The cosmic workforce

The traditional use of Elements

Elementals began in Greek cosmology and became part of the occult wallpaper, with few people realising what they were supposed to do.

The later magical tradition often speaks of five elements: fire, water, air, earth and spirit. The older Greek starting point was stranger and a bit less tidy.

Around 450 BC, the Sicilian philosopher and religious figure Empedocles described creation through four “roots”: earth, air, fire and water, moved by two vast forces, Love and Strife. What survives from the poems known as On Nature and Purifications is fragmentary but hugely important for what came later.

Empedocles was not saying that the universe started from nothing. His four roots, earth, air, fire and water, were eternal. Only their arrangement changed.