ts population. This vast kingdom exists in the physical world
also, for many of its orders wear etheric bodies and are only just beyond
the range of ordinary physical sight. Indeed, circumstances not
infrequently occur under which they can be seen, and in many lonely
mountain districts these appearances are traditional among the peasants, by
whom they are commonly spoken of as fairies, good people, pixies or
brownies.

They are protean, but usually prefer to wear a miniature human form. Since
they are not yet individualized, they may be thought of almost as etheric
and astral animals; yet many of them are intellectually quite equal to
average humanity. They have their nations and types just as we have, and
they are often grouped into four great classes, and called the spirits of
earth, water, fire and air. Only the members of the last of these four
divisions normally confine their manifestation to the astral world, but
their numbers are so prodigious that they are everywhere present in it.

Another great kingdom has its representatives here--the kingdom of the
angels (called in India the devas). This is a body of beings who stand far
higher in evolution than man, and only the lowest fringe of their hosts
touches the astral world--a fringe whose constituent members are perhaps at
about the level of development of what we should call a distinctly good
man.

We are neither the only nor even the principal inhabitants of our solar
system; there are other lines of evolution running parallel with our own
which do not pass through humanity at all, though they must all pass
through a level corresponding to that of humanity. On one of these other
lines of evolution are the nature-spirits above described, and at a higher
level of that line comes this great kingdom of the angels. At our present
level of evolution they come into obvious contact with us only very rarely,
but as we develop we shall be likely to see more of them--especially as the
cyclic progress of the world is now bringing it more and more under the
influence of the Seventh Ray. This Seventh Ray has ceremonial for one of
its characteristics, and it is through ceremonial such as that of the
Church or of Freemasonry that we come most easily into touch with the
angelic kingdom.

When all the man's lower emotions have worn themselves out--all emotions, I
mean, which have in them any thought of self--his life in the astral world
is over, and the ego passes on into the