The subject of elementals cannot be exhausted.  There was hardly a public Stoa Lesson by Daskalos that did not at least touch on the subject of the elementals.   Daskalos considered the study  of our elementals as one of the most important for not just his students but for all human beings.

Every thought, emotion and desire creates and transmits an elemental – also called thought-form – that carries on an existence of its own. We create and regenerate two types of elementals. When negative emotion prevails over thought, we have created emotional thought-forms, or desire-thoughts. When our ideas, desires and emotions pass through reason and love, we create reasoned thought-forms, or thought-desires. An elemental can never be destroyed, only disenergized (when no longer fed with etheric vitality). Elementals of a kind collect to form powerful group elementals. If an individual, or a collection of individuals, are vibrating at the same frequency, they will attract such group elementals. Archangels also create elementals (e.g. nature spirits and angels) in the service of the Divine Plan.

Researchers of Truth understand the triadic nature of their subconscious. One chamber of the subconscious contains all the elementals composing our personality. The second chamber is the storehouse of life-giving etheric vitality. The third, and most valued chamber, is that of the Logos and the Holy Spirit.

With appropriate training, we can project and direct etheric vitality from the etheric doubles of the bodies and send it over vast distances, and perform so-called miracles. To do this we can take part of the Mind-substance of etheric vitality, give it form and project it as a mental image, outside both our gross material body and our etheric double.

This happens consciously when we form what we call “thought-desires”, but unconsciously when we form “desire-thoughts”. Jesus Christ called the latter “deaf and dumb spirits” (Mark 9:25). These two types of thought forms, because they are both living forms, we call “elementals”.

Etheric vitality is the “Bread” which comes to us from Heaven. It is the means by which we build, when rendered into elementals, the present day personality. It is also the means of cleansing and purifying the character, which ultimately serves to assimilate our personality into the Inner Self–our Self-aware Soul.

We will concern ourselves with the way of using super-substance of Mind in the creation of psycho­noetical images. Such images arise from the shaping of Mind into forms that we call “elementals”.

Our present personalities, that is to say the vehicle through which most of us experience and interpret the worlds, are compositions of  various elementals born either subconsciously, self-consciously or super-consciously. Elementals having once been created and projected, gain a material existence of their own. Upon still closer examination, we learn that each elemental owns a psychic and a noetical counterpart, which inherits the intentions of its creator.

Life as we know it in gross matter is how we ourselves fashion Mind supersubstance coupled with the communal and global environments that have been pre-shaped around us.

In this way we create different conditions in and around us, which can approach the likeness of paradises or hells, or stand somewhere in between, which is what Catholics call purgatory. We each live in a shell, more or less permeable, of our own design.

Just as the gross material body consists of many cells, organized into a working whole, so our personality consists of a network of interdependent psycho-noetical images. The cells of our personality, as we might call them, are precisely, one by one, the elementals which we create and project as a result of our desires and weaknesses, strengths and virtues.

With every thought, each glance, idea, distraction or feeling we create elementals. Even as we sleep, we are emitting elementals that will affect us and those around us.

The elementals are emitted with an intensity corresponding to the strength of the desires which gave birth to them. When they have reached their goal and served their purpose, they return to their creator to be projected once again with ever increasing power. This procedure is repeated many times, creating within our personality, either a terrible environ­ment of darkness if the elementals are of low degree, or a strong atmosphere of love if they are good thought-desires

In the same way we can poison the material body by consuming harmful food, or can cleanse it by improving the way we care for it, so we poison or cleanse our personalities.  This is how human character evolves.

But what is character and what is its relationship with our personality? We have said that our material body is some­thing which is in constant state of change. Substance enters it and other substance is discarded. Orthodox science tells us that with the passing of every seven years, not a single cell remains from the body of the seven years prior. We have the opportunity to shape our bodies and health in this con­stant process of renewal.

The same thing happens with our personality. Substance is taken in and substance is discarded. With the production and reproduction of elementals we build and rebuild our personality. Here, too, we create health or illness, contentment or dissatisfaction, and sow peace or unrest.

For most of us the construction of our personality is performed subconsciously, as we let desires and emotions dictate the character of the personality. Let us recognize the gift we have, to create and to form the holy supersubstance Mind, into heavens and hells. In a manner not unrelated to the Archangels, we have been given the authority and the responsibility to shape Mind into form. They shape the heavens without, we the heavens within.

We can identify various types of elementals. Some spring from inside the personality, others are drawn from the out­side environment. We either create elementals with our desire-emotions and thought-emotions; or our personality vibrates at a frequency common to a collection of elementals of a like kind and then attracts these elementals. The latter are the so-called “group elementals” that have been cultivated over the centuries by the perpetuation of common beliefs and actions. They can be either benign or malicious in intent. Our personality, whether weak and ill-natured or strong and compassionate, will activate these group elemen­tals.  Once activated they will cling to the host personali­ty, affecting emotions, thoughts and actions.

When such group elementals are particularly aggressive they can control our energy centers in a phenomenon similar to possession. Conversely, should they be benign and loving we might experience a sensation of great inspiration or even ecstasy.

The majority of the elementals we house are intelligent and demanding. They can force the personality to act in a cer­tain manner which creates the conditions for the elemental to be satisfied and renewed. If we are filled with elementals of greed, envy and hatred, these elementals will dic­tate to our personality actions and behaviors that will lead to great disagreements and brawls, not to mention hellish inner dissatisfaction. If we are compassionate and peaceful in nature, our elementals will lead us into situa­tions where we can be of some help and service.

Consequently, in spite of it being accepted that we do not have always full control over the condition of our material body, in the case of our personality the responsibility is ultimately exclusively our own.

If we have constructed a weak personality, we inevitably form centers of  attraction which draw to us the corresponding elementals that others have created or are creating around us, which are hovering in the psycho-noetical atmosphere. But, even in this case, it is we who have the responsibility, because we attract and assimilate only those vibrations which resonate with ourselves. We cannot accuse other people, or the conditions which prevail around us, because the acceptance and assimilation of these elementals is purely our own choice and responsibility.

All around us there are human beings who live in ignorance and darkness,  as well as others who make sensible use of Mind. There are, then, in our communal psycho-noetical environment good and bad elementals. There are angels – and demons too! It is for us to create the magnetic pole which will attract the one and repel the other. No demon can bother any human being who does not resonate with it.

On the other hand, someone who is laboring under a particular guilt, can temporarily be helped by an angelic being or through the meditation of other humans who pray for him, or by the expression of Divine Mercy. Prayer is the process of shaping and emitting loving elementals.

This help, however, is relative, for if the person in ques­tion has not matured psycho-noetically, the benefit derived will be temporarily. To be helped, the person must use this beneficial intervention as the starting point for right-thinking and development.

Let us not cast blame on our surroundings. There are many elementals around us. There are elementals, for example, of those we call alcoholics, many of whom try to present themselves as victims of society. Such people are respon­sible for their sorry state, since they have created or drawn to themselves very strong elementals, which take great will power to dis-energize. Yet the same elementals surround us all.

A common misperception prevails these days in popular psychology. Many psychotherapists believe that in order for a patient to recover he must relive certain emotions and events, venting memories and frustrations that have been plaguing the personality. In this process of “letting the steam out” more often then not the elementals surrounding a memory, rather then being weakened, are revitalized by the attention with which they are served. This method is counterproductive – except in a few cases – to the client’s recovery as it lends only more energy to the problems.

Elementals cannot be destroyed. Once an elemental has been created it will continue to exist in either an active state –when filled with etheric vitality from a personality– or in a dormant state –deprived of thought power, lying in the waiting in the Cosmic Consciousness–. Inasmuch as our personalities are composed both quantitatively and qualitatively of these elementals, in order to rid ourselves of certain elementals we must be prepared to replace elementals which are a nuisance, with more beneficial ones. When one elemental is driven out a vacuum remains which can be occupied by a new elemental of any nature. It is vital, therefore, to fill such voids with elementals that serve a constructive purpose within the personality.

We see why it is difficult for personalities to change too much, too quickly as each personality is composed of a relatively balanced and interdependent network of elementals. Suddenly to remove either large elementals, or a collection of elementals of a like kind, can seriously de-stabilize an individual, leading even to madness. The work of dis-energizing elementals must be slow and steady with much resolve. 

Elementals can never be defeated in a direct struggle. We believe that in order to move beyond the chains of the past it is best to recognize their source – using reason – and then work to replace and transcend them. We need to let go of, and not dwell on, past events. In letting go of the past — which is behind us and unchangeable –, we dis-energize the elementals that weigh us down, depriving them of their life-blood. We can then live unfettered in the present. Let today belong to today, and not the pull of yesterday, nor the push of tomorrow.

The following references are from the Parables book by Dr. Stylianos Atteshlis (Daskalos) in which he address the  parables of Joshua Immanuel the Christ which mention the elementals:

Page 13: Unclean spirits are elementals (Matt 12: 43-45)
Page 95: Elementals can only be de-energized, they can not be killed.
Page 96 : The study of elementals is a most important one in our life on the planet (earth).

For excerpts from a Stoa Lesson on the elementals please select HERE