Deep into Fairyland @ 51
head and body, but no resemblance to the human shape, transparent as
glass, shining with a weird green light of their own. They seemed to
rise up from the depths, slow and heavy of movement, gazing vacantly
as if with an obtuse and limited intelligence.
Far down in the depths Hodson could see huge filamentoid, veg-
etablelike, etheric forms with little or no external consciousness drift-
ing about with the currents. Even farther out to sea he spotted a group
of great sea devas, heads crowned, huge, solemn, majestic rulers of the
seas, faintly reminiscent of the classical Greek rendition of the sea god
Neptune.
Watching the incoming tide on the west coast of England in April
of 1922, Hodson could see up the coast and out to sea. The air was
densely populated with countless sea spirits at various levels of evolu-
tionary progress, from smaller human-shaped beings, rejoicing among
the breakers, through the orders of large sea spirits resembling both fish
and birds but usually with human heads.
It seemed to Hodson that as the electric vitality of the incoming
tide increased, hosts of sea spirits would clothe themselves in etheric
matter in order to participate more vividly in the marvelously refresh-
ing and vitalizing magnetism created and released as the tide came
higher and higher.
He described them as rushing toward the breaker line to enter the
tidal magnetism as it discharged upward and forward during the whole
period of flow, increasing to a peak at high-water mark. As they entered
the magnetic field, sea spirits became visible in human shape, giving off
brilliant flashes of white light. Slowly they absorbed the magnetism,
experiencing a sensation of extreme delight up to a stage when even
their ethereal organism could contain no more. A moment's pause as
they assumed an expression of the most radiant joy and vivid vitality,
surrounded by an aureole of light, then, at saturation point, the whole
force dissipated in something like an electric discharge. Slowly the
creature faded out of etheric vision in a state of dreamy inaction, retir-
ing once more to the astral plane.
When the ocean reverted to the comparative quiet of low water,
the beings, said Hodson, retired to the astral plane to "dwell upon the