124 @ The Secret Lfe of Natureproducing thought-forms, as do humans, but theirs are deemed to be
not as concrete as those of humans, though possibly put to better use
as they communicate with one another by flashings of splendid color;
it is a language not as definite as ours but more expressive.
Steiner describes deva impulses, emotions, desires, and wishes-in-
visible in humans-as effects of light: radiant, flashing with a myriad
hues, like rainbows changing colors. To Hodson, the deva's aura is less
defined than the human aura.The colors are more fluid, more like a
flame than a cloud, and whereas human auras appeared to him as bril-
liant but delicate clouds of glowing gas, the devas' looked more like a
mass of fire. He describes a deva's natural body at the astral level as "iri-
descent, changing, pulsating with astral forces," not limited to a fixed or
definite shape, but often losing all semblance of human form, seeming
to become "whirling masses of force and vital energy in which appear
graceful wing-like formations, long streaming curves, a suggestion of
waving arms, of hair flying in the wind." In the deva's consciousness
Hodson found nothing that could correspond with pain, disappoint-
ment, depression, fear, anger, or desire; nor was there any sign of strain.
To account for this, Hodson points out-in his quaintly puritanical lan-
guage-that devas do not have to resist the "promptings of the lower
nature with which the human aspirant to the spiritual life is assailed."
But like the angels in John Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost, who
make love to one another for the pleasure of fulfillment rather than to
beget children, Hodson's angels practice union and self-identification
with one another not for reproduction of the species but to share their
life and consciousness with other forms of life, "attaining such a large
measure of self-identification with the life and consciousness of the
object of their labors that Buddhic and nirvanic power is released into
both the life and the form at the level at which they are working."
Leadbeater further explains that angelic and devic beings cannot af-
fect things on earth directly because of their higher levels of conscious-
ness, so they use the services of nature spirits to create all kinds of objects
and creatures in the material world. In the development of the earliest
forms-mineral, vegetable, and animal-devas made use of fairies and
elementals to evolve the most beautiful and responsive examples.