uncomfortable sensations in the bedroom appointed to me. It was early summer-time when there is but a short spell of darkness, and I was on such intimate terms with my hostess, herself a psychic, that I had only to say I disliked the atmosphere of my bedroom, to have it changed.
The former mistress of the house had been a very remarkable woman whom I had known intimately. She was brilliantly clever and accomplished, and charming to talk to, but unfortunately she took a vivid interest in occultism of the wrong sort—in Black Magic. Anything to do with spells, witchcraft, elementals, incantations, attracted her enormously, and she had a very considerable knowledge of the subject. I have no doubt she could have worked a great deal of mischief had she been so inclined, but luckily her designs were more impish than malign.
I often warned her that there was undoubted danger in such researches, and that she was certain to attract about her elementals of a most undesirable kind, but my warnings went unheeded, and to the time of her death her interest in the dark subject never flagged.
She had not died in the house I had come to stay in, but it occurred to me as I dressed for dinner that I was in her old bedroom.
This suggestion came to me suddenly, and to the accompaniment of a sound. A sound more felt than heard, a sound known to the spirit rather than to the ear; a tiptoe silence hovering on the brink of sound's threshold.