Concerning the classes of spiritual and occult beings, of which
there are three general grades: Small nature-beings (elementals), Daimons,
and Gods.
* Elementals of the lower psychic (or "lower astral") planes. These are the beings contacted by ceremonial magicians. Entities of this class sometimes tend to attach themselves parasitacaly to human psyches, and feed off our emotions and base desires.
* Elementals of the "etheric" or subtle physical planes intermediate between psychic and the physical. There would seem to be two types of etheric planes, the "higher", which are supra-physical, creative and holistic in nature, and the "lower", which are sub-physical and concerned with purely materialistic forces. In the follow-up questions to one of his lectures (The Etherisation of the Blood, pp.39-42), the Christian Theosophist Rudolph Steiner refers to these latter "fallen ethers" as the counter-reflection of the higher planes. It is from these lower planes, he claims., that the forces of electricity, magnetism, and what he called "terrible forces of destruction" (which has been taken to refer to nuclear power) ultimately originate.
* Finally, there are the elementals or subtle consciousnesses of gross physical matter. These are the gnomes, undines, etc refrerred to by Paracelsus and others.
All these "elemental" beings can no more be considerred "mortal"
than can a wave on the surface of the ocean. The term simply isn't
applicable. Just as a wave appears on the surface of the ocean, then
returns back to the undifferentiated mass of water from which it comes,
to reappear again elsewhere, so do these "elementals" emerge from the undifferentiated
continuum of "elemental essence" (to give the Theosophical term) and return
back to it again.
But it is not even the emanations of the Atzilutic/Noetic Gods that manifest through religious thought-forms and memes, but rather emanations stemming from a lower hierarchy, the Psychic Gods. It is these Psychic Gods that may be perceived by exceptional clairvoyants (but not by someone whose clairvoyance is limited to the astral and lower mental planes). They would thus constitute the afore-mentioned "devas" or "Shining Ones" proper (as distinct from the "devas" as nature-spirits or elementals). They also constitute those mythopoetic (myth-generating) forces or entities that Carl Jung called "archetypes"; that is, the Archetypes-in-themselves, as distinct from the forms the archetypes take in specific collective human cultural and racial memories.
So, to sum up, the "elementals" and "devas" are the nethermost
expressions or extensions of the daimons, the daimons are the nethermost
expressions or extensions or emanations of the secondary gods, and the
secondary or derived gods are in turn the emanations or extensions of the
Primary Gods.
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