Not having studied writings much about elementals and not having the psychic abilities or inclinations to study that way, (as do most of us) I thought to put up some passages on the subject.
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From G d Purucker's online Dialogues:

November 14, 1933
Elementals

This is indeed a very difficult theme; and yet, Companions, I have often wondered why it should be found to be so difficult. Let me try to explain very briefly just what elementals are. According to our esoteric teaching, which is the doctrine taught in the Mystery-schools, the universe is built up of elements, i.e., of fundamental element-principles. As the entire universe is animate, full of life and lives, these fundamental elements or element-principles are compacted and builded of lives -- not merely living in them, but these lives verily form or compose these fundamental elements. Now those entities or lives of these elements, which are the first remove from homogeneity in any of the elements, are what are called elementals -- in other words entities just beginning to evolve into greater complexity of consciousness and structure. They too are beings growing from unself-conscious god-sparks in order finally to reach self-conscious godhood, and thereafter to take a self-conscious part in the labor of the universe.

Now then, the elementals really can be looked upon as the building bricks, or individualized substantial particles of energy-substance, belonging to the seven ranges of prakriti, and therefore of the universe. Everything in the prakriti or substantial side of the universe reposes on the three kingdoms of the elementals. From this point of view the elementals correspond to the life-atoms in our own bodies, because these life-atoms themselves are of seven or ten different classes corresponding to the seven ranges of prakriti, and therefore to the seven or ten cosmic elements. These life-atoms in our bodies build our bodies, and are used by the various monads composing the sevenfold, or tenfold, constitution of man. Hence, there are elementals which compose or are the foundation of every one of man's seven principles.

The elementals, therefore, in the aggregate are the forces of nature as well as the substances of nature. When acting aggregatively as energies they are forces, and when acting aggregatively as bodies they are the substances of nature. It is quite erroneous to look upon the elementals as beings merely living in nature, and as not forming nature; and it is also erroneous to consider them in a weird or spooky way, as mere little ghostlings flitting around us. The elementals are the inhabitants of the elements; and all beings more evolved than the elementals use these elementals for everything that these more evolved beings do or are.

The elementals may be also called the nature forces, or nature spirits, because all nature being conscious in greater or less degree, whatever takes place however seemingly unconscious, actually is brought about by the deliberate or unconscious action of elementals, either acting for themselves or as the vehicles of higher intelligences.

Therefore is it said that some of the elementals in the universe are friendly to man, because man happens to be at the certain point of his evolution where these particular elementals aid him. Other elementals are said to be unfriendly to man -- not because the elementals themselves are evil, or wickedly wish to do evil to man, but simply because man happens to be in such an evolutionary position at the present time that these elementals automatically react unfavorably on him. As an instance, a draught of cold air may give a man a chill. This is not the fault of the elementals involved, but the fault of the man who remains in the cold draught thus exposing himself to this particular type of automatic elemental action. But there are elementals on all the planes of prakriti, and therefore on all the planes of man's constitution. Consequently there are manasic elementals, and kamic elementals, etc.; and some of these elementals belonging to the higher grades of prakriti can do man great injury unless the man is watchful and resists their action which he can always do by reason of his masterful will and high intelligence.

Now there are also elementals which have reached a point in their own evolution where they seek and can have imbodiments on our earth; and these are the classes of elementals which are much more evolved than other classes. Consequently they form the various orders and families of the animate beings below man, commonly spoken of as the higher vegetables, the insects, and the beasts. They are imbodied elementals, all of them; the beasts are highly evolved elementals; the insects are less evolved elementals. We humans also at one time in our far past evolution passed through the elemental stage, and obviously then were elementals.

The elementals of fire can be very friendly to man when he uses them properly; but they can become bitter foes of his, most dangerous enemies. The fire elementals can burn down his house, or burn the man's body; but it would be foolish to say that because the fire elementals automatically act according to their nature, they are wicked, or that they are fundamentally unfriendly to man. Taking the elementals of the four lower and best known classes, the salamanders, the sylphs, the undines, and the gnomes, it is probably the sylphs, the elementals of the air, which to man in his present state of evolution are the most dangerous of all, because for some strange reason they seem to have a peculiar psychological effect on the kama part of his constitution.

Finally, the elementals, being the inhabitants of the respective elements, themselves exist in orders, in families, and in various species. They actually compose the seven prakritis or elements of nature; and these seven cosmic elements are the great reservoirs of beings who in these elements begin their evolutionary march upwards to divinity. The elementals are therefore again partially individualized entities, baby souls in the school of life. Ordinarily they work in groups or in waves or flows; but quite frequently also there are manifestations of the action of individual elementals. It is wrong to look upon the elementals as quite individualized little sprites, in the manner in which European folklore regards the brownies or the pixies or the fairies or the kobolds or the leprechawns. All these are names for different kinds of elementals; and even the medieval descriptions of them are accurate enough, provided they do not induce the belief that the elementals are as intelligent as man or as having man's freedom of will or conscience, because all this last is not true. The elementals are quasi-individualized nature sprites, and actually perform all the physical work of the world. They may also be correctly looked upon as life-atoms in a certain stage of the latter's evolutionary progress.

Remember also that the elementals are monads imbodied through their rays in the respective prakritis or elements of the universe. In consequence, every elemental is on its way to become a man, and finally a god. Further, as every one of the seven or ten prakritis of nature, every one of the seven or ten element-principles of nature, is composed of these lives or life-atoms, therefore there are elementals of all these seven or ten different grades of ethereality or spirituality. These different grades of elementals slavishly copy the pictures in the astral light of past events, including of course the pictures of forms in all their multimyriad types. Furthermore they slavishly follow and try to emulate, although unconsciously, the orders or families or species of beings more evolved than themselves. Hence it is that the elementals of the higher prakritis or elements sometimes have a human shape or quasi-human shape, or have the forms of beasts, whether patterned after humans or beasts now on earth, or after the pictures in the astral light of human beings or beasts who lived in past manvantaras.

The elementals of the fifth cosmic plane, counting upwards, or what we may call the mahatic or manasic elementals, tend to assume the human shape; but this is merely a maya, the appearance of form, because although they may have as semi-individualized entities the human shape, they are soulless because without a human soul. It is merely the form in the astral light that they copy blindly, slavishly, automatically. This is one of the reasons why the kama-loka and the astral light are filled with elementals in various degrees of advancement, who take on, assume, or disguise themselves in the appearances or forms of human beings who have lived. Mark these words because they are important. But all these appearances are soulless because they are merely elementals in the human shape or form. The elemental has as yet evolved no human soul, and therefore from the human standpoint is without conscience or moral principle.

Thus it may be seen once more how elementals of this type can be friendly to man or very unfriendly, in fact even malignant, not because of any evil in themselves, but because of the mischief that they can work by reason of their mayavi or illusory appearance and the effects they can produce.

In conclusion -- and to draw a comparison which may be helpful -- there is somewhat the same difference in evolution between an elemental and a man that there is between a life-atom and a man; or to put the matter in another way, between a human embryo in its first stages of growth and a full-grown man, as there is between an elemental and an animal.

There are four sections in this piece dealing with elementals. The Sage is Blavatsky (or one of her gurus) and the Student is WQ Judge.
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