Explanation of the Elements

[Denise Morgan (Helping Hand)]

Explanation of the Elements
According to the ancient teachings, creation was founded on five forces, or elements, that were joined together by the sixth aspect of spirit. These elements are Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Chaos.

The element of earth represents form and stability. The element of air represents intellect, objectivity, thought, and adaptability. The element of fire provides force and generates activity. The element of water lends change and mutability. The element of chaos brings about rapid change, removing of obstacles or unwanted situation, and to get things moving when static.

Earth, Air, Fire, and Water elements within magical symbolism are the basic components of all that exists. They are at the same time visible and invisible, as well as physical and spiritual. From these four elements all things have been created according to magical belief.

Chaos comes in were the beginning of Creation started. Its elemental energy was used to remove everything in the Universe to make way for the other four elements to begin forming everything we know today. We will discuss the uses and abilities of the element in a separate handout since we need to go over it to understand it. We will continue to go over the remaining four elements at this time.

It is unwise to view the four elements in purely physical terms. When we speak of the elements, we do not mean literally the forms that we are used to referring to them. For example, Water can mean anything in liquid form or Air can mean any gaseous substance. These names can be used to represent the unformed, non-material substance of the element.

The elements are even considered in the psychological divisions of basic human personality. Everyone is linked to a combination of elemental forces at the time of their birth and usually one element predominates. For example, those who are influenced by Water seem to be ruled by their emotions while Air people are more detached, intellectual, logical, or abstract. Earth people are usually practical and materialistic while Fire people are the most quickly bored if their interest isn’t feed.

The elements are found in the very heart of the Craft, whether approached from a magical or devotional direction. Because this is the magic of nature, using natural powers, tools, and symbols, it is important to understand the attributes of the elements. An understanding of the elements will aid your magical work greatly.

EARTH
Earth doesn’t necessarily represent the physical Earth, but that part of it which is stable, solid, and dependable. It is the foundation of the elements, the base. It is the domain of abundance, prosperity, and wealth. In magical workings, Earth “rules” all spells and rituals involving business, money, employment, and prosperity in all its forms, stability, fertility, and more.

Earth is a feminine element. It is nurturing, moist, fruitful, which are the qualities that make it feminine. These attributes are the reasons that many civilizations envision the Earth as a great Mother Goddess, the all-fertile Creatress of nature.

Earth rules the Northern point of the compass, because that is the place of greatest darkness and of winter. Its color is the green of the fields and plants. It governs stone, image, and tree magic.

AIR
Air is the element of intellect, the realm of thought, which is the first step toward creation. It is the clear, uncluttered, pure visualization, which is a powerful tool for change. It is also movement, the force that sends the visualization out toward manifestation. It rules spells and rituals involving travel, instruction, freedom, obtaining knowledge, discovering lost items, uncovering lies, and more. It can also be used to develop the psychic faculties.

Air is a masculine element, being dry, expansive, and active. It is the element that excels in places of learning, and which is at work while we imagine, think, and consider.

Air rules the East because this is the direction of the greatest light, and the light of wisdom and consciousness. Its color is yellow; the yellow of the Sun and of the sky at dawn and its season is spring. Air governs the magic of the four winds, most divinations, concentration, and visualization.

FIRE
Fire is the element of change, will, and passion. It is most primal and for this reason is much used in magic. It is the realm of sexuality and passion. It is not only the “sacred fire” of sex, but also the spark of divinity, which shines within us and in all living things. It is one of the most physical and spiritual of the elements.

Fire rituals usually involve energy, authority, sex, healing, destruction (of negative habits, disease), purification, evolution, and more. Its magic is quite often practiced near the hearth, or beside fires lit in wilderness clearings, or beside the flame of a single candle.

Fire is masculine. It rules the South, the place of greatest heat, the color red, and the season of summer. All candle magic comes under Fire’s powers.

WATER
Water is the element of purification, the subconscious mind, love, and the emotions. It is the element of absorption and germination. The subconscious is symbolized by this element because it is rolling, always moving, like the sea which rests neither night nor day.

Water magic involves pleasure, friendship, marriage, fertility, happiness, healing, sleep dreaming, psychic acts, purification, and more. A ritual of Water usually ends with an object being tossed or placed in or on a body of water.

Water is a feminine element, and its color is the blue of deep, deep water. It rules the West and autumn months of the year, when rain showers wash the Earth. The magic of Water is full of mirrors, the sea, fog, and rain.



Elemental Chaos
In Dragon magick, chaos is seen as an element, a force that we can tap into to help propel and form our magick. Chaos is the divine spark that lies within each of us, it lets us know that chaos is found within and without and it helps to put us in touch with the first Deity. It is how dragon magickians tap into the primordial energy that existed before the Goddess was formed; it is sometimes called the first magick. There is the common misconception that because we use chaos that our magick is confused and disordered. This isn't so, our magick still has structure it just tends to react and manifest in unusual ways.

Chaos, in and of itself, isn't a system or philosophy. It is a bridge between our world and dragons; we tap into their energy when we choose to work with chaos. We already know that we shape our magick out of the traditional four elements, bind our magick together with spirit, then in dragon magick we transmit it through chaos. By invoking dragons into our rites we are consciously drawing on the element of chaos. Chaos is the basis for our magick with dragons, it is how they can add their energy to our works and chaos is seen as the primal creative force.

What confuses many is that chaos doesn't come with a set of rules or ethics and because of it some have deemed it the "left hand path", equating it with evil. There are no set spells for chaos, it works with the spells of any tradition or those that the practitioner writes. Chaos' ability to blend itself with any method, any belief system makes it fairly unique and often a mystery. It is not evil, just as magick is not inherently evil, but it can be shaped to suit any need. Just like electricity, chaos is neither good nor bad; it is how we choose to apply it that gives it a positive or negative attitude.

But what is chaos? It is defined as "the irregular, unpredictable behavior of deterministic, non-linear dynamic systems". What this means is that we cannot always guess how chaos will manifest or what its outcome might be. Just because spell A completed in manner B that doesn't mean it will happen that way every time. Spell A might turn into C or D, or it might do some thing completely unexpected and give us 3. Chaos challenges us to consider alternative avenues of thought, to abandon logic as our only way of proving an experience. For most magickians this is the largest stepping stone, it is often hard to not try to find a logical manner to explain away what we are doing.

Because chaos is non-linear, it is not bound by the constraints of time. Applying this to spell work means that we can affect events already past or those that haven't happened yet. If you took the Gaean Tradition first degree course, you may remember in the one lesson it was briefly touched upon we don't always know how magick works. The example used there was with weather magick, performing a rain spell. Does the magick work in the present time to affect current weather patterns to bring rain? Or does it work retroactively, moving backward in time to set up the weather that we need to bring the storm that we desire? Chaos magick tells us that it can do either one of those, or it can do both, or neither.

Working with chaos means that we are tapping into a powerful and strong energy that at its core is primal. It can overwhelm some and many find that they feel like the energy could physically knock them over. Its unadulterated power makes it appear dangerous and threatening but with time and practice you can get used to the rush of energy, but even then it will still retain its 'punch' so that we don't forget what we are dealing with. Chaos is akin to the spirit of dragons and we must learn to work with chaos, to "think outside the box", and through the key of belief to tame the elemental force of it. We cannot dominate chaos, just as we can't dominate dragons, nor can we hope to over power it but we can work with it and have it work our will. To try to harness it in a war of domination will only frustrate ourselves and warp our magick.