Sylph

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Ariel and Prospero in Shakespeare's The Tempest

The sylphs, air spirits[1] or elementary beings of the air weave and work in the airy-warm, interspersed with light, in the movements of the clouds and the wind, from the finest breeze to the mighty storm. They also include various elves and the gigantic storm spirits. Their best-known representatives in poetry are the air spirit Ariel, who appears in Shakespeare's The Tempest and also appears in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, as well as the elf king Oberon and the elf queen Titania from A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Origin and Nature of the Sylphs

Sylphs are elementary beings that emerged from the hierarchy of the Angeloi

„136“ (Lit.:GA 64)

. They bring the light ether to the plant and, together with the undines, plasticise the primordial plant. After withering, this plant form "trickles" down into the earth, where it is perceived and preserved by the gnomes. This is the actual feminine of the plant.

The sylphs have an astral body, an etheric body, a physical body and another member that belongs to the third elementary kingdom.

The Sylphs and the Animal and Plant Kingdom

„Where animal and plant touch, there the sylphs work. The sylphs are bound to the element of air, they guide the bees to the flowers. Thus we owe almost all useful knowledge of beekeeping to the old traditions, and especially in beekeeping we can learn a lot from them. For what exists nowadays as science about bees is completely permeated with error, and the old wisdom, which has been propagated by tradition, is only disturbed by it. Science proves to be something useless. Only the old hand grips are useful, the origin of which is unknown, because at that time man used the spiritual world as a guide.“ (Lit.:GA 98, p. 91)

The Relation of the Sylphs to the Human Will

The sylphs are related to the human will:

„And likewise in the aeriform is contained a sum of elementary beings. All these beings, the more they approach the aeriform, lose more and more their longing for multiplicity. We have the feeling that even number is no longer of any help to us in reaching up to the aeriform. Unity is striven for more and more. Nevertheless, the elementary beings of the air live in a great diversity - and are related to the human will. Related to the human intellect, inwardly related, are the elementary beings of the solid, related to the human feeling are the elementary beings of the liquid, related to the human will are the elementary beings of the aeriform element.“ (Lit.:GA 211, p. 203ff)

The sylphs have a fine feeling for the subtlest movements of the air space, which they perceive as sounding, and are particularly attracted to the flight of birds. The sylphs mentally add the metabolic-limb system (cow) to the birds, which are actually all head. Sylphs are also found particularly where the animal and plant kingdoms touch each other, for example where bees buzz around flowers.

When the sylphs go beyond their sphere of activity in the plant world, they can swell to gigantic size and, like the salamanders, become storm and fire giants.

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.

References

  1. ↑ The designation -ghosts' is strictly speaking not correct, since they do not have an independent I, thus no individuals spirit.
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