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Do away with it and you are obliged to people the world and burden your life with a host of hypothetical and imaginary beings: gods, demigods, angels, demons, saints, spirits, shells, elementals, etherial entities, interplanetary intelligences and so on; except it and all those phantoms, without disappearing, for they may very well continue to live in its shadow, become superfluous or accessory.
Now that we are at grip with elementals, I find myself, if anything, in advance of the fashion. This, however, by the way. What I am clumsily trying to explain is that if I am to make this story intelligible I must start from the darkness where its roots lie hidden. And that darkness is the black depths of the canal by the lock gates where Althea Fenimore's body was found.
In some cases it is clear that the flocks of animals seen have been simply hordes of unclean artificial elementals taking that form in order to feed upon the loathsome emanations of peculiarly horrible places, such as would be the site of a gallows.
For my own part I am inclined to think that whereas, in some cases, the ghostly coach horses are the phantoms of horses that were killed on the highways, in others they are either Vice-Elementals, or Elementals whose particular function it is to prognosticate death, either the death of those who see them, or the death of someone connected with those who see them. A Phantom Horse and Policeman
All the stories of the intervention of guardian angels must not, however, be attributed to the action of artificial elementals, for in many cases such "angels" have been the souls of either living or recently departed human beings, and they have also occasionally, though rarely, been Devas.
What benefit can be derived from getting into close touch with earth-bound spirits, i.e. with vice and impersonating elementals and the phantasms of dead idiots, lunatics, murderers, suicides, rakes, drunkards, immoral women and silly people of all sorts, is, I think, difficult to say; for my own part, I am only too content to steer clear of them, and confine my attentions to trying to be of service to those apparitions that are, obviously, for some reason, made to appear by the higher occult powers.
Illiterate in all save the elementals, untouched by the larger currents of thought, drunk with their power over dolts, crazed by their immunity to challenge by their betters, they carry over into the professional class of the country the spirit of the most stupid peasantry, and degrade religion to the estate of an idiotic phobia.
The fact is, the latter is more likely than not to be "possessed" by elementals, which need scarcely be a matter of surprise when one remembers that bogs particularly Irish bogs have been haunted, from time immemorial, by the most uncouth and fantastic type of spirits. But mummies, mummies even more often than clocks and chests, are "possessed" by denizens of the occult world.
The smoke hung lazily, drifting into vague patterns and then began to coalesce into a green houri without costume. He swatted at it negligently. "Dratted sylphs. There's no controlling the elementals properly any more." He didn't seem too displeased, however, as he watched the thing dance off. Then he sobered.
Some say their attachment to a family is due to some crime perpetrated by a member of that family in the far dim past, whilst others attribute it to the fact that certain classes and races in bygone times dabbled in sorcery, thus attracting the elementals, which have haunted them ever since.
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