Worldwide Fairyland fl 65
to build up wings of radiating energy. When a more objective self-
expression is entered upon, the creature clothes itself more or less in-
stinctively in the matter of the ether.This culminates in the temporary
creation of an etheric body, "ensouled, inter-penetrated, and sur-
rounded by its astral creator."
The denser "etheric vehicle" is taken on, according to occult tradi-
tion, for at least two reasons: an etheric body worn by a nature spirit
gains for it an added sense of individuality or entity. Otherwise it feels
unselfconsciously diffused throughout a group. Also, by closer contact
with the physical world, the etheric vehicle provides an increased vi-
tality and vividness of life, and this gives pleasure. The etheric body of
a plant, say occultists, is created-before the physical body-out of en-
ergy organized according to a thought-form or prototype, which holds
and molds the grosser material. The etheric vehicle also lasts longer,
well after the plant's physical body begins to disintegrate.
To build these etheric bodies, nature spirits are required to emerge
&om the more tenuous astral level into the denser etheric level, where
they become easily visible to clairvoyants. In the etheric they are said
to dance, play, and see one another and, to some extent, human beings,
whom they imitate and on occasion become attached to if the human
is sufficiently sensitive to respond to their presence and even comrnu-
nicate with them.
Most illuminating is Hodson's remark that to etheric sight, al-
though some of the nature spirits are less than a quarter of an inch in
size, "they may be sub-microscopic from the point of view of solid
measurement."
This relativity of size adds an eerie aspect to the clairvoyant's ven-
ture into fairyland. When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle completed his study
of the evidence adduced by Gardner, Hodson, and others as to the na-
ture of the spirit world, he felt himself to be "on the edge of a new
continent, separated not by oceans but by subtle and surmountable
psychic conditions."
This new multidimensional world, beyond the limiting confines of
our three dimensions, was to be further explored and charted by
Leadbeater, Besant, and other psychics as they blazed a trail for physi-
cists deeper into the sinews of the atom.