101- GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS: Predominance of matter over spirit; a propensity toward evil; ignorance, pride, selfishness, and all the evil passions that result from them.
They have an intuition of God, but they do not comprehend God.
Not all are essentially evil, however. Some are more frivolous, thoughtless and malicious than downright wicked. Some do neither good nor evil, but the simple fact that they do no good reveals them to be imperfect. However, there are others who take pleasure in wickedness per se and are gratified when they find an opportunity to practice it.
Third-order spirits can ally intelligence with wickedness or malice, but regardless of their intellectual development, their ideas lack elevation and their sentiments are more or less contemptible.
Their knowledge about the things of the spirit world is limited, and the little they do know is confused with the ideas and prejudices of corporeal life. They cannot give us more than faulty and incomplete ideas of that world, but the attentive observer may frequently find in their faulty communications great truths taught by the highly purified spirits.
Their character is revealed by their language. Every spirit who betrays an evil thought in its communications can be placed into the third order; consequently, every evil thought that may be suggested to us comes from a spirit of this order.
They see the happiness of the good spirits, a sight that tortures them endlessly because they experience all the anguish that envy and jealousy can produce.
They also retain the memory and perception of the sufferings of their corporeal life, and this impression is often more painful than was the reality itself. Therefore, they indeed suffer from the wrongs they themselves endured and from those they caused others. And since they suffer from them for a very long time, they believe they will continue to suffer forever: a belief allowed by God as a punishment.
We may divide these spirits into five principal classes:
102- Tenth class. IMPURE SPIRITS. These are inclined toward evil and make it the object of all their preoccupations. As spirits, they give unscrupulous advice, incite discord and distrust, and use all sorts of disguises in order to deceive more effectively. They associate with individuals whose character is sufficiently weak to make them yield to their suggestions and be led into misfortune, and they are pleased at being able to retard these individuals’ progress by causing them to succumb in the trials they must undergo. In their manifestations, these spirits may be recognized by their language: trivialness and coarseness of expression among spirits, as among humans, is always indicative of moral, if not intellectual, inferiority. Their communications reveal the baseness of their inclinations, and if they try to fool us by speaking sensibly, they are unable to maintain the ruse for very long and always end up betraying their origin.
Certain cultures have transformed them into malevolent deities, while others have designated them as demons or evil spirits.
During incarnation, they are inclined toward all the vices that are engendered by vile and degrading passions: sensuality31, cruelty, deceit, hypocrisy, covetousness and sordid greed. They do evil for the pure pleasure of it, most often without reason. Out of hatred for the good, they almost always choose their victims from among honest people. They are the true scourges of humanity no matter what position they occupy, and no veneer of civility can ever cover their dishonor and ignominy.
31 Noun form of the adjective sensual: “Arousing or preoccupied with gratification of the senses or appetites; carnal. Lacking in moral restraints” (Webster’s, op. cit.) – Tr.
103- Ninth class. FRIVOLOUS SPIRITS. These are ignorant, mischievous, thoughtless and mocking spirits who meddle in everything and respond to every question with no concern for what is really true. They love causing petty annoyances and little thrills, creating intrigues and misleading people into error through deceit and mischief. To this class belong the spirits commonly designated by the names of hobgoblins, imps, gnomes and pixies. They are under the subjection of higher order spirits, who often use them as we use servants.
In their communications with people, their language is often spirited and facetious, but almost always without depth. They seize upon human oddities and absurdities, which they comment on with sarcasm and satire. If they take distinguished names, it is more out of mischievousness than wickedness.
104- Eighth class. PSEUDO-LEARNED SPIRITS. The knowledge of these spirits is quite broad but they think they know more than they actually do. Since they have made a certain amount of progress in some sense, their language has a serious tone about it that can be deceptive as to their true abilities and enlightenment. However, such is frequently nothing more than a reflection of the prejudices and theoretical ideas they held during their earthly life. Their language contains a few truths mixed in with the most absurd errors, giving rise to the presumption, pride, envy and stubbornness from which they have not been able to free themselves.
105- Seventh class. NEUTRAL SPIRITS. These are neither moral enough to do good nor bad enough to engage in wickedness; rather, they vacillate between the two. They have not raised themselves above the ordinary human condition regarding either their moral qualities or their intelligence. They are attached to the things of this world and long for its coarse satisfactions.
106- Sixth class. BOISTEROUS AND DISTURBING SPIRITS. Strictly speaking, these spirits do not form a distinct class as to their personal qualities and they may belong to any of the third order classes. They frequently make their presence known through perceptible and physical effects, such as raps, the movement and abnormal displacement of solid objects, the movement of the air, etc. They appear to be more attached to matter than the others and they are the principal agents of instability in the globe’s elements, whether by acting upon the atmosphere, water, fire and solid bodies, or in the entrails of the earth. One can recognize whenever such phenomena are not due to any fortuitous and physical cause because there is an intentional and intelligent character about them. Although all spirits can produce these phenomena, higher order spirits usually leave them to subaltern ones since they are more suitable for material rather than intelligent matters. Thus, when the higher order spirits deem that manifestations of this type are useful, they use these spirits as their agents.
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