The 4 Elemental Relationships
The magic of the four elements-water, earth, fire and air- weave the tapestry of our lives, guiding us through the chaos of existence with wisdom, wonder and connection.
TL;DR
The four elements-water, earth, fire and air are fundamental to understanding our physical world and can guide us in achieving balance in life.
Our personal experiences deepen our awareness of how the natural elements and their interconnections influcence the outcomes of our lives.
Astrology assigns each of the four element to specific signs, influencing our personalities and providing metaphors for understanding relationsiips and emotions.
Integrating insights from science and ancient philosophies, such as Aikido helps us to navigate the complexities of existence, promoting harmony and balance in our lives.
There are some things in life so natural and integrated into our daily lives that we don’t think of them. Yet, they can impact your path exponentially if you consciously embrace and live with them.
Water, earth, fire, air.
These four elements are always present, yet how often do we stop to consider our world through this lens? These “divisions of physicality” clearly demonstrate utmost precision and balance in creating the physical world as we know it.
I first became aware of the four elemental categories as a teenager during a weekend camping trip. I was sitting on a large boulder in the hot sun. The boulder was on the edge of a river that rushed along just below the boulder and the many others strewn about by the migration of an ancient glacier that was long gone and melted centuries ago.
The melodies of cascading water caressed my ears. The sun felt good. It warmed my skin, heat penetrating deep to the bone. I inhaled the air full of Earth’s perfume, old pine needles and baking stones. I could hear just bits and pieces of my sisters’ conversation. My eldest sister was explaining how the earth was made of four categories of elements: earth, water, air, and fire. We stayed on the mountain amongst the ancient sequoias that weekend, many times in quiet contemplation.
The forces of nature that had withstood thousands of years were palpable, and it was clear the wilderness contained ancient secrets of the elements and manifested the balance of life forces on the planet. It seemed magical and otherworldly that our natural world contained complex and intriguing secrets intricately woven together to create a beautiful existence to all who live on Earth. One just had to look, regard, listen and contemplate to begin a journey into learning the complexities of nature and the four elements. The concept of how the four elements interconnect and influence life have since become a guide for balancing the rest of my life.
Tonight is the Pisces full moon and I’m contemplating the balance between managing relationships and my emotions. Psychic predictions and astrological musings are the flavor of the night on social media. There is a brilliance in these predictions, yet some are terrifying — a familiarity, a theme that I have heard repeatedly through the course of my life. I scroll through a diagram of the twelve astrological signs.
The four elements of water, earth, fire and air are assigned three signs each. Water signs tend to hold more fluid characteristics, going with the ebb and flow of life and having the ability to plunge deep and connect with deep emotion. Earth signs tend to be steady and strong, representing the qualities of groundedness, nurturing and growth. Fire signs are known for their fearlessness, moving quickly to make change and blaze the way. Fire is the element of rebirth and destruction, consuming what is no longer useful. Those born under the fire sign are exciting, fiery, work fast and examine life with astonishing clarity to make decisions quickly and unequivocally. Air signs tend to be associated with their lightness of being. The air element represents freedom, exploration, movement and grace. Jet streams and lovely breezes that circle the earth are filled with fresh promise. The sign of communication and intellect, adaptability and open-mindedness.
I think about my loved ones, one by one. I contemplate their birth sign and wonder if they fit the element they are assigned. I try to eliminate any doubts by choosing opposing characteristics and run through my memories to find an occasion where the person acted in opposition to their birth sign. I choose my brother. A Virgo, an earth sign, a giving, loving, and extremely outgoing individual. Is he like the Earth element? Reliable, solid, and grounded? Is he steady, organized as a Virgo should be? I sift through my memories again and yes, he is.
The four elements of our physical world comprise a collective reality that we rely on to understand our physical environment. They meld perfectly to create our green and blue paradise. The four elements represent facets of our existence, that we can look to and contemplate to discover meaning and reasoning.
Humankind often turns to the sciences, such as medicine, alchemy, and astrology to understand their emotions and relationships. Astrological signs, and the elements that are associated with each sign, serve as metaphors that we can apply to real life and relate to. These metaphors lead us to a type of guidance that is utilized in building relationships, work life, and even sometimes determining where we live.
Carl Jung, the renowned psychiatrist, utilized astrology and the study of the elements to understand the human psyche. He studied elements of the world and human life that correlated and explained human characteristics and events. Jung incorporated the study of astrology into his scholarship of human behavior to make sense of the emotional and psychic world of humans. He believed that astrology represented the totality of all psychological knowledge since ancient times. He held strong beliefs that the ideas of astrology were so substantial they were worth considering and integrating into his studies of the human psyche.
In science, elements take on a new meaning. Elements have been studied and categorized down to an atomic level. Through science we have learned that elemental characteristics visible to the eye actually hold much more complexity than what we see on first impression. Iron is dense, yet can eventually corrode. It can be magnetic, yet non-magnetic; malleable, yet brittle. Water, which is fluid, is made of gasses that become tangible in the form of H2O. Here again, we see the underlying truth that nothing appears as it seems. Everything is changeable and existence ultimately relies on our ability to move with and adapt to changes. Then there is the magical element of Francium, discovered in Paris and named after France. Francium is highly radioactive and one of the rarest elements on earth. It’s the heaviest alkali metal and only appears as the result of the decay of other elements. Scientists are unable to study and capture the true essence of Francium, due to its rarity and that it does not exist in bulk form. Francium is highly reactive and disappears quickly. A mysterious, unsolvable story of an element that changes our understanding of the physical world as we know it.
Amongst all this change, the elements of life and earth manage to balance just enough to sustain our reality as we know it. Since the beginning of time civilizations and cultures have strived to understand how to achieve optimum levels of existence. The ancient Aikido philosophy; if earth– be water, if fire– be water or air, if water– be earth, if air– be earth or fire, encourages us to utilize the qualities of the four elements to our best advantage to achieve a balanced and optimal state of existence. Aikido calls us to apply and understand how to move through the strengths and weaknesses of each element to achieve the ultimate victory of peace and balance. To flow, yet remain steady; holding currents of promise. It’s clear that in nature we can observe the balance of the elements and how they interconnect to establish harmony. To be human is to continually survive the challenges of our environment and its influences; to work towards a balance of all elements of existence to ensure that we grow and thrive.