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ROSICRUC1ANISM, ALCHEMY, AND MAGIC. 203
men and spirits, resembling men and women in their or-
ganisation and form, and resembling spirits in the rapidity
of their locomotion." They must not be confounded with the
Elementaries which are the astral bodies of the dead. 1
are divided into four classes.
They
" The air is replete with an
innumerable multitude of creatures, having human shapes,
somewhat fierce in appearance, but docile in reality ; great
lovers of the sciences, subtle, serviceable to the Sages, and
enemies of the foolish and ignorant. Their wives and
daughters are beauties of the masculine type.
seas and streams are inhabited even as the air ;
. . . The
the ancient
Sages gave the names of Undines or Nymphs to these Elementals.
There are few males among them, and the women
are very numerous, and of extreme beauty ; the daughters
of men cannot compare with them. The earth is filled by
gnomes even to its centre, creatures of diminutive size,
guardians of mines, treasures, arid precious stones. They
furnish the Children of the Sages with all the money they
desire, and ask little for their services but the distinction
of being commanded. The gnomides, their wives, are tiny,
but very pleasing, and their apparel is exceedingly curious.
As to the Salamanders, those fiery
dwellers in the realm of
flame, they serve the Philosophers, but do not eagerly seek
1
According to Eliphas LeVi, the Astral Light, i.e., the substance
diffused through infinity, and which is the first matter of the material
and psycho-material universe, is " transformed at the moment of
conception into human light, and is the first envelope of the soul. " In
combination with fluids of extreme subtlety, it becomes the astral,
etherised, or sidereal body. When a man dies and the divine spirit
returns into the empyrean, it leaves two corpses, one on the earth and
one in the atmosphere, "one already inert, the other still animated
by the universal movement of the soul of the world, but destined to
die gradually, being absorbed by the astral energies which produced
it."" Mysteries of Magic," pp. 97, 105.