“As by gradual progression from the star-cloudlet to the development of the physical body of man, the rule holds good, so from the universal ether to the incarnate human spirit, they traced one uninterrupted series of entities. These evolutions were from the world of spirit into the world of gross matter; and through that back again to the source of all things.
The “descent of species” was to them a descent from the spirit, primal source of all, to the “degradation of matter.” In this complete chain of unfoldings the elementary, spiritual beings had as distinct a place, midway between extremes, as Mr. Darwin’s missing-link between the ape and man.
No author in the world of literature, ever gave more truthful or more poetical description of these beings than Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, the author of Zanoni. Now, himself “a thing not of matter” but an “idea of joy and light”, his words sound more like the faithful echo of memory than the exuberant outflow of mere imagination.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 