Lecture XXVII

Naturally man continually does all this in ordinary life, but he does it in an unsystematic way, creating contradictory beings. Art consists in working harmoniously upwards from the physical to higher planes. In rituals, through definite acts, the aim is to produce not contradictory but harmonious beings. At present man is not in a position to bring these things into harmony. But for everything man creates in this way on the astral plane there are certain directing beings. So we have a world of elemental beings around us with a king. Among the Indians the king of the gnomes is called Kshiti, the highest of the gnomes; the highest being among the undines: Varuna; the highest being among the sylphs: Vayu, and everything having its consciousness in fire is directed by the king of fire: Agni. In all activity connected with fire, water and so on we have to do with these particular Deva-beings. All the fire we have here on Earth is the substance that is woven out of the beings which belong to Agni. Ceremonial magic is the lowest kind of sorcery and consists in making use of certain specially devised tricks on the physical plane in order to create definite forms and beings on the astral plane. Schools exist today in which ceremonial magic is still exercised. Such usages cause great attraction towards the astral world and very frequently result in suicide, because then a person is almost exclusively active in the astral world and has become unaccustomed to using the physical world for its rightful purpose. He has developed a partiality for the other world and the physical body is often a hindrance.