By Franz Bardon - Extracts from Initiation into Hermetics Sacred Magick Edition

In contrast to thoughts living in their forms in the mental or spiritual sphere, the "elementals" are entities with a certain degree of intelligence deliberately created by a magician. Such elementals are capable of fulfilling certain tasks on the mental plane and obviously they may be looked at as obedient servants of the magician according to the purpose he aims at. Through the creation of elementals of the so-called elemental magic type, the magician can accomplish everything on the mental plane without any discrimination of his own or a strange sphere. I will quote only a few examples just because of the great variety.

With the help of the elementals the magician can influence the mind of any other person optionally, he can strengthen or weaken man's mental and intellectual faculties, he can protect himself or others against foreign influences, transmute friendships into animosities or the other way around, he can produce a favorable atmosphere in associating with his fellow men, and he can bring under his control anybody's will that is not yet developed or profiled.

The businessman can enlarge the number of his customers, and the elementals can be helpful to him in many other ways. The genuine magician will always be inspired by good and noble intentions and keep the altruistic motive in mind if he is aiming at the highest level of magical maturity.

The practice of creating elementals is very simple and an affair of the magician's imagination, but the following rules must be considered:

1. The elemental has to be given a form corresponding to the desire one wishes to be fulfilled.
The form is to be created y intensive imagination.

2. The form, the so-called vessel or housing has to be given a name of some sort. Everything existing, whether in a particular shape or shapeless does have a name; if it has no name, it does not exist.

3. The task is to impressed on the elemental with the help of the willpower and the imaginative faculty; that is, an authoritative order has to be given with respect to the kind of effect to be produced. Here as well, the present or imperative form formula must be retained in exactly the same way as I described it in the chapter dealing with subconsciousness.

4. The effectiveness is to be impressed on the elemental regardless whether it be a question of a permanent or a restricted effect.

These four fundamental rules are to be respected if one intends to work successfully with elementals. I will render the practice even more understandable, and an illustrative case may show how it can be done:

Supposing the magician intends to enforce someone's memory or any other intellectual faculty with the help of an elemental, the procedure is as follows:

The magician imagines a universal ocean of light, from the luminous matter of which he shapes an enormous ball of light, compressing and accumulating it more and more with the help of his imagination until this ball has the size of approximately 12-20 inches. By this accumulation of light, the ball has become similar to a radiating sun. Now the magician impregnates this light ball with the desire and the firm conviction that it will exhibit the same power and quality as is supposed to revive and reinforce the desired mental faculty such as memory, eloquence, etc., in the respective person. As soon as the magician has shaped this mental sun or ball, he must give it a suitable name, say Lucis or the like. Besides, he is fixing the time when this ball is to affect the mental sphere of the person with terms like these:

"You ought to work in the mental sphere until the person concerned has attained the desired faculty in such a way that this faculty has become a habit!" Having fixed the time, the magician orders the elemental to dissolve in and return to the ocean of light as soon as it has fulfilled its task. Expressing it magically, the birth and death of the elemental are fixed in exactly the same manner as Man's or any other being's fate is.

Considering the fact that an elemental knows neither time nor space, it may be directed to the mental sphere of the respective person. Its sending off happens quite suddenly as if the connecting link between yourself and the elemental were torn. At the same moment, one turns to another job, one ceases to remember the elemental that has just been created. One may also accompany the breaking up with a certain farewell gesture, just as one did while creating it. All this is left entirely to the discretion of the scholar who, at this present state of development, should be quite capable of giving such and similar instructions himself. The more detached from the magician that such an elemental is, the more effective it will be in the mental sphere of the person for whom it was created. It can work independently in the mental sphere and will not be restricted in any way by the magicians' mind. Now and again it is advisable to reload the elemental to give it a greater power of expansion. This is achieved by calling the elemental by the name given to it, back from the mental sphere of the person concerned, rendering it more dynamic through a new accumulation of light, and sending it of again. As soon as the elemental has fulfilled the required task, it will dissolve itself in the ocean of light. This example should suffice to give the magician a rule of conduct how to create elementals. The experiment described here often is used by adepts for the purpose of inspiring and strengthening scholars of low standard.

Let us now turn to another similar topic that makes us acquainted with the so-called Larvae:

The difference between an elemental and a larva is basically the fact that an elemental is created deliberately by the magician whereas the larvae form themselves involuntarily in the corresponding mental sphere as the result of a strong physical excitement, no matter what kind of excitement this happens to be. The stronger the excitement is, the more mental material a person is subsiding, the larva will become all the stronger, denser and more viable, especially in the case of a regular and frequent repetition of the same physical excitement.

This involuntary formation of larvae occurs in any human being, young or old, magically trained or not, regardless whether the person knows or ignores it. If the physical excitement is fading due to the fact that no attention has been paid to the upsetting affair, the larva too will disappear by and by until finally dissolving itself. Consequently there will be in the mental sphere a constant bringing forth and dying of larvae, naturally at the cost of the mental matter of each human being. We are causing these events by our own psychic excitement. The reasons can be very different, usually fear, grief, sorrow, fright, hatred and envy and such like producing them. The shape that the larva shows depends on the cause of the psychic excitement and is always symbolic. Anyone who knows something about symbolism will be able to get a clear idea about this problem; for example, a thought of love will always be symbolized by a heart, a thought of hatred by an arrow or a flash, etc. In spite of the fact that the larvae, these undesirable mental inhabitants cannot be seen by the normal human being, they still do exist, and the well trained magician can see them on the mental plane. In sensitive or excitable persons, the mental matter is much more separable and the reproduction of larvae is obviously easier and more intense. Such people wreck themselves, their health, especially their nerves, but they also damage their intellectual faculties and involve other highly suggestible people too. All kinds of mass psychosis are originating here. There is no need to describe mass psychosis in detail, because everybody will have made observations and had experiences regarding this problem.

The more one returns to the cause of the psychic excitement and the more attention one pays to it, the stronger the larva will become. Any larva that is condensed very strongly will show a great deal of self-preservation instinct and will try to prolong its duration of life as far as possible. For this reason, it stimulates the mind of the given person, trying at every opportunity to draw his attention to the cause of excitement and to revive it constantly. Such a well-fed larva can become fatal to a sensitive or emotional individual, and numerous mental disturbances such as persecution mania and the like are the result of it.

Many people are living under the erroneous supposition of being haunted and destroyed by black magicians, whereas they are in fact victims of their own fantasies, or putting it correctly, victims of the larva they have been creating themselves. People like this usually will not find out about this problem until they leave their mortal frame. Only a very few persons are actually haunted magically. Think of the numerous Inquisition victims of the past! No doubt there is a certain advantage for the average man in that the old order has changed, yielding to a new one, for "If a man's belief is bad, it will not be changed by burning'. But one has thrown out the baby with the bath water without touching the roots of the matter and without verifying the higher laws.

Now the magician will realize why such stress has been laid on the importance of introspection, control and mastering of the thoughts at the beginning of the practical part of this work. Supposing he did not get the thoughts under control of his willpower in the course of his development, he would unconsciously create larvae that might become fatal to him sooner or later.

Next I am going to describe another group of entities existing in the mental sphere, namely the group of the phantoms or phantasms. The difference between a larva and a phantasm is as follows: A larva is quite unconsciously adopting a shape in the mental sphere, appropriate to the motive of the single or repeated psychic emotion, whereas a phantom accepts a certain form originating in the fantasy of Man. Exactly in the same way as it happens to be with the larvae, the phantom is likewise reinforced, revived and animated by the repeated evocation of the picture, regardless of whatever the matter might be, and it will be capable of influencing not only the mental or astral plane, but also the material level. Two examples may serve to illustrate this topic:

A very remarkable example is the so-called magic persecution mania that I shall describe from two certain points of view, with reference to the phantoms. There are certain human beings with an innate scowl or with demoniacal features, and whose outward appearance consequently gives the impression of black magicians, but who probably haven't got the faintest idea of any human science, to say nothing at all of magic. It is sufficient for any easily suggestible, emotionally excitable or rather conceited person to meet with such a type of man, whether in business or in personal concern, and our "test subject", as we shall call it, will instantly have the sensation of a strong dislike and antipathy towards the antagonist. It can happen that our type is exhibiting a whimsical behavior without wanting to do so or even knowing about it. The first thought entering the test subject's mind will be that he is facing a black magician. Maybe, for some reason or other, this test person is to thinking too highly of this type of man, and the first step toward self-suggestion has already been done. Sooner or later, small awkward everyday incidents will never be cleared up, but the blame for them will be set on our type of man. From now on, the attention is stirred up, one is watching oneself, and the picture of the "type" becomes more distinct. Already one begins to feel persecuted.

The eyes grow more glittering, his appearance reveals itself in dreams, the picture becomes more vivid and eventually emerges even in broad daylight. Finally one constantly lives under the impression of being persecuted at every turn. With the help of a very lively imagination, the picture can be condensed to such a degree that it becomes visible even to other similarly sensitive persons. Feeling persecuted in this manner, with the picture continually working on his mind, our test subject may be argued into anything, even the worst. He looks for help, begins to pray, and does his best to scare away this terrible influence; he gets a nervous breakdown, gradually becomes insane, and ends up by committing suicide or else in a mental hospital for the rest of his life. The phantom has fulfilled its task.

How terrific is the shock, however, if such a spirit must convince itself in the mental sphere that it is committing a well-organized magic suicide! What a bitter disappointment! Our "type-man" of course has not the faintest idea of what happened and will never realize that he was nothing but a means to an end. His face and his conduct were only the form, the pattern from which our test subject created the destructive being, the phantom whose victim he became in the end. Such and similar sad examples happen more frequently than you would believe, sometimes faster, more drastically, in other cases more slowly, furtively, insidiously.

But should you dare to tell the persecuted person the truth, he would never believe it because the phantom knows well how to hinder its victims from escaping. If the guiding hand of Divine Providence leads such an unhappy persecuted person to a genuine magician who finds out the phantom's trickery, he will have a very difficult task to convince the victim, to lead him to the right path, and to teach him a different, normal mode of thinking. At certain times, especially if the victim is under the spell of a phantom, the helper will have to interfere very firmly indeed, now and again, even drastically to restore the mental balance of the individual.

The second example shows the same occurrence but with a different underlying motive:

Here we have to deal with a phantom of eroticism: the birth of such a phantom - if one may use the expression of birth at all - takes place in the face, the beautiful body of a living person, sometimes only a photo, a pornographic illustration or something similar with the purpose of provoking the lust, the sexual instinct, regardless of the person belonging to the female or male sex. Provided anyone being in love, having no opportunity at all of satisfying his personal longing, the stronger and more vehement this yearning will grow, and at the same time the phantom's insinuations will become stronger, because it is thriving entirely on thoughts of yearning. The more the concerned person tries to resist this unsatisfied love, the more obtrusive the phantom will become. At first it will turn up in dreams and allow is victim to revel in the most delightful transport of love. A little later it will provoke the sexual instinct and allow sexual intercourse in the victim's dreams. The pollutions produced in this way help the phantom to become denser and to influence the victim more and more, because the sperm represents the vital power that the phantom is sucking up like a vampire.

The point in question here is not the material sperm, but the animal vital power accumulated in the sperm. The victim is losing the ground under his feet, his willpower is diminishing, and the phantom gradually wins the upper hand. If fate is not so kind to such a one as to have him enlightened in good time and to find the right distraction for him, the phantom's mode of action will result in more dangerous effects. The person becomes confused, stops eating, the nerves are over-excited and such like. The love-phantom can be condensed to such a degree by unsatisfied passion that it can adopt bodily forms, seducing his victim to onanism and other artificial stimulation of the genital organs. Thousands of people have fallen victims of phantoms by committing suicide as the result of disappointment in love or unsatisfied passions. This problem recalls the memory of true occurrences of the medieval succubi and the trials for witchcraft connected therewith. A very dangerous pleasure indeed!

In the light of the two foregoing instances, the magician may observe the activity of the phantasms, and he will be able to form such specters himself. But do not forget: sooner or later, he always will run the risk of being influenced or mastered by them. He knows what is happening in the average individual, and how to produce these phantasms consciously in the magic way, but never will he be induced to execute such practices himself, always remembering the magic sentence: "Love is the love, but love under a strong will."

There is one theme left to be described, that of the phantasms or shadows.
Phantasms are animate presentations of people already deceased. I will pay particular attention to this theme to avoid many errors and enable everyone to sift the chaff from the wheat. As soon as a human being leaves behind the mortal frame, it is at once in the fourth state of aggregation, usually called the "world beyond". Without any mediating substance, it is impossible for a being to operate on our tri-dimensional sphere, just as a fish cannot swim without water. The same thing prevails upon beings already passed away to the world beyond.

Remembering, praising, mourning the deceased, any memory of or tribute to them will create and enliven imaginary pictures of the dead, which as a result of frequent repetition have a rather long duration of life. We call these pictures, created by the living ones, phantoms. It is this kind of phantom that manifest themselves in great numbers to the so-called spiritualists, evokers, diviners, etc. The spooks and hobgoblins also are nothing else but phantoms preserving, condensing and thriving on the affection and attachment of the bereaved ones, as it happens in the case of the shadows. This can be stated without difficulty by citing a being that manifests itself in different places at the same minute at once through so-called mediums, which is nothing but a manifestation of the dead person's phantom, because phantoms can be created by the hundreds. It is very sad that these phantoms always are mistaken for the real dead person by the spiritualistic mediums. A lot of mischief, self-deception, and fraud is carried out in this line.

One can observe, for instance, that one of the mediums is communicating with a famous leader or general, a second one with an artist, another with a saint, in a different place with a pharaoh, and immediately again with an angel. Therefore it is not at all surprising that this particular field of knowledge will meet with a host of opponents and mockers, because of its amount of self-deception. No wonder that a phantom has such a strong instinct of self-preservation as to present itself as a vampire to the medium or the whole circle, and indeed becomes fatal to the neighborhood as well.

Of course, all this does not mean that a genuine magician who masters the fourth state of aggregation, the akasa principle, would not be able to communicate with a deceased person or with an intellect that is not yet embodied. I have already quoted the practice in the chapter about mediumistic writing. Apart from that, any magician is able to forma housing, a shape, with the help of the imagination, transfer it into the fourth state of aggregation, and to persuade or even to force the true, desired being to enter this form and manifest itself to the external world. This practice belongs to the field of necromancy or conjuring magic and has nothing at all to do with the generally known spiritualism. The genuine magician will use this practice only in extreme cases, and he will not evoke a being away from its sphere, because anything a being of the fourth state of aggregation has to say or to fulfill in the material or astral world can be achieved likewise by the magician himself through his maturity.