The Four Elements – The Basics
The ancient Greeks believed the universe was broken down into four basic elements: Earth, Air, Water and Fire (as proposed by the philosopher Empedocles). Aristotle added a fifth element, Aether – the matter that fills the universe above the terrestrial sphere.
Many cultures actually believe in five basic elements.
In Hinduism there is Earth, Water, Air, Fire and Void. This is the same in Japan.
In China there is Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water.
The Celts believed in three: Earth, Sea, Sky.
However, in this article, I’m going to focus on the four elements.
Obviously we know today that the universe is broken down into the 118 elements on the periodic table, which is ordered by each element’s atomic number (the number of protons in its nucleus).
Yet the “four elements” provide an important way for people to conceptualize who they are on a spiritual level. Understanding what each element represents helps us evaluate where our individual strengths and weaknesses are. And in the West, the four classical elements seem to be the default.
And there’s a certain, balanced logic to the number four. There are four seasons in a year. Four states of matter (solid, liquid, gas, plasma). Most tables are held up by four legs. Most people have four limbs (or a fifth if you include the head). The spiritual significance of the number four is stability and structure.
There are many healing traditions and religions which incorporate the elements in their practices. The four suits in the Tarot represent the four elements. The medicine wheel is an example of Native Americans recognizing the four elements. Wiccans honor the classical elements along with a fifth added in that represents the spirit or the self.
So, now that we’ve clarified why the number four is important, what is the significance of the elements themselves?
ELEMENTAL SIGNIFICANCE: BASIC DEFINITIONS
- Air represents intellect, mental intention, and connection to universal life force.
- Earth represents grounding, the foundation of life, substance, connection to life path, and family roots.
- Fire represents energy, a tool for transformation, connection to personal power, and inner strength.
- Water represents emotional release, intuition, and inner reflection.
THE ELEMENT OF AIR
GODS: Enlil, Kheohera, Mercurym, Shu, Thoth
GODDESSES: Aradia, Arianrhod, Cardea, Nuit, Urania.
Cardinal Direction: East (where the sun rises)
Season: Spring (A time of freshness)
Time of Day: Dawn
Color: Yellow
Positive Qualities: vigilance, care-freedom, kind-heartedness, trusting nature, clarity, lightness, independency, dexterity, optimism, diligence, acuity, joy, smiling…
Negative Qualities: lack of perseverance, dishonesty, gossipy, cunningness, backbiting, garrulousness, inconstancy, touchiness, prodigality.
Astrology: Gemini, Libra, Aquarius
Spiritual Significance: Intellect, freedom, purity.
“The element of Air is vital to human survival, without it we would all perish, its aspects are Thinness, Motion and Darkness and its quality is Active. Air is the manifestation of movement, freshness, communication and of the intelligence. Sound is another manifestation of this element. As an element, it is invisible, but its reality can be felt in the air that we breathe in every day.
To connect with the power of this element, find a place with clean air and breathe deeply, touch a feather or inhale the fragrance of a heavily scented flower. Let yourself experience the energy of this element, and reflect that we also possess Air energy within ourselves.
In magical terms, Air is the power of the mind, the force of intellect, inspiration, imagination. It is ideas, knowledge, dreams and wishes. Air is the element of new life and new possibilities and is essential to spells and rituals of travel, instruction, finding lost items, some types of divination, and freedom. Air aids us in visualization, a vital technique in magic.
Air is a masculine element and governs the magick of the four winds. It is the vital spirit passing through all things, giving life to all things, moving and filling all things. Thus Hebrew doctors ascribe it not as an element but as a medium or glue that binds all things together.” (Source)
THE ELEMENT OF EARTH
GODS: Adonis, Athos, Arawn, Cernunnos, Dionysus, Marduk, Pan, Tammuz.
GODDESSES: Ceres, Demeter, Gaea, Mah, Nephthys, Persephone, Prithivi, Rhea, Rhiannon.
Cardinal Direction: North
Season: Winter (A Time of Darkness)
Time of Day: Night
Color: Green
Positive Qualities: consistency, conscientiousness, perseverance, punctuality, caution, resistance, responsibility, carefulness, firmness, reliability, sobriety, ambition, respectfulness, matter-of-factness…
Negative Qualities: stuffiness, superficiality, laziness, indifference, cumbersomeness, touchiness, lack of conscientiousness, irregularity, timidity, scornfulness…
Astrology: Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn
Spiritual Significance: Discipline, Vigilance, Stabilizing, Grounding.
“The basis and foundation of all the elements is the Earth. The Earth is the object; subject and receptacle of all celestial rays and influences and in it are the seeds of all things. It is made fruitful by the other elements and the heavens, and brings forth all things of itself. It is the first fountain from whence all things spring; it is the centre, foundation and mother of all things.
Earth is the element of stability, foundations and of the body. The Earth is the realm of wisdom, knowledge, strength, growth and prosperity. It is also the physical Earth on which we live and the very heart of life. It is essential in spells and rituals of prosperity, business, fertility and stability. Earth is a feminine element and governs stone and knot magic.
The Earth can be viewed as our mother, with its fertile and nurturing farmland, providing all Earth’s creatures with nourishment and shelter. The earth takes on qualities of the other elements, whether it is the dry, dusty and hot aspects of Fire and Air, as is found in deserts. Or the moist and fluid aspects of Water, in swamps, marshlands and fens. In its physical manifestations, such as stones, rocks, crystals and gems, the element of Earth represents the densest of the elements.
The Earth is the womb from which all things spring, pressing your hand against fresh soil, you can feel its vitality, stability and earthiness. In its fertile soil, we’ve grown the food that provides life, on its surface we live out our lives, and when the time to return to the Goddess and God comes, we are interred in the earth.
We couldn’t exist in this form without the Earth. But our planet is simply a manifestation of this element on the physical plane, each of the elements exist in the astral planes as pure energy. This Earth energy not only exists within ourselves but also throughout the universe at large.” (Source)
THE ELEMENT OF WATER
GODS: Dylan, Ea, Manannan, Osiris, Neptune, Poseidon
GODDESSES: Aphrodite, Isis, Mariamne, Mari, Tiamat, Yemaya.
Cardinal Direction: West (where the sun sets)
Season: Autumn (a time of harvest)
Time of Day: Dusk
Color: Blue
Positive Qualities: understanding, placidity, mildness, trusting nature, devotion, mercy, forgiveness, modesty, compassion, fervour, pliancy, meditativeness, internalization…
Negative Qualities: indifference, heartlessness, laziness, indolence, rigidity, lack of daring, lack of concern, unstableness, dejection
Astrology: Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces
Spiritual Significance: Intuition, Emotion, Compassion, Healing
“Water, is a great necessity, without it nothing can live. Only earth and water can bring forth a living soul. Such is the greatness of water that spiritual regeneration cannot be done without it.
Thales of Miletus concluded that water was the beginning of all things and the first of all elements and most potent because of its mastery over the rest. Pliny said “Water swallow up the earth, extinguishes the flame, ascends on high, and by stretching forth as clouds challenges the heavens for their own, and the same falling down, becomes the cause of all things that grow in the earth.
Water is a cleansing, healing, psychic, and loving element. It is the feeling of friendship and love that pours over us when we are with our family, friends and loved ones. When we swim it is water that supports us, when we are thirsty, it is water the quenches our thirst, another manifestation of this element is the rainstorms that drench us, or the dew formed on plants after the sun has set.
The power of the energy of Water, can be felt by tasting pure spring water, moving you hand through a stream, lake, pool, or bowl full of water. You can feel its cool liquidity; it’s soft and loving touch, this motion and fluidity is the quality of Air within Water. This Water energy is also contained within ourselves, our bodies being mostly composed of Water.
As well as being vital for life, within the energy of this element is contained the essence of love. Love is the underlying reason for all magic. Water is love.
Water is a feminine element, it also the element of emotion and subconscious, of purification, intuition, mysteries of the self, compassion and family. It is psychic ability; water can be used as a means of scrying or as an object for meditation. Water is important in spells and rituals of friendship, marriage, happiness, fertility, healing, pleasure, psychic abilities and spells involving mirrors.” (Source)
THE ELEMENT OF FIRE
GODS: Agni, Hepaetus, Horus, Promtheus, Vulcan.
GODDESSES: Brigit, Pele, Vesta.
Cardinal Direction: South
Season: Summer (The Time of Heat)
Time of Day: Noon (When the Sun in Highest)
Color: Red
Positive Qualities: vigorousness, zeal, enthusiasm, courage, decisiveness, power of creativity, daring, sedulity…
Negative Qualities: quarrelsomeness, irritability, urge to destroy everything, passion, immoderacy, jealousy, voraciousness, vindictiveness, violence, hate, anger, sudden ebullition…
Astrology: Aries, Leo, Sagittarius
Spiritual Significance: Destruction, Renewal, Rebirth, Transformation
“The element of Fire is both creative and destructive, its qualities are Brightness, Thinness and Motion and its mode is Active. It is fire that we and our ancestors used to warm our homes, we use it to cook our food, we sit around it to ward of the darkness of night, and it fuels our passions. Fire, unlike the other elements, does not exist in a natural state. Its physical form can only take place by consuming some other element. Fire is the transformer, converting the energy of other objects into other forms: heat, light, ash, and smoke.
To feel the manifestations of this power, go out on sunny day and feel the warmth and light of the Sun, hear the crackling of logs and smell of smoke from a burning fire. As you gaze into the transformational flame of a candle, immerse yourself in the energy of Fire. Fire is the natural element of animals and mankind, and they “have, in their natures, a most fiery force, and also spring from celestial sources.”
In order to gain benefit from the energy of this element, we need to control Fire’s destructive aspect. When we light a candle, we are not only calling upon the energy of Fire, we are also limiting its power. This destructive aspect should not be seen as negative, forest fires, actually help, clearing away underbrush and encouraging seeds lying dormant within the Earth to burst forth into new life.
Fire is a masculine element, its aspects being change, passion, creativity, motivation, will power, drive and sensuality. It is sexuality, both physical and spiritual. Fire is used in spells, rituals and candle magic for healing, purification, sex, breaking bad habits or destroying illness and disease. Fire is the element of authority and leadership.
The properties of Fire, Heat, Making things fruitful, Celestial light, Giving Life to all things. Its opposite the Infernal Fire are a parching heat, consuming all things and darkness, making all things barren.” (Source)
LINKS
The Four Classical Elements (Wikipedia)
The Elements of Magick (The White Goddess)
The Elements – Fire, Earth, Air and Water (Thought.Co)
Friedrich Nietzsche’s Will to Power
“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
Friedrich Nietzsche is probably one of the most influential and misunderstood philosophers in history. And sadly, he didn’t even attract much fame until the part of his life where he started to lose his mental faculties and go insane.
In this post I will not cover the entire history of Nietzche or his writings. But I would like to explain one of his most famous concepts, a conception that revolutionized thought on philosophy, religion and politics — his “will to power.”
The will to power describes what Nietzche believed was the main driving force of human life. He did not believe it was a struggle for survival, as philosophers posited in the past. He believed it was the struggle for power — achievement, ambition, and the striving to reach the highest possible position in life. It can be argued that human beings do not wage war or create art or write books merely so they can survive, but the greater reason, is so they can gain and enforce their own power. And this is not only just a struggle in human life, but it is the perennial struggle of nature itself.
Part of the reason why Nietzche is so important, when it comes to the history of thought in Western civilization, is because his works urge people to question what was the accepted morality of the time. Of what actually is morally true, and of what actually is a good pursuit in life.
Master Morality vs. Slave Morality: A key concept in the works of Nietzche is slave morality and master morality (On the Genealogy of Morality). Master morality values pride and power, while slave morality values things like meekness and humility. Master morality weighs actions on good or bad consequences (i. e., classical virtues and vices, consequentialism), unlike slave morality, which weighs actions on a scale of good or evil intentions (e. g, Christian virtues and vices, Kantian deontology).
Controversy: Friedrich Nietzsche is controversial because the Nazis were great fans of his work. But would he actually have supported them if he was alive in the 1930s?
The exact ideology of Friedrich Nietzsche is difficult at times to pin down. But in the context of the time he was alive, Nietzsche was not an anti-semite. According to Robert Holub, in Nietzsche’s Jewish Problem, Nietzsche recoiled from the crude excesses of Richard Wagner’s antisemitism and even had extremely positive remarks about the Jewish community that would probably be characterized as a form of racism in modern times (for the use of stereotyping), but would have been considered pro-Jewish at the time.
When Nietzsche referred to the “blond beast at the core of all noble races,” many people believe he was actually talking about lions rather than fair-haired Europeans. After all, check out this quote:
“One cannot fail to see at the bottom of all these noble races the beast of prey, the splendid blond beast, prowling about avidly in search of spoil and victory; this hidden core needs to erupt from time to time, the animal has to get out again and go back to the wilderness: the Roman, Arabian, Germanic, Japanese nobility, the Homeric heroes, the Scandinavian Vikings–they all shared this need.”
There’s not many blond Arab or Japanese folk — so I think it’s pretty evident he was talking about lions.
One of the reasons why Nietzsche came to be associated with Nazis is because his sister, unlike him, was a protonazi. They even grew apart when she married a former high school teacher who had become a prominent German nationalist and antisemite. Yet in the years when Friedrich Nietzsche started to lose his sanity, his sister became his caretaker, curator and the editor of his manuscripts. She reworked his unpublished writings to fit her own ideology, often in ways contrary to her brother’s stated opinions. And when she died in 1935, Adolf Hitler attended her funeral.
Nietzsche and Black Power? While many people associate Nietzsche with Hitler, there are very few who would associate him with the Black Power movement in America. Yet Huey P. Newton, one of the key founders of the Black Panther Party, was an avid fan of Nietzsche. He found his writings, The Will to Power and Beyond Good and Evil, especially influential.
Elaine Brown writes that, at Huey’s behest, the Party established a school for party leadership to attempt to acquaint them with broad philosophical ideas:
Now they were wondering about his ideological institute. I saw the questions as the local leadership cadres came trooping to Oakland from as far away as Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago for bi-monthly, two-day learning sessions led by Huey. Where was the stuff about the pigs, they seemed to ask, as we studied with not only Mao and Marx but Aristotle and Plato. Where was the stuff about urban guerrilla warfare? Their expressions conveyed, as Huey led us in discussions of the philosophies of Rousseau and Kant, [sic] Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, about existentialism and determinism and free will. I saw their faces when we examined and questioned the theories of capitalism and socialism and communism. Huey asking whether our systematic use of the tests of dialectical materialism meant anything. If, under a dialectical materialist analysis, nothing “stood outside” of the process, did that negate the process itself, he asked? (Brown 255-56)
The idea of the Will to Power is evident in the Newton’s article “Black capitalist”
When we coined the expression “All power to the people”, we had in mind emphasizing the word “power” for we recognize that the will to power is the basic drive of man. But it is incorrect to seek power over people. We have been subjected to the dehumanizing power of exploitation and racism for hundreds of years; and the Black community has its will to power also. What we seek, however, is not power over people, but the power of control of our own destiny. (Newton 227)
As a Nietzschean, Newton knew that only power could influence change, and direct it along its desired course.
Nietzsche also played a critical role in getting people to question the established norms and morality of their time. In America, when Africans were brought here and enslaved, they were taught Christian morality, and taught to embrace the meekness, humility and pacifism encouraged by what Nietzsche saw as a “slave morality.” Via the Black Power movement, many African Americans started to question those values, and see the pursuit of power as a road to real change.
Importance in the Pagan Community: The ideas of Nietzsche are obviously of great import to the modern pagan community. He questioned the Judeo-Christian morals of good versus evil that came to define the West. Paganism — in my opinion — is a religion and set of values less concerned with good and evil, and more concerned with virtues like courage, honesty, integrity and the ability to hone one’s inner power though magic or ritual.
Nietzsche is a fascinating character supported by movements on both the left and the right. You can love him or hate him, but you cannot deny the importance of his writings and their effect on history.
QUOTES
To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
Without music, life would be a mistake.
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
LINKS
Hinduism For Dummies
Hinduism is an important religion for Pagans to learn about and understand, because it is one of the few Pagan Religions to last the test of time. Several of the world’s other Pagan belief systems have either been destroyed or synthesized into one of the Judeo-Christian Faiths. Most other Pagan religions alive today are small tribal, ethnic traditions or are Neo-Pagan revivals of religions that were forced underground for a thousand years.
So, read about a Pagan system that has survived the test of time, and is even a major world religion.
Metal Gaia 