f them has had
sufficient strength to materialize and become for the moment visible
to physical sight. A curious fact which deserves mention here is that
even after the passage of the mother into the devachanic condition the
love which she pours out upon the children she thinks of as
surrounding her will react upon the real children still living in this
world, and will often support the guardian elemental which she
created while on earth, until her dear ones themselves pass away in
turn. As Madame Blavatsky remarks, "her love will always be felt by
the children in the flesh; it will manifest in their dreams and often
in various events, in providential protections and escapes--for love
is a strong shield, and is not limited by space or time" (_Key to
Theosophy_, p. 150). All the stories of the intervention of guardian
angels must not, however, be attributed to the action of artificial
elementals, for in many cases such "angels" have been the souls of
either living or recently departed human beings, and they have also
occasionally, though rarely, been Devas.

This power of an earnest desire, especially if frequently repeated, to
create an active elemental which ever presses forcefully in the
direction of its own fulfilment, is the scientific explanation of what
devout but unphilosophical people describe as answers to prayer. There
are occasions, though at present these are rare, when the Karma of the
person so praying is such as to permit of assistance being directly
rendered to him by an Adept or his pupil, and there is also the still
rarer possibility of the intervention of a Deva or some friendly
nature-spirit; but in all these cases the easiest and most obvious
form for such assistance to take would be the strengthening and the
intelligent direction of the elemental already formed by the wish.

A very curious and instructive instance of the extreme persistence of
these artificial elementals under favourable circumstances came under
the notice of one of our investigators quite recently. All readers of
the literature of such subjects are aware that many of our ancient
families are supposed to have associated with them a traditional
death-warning--a phenomenon of one kind or another which foretells,
usually some days beforehand, the approaching decease of the head of
the house. A picturesque example of this is the well-known story of
the white bird of the Oxenhams, whose appearance has ever since the
time of Queen Eliz