They Live!

Eliphas Levi, in Histoire de la Magie, (p. 116) gives

the following explanation of the supposed origin of

" elementals " known by spiritists as " dwellers on

the threshold. "

He states that; " according to the best authorities,

these spirits (larves) possess an ethereal body formed

of the vapour of blood. That is why they seek blood

and why they were supposed, formerly, to feed on the

smoke of sacrifices.

" They are the Incubi and Succubi, the monstrous

children of impure dreams.

" When sufficiently condensed to be visible, they

are only a vapour coloured by the reflection of a picture

and, having no independent life, they imitate the life

of him who evokes them as the shadow does the body.

" They generally manifest around the persons of

idiots and beings devoid of morality whose isolation

has led them to develop irregular habits.

" Owing to the feeble cohesion of the parts of their

fantastic bodies, they fear the open air, fire, and above

all, the point of swords, and as they live only by the

life of those who have created or evoked them, they

become the vaporous appendices of the real body of

their parents. So it can happen that an injury inflicted

on them might actually react upon the parent body,

as the unborn child is really wounded or disfigured

by an impression made upon its mother.

" These elementals draw the vital heat from persons

in good health and quickly exhaust those who are

weak.

" They are the source of the stories of vampires,

stories only too true and periodically recurrent, as

everyone knows.

" That is why one feels a chill of the atmosphere

when approaching mediums who are persons obsessed

by these spirits that never manifest in the presence of

anyone able to unveil the mystery of their monstrous

birth. They are children of an exalted imagination or

unbalanced mentality... "

- Occult Theocracy - Lady Queenborough

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