On a totally unrelated and absolute sidetrack topic, when we're talking about the possibility of angels who are not pure spirits it makes me think how perfectly Tolkien captured such a nature in his Elves, who while being involved in the earth and helping men and fighting evil, also had an otherworldly feeling to them, as if they knew of their higher purpose.
Since you bring up elves, one school of thought says they are demonic.
Making the Demonic User Friendly: Elves, Fairies, Gnomes, Leprechauns and the LikeOnce upon a time, most common books of
fairy tales, contained stories which featured
dwarfs, dragons, elves, fairies, giants, gnomes, goblins, griffins, mermaids, talking animals, trolls, unicorns, or witches, and usually magic or enchantments
[Some of the other creatures in the fairy tales were
pixies,
sprites and
elementals.]
ALSO featured were usually a few notable facts about such entities.
Such as
1- Most were NOT friendly to humans.
2- Most were involved in some sort of “
magic.”
3- Most caused trouble–particularly at night.
4- The stories were often about how humans could trick the entities into performing some service for the humans.
5- IF the entity was not able to be tricked, the humans would set out sacrifices (most usually food, alcohol or milk) in order for the entities to leave them alone.
THUS, most children of a certain age who had a knowledge of fairy tales also had a knowledge that the beings which were featured in these tales were not usually friendly to humans.
In fact, if one looks up most of these beings featured in fairy tales, it can be found that the people who composed the tales believed these elves, fairies and other similar beings to be demonic.
In other words, the authors of these fairy tales used the common folk names for demons:
elf, fairy, gnome, leprechaun, etc.Since most men have a natural
aversion to demons, these supernatural, otherworldly creatures were thought to be an enemy–or at the least, an adversary–of man.
So how has modern man changed so? How has modern man taken such a fancy to elves, fairies, leprechauns and the like?
Modern man has been carefully taught that these demonic entities are friendly and cute.
TWO men in particular are responsible for most of this teaching.
Walt Disney, through his many cartoons and animated stories/movies and
J.R.R. Tolkien with his many stories (such as
Lord of the Rings) in which elves were the “
heroes.”
A famous witch once made the statement “I come from a family of witches. While you were learning the 23rd Psalm, I was reading Tolkien and CS Lewis.”
—C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien: Heretical Fruits
Generations have grown up being read to and reading Tolkien’s fiction and watching the antics of the animated fairy,
Tinkerbell. And now, generations have the idea that elves, fairies and the like, are FRIENDS of man.
We will call it the
Modernization of the Fairy Tale.
It’s just another service of the world: making the demonic
user friendly.