When I charted out the articles in the New To Wicca? section, I didn’t plan on including a segment solely about the Elements.  However, as I was writing, I realized I needed to put this somewhere on the site.  Some of that is because I consider myself to be an Elemental Witch.  I love Element work, the simultaneous intricacy and utter purity of it.  Understanding the way the Elements relate to each other is a rewarding bit of research and forms part of the foundation for multiple areas of our Craft:  astrology, ritual craft, hierarchy of the Elements/Elemental Ordering, magickal correspondence, archetypal correlations, Tarot.  The list goes on.

For those of you already somewhat familiar with the Elements, you are probably most accustomed to seeing them arranged in the order of Air (East), Fire (South), Water (West) and Earth (North).  You may also already know that it is an unspoken matter of etiquette to move only clockwise about the Circle, and thus you would also encounter the Elements in that order:  Air, Fire, Water, Earth.  So you may be wondering why I am introducing the elements to you in a different order.

I work with Elements in a foundational way, with the intention that one layer builds upon another, mirroring the order of the natural world.  When viewed in this manner, it is easier to understand Elemental relationships.  Many of the books I’ve seen recommend beginning with Air and working clockwise around the circle following Air with Fire, then Water, then Earth.  Learning the Elements by rote in this manner certainly helps you get off to a quick start in ritual because it automatically sets up the order in which the Elements are typically called in ritual work (not everyone does it the same way, though, so be warned).  To me, understanding the Elemental system requires going back to ceremonial practice, but before we go quite that far, let’s just begin with what you can see.

If you go outside on a clear sunny day and I ask you to point out the Element of Fire to me, you would most likely point at the Sun.  The Sun is a star, far from us, and yet we equate it with Fire.  It is the “highest” level in order of plain outright “height”.  The next element you encounter coming down is Air, our atmosphere.  Below that we find Water.  I know that there are places where atmosphere comes right down to touch land, however, 70% of the planet is covered in Water and so, 70% of the time, Water is the next element coming down.  Besides, Earth is the “bowl” that holds the Water, and thus is on the bottom.  (There are varying layers of the Elements going inward past the Earth’s crust, but right now, we’re just going to deal with that which we observe and with which we interact daily).

This order — Fire, Air, Water, Earth — can be found in Aristotle’s Physics (this was the commonly accepted view through the Middle Ages).  These four Elements could be found at the junctures of the four Qualities:  Dry, Hot, Wet, and Cold.  Each element had a primary and a secondary quality.  You can follow the pattern around:  Fire is primarily hot and secondarily dry; Air is primarily wet and secondarily hot; Water is primarily cold and secondarily wet; Earth is primarily dry and secondarily cold.

When viewed this way, many difficulties with Element work disappear.  Fire is obviously the opposite and complement to Water.  If I tell you that Fire is the Father Element and Water the Mother Element, you immediately begin to see a ripple of correlations:  Fire-Father-Sun-Active-Projective and Water-Mother-Moon-Passive-Receptive.  Fire projects outward, naturally manifests “up” (flames don’t burn downward as a rule).  Water receives inward, naturally manifests “down” (water flows down to the lowest point and fills the form of whatever holds it).  There are an immense number of correlations to be drawn, each with a lesson to be learned.

Likewise, there is a polarity between Air and Earth, for Air seems more “space” than matter, while Earth seems more matter than “space”.  There are correlations here, also.  Let’s work with the example of the Father and Mother (Fire and Water) in a form you see in real life.

Take a glass of water and set it in the sunlight.  That glass of “Mom” is sitting in the light of “Dad” and evaporation begins to occur.  From the Water, two new elements are made:  Air (the Son — the evaporated state of Water) and Earth (the Daughter — the sediments left in the glass that could not be transformed).  Air and Water are the “Child Elements”, born from the union of Fire and Water.

This sacred marriage between the Father and the Mother (between Fire and Water) produces the Son and the Daughter (Air and Earth, respectively).  The symbol for this Great Marriage between Prime Male and Prime Female can be seen in the Akasha symbol — most commonly recognized as the six-pointed Star of David.  In the Star of David, the symbol of the Masculine Element of Fire — the upright triangle — is combined with the symbol of the Feminine element of Water — the inverted triangle.

From the union of the Fire and Water triangles, we obtain the Air and Earth triangles that symbolize the Son and Daughter elements.  You will notice that the Air triangle is upright like the Fire triangle — this denotes its masculine gender.  However, notice the line across the top third of the triangle.  I call this the Gate of Life.  In the Air symbol, this line represents pictorally the upper line of the inverted triangle of Water when the Water triangle is joined with the Fire triangle in the Great Rite that then gives birth to, in this case, Air.  Likewise, the line in the Earth triangle represents the bottom line of the upright triangle of Fire when in the akashic position.  You will notice that the Earth triangle is also inverted and thus proclaims its primary Feminine nature.  If we follow this analogy to its conclusion, then both Air and Earth exemplify the dual gendered nature of humanity, formed of both Male and Female.  Air (like men) has a primary Masculine form but is also part Feminine as it came through the Gate of Life that is the union of the Male and Female.  Earth (like women) has a primary Feminine form but is also part Masculine as it, too, came through the Gate of Life.

What I’ve presented above isn’t what you will necessarily find in a Wicca 101 class.  It comes from ceremonial tradition.  Do you have to know the above to experience the Elements?  Of course not.  You can feel the sun on your face, the earth beneath your feet, the wind in your hair, and the coolness of the water on your skin in the rainfall.  This is how our bodies connect, how we intuitively soak up the natural wisdom of the elements.  However, let me make a case here.

Wicca was not merely born from earthy, folk-tradition goodness.  Gardner also married into Wicca ceremonial magick from Crowley, the Golden Dawn, Rosecrucian symbolism, hermetic magick.  All that stuff you see Wiccans do in circle?  That didn’t come out of a hedgerow.  It came straight out of a temple of The Art.  Casting circle, the Watchtowers, the pentagrams and hexagrams, salutes and symbols, tools and invocations — I invite you to research where they came from.  Dig into your origins.  Don’t just do it because a book says to do it.  Find out WHY.

The diagrams I’ve posted above have some unusual color correspondences for the elements.  These are not just some whim.  On most Wiccan lists, you will see Earth as Green, not Black.  You might also notice that Fire, Water, and Air contain the colors of the rainbow — two each — this, too, is quite deliberate.  As I said before, you don’t need to know this to experience the elements, however, my advice is this:  keep balance in your studies.  As you move forward with an intuitive (Feminine) experience of a thing, step also forward with the logical (Masculine) experience of a thing.  As you learn to experience the Elements by feel and sensation and deep “knowing”, also make the effort to discover the roots of the magickal practice that makes all this stuff “make sense”.  To truly understand Wicca and why Wicca works, both sides of the hedgerow need attention:  the folk practices that connect us to the Earth and the ceremonial practices that connect us to the Great Work.  This, too, is part of the Great Marriage that must take place in you.

I’ll post some exercises and meditations for each Element soon here in the OWLs section.  Stay tuned!

Diagrams created by Sitara Haye, 2009.