Worldwide Fairyland @ 63
stimulating energy of the sun and the raw material of the form-to-be."
The growth of a plant seed, regarded as the customary and inevitable
result of its being placed in a warm and moist soil, would never take
place, says Hodson, if the fairy builders were absent. "Nature's crafts-
men must be present to weave and convert the constituents of soil into
the structure of the plant."
The normal working body of a fairy or sprite engaged in assisting
growth process, according to Hodson, is not of the human nor of any
other definite form. "They have no clear-cut shape and their worlung
bodies can be described only as clouds of color, rather hazy, somewhat
luminous, with a bright spark-like nucleus.They cannot be defined in
terms of clear-cut form any more than you could describe a tongue of
flame. It is in this kind of body that they work, inside, that is, inter-
penetrating, the plant structure."
Hodson further describes these cloudhke bodies as being of the na-
ture of a magnetic field, and their work on cell growth and the circu-
lation of sap is much like "the movement of iron filings by a magnet,
the magnetic influence being supplied by the currents of their own
vital energies."
Some of the nature spirits are seen to work above ground and some
among the roots below. Others appear to specialize in color, responsi-
ble for the "painting of flowers, the needed brush being the streaming
motion of their own cloud-like bodies."
Observing some bulbs growing in a bowl, Hodson described large
numbers of small submicroscopic "etheric creatures" moving about in
and around the growing plants, visible etherically as points of light,
playing around the stems and passing in and out of the growing plant.
"They have the power to rise into the air to a height equal to that
of the plant, but I have not seen any rise further than that.They absorb
something from the atmosphere, re-enter the tissue of the plant and
discharge it.This process is going on continually: the creatures are en-
tirely self-absorbed, sufficiently self-conscious to experience a dim
sense of well-being and to feel affection for the plant which they re-
gard as their body. They have no consciousness apart from this. The
bulbs give the impression of great power and concentrated energy.
The color is pinlush-violet, with a more intense light in the center, and