Ongoing Process

So I just discovered something fascinating.  The classic four elements of water, earth, air, and fire originally arose not out of some abstract speculation, but out of actual experience of the world.  They’re derived from combinations of two of our most primal experiences: warmth and moisture.  These formed two dynamics, warm/cool and moist/dry.  Imagine these as the two axises of a graph, and the four quadrants define the four elements.

• Water: Moist/Cool
• Earth: Dry/Cool
• Air: Moist/Warm
• Fire: Dry/Warm

This may be glaringly obvious, but it’s actually a completely new idea to me that these systems (this is the very roots of alchemy!) would stem from the actual world and not be conjured from beyond it.  This has set me off exploring the entire notion of Western esotericism in an entirely different way.  Rather than starting with all the systems and trying to break them open to see how they tick, I can start with my own experience of being alive and work upwards!  OK, in reality I’ll probaby do both.  But still, this is an entire modality that I had never conceived of before!

Woohoo! 

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 at 9:17 pm and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.