Throughout history, every culture has told of their “little people,�?such as the Menehunes of Hawaii, the leprechauns of Ireland, the elves of Germany’s Black Forest, or even the tooth fairy of many cultures. There has to be some reason why people have kept these ancient stories alive through written or oral tradition.

Personally, I think that knowing about the lower levels is just for information, and you should keep your mind in your own dimension. Many of these areas of the underworld are for children anyway, as this is where they see fairies, gnomes, flying horses, unicorns, and the like. (After all, children are psychic.) Keep in mind that just as we rarely see the inhabitants of the Other Side, we also don’t tend to witness the creations that exist in the underworld. Nevertheless, I’d like to explain each of the seven levels and their inhabitants, one by one.

The First Level—Fairies, Nymphs, Sprites, and Devas

The first level of the lower levels is the highest and contains fairies, nymphs, sprites, and devas. Fairies and sprites live in the woods and glens; water nymphs reside in streams, lakes, and ponds; and devas are sentient, making up and residing in trees and all living matter. (The old idiom of knocking on wood comes from waking the devas for good luck.) My own grandmother prayed to the devas of her garden and plants, and I swear that she could put a stick in the ground and have it grow. I mean she didn’t just have a green thumb . . . her whole hand was green. Her gardens were awesome, with vegetables at least twice the size of others in the vicinity and flowers that would bloom and bloom, with huge blossoms and spectacular hues.

Most cultures appear to accept devas—even Sanskrit scrolls verify that the Tibetans believed in them. In fact, deva means “being of brightest light,�?or “nature spirits,�?in Sanskrit. It seems that these creatures are content in being, while we humans are concerned about doing. And they’re always willing to help us if we simply let them.

The lower phylum of deva resides in inanimate objects such as rocks or even machinery. (I’ve known people who really understood this and talked to their cars, stoves, saws, and washing machines and begged them to work—and more times than not, they did.)

You can find a lot of lore on these first-level inhabitants in American Indian and Hawaiian cultures, both loving and revering the land and the little people who coexist with it. Also, note that the entities on this level seem to be very friendly toward, and caring about, humankind, as they tend to our children and even animals.

The Second Level—Gnomes and Elves

Dwellers of the second level have been given good as well as bad PR. While gnomes are a help to human and plant life, they’re more interested (as are the elves) in keeping to themselves and taking care of the forests and the minerals of the earth. Unlike the beautiful sprites, fairies, and nymphs, gnomes look old and gnarled and seem to be gruff and not particularly fond of people or animals. However, they have been known to help sick animals in the forest if no one else is around.

Elves, on the other hand, have their consciousness deep in Mother Nature and dwell in mountains and forests, and near streams. They can also shy away from humans but aren’t as curmudgeonly as gnomes (who might be synonymous with the Irish leprechauns). Elves have been known to leave presents for underprivileged children (as in Santa Claus and his helpers) and help people with tasks in their homes. In fact, literature abounds with these stories, such as The Elves and the Shoemaker by the Brothers Grimm, in which an old cobbler was too tired to finish all the shoes that people ordered, so elves came in and finished the job for him during the night.

In folklore, it was often said that gnomes or elves (and even beloved fairies) would steal babies. This, of course, isn’t true and was probably something that got told to mask kidnappings by other humans. Elves and gnomes do give spiritual support to all plant life, since this is where they live, but they try to stay as invisible as possible.

The Third Level—Giants and Dragons

Giants and dragons exist in mythology (as do all the other residents of the underworld) and are steeped in folklore. Of course the Bible has the famous story of David and the giant Goliath, and we also read about St. George who slayed the dragon. Both giants and dragons seem to be kind creatures connected to mountainous territory that have been given a bad rap. It has been reported that giants reside in ancient forests to this day. (Might Bigfoot be one?) In addition, such creatures are gentle and have been seen by very sensitive people, and not just in dreams.

Dragons have always been renowned for having great strength; in fact, they’re supposedly able to transfer their power to humans at will. Lesser dragons exist solely to project lust and power, but the higher ones have been known to cure illness. Dragons have been seen floating high over the cloud level in all kinds of vivid colors and don’t seem to descend into the lower atmospheres—although at one time they did walk the earth, which may have been at the same time as dinosaurs. They seem to be a reservoir of energy for the planet, and some groups even think that they protect the atmosphere and the very air we breathe.

The Fourth Level—Unicorns and Flying Horses

The home of unicorns and flying horses (such as Pegasus) is also the first of what are often called the “nightmare levels.�?I think the reason might be because these horses (“mares�? would tend to be seen at night, so they’d be “night mares.�?

According to fable or folklore, the unicorn has only been tamed or caught by a virgin, and it reputedly has magical powers. The mythical winged horse appears to have been around as a type of messenger from heaven. There must be some truth to this because Francine has said that she’s seen it, and I can tell you from being with her almost 70 years that she’s never given in to any kind of weird fantasy (in fact, in some ways she’s more pragmatic and skeptical than I am—which is saying a lot). We also see flying horses in television commercials or in the logo for a movie production company, as they represent freedom and beauty.

The Fifth Level—Centaurs, Cyclopes, Goblins, and Sorcerers

Now we come to an interesting level in the underworld—“the barrier level,�?in which strict containment is enacted by Lilith. This is also the first level where we find creations that are made by humans, not God. To that end, we find many mythological creatures here, such as centaurs (half man and half horse), Cyclopes (giants with one eye), and goblins.

As for the so-called wizards, true sorcerers, warlocks, and witches that inhabit this level, they’re not the nature-loving types who practice the ancient religion of Wicca that we know on our Earth plane, but the almost garish Hollywood types with pointed hats and broomsticks, like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. These are basically created tulpas, or human thoughtforms made into substance. As I mentioned before, everything that human beings have thought, believed in, or made up in our imagination has a place in some reality—even if it does exist on a lower level. Humankind can think something into existence, but the actual entity can’t leak into our dimension because Lilith, the strong keeper of the underworld, blocks them.

I’m sure that’s how the early Romans and Greeks came up with a lot of their mythology. Someone, whether it was a high priestess or oracle, tuned in to the lower levels. I’m also convinced that many fantasy writers have tapped in to these levels from time to time for inspiration. An example of this would almost surely be J.R.R. Tolkien and his wonderful books on orcs, goblins, and hobbits, with wizards and magic thrown in.

The Sixth and Seventh Levels—“Mind-Dump Areas�?

Now we reach what are known as the “mind-dump areas�?of the underworld. Here’s where we find “the bogeyman,�?the so-called devil, the Loch Ness monster (or any number of what we may term monsters), and the like. I’m sure the reason that our dreams are disturbed by these bizarre creatures is because we subconsciously bring them up.

Francine says that hardly anyone visits these levels—it’s more or less just our thoughtforms that dwell within these realms. They can’t leak upward, and for all practical purposes we can’t descend to them. The beings that reside here are probably in our mind from studying about them on the Other Side or even hearing about them in this life. Movies, books, and TV shows bring them to our awareness, as do the countless fairy tales, myths, and stories that are handed down from generation to generation.

There’s no way that this subconscious knowledge is like that of past-life “bleed-throughs”—for example, the reason that you can’t stand anything tight around your neck is because in a past life you were hung, or the pain in your back that no one can diagnose stems from your back being broken in a past life, and so forth. Just as we bring over great knowledge and talents from our previous existences, we can also carry painful memories with us, but this has nothing to do with the mind-dump areas.

Because these creations are on such a low level, they can’t materialize—not even in thoughtform do they become real. It’s almost as if humankind can summon types of bizarre thoughts (sexual as well as sadistic and masochistic), and they all reside there. I personally believe that every evil notion resides there . . . as they’d logically have to if it were a sort of storage house for the thoughts of creation.

It would seem to me that the sixth and seventh levels would also contain thoughts that are pleasant and funny yet without any real purpose. With all this melding of contradictory, chaotic, lovely, and bizarre mind creations, it’s no wonder that hardly anyone ever visits these levels. These areas are probably what our definition of utter chaos would be, with confusion and discordance running rampant with beauty and harmony, as a constant barrage of emotion and feelings rain down. Who wants that?

I think that’s why Francine was reluctant to divulge this information until I kept after her to tell me. She assured me that Lilith (with the guardianship of Mother God, of course) doesn’t ever let these lower levels leak up, and that’s certainly understandable. Please be aware that we can have knowledge of these types of places, but since they don’t affect us at all, they’re really of no concern. Now the five upper levels of the underworld are privy to our world, but they rarely leak through and are no threat to us. Fairies, gnomes, little people, unicorns, and the like are not harmful to humankind and many times help children and animals, as well as us grown-ups. They’re not to be confused with the Other Side’s angels and spirit guides, nor with ghosts—these are more what the ancients referred to as the “mythology levels�?. . . except they’re not myths.

It’s very easy for humankind to be afraid of “evil�?or brand anything we don’t understand as such. It’s just like thinking that there are demons and a devil. There are confused and mischievous ghosts who don’t like us inhabiting their space or domain, but they’re certainly not evil. In all my life (and I’ve been to thousands of hauntings in the U.S. and in almost any country you can think of), I haven’t found a single evil spirit. I have found entities who don’t know that they’re dead or who are confused and agitated, but never evil.

I’m sure that the reason religion takes a dim view of certain advanced spiritual beings is because it feels that they take away from God. But how can they? There is God the Father and the Mother and our beloved Lord; the other lesser phylum such as angels, humankind, Lilith, and her domain; and even the lowest levels that are on their own vibrational level or dimension of existence. Creation is what it is—and only God knows the all of it. If for no other reason, these lower levels are valid because humankind keeps reporting on their existence, whether in stories, songs, or dreams.

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I hope that this chapter has helped to explain some of our bizarre nightmares. As I stated earlier, our subconscious probably has this knowledge stored because we researched the underworld on the Other Side or encountered such creatures during a past life in a simpler time. But regardless of how we became aware of this knowledge, it’s basically for informational purposes to explain some of the unexplainable. So to those of you who have seen these creatures (as I have), don’t despair and think that you’re going crazy . . . it’s just another little corner of our vast creation, and it truly does exist.

The following excerpt is taken from the book Exploring the Levels of Creations, by Sylvia Browne. It is published by Hay House.