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SECTION X.
On the Elements and Atoms.
When the Occultist speaks of Elements, and of human Beings who
lived during those geological ages, the duration of which it is found as
impossible to
determine—according to the opinion of one of the best
English Geologists*—as the nature of Matter, it is because he knows
what he is talking about. When he says Man and Elements, he means
neither man in his present physiological and anthropological form,
nor the elemental Atoms, those hypothetical conceptions, existing at
present in scientific minds, the entitative abstractions of Matter in its
highly attenuated state; nor, again, does he mean the compound
Elements of Antiquity. In Occultism the word Element in every
case means Rudiment. When we say "Elementar}^ Man," we mean
either the proemial, incipient sketch of man, in its unfinished and
undeveloped condition, hence in that form which now lies latent in
physical man during his life-time, and takes shape only occasionally
and under certain conditions;
or, that form which for a time sur\dves
the material body, and which is better known as an Elementar>'.t
With regard to Element, when the term is used metaphysically, it
means, in distinction to the mortal, the incipient Divine Man; and, in
its physical usage, it means inchoate Matter in its first undifferentiated
condition, or in the Laya state, the eternal and normal condition of
Substance, which differentiates only periodically ;
during that differentiation.
Substance is really in an abnormal state—in other wwds, it is
but a transitory illusion of the senses.
As to the Elemental Atoms, so-called, the Occultists refer to them
by that name with a meaning analogous to that which is given by
• In cnswer to a friend, that eminent Geologist writes: "I can only say, in reply to your letter,
that it is at present, and perhaps always will be, impossible to reduce, even approximately, geologriccil
time into years, or even into millenniums." (Signed, William Pengelly, F.R.S.)
t Plato, in speaking of the irradonal, turbulent Elements, "composed of fire, air, water, and earth,"
means Elementary Daemons. (See Tinueus.)