Sylphs are elemental spirits of air. Their name comes from the Greek silphe, meaning "butterfly" or "moth." They often appear as bird-winged faeries and according to mythology, tend to shy away from humans, preferring to live alone on remote mountaintops, where they can fly with the birds. They tend to be mercurial loners. As a guide, they help us find inspiration and creativity.
Elementals, or Spirits of the Elements. The creatures evolved in the Four Kingdoms, or Elements -- Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, except a few of the higher kinds and their rulers. They are rather the forces of nature than ethereal men and women.
The medieval mystics taught that these elemental beings were of four general kinds:
those arising in and frequenting the element of fire - salamanders;
those arising in and frequenting the element air- sylphs;
those arising in and frequenting the element water- undines ;
those arising in and frequenting the element earth - gnomes.
An elemental is a being who has entered our universe on the lowest plane or in the lowest world , degree, or step on the rising stairway of life; and this stairway of life begins in any universe at its lowest stage, and ends for that universe in its highest stage - the universal kosmic spirit . Thus the elemental passes from the elemental stage through all the realms of being as it rises along the stairway of life, passing through the human stage, becoming superhuman, quasi-divine - a quasi-god- then becoming a god . Thus did we humans first enter this present universe .
Sylphs are beings of wide-open spaces and the air. Sometimes they are depicted as cloud beings. Sylphs are responsible for the myths of "angels", the winged protectors of the Garden of Eden. Their attitudes embody the extremes of nature, mercurial and intense. Most of all, they defend the high peaks and wilderness mountains that are their home.
Sylphs are immortal non-physical beings which have and are souls. These beings are the artists who form the clouds, in their wispy and thin forms, e.g., horsetails, feathers, etc. The typical cirrus, and cirronimbus formations are expressions of the Sylphs. Sylphs are not typically visible to the untrained eye. Sylphs do inhabit the same volume of space as the air, but their actual Being resides in the physical vacuum, as a coherent holographic form of energy.
This holographic form is typical of many varieties of Consciousness, including the Consciousness of Human Beings.Sylphs look like white balls of light, darting around the sky rapidly unless they are involved in a creation, in which case they will remain in place for a while. One must learn to distinguish between the sylphs and the communications balls that the mountains and clouds and so on use to communicate with one another. The key is in the emotional content of each, as usual. The sylph is itself a Being, while the the white communications balls are devices sent between one Being and another. Also, communications balls are usually slower moving than the observable activites of sylphs.
Sylphs are loners, content to soar the skies with the eagles. They care little for the machinations and politics of "ground folk", and they rarely interfere with changeling society. Like trolls, sylphs hold their word of honor to be inviolate, and once sworn to protect something, they will defend it to (or even past) their death.
Like the sidhe, sylphs are very regal in manner and bearing. Theirs is an ancient and proud legacy, and it is dying out. Fewer and fewer sylphs fly as the modern world creeps in. Most sylphs feel that this is the end of their race, that they will be the first of the kiths to slip into the Fimbulwinter. It is for this reason that they have come down from their mountains and rejoined changeling society in large numbers. If they are to die, then at least they will be remembered for the honor, glory and majesty that is inherent to their kind.
Morna's Story
