The four elements is still really popular in new-agey circles. I believe my element is “air” and it has something to do with my birthday or astrological sign. The four element thing is really central to Wiccan practice, or it least it was in middle school when I learned this stuff (doing spells and shit was at that time very popular among 14-year-old girls and I was a 14-year-old boy).
I had never heard of quintessence until I studied Aristotle, though.
I shouldn’t speak for actual Wiccans, my experience was mostly love spells and giggling. I did sit in a circle once and “call” the air element after which people did the same for fire, earth and water. Then someone stole some of my hair to make me fall in love with them and we all smoked cinnamon sticks.
One great virtue of this dual explanation is that it removes the need for
what William James, in his remarkable “The Varieties of Religious
Experience”, called the “objective correlative”. By identifying the Gods with
shared features of our psychological and inter-subjective experience, but
being willing to dance with them on their own terms in the ritual circle, we
can explain religious experience in respectful and non-reductive ways without
making any anti-rational commitments about history or cosmology. Scientific
method cannot ultimately be reconciled with religious faith, but it can get
along with experiential mysticism just fine.
Doreen Valiente
talks about the four elements and Spirit as a fifth element in
An ABC of Witchcraft (1973); see for example the “Pentagram” entry.
(I was into Wicca when I was a 14-year-old boy too!)
Wikipedia is more trustworthy than I am (they same the same about it being more about ritual than belief). I don’t remember anything about the 5th element but wikipedia says that is there too. What we did was apparently “casting the circle” and I sat on the east side (or facing the east, I can’t remember) and read something about wind and slyphs. I recall thinking that being born with air as my element should imply that I had more control over the air/wind, but that’s probably the 14-year-old version.
The four elements is still really popular in new-agey circles. I believe my element is “air” and it has something to do with my birthday or astrological sign. The four element thing is really central to Wiccan practice, or it least it was in middle school when I learned this stuff (doing spells and shit was at that time very popular among 14-year-old girls and I was a 14-year-old boy).
I had never heard of quintessence until I studied Aristotle, though.
I’m a somewhat casual Neo-pagan—I enjoy the rituals.
As far as I can tell, the four elements are viewed as a convenient source of symbolism, but not believed in literally.
I don’t know about Wiccans, but Neo-paganism is a community of practice, not belief. Neo-pagans cover the range from atheism to literal belief.
I shouldn’t speak for actual Wiccans, my experience was mostly love spells and giggling. I did sit in a circle once and “call” the air element after which people did the same for fire, earth and water. Then someone stole some of my hair to make me fall in love with them and we all smoked cinnamon sticks.
Another example: I don’t know if Eric Raymond would self-describe as atheist, but he is a neopagan with, as far as I can tell, a naturalistic worldview.
Edit—a key quote:
Doreen Valiente talks about the four elements and Spirit as a fifth element in An ABC of Witchcraft (1973); see for example the “Pentagram” entry. (I was into Wicca when I was a 14-year-old boy too!)
In what sense did the Wiccans believe in the four (or five) elements?
Wikipedia is more trustworthy than I am (they same the same about it being more about ritual than belief). I don’t remember anything about the 5th element but wikipedia says that is there too. What we did was apparently “casting the circle” and I sat on the east side (or facing the east, I can’t remember) and read something about wind and slyphs. I recall thinking that being born with air as my element should imply that I had more control over the air/wind, but that’s probably the 14-year-old version.
Sorry, I was automatically not counting the Wiccans as ‘serious’ which is probably unfair.