Sanskrit
यजन्ते सात्त्विका देवान्यक्षरक्षांसि राजसाः । प्रेतान्भूतगणांश्चान्ये यजन्ते तामसा जनाः ॥
yajante sāttvikā devān yakṣarakṣāṃsi rājasāḥ pretān bhūtagaṇāṃś cānye yajante tāmasā janāḥ
Translation
Pure men worship the Gods; the passionate the gnomes and giants; the others, the dark folk, worship ghosts and troops of nature-spirits.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
The first concrete application of verse 2’s typology, and it reads less as a literal cosmology of who’s out there to worship than as a diagnostic: what a person is drawn to venerate — luminous ideals, power-and-wealth spirits (yakṣas and rākṣasas, in the older folk taxonomy), or restless ghosts and minor spirits (pretas and bhūtas) — gives away which guna is running the show. The devotional object is a mirror of the devotee’s inner state, not an independent fact about the universe.