[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
to the crusades, like many another valiant man, and took with
him to win his spurs in the sacred cause his youngest and
favourite son, a promising youth whose success in life was
the dearest wish of his father's heart. Unhappily, however, the
young man was killed in battle, and the father was plunged
into the depths of despair, lamenting not only the loss of his
son, but still more the fact that he was cut off so suddenly in
the full flush of careless and not altogether blameless youth.
So poignant, indeed, were the old man's feelings that he
cast off his knightly armour and joined one of the great
monastic orders, vowing to devote all the remainder of
95
his life to prayer, first for the soul of his son, and secondly
that henceforward no descendant of his might ever again
encounter what seemed to his simple and pious mind the
terrible danger of meeting death unprepared. Day after day
for many a year he poured all the energy of his soul into the
channel of that one intense wish, firmly believing that
somehow or other the result he so earnestly desired would be
brought about.
A student of occultism will have little difficulty in
deciding what would be the effect of such a definite and
long-continued stream of thought; our knightly monk created
an artificial elemental of immense power and resourcefulness
for its own particular object, and accumulated within it a store
of force which would enable it to carry out his wishes for an
indefinite period. An elemental is a perfect storage-battery
one from which there is practically no leakage; and when we
remember what its original strength must have been, and how
comparatively rarely it would be called upon to put it forth,
we shall scarcely wonder that even now it exhibits
unimpaired vitality, and still warns the direct descendants of
the old crusader of their approaching doom by repeating in
their cars the strange walling music which was the dirge of a
young and valiant soldier seven hundred years ago in
Palestine.
2. Elementals formed consciously. Since such results as
have been described above have been achieved by the
thought-force of men who were entirely in the dark as to
what they were doing, it will readily be imagined that a
magician who understands the subject, and can see exactly
what effect he is producing, may wield immense power along
these lines. As a matter of fact occultists of both the
96
white and dark schools frequently use artificial elementals in
their work, and few tasks are beyond the powers of such
creatures when scientifically prepared and directed with
knowledge and skill for one who knows how to do so can
maintain a connection with his elemental and guide it, no
matter at what distance it may be working, so that it will
practically act as though endowed with the full intelligence of
its master.
Very definite and very efficient guardian angels have
sometimes been supplied in this way, though it is probably
very rarely that karma permits such a decided interference in
a person's life as that would be. In such a case, however, as
that of a pupil of the Adepts, who might have in the course of
his work for them to run the risk of attack from forces with
which his unaided strength would be entirely insufficient to
cope, guardians of this description have been given, and have
fully proved their sleepless vigilance and their tremendous
power.
By some of the more advanced processes of black magic,
also, artificial elementals of great power may be called into
existence, and much evil has been worked in various ways by
such entities. But it is true of them, as of the previous class,
that if they are aimed at a person whom by reason of his
purity of character they are unable to influence they react
with terrible force upon their creator; so that the mediaeval
story of the magician being torn to pieces by the fiends he
himself had raised is no mere fable, but may well have an
awful foundation in fact.
Such creatures occasionally, for various reasons, escape
from the control of those who are trying to make use of
them, and become wandering and aimless demons, as do
some of those mentioned under the previous heading under
97
similar circumstances; but those that we are considering,
having much more intelligence and power, and a much longer
existence, are proportionately more dangerous. They
invariably seek for means of prolonging their life either by
feeding like vampires upon the vitality of human beings, or
by influencing them to make offerings to them and among
simple half-savage tribes they have frequently succeeded by
judicious management in getting themselves recognized as
village or family gods.
Any deity which demands sacrifices involving the
shedding of blood may always be set down as belonging to
the lowest and most loathsome class of this order other less
objectionable types are sometimes content with offerings of
rice and cooked food of various kinds. There are parts of
India where both these varieties may be found flourishing
even at the present day, and in Africa they are probably
comparatively numerous.
By means of whatever nourishment they can obtain from
the offerings, and still more by the vitality they draw from
their devotees, they may continue to prolong their existence
for many years, or even centuries, retaining sufficient
strength to perform occasional phenomena of a mild type in
order to stimulate the faith and zeal of their followers, and
invariably making themselves unpleasant in some way or
other if the accustomed sacrifices are neglected. For example,
it was asserted recently that in one Indian village the
inhabitants had found that whenever for any reason the local
deity did not get his or her regular meals, spontaneous fires
began to break out with alarming frequency among the
cottages, sometimes three or four simultaneously, in cases
where they declared it was impossible to suspect human
agency; and other stories of a more
98
or less similar nature wilt no doubt recur to the memory of
any reader who knows something of the out-of-the-way
corners of that most wonderful of all countries.
The art of manufacturing artificial elementals of extreme
virulence and power seems to have been one of the
specialties of the magicians of Atlantis "the lords of the
dark face." One example of their capabilities in this line is
given in The Secret Doctrine (vol. ii., p. 427), where we read
of the wonderful speaking animals who had to be quieted by
an offering of blood, lest they should awaken their masters
and warn them of the impending destruction. But apart from
these strange beasts they created other artificial entities of
power and energy so tremendous, that it is darkly hinted that
some of them have kept themselves in existence even to this
day, though it is more than eleven thousand years since the
cataclysm which overwhelmed their original masters. The
terrible Indian goddess whose devotees were impelled to
commit in her name the awful crimes of Thuggee the
ghastly Kali, worshipped even to this day with rites too
abominable to be described might well be a relic of a
system which had to be swept away even at the cost of the
submergence of a continent, and the loss of sixty-five million
human lives.
3. Human Artificials. We have now to consider a class of
entities which, though it contains but very few individuals,
has acquired from its intimate connection with one of the
great movements of modern times an importance entirely out
of proportion to its numbers. It seems doubtful whether it
should appear under the first or third of our main divisions;
but, though certainly human, it is so far removed from the
course of ordinary evolution, so entirely the product of a will
outside of its own, that
99
it perhaps falls most naturally into place among the artificial
beings.
The easiest way of describing it will be to commence with
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]