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Updated: June 2, 2025
As a general rule, whenever silly tricks or practical jokes are played at a séance, we may infer the presence either of low-class nature-spirits, or of human beings who were of a sufficiently degraded type to find pleasure in such idiotic performances during life.
It seems to us that the only difficult step in such a simple and direct evolution of the idea of a beneficent Supreme Being is the conception of gods or spirits that perform definite functions, such as Bali Atap, who guards the house, and the gods that preside over harvesting and war, as distinct from such gods or nature-spirits as Balingo and Bali Sungei.
In this name the word Deva must not, however, be taken in the sense in which we have been using it, for it is not over the Deva kingdom but over the four "elements" of earth, water, air, and fire, with their indwelling nature-spirits and essences, that these four Kings rule.
We might almost look upon the nature-spirits as a kind of astral humanity, but for the fact that none of them not even the highest possess a permanent reincarnating individuality.
Many a story illustrative of this curious characteristic may be found among the village gossip of the peasantry in almost any lonely mountainous district, and any one who has been in the habit of attending séances for physical phenomena will recollect instances of practical joking and silly though usually good-natured horseplay, which always indicate the presence of some of the lower orders of the nature-spirits.
By its means nearly all the physical phenomena of the séance-room are produced, and it is also the agent in most cases of stone-throwing or bell-ringing in haunted houses, such results as these latter being brought about either by blundering efforts to attract attention made by some earth-bound human entity, or by the mere mischievous pranks of some of the minor nature-spirits belonging to our third class.
The nature-spirits form an enormous kingdom, some of whose members exist in the astral world, and make a large part of its population. This vast kingdom exists in the physical world also, for many of its orders wear etheric bodies and are only just beyond the range of ordinary physical sight.
This has actually happened, sometimes because the thought-forms were ensouled by playful nature-spirits, or more often because some 'dead' novelist, watching on the astral plane the development of the plan of his fellow-author, thought that he could improve upon it, and chose this method of putting forward his suggestions.
+376+. The venerated dead stood apart, as a rule, from the nature-spirits and the gods, but these different classes sometimes coalesced, as has been remarked above, in popular usage. The powers and functions of the dead were not essentially different from those of the divinities proper, particularly in the simpler stages of society.
Even then the astral corpse still remains, but when it is quite without any trace of its former life we call it a "shell". Of itself a shell cannot communicate at a séance, or take any action of any sort; but such shells are frequently seized upon by sportive nature-spirits and used as temporary habitations.
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