Under the interpretation made by writer Castaneda, even living in another dimension^[59] of perception, ethereal beings are some sort of intelligent alien beings or energy beings, and so terraqueous as men are.^[60][61][62]

Practically inside of an animismic perspective,^[63] he closely approaches these entities of the sprites and metaphorically designates them as "inorganic beings" on an allusion they are not made of flesh and bones. Therefore as expected, in scientific terms these alien ghosts would have neither inorganic nor organic structure.^[64][65]

Only the powerful sorcerers, the seers, this means to him, with great amount of energy (above the ordinary human), can perceive these ethereal beings. As a result usually they are out of the common perception of a regular person.

Along his books, at this shamanic world’s scenery,^[63][66] like exists many species of animals, there are umpteen kinds of ethereal inhuman beings. Similar to human organic realm, there are the harmless, little dangerous and the very dangerous entity. Or drawing a parallel there are irrational, intermediary and intelligent ethereal creatures. Comparatively on the same sense, other mystic literatures speaking of these ethereal creatures would recognize them as: elementals, fairies, ghosts and demons on identical sequence.^[67][68][69]

These entities have only self-interests while others can help the sorcerer to gain power. He calls these last ones as "Allies".^[70] The outward appearance of them may be any thing: a person, an animal or still a geometric form.^[59][61] Even the death would be personified as a fierce ally^[71] who should be called for fulfilling the apotheosis of a sorcerer, hisenlightenment.^[72][73]

Nevertheless, such assertions have ancient paradigms in places like the Mediaeval Europe where these ethereal beings could be rendered respectively as Succubus that could too have animal forms^[74] or familiar spirits, where believed to assist witches in their practice of magic.^[75] In the beginning of the 20th century, familiars were identified as "niggets", which were crawly things that witches kept over them.^[76]

Regarding the forms of these creatures, also in Asian folklore, the tsukumogami, a Japanese ghostly being, is originated from inanimate objects such as knives, paper lanterns, or umbrellas^[77] (the latter one known as karakasa).^[78] And other beings may have the shape of animals, people, objects, or metamorphic characteristics like the Japanese Yōkai (妖怪?),^[77] as well as the Korean ghost Dokkaebi, which can transform himself in a stick or a club.^[79]

Similarly on Greek mythology and other mythologies and religions (such as the Animism of Japanese Shintoism and Balinese mythology), there are mountain's spirits, river’s gods, forest’s gods, nymphs, mermaids, that harm or help people (including mundane people, besides priests and shamans) on situations, problems or just granting supernatural powers to humans that request them. For instance, the priestess of the Delphic oracle made her prophecies possessed by power of Apollo, sun’s god.

As laid down by Castaneda, though living much longer, somewhere around thousands of years, these ethereal beings are mortal; they eventually die as well any living being. Feature that shared with the hungry ghosts in Chinese tradition and the Germanic nixes.^[80]

As animals eat food for surviving, those ethereal entities would feed themselves on pure energy from other intelligent life forms. In fact humans would be easy prey.^[69][81] Also they compete surrounded by distinct brands of them, meaning that they can prey each other on their hunting for energy.^[61] On the other hand, an ethereal being would have regularly much less energy than humans. Comparatively could say that them are like a single candle while a person is like a lamp of one hundred watts.^[59][60]