CosmologySimplifiedDefined by Blavatsky

Elementals

Also: Nature-spirits · Elementaries (distinct) · Devas (in a looser later sense)

Western occult classification of spirits of the four elements; recast in Theosophy

Blavatsky

Original sense

Semi-conscious forces of nature, lacking a human ego, that inhabit the elements and the astral light. They can be used in magic, they swarm around mediums, and they are not ‘spirit guides’ or the souls of the dead. She distinguished elementals from elementaries (the decaying shells of deceased humans).

Elementals are the creatures evolved in the four kingdoms of earth, air, fire, and water, and called by the Kabalists gnomes, sylphs, salamanders, and undines.
Isis Unveiled; Theosophical Glossary

Fairies, poltergeists, and many séance ‘controls’ she filed here. To treat them as teachers is, in her view, to take a current for a person.

New Age

Later sense

Friendly nature-spirits, crystal devas, and garden elves who cooperate with humans in co-creating a better earth (Findhorn is the classic bridge). The elementary/elemental distinction is almost unknown.

Typical use. Deva oracles, ‘elemental healing,’ fairy cards, and land-blessing ceremonies.

The drift

The core survived; the metaphysics was flattened.

A cautionary zoology of the astral became a children’s book with better production design. Cooperation with nature-spirits is not foreign to later Theosophy (Besant, Hodson), but Blavatsky’s first note is danger, not partnership.

Related terms

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