62 @ Thesecret LfefeNature
as wheat and oats, and later through bees. "Its next stage is to be en-
souled as a beautiful fairy with an etheric body to live on the surface
of the earth. Later still they will become sylphs and salamanders with
only astral bodies, on their way to higher levels."
Although, says Leadbeater, there is a good deal of overlapping be-
tween kingdoms as spirits evolve, the progression is rational. "A life
which ensouled one of our great forest trees could never descend to
animate a swarm of mosquitoes, nor even a family of rats or mice. On
the other hand such a step could be appropriate for that part of the
'life-wave' which had left the vegetable kingdom at the level of the daisy
or the dandelion."
With nature spirits, death, say occultists, is not as it is with humans.
Instead, there comes a time when a spirit's energy seems exhausted, and
it becomes tired of life. When that happens its etheric body grows
more diaphanous until it is left as an astral entity to live for a while in
that world among the spirits who represent its next stage of develop-
ment. From that astral life, it fades back into its group soul before being
provided with another astral and etheric body suitable for the devel-
opment of another life.
Leadbeater describes another group of elementals that look after
flowers.These, though beautiful, are really only thought-forms "created
by a greater being in charge of the evolution of the vegetable king-
dom." Not really living creatures, or only temporarily so, they have no
evolving to do, no reincarnating life. When they have done their
work they dissolve into the surrounding atmosphere, just as do human
thought-forms.
Leadbeater explains that when one of the "great ones" has a new
idea connected with the kingdom of plants or flowers under his
charge, he creates a thought-form to carry out the idea. This usually
takes the form of an etheric model of the flower or of a little creature
that hangs around the plant or the flower all through the time that the
buds are forming and gradually builds them into the shape and color
to match the thought-form. But as soon as the plant has fully grown or
the flower opened, the creature's work is over and it dissolves.
According to Hodson, the prime function of the nature spirits in
the realm of plants is to furnish a vital connecting link between "the