My apologies: I had the order of properties wrong in the first version of this post. I have corrected the table, and, now, the pentagram.
When I started studying Wicca, I was taught the Wiccan idea of (magickal) elements. I understood that fairly readily, as I had come across it before, and used it in many of my magickal workings – in fact, the concept probably dates back to ancient Greek philosophers (or further), and came to us via Hermeticism (there is some good information on this, if I recall correctly, in Brendan Myers’ book “The Earth, The Gods and the Souls”). However, the concept of associating an element with a particular direction was new to me – before then, when I had invoked a pentagram in a quarter, I had invoked all four mundane elements and æther in each quarter, like this:
When I started studying Wicca, I was taught the Wiccan idea of (magickal) elements. I understood that fairly readily, as I had come across it before, and used it in many of my magickal workings – in fact, the concept probably dates back to ancient Greek philosophers (or further), and came to us via Hermeticism (there is some good information on this, if I recall correctly, in Brendan Myers’ book “The Earth, The Gods and the Souls”). However, the concept of associating an element with a particular direction was new to me – before then, when I had invoked a pentagram in a quarter, I had invoked all four mundane elements and æther in each quarter, like this:
Now, associating an element with each quarter was the way things were done
in Wicca, and much of Paganism, and the explanations made sense (although, mostly, if you were in Scotland –
or perhaps England), and I just adapted the correspondences to the Southern
Hemisphere (and I know people who, for
instance, if they are working on the west side of Port Phillip, invoke water
in the east [and I see this is now mentioned on Wikipedia] – and I
know others who insist on no change for the Southern Hemisphere, to the extent
of insisting that people here celebrate Litha in the middle of winter!),
and then, more recently, started to explore properly
adapting this by using true, local seasons. However, going back to the
association of elements with the points of a pentagram, other people seem to
have had an association along the lines of this (from Wikipedia,
author “Jakub Jankiewicz (Jcubic)”):
(Incidentally, it is great to see
a diagram with the Wiccan symbols for the elements added in as well: one of the
many annoyances of life is that people tend to scatter information across
multiple places, instead of summarising it into one. I find that particularly
in my day job, where I consider much of the information on Process &
Information Drawings [PIDs] can be combined usefully, easily and clearly with
the information on Process Flow Diagrams – but I digress from this aside, and all for the sake
of a good ol' grumpy whinge :) )
I’ve pretty much done nothing about the order of elements around the
pentagram, other than cringe, as nails were metaphorically scraped over the magickal
blackboard of my soul :) , but now I think I have found why I like the elements
in the order that I do. (I think I had
associated the “heavier” elements of earth and water with the lower legs of the
pentagram, and the “lighter” elements of air and fire with the arms.)
I found the answer – or the missing part of the puzzle, I should say - in
Agrippa’s Philosophy of Natural Magic: Complete Work on Natural Magic, White
& Black Magic, published in 1559 and being the first volume of his De
occulta philosophia libri tres. (Heinrich
Cornelius Agrippa lived 14th September 1486 – 18th February
1535, and was a German magician, occult writer, theologian, astrologer, and
alchemist; I got my copy from the Ordo Aurum Solis’ on-line
public library, but modern versions have been published as well.)
In that, Mr. Agrippa states that each element has two properties, which
are various combinations of heat-cold and dry-moist. One property is referred
to as “proper”, and the other as “mean”. I haven’t explored that description
far enough as yet, but I suspect it means “higher octave/frequency expression”
and “lower octave/frequency octave expression”, in the sense of levels
- or frequencies - of reality.
Probably the clearest way for me to present that is in a (corrected) table:
Agrippa’s explanation is that the elements are in a sequence, where the “mean” property of one becomes the “proper” property of the next.
Agrippa’s explanation is that the elements are in a sequence, where the “mean” property of one becomes the “proper” property of the next.
Furthermore, the order that he has the elements listed in is the order
I use, if I travel around the outside of the pentagram in a clockwise
direction. This brought to mind what I had been taught about elements when studying
“Touch
for Health” back in the 80s, which was arranging the (Eastern) elements
into a pentagram, and viewing the interactions between them in two ways:
- generative, and
- control.
The generative cycle goes around the outside of the pentagram, in a
clockwise direction.
The control cycle is internal, and uses the sequence I use when drawing
a pentagram to invoke (top to lower
right, lower right to upper left, etc – and I am aware that some do that in a
different order, but I don’t consider this related to the direction of the sun:
more on that some other time). For an illustration of that, see here,
which is from here.
So, in this system (and, strictly
speaking, if I use Mr Agrippa’s system ӕther should perhaps be drawn either in the
centre, or encompassing all on the outside, rather than using a pentagram - but
when I have ever just stuck to using what I’ve been told? :) ), the “dryness”
of fire generates the “dryness” of earth, the “coldness” of earth generates
the “coldness” of water, etc, which could also be viewed as a category of what
I term the Magickal Principle of Harmony, or
what others term “like unto like”.
Also, if one had, say, an excess of stolidity (i.e., earth), one would
use ӕther to control it. If one was being distracted (an excess of air), use
earth to control it, and so on.
Now, in Touch For Health, when strengthening, one finishes by using the
control cycle to stop the effect continuing until it becomes unbalanced. So,
continuing with this exercise, possible uses of this way of viewing the
elements (and this no doubt has parallels with the old idea of humours, which
has – in the sense of physical medicine – been well and truly superceded) could
include:
- emotionally:
earth could steady (control) the mental flightiness of an excess of air, and possibly the passion of fire could control some emotions, such as some forms of depression, which may be an excess of water (depression has many forms and causes, and ALWAYS should be treated under competent medical supervision),
whereas
if one had a lack of emotion, one may need to use earth to stimulate that (e.g., if feeling numb and overwhelmed from modern life, get out into nature); - physically (these examples are dreadful, I admit, but I’m tiring, now, after
several hours of this):
if a runny nose is due to an excess of water, it would be controlled by fire – dry heat (and a visit to the chemist),
whereas
if one’s temperature is high due to an excess of fire, and application of air would control it – so stand in front of a fan, in a sense; -
magickally:
an excess of water manifesting as flitting from one thing to another could be controlled by a dose of fire – perhaps as passion for something,
whereas
being too passionate about something could be controlled by the inspired thought of air.
I am going to have a go at adding this to my weekly psychic weather
reports, although many of those situations – as with all life – are more a case
of the blend of elements. So a
situation may be, for instance, 50% earth, 20% air, 15% water, 10% fire and 5% ӕther,
whereas it should, perhaps be 30% earth, 20% air, 15% water, 10% fire and 25% ӕther. I'll be nominating an element to increase or to control an influence, and another to finish to stop things becoming unbalanced.
To summarise this, I’m going to present a revised diagram (and corrected, for the initial error of properties) which summarises
what I have been talking about above, and includes a speculation that ӕther
includes all four “properties”. This also shows my association of sigils with
the elements – includes those of the (in
the Hermetic sense) kings of each element, which is something that must be
used with great caution (and is something I started exploring after reading Katherine Kerr's Deverry series).
I am also missing the sigil for ӕther. I don’t know what it should be …
so I will keep searching, and trying to earn the right to know.
I’m going to finish on another note: the combination of a couple of
ideas I had some time ago: tetrahedrons – specifically, protective
tetrahedrons, and protective sheets (see here).
My partner had the idea of using rolled up, miniaturised versions of protective
sheets as a way of having portable protection – put them in your handbag, for
instance, or perhaps you could make them a pagan version of the mezuzah (which I mentioned previously, but haven't got around to making yet ... ).
[2] Please
see here, here and my post "The
Death of Wikipedia" for the reasons
I now recommend caution when using Wikipedia. I'm also exploring use of h2g2,
although that doesn't appear to be as extensive (h2g2 is intended - rather
engagingly - to be the Earth edition of
"The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy").
[3] I apologise for the formatting: it seems Blogger is
no longer as WYSIWYG as it used to be, and there are a lot of unwanted
changes to layout made upon publishing, so I often have to edit it immediately after publishing to get the format as close to what I want as possible.
Tags: about me, correspondences, elements, Hermeticism, magick, Paganism, pentagram, sigils, Wicca,
First published: Fryrsdagr, 24th April, 2015
Last edited (excluding fixing typo's
and other minor matters): Friday, 24th April, 2015
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Remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, to mind our Mӕgan, and to acknowledge that all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering” (just as binary gendered [men’s and women’s] sporting teams are either both given the gender descriptor, or neither).Copyright © Kayleen White 2007-2024 NO AI
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