The Conjuration of the Four Elements, by Eliphas Levi.
The four elementary forms separate and specify by a kind of rough outline,
the created spirits whom the universal movement disengages from the
central fire. Everywhere spirit works and fecundates matter by life; all
matter is animated; thought and soul are everywhere. In seizing upon the
thought that produces the diverse forms, we become the master of forms and
make them serve for our use.
The astral light is completely filled with souls that it disengages in the
incessant generation of being; souls have imperfect wills which can be
dominated and used by more powerful wills. They then form great invisible
chains, and can occasion or determine grand elementary commotions.
Phenomena ascertained in the processes of magic and all those recently
verified by M. Eudes de Merville have no other causes.
Elementary spirits are like young children. They torment those more who
busy themselves with them, unless one has control of them by means of
superior rationality and great severity. These are the spirits which we
designate under the name of "occult elements."
These spirits are those who often prepare disquieting or fantastic dreams.
They are those who produce the movements of the divining rod, and the raps
on walls and furniture. But they can never manifest any other thought than
our own, and if we are not thinking, they talk to us with all the incoherence
of dreams. They reproduce good and evil indifferently, because they are
without free will and consequently have no responsibility. They show
themselves to ecstatics and somnambulists under incomplete and fugitive
forms. This occasioned the nightmares of Saint Antony, and, very probably,
the visions of Swedenborg. They are neither souls in hell nor spirits guilty of
mortal sin; they are simply inquisitive and inoffensive. We can employ or
abuse them like animals or children. Therefore the magus who employs their
help assumes a terrible responsibility, for he will have to expiate all the ev