130 @ The Secret Liji of Nature
that to see it requires a purer form of clairvoyance. Whereas fairies can
be seen, especially out of the corner of the eye, angels, says van Doren,
are rarely seen with the physical eye. Her theory is that the central part
of the retina is used so much for ordinary sight that it does not respond
to the more delicate vibrations of light fiom fairies, let alone angels,
whereas the rest of the retina is fresh and more suitable for such uses.
To those who can see the angelic hosts, they appear to fill all space,
a vast orchestra and choir gathered in tiers, arranged in groups, each
with its own characteristic colors and cosmic chants, a sort of Jacob's
ladder of development, no rung missing.
As Hodson describes them: "Every atom of their auras is glowing
and shining with the appropriate hues of their particular chord of ex-
istence, and the space all around them is shimmering with the irides-
cent radiance of their auras and the effects of their song upon the
surrounding elemental essence."
To Hodson, angels serve somewhat as electrical transformers, rheo-
stats of resistance, stepping down the voltage from on high. "They ap-
pear to receive in themselves the primordial, creative energy and, as if
by resistance to its flow, reduce the voltage, slow it down." In Hodson's
romantic language: "They hear the divine song, direct and re-echo it,
rank upon rank, until it is brought to a voltage where it will build in-
stead of destroy, as it might do in its naked potency."
By self-unification with this descending "word-force," says Hodson,
and particularly with such streams of power as are vibrating at fre-
quencies that are identical with those of their own nature, the angels
amplifji and augment its form-producing power.
Hodson describes what he calls "the music of the divine idea" de-
scending to the world of form, or Rupa plane. There the appropriate
angel receives and reechoes it until it is "heard" at the astral level, fiom
where it influences the elemental essence. Again it is reechoed and
slowed down until it reaches the etheric world, where it uses etheric
matter to assume shapes and beautiful designs. Magnetic fields of force
are there set up containing geometric designs. In these lines of force the
nature spirits play, thereby increasing their formative tendency as they
assist in building natural physical forms, atom by atom, molecule by