Roughly a decade ago, I was working on my wife’s shoulder which was bothering her, and I had a visionary experience. I was trying to concentrate on what I was working on, but had this really irritating picture in my head of something that was doing a sweeping motion that I couldn’t get to go away. Whatever the thing was, it was messing with my concentration, to the point that I was spending more mental energy on making the image go away more than what I was doing for my wife’s shoulder.

At first I didn’t realize I was having a vision, and then I realized that it wasn’t going away due to the nature of the vision, so instead of trying to make it end, I began to pay attention. As I focused in on the sweeping motion, I sort of zoomed out and realized it was a broom that was sweeping off our front porch. Stuck in the cracks of the stone was a piece of paper, which I proceeded to pick up. I tried to read what was on it, but couldn’t.

As I did this in the vision, a really ugly spirit of some kind approached me and said something (I forget now), and I made him leave. Directly after that, I asked Holy Spirit how a demon could appear in my vision and interact with me, as I found that both confusing and new at the time. What He said to me was this:

“It’s not a demon.”

I was like “It’s ugly enough to be one… So what was it??”

Holy Spirit replied “An air spirit.”

I can already hear the sound of a record player coming to a screeching halt as someone says “wait, what?”

Right after Holy Spirit said this to me, He reminded me of Ephesians 2:2 which refers to Satan as the “Prince of the powers of the air.” The word ‘powers’ there is the word exousias, which is used in 2 types of places:

1) used when the New Testament talks about power, also thought of as virtue or energy, of the kind that Jesus used to heal people
2) found in the lists of heavenly hierarchies, specifically Colossians 1:17 and 2:15. In these lists, it’s the same word being used, but in reference to angels and/or other sentient spirit beings.

While one could make a reasonable argument that there is no connection between “Powers of Air” and what I would refer to as elemental spirits, there was something else that made me pay a little more attention to what He shared with me. Years ago, my friend Ben (I talk about him in my book The Beginner’s Guide to Traveling in the Spirit) was telling me once about an experience he and a couple of his friends had. They were practicing their gifts of discernment together, as Ben was a feeler, and one of his other friends was a seer. The name of the game was basically “How many angels are in the room?” They identified 11 angels in the room, except for one thing . . . some them weren’t angels—they were Powers. He described what they looked like to me. Of the Powers, one looked like a fountain. The other one was like a pillar of flame.

A seraphim/fiery burning one caught on camera

Now, I don’t believe in coincidences. When I put that story together with the Power of air that Holy Spirit showed me in that vision, suddenly we have air, fire, and water, 3/4 of what are typically known in mythology as “elemental spirits”. Furthermore, the Bible makes another somewhat veiled reference to this in Psalm 104:4 (which is later quoted in Hebrews 1:7) which states: “He makes winds his messengers, flames of fire his servants. (NIV)” In this passage it suggests that God uses either a sentient wind or Wind/Air spirits his messengers (or angels, as it could be translated), and he has servants who are flames of fire. Interestingly enough, “seraph” means something to the effect of “fiery burning one”. If that doesn’t sound like a fire-spirit of some kind, I don’t know what does. Now, while I’m not making the argument that seraphim are fire elementals, my point is that throughout scripture we actually see more references to Powers, or elemental spirits, than we might realize.

Did you know that elemental spirits are also referenced elsewhere in scripture? They are. Strong’s G4747 is the word “stoicheion” which means the following:

• any first thing, from which the others belonging to some series or composite whole take their rise, an element, first principal
• the letters of the alphabet as the elements of speech, not however the written characters, but the spoken sounds
• the elements from which all things have come, the material causes of the universe
• the heavenly bodies, either as parts of the heavens or (as others think) because in them the elements of man, life and destiny were supposed to reside
• the elements, rudiments, primary and fundamental principles of any art, science, or discipline
• i.e. of mathematics, Euclid’s geometry   (taken from Strongs Concordance, Blueletterbible.org)

What the Bible refers to as “stoicheion” are literally elemental spirits–formed of the elements from which all things come from. Stoicheion are referenced in 7 places in scripture: Galatians 4:3, Galatians 4:9, Colossians 2:8, Colossians 2:20, Hebrews 5:12, 2 Peter 3:10, and 2 Peter 3:12. When we read these verses, it specifically refers to elements of creation. Galatians 4:3, the first mention, states “Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world . . .”

One of the things I have come to realize in my life travels is that *typically* most people are in some measure of bondage to the elements of the world. And when I say “world”, I mean creation and the cosmos, not just planet earth. Think about it. The entire reason astrology works is because we are connected in some way to the cosmos, and even our position in space at birth causes us to be influenced in subtle ways by the energies of other stars and planets. It’s difficult to explain why astrology even works, but it usually does. The problem is that we aren’t *supposed* to be subjected to such things, but most people still are anyway. Thus, there is something about breaking free from the influence of elemental spirits, or at least the ones that don’t serve God, that is important. If Satan is in control of the elemental spirits of the air, then what other elementals are under his control?

While I have heard stories of people who have encountered elemental spirits, I have had some encounters of my own. Some of these spirits serve God, but more often than not they are ignorant of God’s existence and are very self-seeking and selfish. In fact, Colossians 2:8 says, “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.” Something about elemental spirits tends to involve deceit, and one friend has pointed out that they tend to work through illusion, which makes sense in context of this verse.

Galatians 4:9 tells us that elemental spirits are actually far weaker than we realize (it says they are “weak and beggarly”), and from what I understand, they use deceit and illusion to get us to come back in bondage under then, and in so doing, they can use our power as their own. Why would they want to do this? 2 Peter 3:10-12 suggests they will be destroyed by heat and fire, and it is likely they want to use our power to somehow avoid that fate. Furthermore, there appears to be a connection between elemental spirits and getting us to follow highly proscribed rules and religious structures. There is something about getting us locked into definable patterns that helps them to engage and use our power.

I first wrote about this topic on December 1 of 2009, 10 years ago. Before then, there were a few people talking about it, but very few. In the last ten years, God has been giving even more people revelation about this subject and not only how elemental spirits can influence us, but what we can do about it and how we are supposed to bring them under the dominion of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I don’t pretend to have it all figured out, but I do believe that God wants us to have a greater understanding of this subject as a whole.

If you want to hear more about this topic, consider listening to a podcast episode on Discovering Truth with Dan Duval called Stoicheion, Elementals and Rudiments with Ruthie Andrews.