Welcome to Gaia! ::

The Hermetic concept of the four (philosophical) elements comes from a Pythagorean philosopher by the name of Ocellus Lucanus, as well as Aristotle. These elements are, of course, Fire, Air, Water and Earth. What follows is an overview of this system.

There are four primary elemental powers that make up the elements. These are hot, cold, dry and moist; combinations of two of these four powers each create an element:

Hot + Dry = Fire
Hot + Moist = Air
Cold + Dry = Earth
Cold + Moist = Water

We could also have Hot + Cold and Dry + Moist, but these are opposites and cancel one another out.

The elements themselves are considered to be qualities which all things possess and should not be understood as referring to the things in nature which we give the same names to. Thus Fire is not the flames produced when you light a match, though fire does contain Fire within it. Water is not the stuff that flows in a river, though water contains Water within it. As qualities we find that, quite frequently, one or more of the elements can be found in everything and are found in relative amounts when compared to other things of with similar qualities.

According to Aristotle there are 12 secondary qualities or elemental powers beyond the four primary ones. These powers come in pairs and are: heavy/light, rare/dense, smooth/rough, hard/soft, thin/thick, and brittle/viscous. Aristotle goes on to tell us that these twelve secondary powers are derived from moist and dry. This will eventually make its way into Neoplatonic cosmology, where everything comes from fire and air.

Occellus attributes four powers to each element instead of two.

Fire: hot, dry, rare and brittle
Air: soft, smooth, light and thin
Water: cold, moist, dense and viscous
Earth: hard, rough, heavy and thick

These can also be characterized by a single, well, character: Fire is hot, Air is moist, Water is cold and Earth is dry.

When considered in relation to other elements, however, Occellus agrees with Aristotle and we get the same arrangement of elements as above, i.e. Fire = Hot + Dry, etc.

The medieval and especially Renaissance hermetists expanded on this idea and saw within the four elements not only qualities but whole realities governed by those qualities; these realities appear to overlap and inform our own and their inhabitants, the “elementals” are understood to be quite active in our world, doing, well, elemental things really.

The elementals are named after mythical beings, or mythical understandings of real things, and today are most frequently referred to as follows:

Salamanders: fire elementals. These were named as such because it was once believed that salamanders, the lizardy critters, lived in fire as they were frequently seen scurrying out of trees when they were on fire. No one quite seemed to understand that they actually lived in the trees and were running for dear life. By the time people figured that one out the name had stuck. All the others are named for mythical entities (note that “mythical” and “not real” are not the same thing).

Undines: water elementals. Originally this term seems to have referred to female water spirits who tried to get human souls for themselves by mating with humans. The name apparently comes from Paracelsus, a famous alchemist. The word is derived from the Latin unda a wave or water.

Sylphs: air elementals. Again named by Paracelsus who conceived of them as being mortal and soulless. The name comes to us from the French sylphae which comes from the Latin Sylphus, which appears to have been the name of a deity.

Gnomes: earth elementals. Again Paracelsus is our source for the naming of these guys. In actuality Paracelsus named all of the elementals in the 16th century, using names from myth and legend, as I explained above. According to legend gnomes are diminutive beings that live in the center part of the Earth. Paracelsus named the earth elementals after them as, well, the gnomes live in the earth, now don’t they?

It should be noted that Paracelsus’ use of these names should not necessarily be taken to mean the same thing that the original stories about them meant, which tended to envision these beings as physical entities that while perhaps connected to a particular physical element don’t really match with the philosophical and metaphysical nature of the hermetic elements, though their symbolism and imagery are so heavily influenced by images of their physical counterparts that it can be difficult to distinguish them sometimes.

You may want to find a copy of A Treatise on Angel Magic, a Renaissance period magical text (edited by Adam McClean and recently once again in print). It has, amongst other bits of magical goodness, a section on the elementals.

Wow, that's great! We need to have more topics like this.

I'll look into those books, since my occult bookshelf is lacking