Note: This short piece is part of an essay called, The Four Elemental Realms. It describes the four elements on the astral plane. And that essay is part of a book called, The Perfection of Wisdom.
They did not teach me about sylphs in high school physics nor in Sunday school class alas. Magicians often fail to learn their names since magic is considered to be a more serious game. Bardon says sylphs do not at all like men. But I am not completely stupid.
Take a breath and feel air like wind toss and turn as it winds through the caverns and ravines and the mountain peaks within your lungs. Feel all the winds of the earth gathering into your breath as you breathe in.
Is there any real reason to learn about sylphs? Not really. Unless, unless you an artist, a musician, a poet, a performing artist who works with the spoken word or a negotiator who must find the right word, perhaps someone interested in enlightenment, a weatherman, a storm chaser, an ecologist, a climatologist whose concern is the onset of the next ice age, a sky diver, a glider pilot, a hang glider, a farmer, a sailor or ship captain, and you might be worried about rain and droughts, preventing hurricanes from hitting major cities or the tornadoes that run about, and there is pranayama, and breathing in yoga, and then again you might be Elijah who has returned-he was a master weather controller, far better than the Dalai Lamas. Or perhaps you are one of those who seeks to attain astral or physical immortality in which case the sylphs realm is part of your trade.
You could say that if you think like a sylph, perceive like a sylph, act like a sylph, feel like a sylph, and have the harmony of a sylph then you are a sylph.
What is it to think like a sylph? Imagine the blue sky is your mind. To perceive like a sylph? Wind, air, and atmosphere are an extension of your body. You are so sensitive you can sense the faintest touch of wind as it moves among the leaves of a tree or arm and arm you stroll with the scent of a flower over a hill yonder. Sylphs are very perceptive beings.
How does a sylph act? They often move rapidly about in the air ready to go anywhere. It is their sense of freedom-if you have it why not use it? But what do sylphs actually do? In a minute I'll take a look at one or two.
How does a sylph feel? In your body you feel relaxed almost beyond human understanding. Imagine floating weightless and the entire atmosphere is your habitat. But as for feelings themselves? There are many kinds of sylphs. Some need a twisting tornado to let go and feel the full exhilaration flow. Some need the hurricane to guide like the captain on the bridge of a ship. He stand watch, charts a course, and faithfully delivers a cargo of wind, rain, storm surge, whatever is required to balance hot and cold, wet and dry, low and high.
Some sylphs simply wander about in the sky where they sense anything disturbing-dead air there or too much rain in that valley yonder. And then they drop down and set things in motion so that the disturbance vanishes into thin air. Sylphs have as many feelings as there are winds and weather conditions.
What is it to have a sylph's sense of harmony? What is that inner quality? Why did Beethoven compose the Ninth Symphony or Schiller the Ode to Joy? Why did Shakespeare write The Tempest or Isadora Duncan dance? Overcoming and transcending limitations; taking conflict like taking the darkness of the night and changing the perspective by adding Dawn's first light; or seizing the injustice, the unfairness, or something out of balance and restoring it to its original purpose-so every need is met and every desire reaches a new height where it breaks free in release finally attaining oneness with beauty.
And so if you think, perceive, act, feel, and have the harmony of a sylph and their sense of freedom too, have you now made the sky your home?
If for a gnome you dream the dreams of the land, what is the deepest dreams the sylphs know? I described it once in a poem:
My mind is the sky, pure, clear, and open. Its air flows through my chest. Its winds are my breath.
Now then, let us try wandering about in the air as a sylph. There is a sylph now. He races by me. I follow behind. He goes a ways and then stops and sniffs the air. Did I ever mention-do not smoke cigarettes a month or two before you contact sylphs or mermaids. It is like kissing a woman and having bad breath.
The sylph I am watching catches the scent of eucalyptus from far below in a forest. It could be this sylph has a flair for aroma therapy. The right scent suppresses certain symptoms and awakens greater harmony. The scent of eucalyptus for this sylph is like two lovers who discover what is hidden in each other's hearts. Can you feel what this sylph feels? There is an inner connection to another in which you are so attuned that you do not even have to claim the other's body to express your joy.
How about another sylph? There is one hovering over the rim of a deep canyon. He is right there where the wind rises from far below and rolls over the edge and then sails across a plateau. What is he doing?
The wind for this sylph is filled with passion. It craves a hunt where satiation derives from stalking and then invading low pressure zones. The wind twists, splits, and divides. This wind is to a desert valley what a flashflood is to a stream. It crashes against hillsides and pounds against whatever blocks its movement awakening dust devils to stumble about as it passes by.
The sylph is fascinated as he watches. The wind is so orderly as it rises from the canyon here and then so wild and unpredictable as it journeys there. It is a lot more than a woman letting down her hair. This sylph enjoys the show. The dissonance in the air flow strikes an emotional chord inside the soul of the sylph that he wants to get to know.
Orif, my patron, says to me, When it comes to this air spirit named Parahim you must move very carefully. Imagine the blue sky way up high. Nothing exists but the enlightened mind. The only sensation is weightlessness. And there is a great stillness and an even greater longing to achieve harmony.
Now match your aura with hers so that when she looks at you she sees herself in another form. The clouds, the winds, and the storm are your outer form, like a cloak you wear, but you are the life underneath and animating these natural things. You are the unfolding of all the desires of the winds.
She is so sensitive she feels the fingers of ice spreading across the surface of a pond, the breath of frost forming on a window at dawn, the icicle dripping, the leaf falling, the trail of eddies from the bird's wing, and the rippling in the air when the birds sing. For her, air is a harp and a violin.
Ah, you have reached the point where her thoughts are yours-you see through her eyes and hear with her ears. You feel with her body. If lovers knew how to do this just seeing each other would create bliss.
In the sky above the clouds there are kingdoms of the soul where men may go to banish every sorrow. Here there is no fear. To breathe this air is to feel freedom everywhere. And the law here is harmony. Every conflict is resolved because the mind is so open, vast, and clear it encompasses the entire world below.
The air is a harp and a violin. If you listen carefully you can hear them playing in the wind and the song is the heart of Parahim singing.
Parahim says, There was once a woman who played a harp. And when she played it was my fingers, my voice, and my art.
The wind that glides through the forest, hides among the elms, sits on the shoulders of the Oaks, jumps down and twirls leaves on the ground, then races off to the sea where white caps dance free, the spray flying in the air like the hair of a woman in a breeze.
There was once a woman who play a harp and those who heard that voice sing, for a few moments or hours, put off their mortality and stepped into the future and walked among their deepest dreams.
See also The Sylph. For more on elemental beings see my book, Mermaids, Sylphs, Gnomes, and Salamanders.
