The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies

They shall be protected against the shots of the elves—"those arrows that fly in the darkness." original: "esas flechas que vuelan en la oscuridad"; a reference to Psalm 91:5, often associated in folklore with "elf-shot" or Neolithic flint arrowheads. As is well known, superstition explained Neolithic arrowheads as the weapons of fairies; it does not necessarily follow that a tradition from a Neolithic people suggests a belief in fairies. However, we cannot absolutely deny that some memory of an earlier race—a shy and fugitive people who used stone weapons—may play a part in fairy legends.

From this, Mr. Kirk slides into that singular theory of primitive metaphysics original: "metafísica salvaje" which somewhat resembles the Platonic doctrine of Ideas. In the belief of the North American Indians, all things have their ideal counterpart or "Father" somewhere.

Thus, when a donkey was seen for the first time, it was regarded as "the father" or "the archetype of rabbits." Now, those who possess "double vision" term: second sight see the "double man," "the double," "the astral body," "the specter," or whatever one wishes to call it, of a living person; and that is simply their counterpart in the abstruse world.

The industry of the Society for Psychical Research has collected much material:

The evidence, whatever its value, for the existence of the "Double-Man" is sufficient. We may call it a hallucination, which does not greatly increase our knowledge. From personal experience and the experience of friends, I am forced to believe that we can perceive a person who is not actually present in the vision—who may be in the next room, or downstairs, or a hundred miles away. This experience has happened to sensible, unimaginative, healthy people, free from superstition and in circumstances that were in no way mystical; for example, when the person supposed to be seen was not dying, nor in distress, nor in any condition other than the most normal. In fact, the cases where there was nothing abnormal in the state of the person seen are much more numerous, according to my personal knowledge, than those in which the person seen was dying, dead, or excited. The opposite seems to be the rule in the experience of the Society for Psychical Research. "The actual proportion of coincidental and non-coincidental cases, after all deduction of possible sources of error, was in fact such that the probability against the supposition of casual coincidence became enormous, assuming ordinary accuracy on the part of the informants" (Professor Sidgwick, Proceedings of the S.P.R., vol. viii, p. 607). About 17,000 responses were collected. Apparently, we must accept these facts as neither very abnormal nor very unusual, and undoubtedly as capable of some subjective explanation.

But when such things occurred among the imaginative and uneducated inhabitants of the Highlands, they became the foundations and proofs of the doctrine of "second sight"—proofs also of the primitive metaphysical doctrine of counterparts and correspondences. "They claim that every Element and different state of Being has Animals that resemble those of another Element." By people who do not know this, "the Roman invention of particularly assigned Guardian Angels" has been promoted. The Guardian Angel of Roman superstition is simply the Double or "Co-walker," the type (in the unseen world) of the man in the visible world. Thus are specters and ghosts explained by our Presbyterian psychologist Referring to Robert Kirk, who was a minister. and his Highland flock. All things universally have their types, their reflection: the type, reflection, or "co-walker" of a man may be seen at a distance or near him during his life; moreover, it may be seen after his death. The man gifted with second sight can distinguish the substantial figure from its aerial counterpart. Sometimes the reflection anticipates the action of reality: "an image of a man entering a house, by which the people knew that the person of that likeness was going to visit them in a few days."

To most of us, it has happened to meet a person in the street whom we take for an acquaintance. It is not him, but we meet the real man a few steps further on. Thus, a distinguished officer, who was home on leave, met a friend, as he tells me, in Piccadilly. The other passed without noticing: the officer hesitated to follow him, did not do so, and about fifty yards later met his man. Probably there is no more to this than resemblance and coincidence, but this is the kind of thing that the inhabitants of the Highlands incorporated into their metaphysics. ^1

The end of the "co-walker" is obscure. "This copy, echo, or living image finally goes to its own flock." Therefore, ghosts have a brief life and, according to M. d'Assier in his work on the customs of the posthumous man (The Posthumous Man original: L'Homme Posthume), they rarely survive more than a century. With an aerial being of this type, the Highlanders explained false or morbid appetites. A "joint-eater" term: a parasite or spirit that consumes the essence of a person's food inhabited the patient, "feeding like two when he eats." As a rule, fairies obtain their food as witches do: they take "the marrow and the milk from their neighbors' cows for their own herd, throwing a 'deceiver' original: "desbrozador" a great distance by aerial magic, pulling only a tap fixed to a post, which will bring the milk from as far away as a bull can be heard to roar." This is illustrated in the drinking scene in Faust. This type of accusation is familiar in witchcraft trials.