I 



EXPLANATIONS OF TERMS 35 



gence. Their characters differ widely. They represent in their 

 natures all states of feeling. Some are of a beneficial and others 

 of a malicious nature. 



Elementaries. — The astral corpses of the dead, from which the 

 spiritual part has departed, but in which, nevertheless, intel- 

 lectual activity may have remained ; the ethereal counterpart 

 of the once living person, which will sooner or later be decom- 

 posed into its astral elements, as the physical body is dissolved 

 into the elements to which it belongs. These elementaries have 

 under normal conditions no consciousness of their own ; but they 

 may receive vitality from a mediumistic person, and thereby for 

 a few minutes be, so to say, galvanised back into life and (arti- 

 ficial) consciousness, when they may speak and act and appa- 

 rently remember things as they did during life. They very 

 often take possession of Elementals, and use them as masks to 

 represent deceased persons and to mislead the credulous. The 

 Elementaries of good people have little cohesion and evaporate 

 soon ; those of wicked persons may exist a long time ; those of 

 suicides, &c., have a life and consciousness of their own as long 

 as the division of principles has not taken place.^ These are the 

 most dangerous. 



Elementum. — The invisible element or basic principle of all sub- 

 stances that may be either in a solid (earthly), liquid (watery), 

 gaseous (airy), or ethereal (fiery) state. It does not refer to the 

 so-called simple bodies or " elements " in chemistry, but to the 

 invisible basic substance out of which they are formed. 



EvESTRUM. — The Thought body of Man ; his conscious ethereal 

 counterpart, that may watch over him and warn him of the 

 approach of death or of some other danger. The more the 

 physical body is active and conscious of external things, the 

 more is the Thought body stupefied ; the sleep of the body is 

 the awakening of the Evestrum. During that state it may com- 

 municate with the Evestia of other persons or with those of the 

 dead. It may go to certain distances from the physical body 

 for a short time ; but if its connection with that body is broken, 

 the latter dies. 



Erodinium. — A pictorial or allegorical representation of some future 

 events ; visions and symbolic dreams that may be produced in 

 various ways. There are three classes of dreams from which 

 may arise four more mixed states of dreams. The three pure 

 classes are : i. Dreams that result from physiological conditions ; 

 2. Dreams that result from psychological conditions and astral 



* This division takes place in consequence of the opposite attraction of 

 matter and spirit. After it is accomplished, the astral body will be dis- 

 solved into its elements, and the spirit enter into the spiritual state. — Se^ 

 A. P- SiNNETT : Esoteric Buddhism, 



