The four elements and occult correspondences

Lecture by Baal-Hiram and Eric Midnight (Teurgia.Org’s administrators)

Welcome to the Teurgia.Org project's new lecture on the four elements and occult correspondences.

Through this lecture, you will be able to understand the principle of qualities and occult correspondences of elements, and not just memorize them. You will learn interesting information about the cross of the elements, about the pentagram, and much more. The lecture also has a second part, which will soon be translated into English. So let's get started.

The four elements are at the heart of all occult and magical theory and practice. The entire world around us is made up of these four elements, and we somehow come across their manifestations every day, hour, minute of our life. Both around us and inside us. All things, objects that surround us, are composed of a mixture of these four elements. The cycles of day, evening, night and morning also correspond to these four elements. Cycles of the seasons. Months through zodiacal correspondences are also associated with the elements. Even planetary influences, which are taken into account in planetary magic, in our world are still mixed with elemental influences and, one way or another, in their manifestation, interact with them and through them. Even at such the simplest materialistic level, accessible in order to observe everything with the naked eye without any mysticism, (мИстисизм) a person himself consists of four elements in his physical manifestation. Bones and flesh are earth, blood is water. The air with which we breathe in the lungs and thus saturate our blood is element of air. And fire is our constant temperature of 36.6 - the heat that keeps us alive. The flame that quickens us and whose burning is our life.

Weather phenomena and natural disasters, lightning, rain, wind, hail, snow, forest fires, earthquakes, storms, hurricanes are also manifestations of the four elements. All these unbridled and uncontrolled external manifestations of the elements can also be compared with the internal processes in a person, correlated with the emotions he experiences, which we will talk about later. Magic and occult practices are based on the fact that the operator learns to control these four elements, bring them into order, subordinate them to his will and use them to achieve his goals both within himself and around him. In other words, magical practice is always and in everything connected with interaction with these four elements in the material plane and in the spiritual and astral spheres. All magical operations, one way or another, are built in accordance with one or another symbolic scheme, the foundation of which is four elements and their correspondences:

The cardinal points, kabbalistic worlds, zodiacal triplicities, correspondences of the sephiroth of the tree of life to the elements, planetary interaction with the elements, direct or indirect correspondence of the nature of spiritual beings to the four elements, etc. Mastering the knowledge of symbolic correspondences and the practical application of the four elements is both the foundation of magical art and its pinnacle. Knowledge and the ability to properly handle them is the key to the secrets of nature and the success of magical practice.

There are only four main properties of the four elements: hot, dry, wet, cold. And combinations of these properties with each other by two belong to each of these 4 elements, showing its exact characteristics. For example, fire: hot and dry, water: cold and wet, air: hot and humid, earth: cold and dry. This scheme of correspondences was first developed by Aristotle, and since then it has been unchanged in the Western occult tradition, it is cited in their works by such masters of occultism as Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Eliphas Levi, Dr Papus, Samuel Mathers, Arthur Waite and many others. Regarding the consistency of this scheme, it is necessary to explain how the mixture of these properties is distributed over these four elements. To make it really understandable, and not represent some kind of dogma that is simply memorized. As with all symbolic schemes and systems of Western magic, this scheme is logical and quite rational. And the easiest way to visualize it for understanding is in the form of a cross on the four arms of which there are 4 basic elements, which, by the way, in the Western magic tradition, are usually symbolized by triangles.

Fire: a triangle turned upward, water is a triangle turned downward, air is a triangle turned upward with a horizontal bar crossing it, and earth is a triangle turned apex downward, also with a horizontal bar, like air, crossing it. So, in this diagram of this cross, we draw a triangle of fire on the upper arm of the cross and conditionally consider it a Father. We place the triangle of water on the right side of the person on the cross, that is, on the left side of the observer (We choose this order according to the rules of reading in Hebrew from right to left, since we use the Kabbalistic formula of the tetragrammaton, which we will talk about a little further) and conventionally consider it Mother. Next to the triangle of fire, we write the properties of fire: hot and dry. Next to the triangle of water, we write the properties of water - cold and wet. Now, next to the lower arm of the cross, draw a triangle of air and we will conventionally consider it as the Son, who inherits the first quality of the father, and the second quality - of the mother. Thus, the air is hot and humid. On the right arm we draw a triangle of the earth and we will consider it a daughter, which borrows the second property of the father and the first property of the mother. So the earth is dry and cold.

Full version of the lecture

Lecture by Baal-Hiram and Eric Midnight (Teurgia.Org’s administrators), September of 2020