Europeans in the 17th century described ethereal beings as an abridged mist with graceful fickle bodies easier to see in faint light; intelligent spirits seem to have a lost nature among demon, man and angel. Capable of vanishing or emerge with their easily moldy bodies at any moment.[85]
The Indonesian folklore sees the universe populated of visible and invisible beings. They are spirits of plants and animals becoming humans, human spirits becoming wild spirits, and demons that occupy the Seven Abysses of underworld, meanwhile nymphs and gods fill the superposed Seven Heavens. All are in communication with each other through the seven plains of the man and also merged as a moveable, polymorphic and single unit.[86]
In folklore several nature spirits and their variations epitomize ethereal beings involved with the destinies of the men.[87] An example of that is the Irish fairy called Bansheewho is very similar to other mysterious characters from Celtic countries.[87] She can assume distinct forms like a bird, a woman or a ghost and travels beyond the three dimensions of space. Even druids frightened her since originally the apparition of a banshee announced a death in family.[88] Actually already in the Roman empire, these beings have a foundation over mythological beings like the Parcae. The Parcae were known in Latin as the “Tria Fata” that means in English the “Three Fairies”.[87]
The Parcae represented personifications of destiny, in many cases called “The Fates”. Previous to the Roman period, and analogous to them, are in Greek mythology the Moirae, whose mother is the Night goddess Nyx. The Moirae managed thethread of life of mortals and immortals from birth to death. Resemblances are found in the Keres who in the Greek mythologyalso were hellish daughters of Nyx as yet capable of determining good or bad fate for men although definitively as dark spirits feeding on vital essence, like the blood shed, of wounded men.[87]
The Celtic druids feared banshees as long as the same happened to Zeus, the lord of Greek gods, who was afraid of the Moirae.[89] However the Moirae also received veneration at the moment that such entities were associated with the birth of children, as well as their equivalent fairies of the British tradition, which were responsible for conducting the souls of stillborn children and fight against the evil.[87]
Thereupon the ancestral relation of fairies expresses a deep connection with the Earth mother.[87] As a matter of fact this already was made explicit by Greek philosophersZeno of Citium (3rd century BC), Posidonius (1st century BC), Plutarchos (1st century) and the Roman philosopher Cicero (1st century BC). According to them the Moirae were identified with the divine, the destiny and the nature. Concerning Cicero all happenings have causes determined in the nature. Regarding Plutarchos the Moirae depict the soul of world divided in three planes: high (Clotho), middle (Atropos) and low (Lachesis) where the works made in high and middle worlds are transmitted by Lachesis for the earthly substances.[90]
According to some authors like the French Jean Chevalier, in the tales, while living among people, the materialized ethereal being at some point have a disruption with that anthropomorphic life by reason of your permanent and natural connection with the infinite. This is seen, for instance, in the legend of the being Melusine who once by week had to leave her husband and hidden transmuted herself in half serpent, half woman. This sighting of the mystery at odds with the usual and limited integration with the universe in what the human psyche has consciousness. Thus a man beholding this dark side is directly subject to the psychic death of worldly life, ends up adrift leaving his human side.[87][91]
Such aspects can be found in the Nordic myths where many times ethereal beings are showed as elves, which in turn are portrayed as little flying beings emerged from water or earth and more visible in the brume. As delineated by those legends they are charming creatures but their fascination can entice people to enter in their dancing circles which are portals to spiritual worlds. Once inside, the person face the infinite what customarily is too much to human mind and in the narratives ends leading a man to insanity, disappear or die even when rescued.[92][93]
Alike content is expressed in the Greek myth of the mortal Psyche and Eros god of love and in several fairy tale variants like Apuleius's The Golden Ass.[93][94] Psyche, tells the myth, a beautiful mortal, falls in deep love and marries Eros without knowing he was a celestial creature. Like in the story of Melusine, Psyche ends up doing the forbidden and spies on her partner beholding the unfathomable mystery and this goes away.
In spite of that, Psyche like the hero Heracles who carried out his twelve labours, engages to fulfill a series of mortal tasks. In the course, Psyche starts slowly stepping in the dark world of Eros but ultimately she has to abandon the men’s world descending until the Underworld, then after all, like a caterpillar developing in a butterfly and like Heracles who becomes an immortal, successful her also is transformed in a winged goddess.[95] Therefore only overcoming her human condition Psyche (which in Greek also indicates “butterfly” and literally means “spirit”) could handle the ethereal world.[90][96][97]
Another aspect emphasized by Chevalier it is the symbolism associated with a common shape embodied in ethereal entities, the serpent.[87] In fact, Psyche suspects Eros be a monster, namely a snake in some versions. This association with the serpent propagates in several European tales, likewise with the number three (as in the Three fates; in the golden bough tale of Aeneas in Aeneid,[98] which is said to have three branches; and the Hermes’s rod called leaved three in the Homeric hymn to Hermes), which also point out the manifestation of the sacred natural (but still material, not spiritual).[99][100] Also in Tantra philosophy the snake is associated with the Kundalini, a center of esoteric energy of the human body that releases the “rebirth” of the being when activated.
According to psychologist Swiss Jung the mythical image of serpent incarnates the dark self, the incomprehensible, the mystery.[101][102] Serpents for Chevalier, or mythic winged serpents like the dragon, translate the allowed materialization of the mystery to the conscious mind. It is, in macrocosmic grade, represented as Ananta from Hinduism who defies and at the same time conserves the stability of the human world surrounded by the occult forces of the universe. The same happens with the Hebraic Leviathan, the Nordic Midgardserpent (Old Norse: Midgarðsormr), and the serpent river Styx that bears the created world second the Theogony by Hesiod. Hells, primordial oceans, and deep earth gathered form the “prima materia”, which is the primordial substance, the serpent itself.[103]
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