Humans have always had a fascination with the Four
Elements. From Ancient Greek
philosophers to Hollywood in modern times, we are obsessed with them.
Even with the periodic table of elements, we still have a desire to find
more knowledge of the Four Basic Elements, we seek to control that which cannot
be controlled.
Our fascination with the Elements began with Empedocles, a
5th Century BCE Greek philosopher.
He is generally credited with the “discovery” of the elements, even
though he never labeled them as such. Empedocles
referred to his discovery as “roots” or “root clumps”.
This is because Empedocles belonged to a group of magician herbalists,
and many of his beliefs stemmed from a foundation in several mystery traditions,
including: Orphic mysteries, Pythagorean theories, and the underworld mysteries
of Hecate, Demeter, Persephone and Dionysus.
Many of Empedocles’ theories served as a launching board
for many Western mystic and magical groups, (alchemy, Graeco-Egyptian magics,
Hermeticism and even Gnosticism). Empedocles
himself was even viewed as a “divine man” or “priest-magician”.
But this paper isn’t about Empedocles; that would be a whole other
paper in itself.
As we move on to more modern times, we see that
humanity’s fascination is still going strong.
We see it in movies (the 5th Element) in TV shows (MacGuyver),
candles, perfumes, paints and even video games (the Final Fantasy series), all
of which are based around the 4 Elements.
The question was “Are the 4 Elements still relevant with
the periodic table of elements in existence today?” My answer would be, yes, they are still relevant.
The reasons for my belief are because they are the basic building blocks
in all life. The Elements are many
things and have many associations that are attributed to them.
And most of those things are different from person to person.
My associations for the elements are Earth – Stability, and fertility.
Water – Emotions and healing. For Air – Creativity, Communication and
Inspiration. And finally, Fire – Passion and Strong emotions.
The elements are things of great power, and their
archetypes can coincide with different personality types, and are even used in
Astrology to help create astrological charts and personality types in people.
They are good to use in visualizations to help people reach different
states and even to help deal with problems in their mundane lives.
The elements are things of great beauty and wonder, and there is still much we can learn from them. Science can’t explain everything, and the Four Elements are just some of those things that cannot be explained. They don’t know why certain chemical compounds create earth, water, air and fire. All scientists know is that for some reason they do. The elements are still capable of inspiring mankind to seek more into discovering our world and the things that are a part of it. The Elements are still capable of inspiring us to great and wonderful things.
Do you think that the elements
will always be relevant in today's ever increasingly scientific society?
Do you think that, with humankind's need to explain everything, we damage the
mysticism of the elements? If water is just 2 parts Hydrogen and 1 part
Oxygen, do you feel like that takes away the "mystery" of it?
I believe that even though we as humans have this insatiable need to explain everything, that we will still find the 4 basic elements relevant in our scientific society. And even knowing that the make-up of water is H2O, I still find it awe-inspiring. I remember as I was thinking about how to write this lesson, that the chemical make-up of each of Elements do take away a bit of the mystery of them, but not enough to ruin it for me. Science can explain things as much as they want, but there are some things that cannot be explained. The elements are a part of that belief, that no matter how much they are explained away, no matter how much science disinfects them, they will always be a mystery to me.
