Alchemy of the Five Elements (Video Transcript)
7.30.2011
Hi, my name is Jeremy Crow and in this video I'll be explaining a bit about the occult elements.
These are: Earth, Water, Air, Fire and Spirit or sometimes it's called Quintessence, which is just the Latin word for Fifth Element. So a lot of times you'll hear people refer to Fire, Air and Water as the principal elements and that these come together to create Earth. But usually it's not explained any further than that. In alchemy they do go into a bit more depth into the relationship between these elements.
Most often the three principal elements are referred to as Salt, Sulphur and Mercury. Salt would be equivalent to Water. Sulphur is equivalent to Fire. And Mercury is equivalent to Air, roughly. They're used in slightly different manner but it's roughly equivalent. So let's just use the elemental terms for now because they're the more familiar terms for most people.
So now what happens is everything around you... everything around you, including yourself, including a bushel of pears or a rock... any of these things are Earth and they contain differing qualities and quantities of the three principal elements of Water, Fire and Air. And the process of alchemy is to create that Fifth Element. So what you do is you take the fourth element of Earth, which is derived from the three principal elements and you break it down into a chaos of those three principal elements. You break down the barriers between the different parts and you end up with a Chaos. This is called Fermentation or Putrefaction. So this Chaos of the three principal elements in their impure state are separated off. The Water is separated, the Fire is separated and the Air is separated. And there are physical substances related to each of these. And then each of the elements, after it's been separated out is individually purified.
Now the the solid waste products are typically referred to in alchemy as Terra Damnata, which is Latin for Damned Earth. And the vaporous impurities that come off in the the purification process are usually referred to as Caput Mortuum, or Death's Head in Latin. So once these three principal elements have been purified then they're recombined and when they come together they form a new Earth without all the impurities. And it's so new or so different that it's referred to as a Fifth Element.
So you've got the three principal elements of Air, Fire and Water. Combined in their impure form they create the fourth element of Earth. If you can combine them together in their pure state you get the Fifth Element or Quintessence. Some people refer to it as Spirit but i prefer the term Quintessence now that I understand all of that, because Spirit just doesn't really seem to convey the same message to it anymore for me. But you know whatever works.
If you're interested in learning more about this type of subject you can check out my website Jeremy Crow dot com and you can leave any comments or questions in the section below. If you enjoyed this video please subscribe to the channel. Thank you very much.
If you feel that this material is important and useful please share it using the social media buttons provided at the side of the page. If you want to help support this website & the development of future content and projects please consider setting up an automatic monthly donation via my Patreon account: