PNEUMATOLOGY 123 



certain semi-material substances unknown to us. They 

 have some kind of alabaster, marble, cement, &c. ; but 

 these substances are as different from ours as the web 

 of a spider is different from our linen. Nymphs have 

 their residences and palaces in the element of water; 

 Sylphs and Salamanders have no fixed dwellings. On 

 the whole, the Elementals have an aversion against self- 

 conceited and opinionated persons, such as dogmatists, 

 inquisitive sceptics, drunkards, and gluttons, and against 

 vulgar and quarrelsome people of all kinds ; but they love 

 natural men, who are simple-minded and child-like, inno- 

 cent and sincere, and the less there is vanity and hypoc- 

 risy in a man, the easier will it be for him to approach 

 them ; but otherwise they are as shy as wild animals." ^ 



" Man lives in the exterior elements, and the Ele- 

 mentals live in the interior elements.^ They have dwell- 

 ings and clothing, manners and customs, languages 

 and governments, of their own, in the same sense as 

 the bees have their queens and herds of animals their 

 leader. They are sometimes seen in various shapes. 

 Salamanders have been seen in the shapes of fiery balls, 

 or tongues of fire running over the fields or appearing 

 in houses. Nymphs have been known to adopt the 

 human shape, clothing, and manner, and to enter into 

 a union with man. There are certain localities where 

 large numbers of Elementals live together, and it has 

 occurred that a man has been admitted into their com- 

 munities and lived with them for a while, and that they 

 have become visible and tangible to him."^ 



* There is nothing very strange in the belief that such " spirits " exist, 

 if we only keep in mind that the best part of ourselves is an invisible 

 spirit of unknown dimensions, occupying and overshadowing a limited 

 material form. 



" The "soul" of the elements ; t.e., their ethereal aspects. 



• It is not credible that a person has entered with his physical body 

 into the Venus mountain or Untersberg, or any other such renowned 

 places of which popular tradition speaks. Neither have the witches 

 and sorcerers of the Middle Ages been at the witch-sabbath in their 

 physical bodies, and it seems equally improbable that a person should 



