Elements Series

One of my endeavors is to be consistently curious about anything and everything. This has led my down the path of having a dragon hoard of books in my house. In fact, it is so bad, that my husband has challenged me to only buy as many books in a month as I have completed. My Amazon wish list for books just gets growing as I slowly begin to realize that I will never not be able to shop my own bookshelves. I am very much OK with this.

One of the starting points in the witchcraft journey is to learn how to utilize the world within and around us to accomplish magical tasks. I can remember being 14 and becoming fascinated with Wicca and wanting to learn everything about everything. I quickly became overwhelmed, but the urge to keep seeking remained. The very first book I ever cracked open started by talking about the elements. Sadly, I don't remember what book that was. This is because I stole it from my older sister....

So, for the next few weeks I will be drilling deep into the elements I work with now. I will be sharing how I use these elements in my day to day, and how to work with them in an ambling way. This will be the "hub" post that will eventually have links to each of the 5 elements I work with so you only have to bookmark one page to have easy access to all of them. I am also including all of the resources I have used, and will be using, at the bottom of this post.

Overview of the Elements

I want to start by saying that not all cultures have the same number of elements that they recognize and work with spiritually. Understanding that there is no universal approach to working with the elements can be very freeing. I also want to make it clear that we are talking about using the energy of these elements, and not necessarily the physical manifestation of the elements. You can work with the essence of fire, without having to light anything on fire. The essence of water can be a part of your life, without having to interact with water directly.* (Please drink your water – we are all cucumbers with more complicated emotions and unlike the tardigrade we cannot subsist in a vacuum. )

Ancient Celtic traditions only recognized three elements: earth, fire, and air. While the Greeks broke the universe down into five total elements: water, air, earth, fire and ether (Pradas, 2020). Ether (or Aether) was believed to be the material of the heavens (Vanderbeck, Spell Jar Book For Beginners, 2022). This, in modern times, has been replaced by the term “spirit” and is considered the magical energy that surrounds us all. In Chinese philosophy we also find five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal and water (Jiang, 2023). You can choose to work with all, some, or none of the elements. This is your path, and no one can tell you what to do on it. In my practice I choose to follow the Greek influenced set of elements.

There are some universal correspondences for each element. While there is no such thing as a “universal truth” there is a large body of information that people have drawn the same conclusions about time and again. This becomes “common knowledge” and thus is not able to be attributed to a singular place. This does not take away your autonomy to call upon an element for something that is not an “agreed upon” correspondence. Your intuition is the most important voice to listen to in the craft. What I am going to share is akin to pirate code – it is more of a guideline than a rule.