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Elements

Air

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Origin 360 BCE to 320 BCE

Air is one of the four classical Western elements, the element of mind, speech, and connection. Its qualities are hot and moist: warm, light, and mobile, the most sociable and diffuse of the four. In astrology it forms the air triplicity of Gemini, Libra, and Aquarius, signs of intellect, relationship, and ideas, and in tarot it is the suit of Swords, the suit of thought, conflict, truth, and the power of the mind. In the doctrine of the four humors it corresponds to the sanguine temperament, ruled by blood, marked by cheerfulness, curiosity, and quick sociability. In the Golden Dawn scheme of directions it is placed in the East, the region of sunrise, and its season is spring, the season of fresh growth and rising breath. Air is thought and relationship in motion, the medium of communication that carries voices and links minds. It is the invisible connective principle among the elements.

Facts
Origins
Origin Period
360 BCE to 320 BCE 1Tradition: Aristotelian physics: the four elements and the quintessence
Origin Period
500 BCE to 400 BCE 1Tradition: Greek natural philosophy: the four roots of Empedocles
Place of Origin
Akragas in Sicily, where Empedocles wrote, and the philosophical schools of the Aegean and of Athens. 1
Attributed Author / Compiler
Empedocles of Akragas, who names four roots; Aristotle, who assigns each its pair of qualities and adds the fifth, heavenly substance. 1
Origin of the Name
Through Old French air, from Latin aer, from Greek aer, meaning air or mist. 1
Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting Source
Hot and wet. Air stands between fire and water in the scheme; the modern reading of air as intellect and communication is not in the source. 1Tradition: Aristotelian physics: the four elements and the quintessence
Learn More
Air in the Western Scheme

Air is one of the four classical elements, and in the Aristotelian scheme of qualities it is hot and wet, light and mobile, rising above earth and water toward fire. As an element it stands for the mind, thought, speech and communication, for the intangible and the moving, breath and wind, the medium of sound and of the spoken word. The tradition assigns the three air signs, Gemini, Libra and Aquarius, to it, read as intellectual, social and oriented toward ideas and relationships. In humoral medicine air corresponds to blood and the sanguine temperament, warm and moist, sociable and optimistic.

In Western ceremonial magic air is placed in the east, the quarter of the rising sun and of dawn, associated with the ritual dagger or sword and with the faculty of intellect and analysis. Its attribution to the tarot suit of Swords is part of the Golden Dawn scheme of 1888. Throughout, air carries a symbolism of intellect, communication, freedom and the swift-moving, the element least bound to place and most identified with the life of the mind.

Sources The Presocratic PhilosophersG. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven and M. Schofield with The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 6th editionIsrael Regardie

Air in Western Practice

Air is the element with the least stable set of attributions in the Western working traditions, and the instability is instructive rather than accidental.

In astrology air is a triplicity: Gemini, Libra and Aquarius. That grouping is settled, it is in Ptolemy, and no school disputes it. Everything downstream of it is less settled.

In the tarot, air is conventionally the suit of Swords and fire the suit of Wands, which is the Golden Dawn assignment and the one most modern decks follow. A substantial older current reverses them, giving the sword to fire as the forged and heated thing and the wand or rod to air as the breath-driven staff, and this is not a mistake in either direction: it is two schools reading the same objects by different logics. Anyone comparing two systems of correspondence should establish which convention each is using before concluding that one of them has made an error.

In the Golden Dawn system air is placed in the east, given the dagger as its working implement and the archangel Raphael as its regent. The eastern placement is the one attribution here that reaches back further, since dawn, breath and the beginning of the day form an old cluster.

The element's stable core, across every school that disagrees about the rest, is mind, speech and relation: air is what passes between things rather than what any one thing is made of. Aristotle gives it hot and wet, the qualities of expansion and of taking the shape of what holds it.

Sources The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 6th editionIsrael Regardie with TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Asia, Continents

The air triplicity governs the northeast quarter.

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Date Palm, Plants

Cunningham's magical herbalism sets the date palm to Air, against the solar rulership the old herbals give it.

Source Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Magical HerbsScott Cunningham
Empedocles, Historical Figures

One of the four roots of his physics, the earliest statement of the four element scheme the West went on to inherit.

Linden, Plants

Cunningham's magical herbalism sets the linden to Air.

Source Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Magical HerbsScott Cunningham
Pine, Plants

Cunningham's magical herbalism sets the pine to Air, against the martial rulership the old herbals give it.

Source Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Magical HerbsScott Cunningham
Raphael, Archangels
The Eighteenth Call, Enochian Calls
Source A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years Between Dr. John Dee and Some SpiritsJohn Dee, edited by Meric Casaubon
The Eighth Call, Enochian Calls
Source A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years Between Dr. John Dee and Some SpiritsJohn Dee, edited by Meric Casaubon
The Eleventh Call, Enochian Calls
Source A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years Between Dr. John Dee and Some SpiritsJohn Dee, edited by Meric Casaubon
The Fifteenth Call, Enochian Calls
Source A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years Between Dr. John Dee and Some SpiritsJohn Dee, edited by Meric Casaubon
The Fifth Call, Enochian Calls
Source A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years Between Dr. John Dee and Some SpiritsJohn Dee, edited by Meric Casaubon
The Fool, Tarot

In the Golden Dawn Kabbalistic attribution, The Fool is assigned to the element Air by way of its Tree of Life path.

Source The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 6th editionIsrael Regardie
The Fourteenth Call, Enochian Calls
Source A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years Between Dr. John Dee and Some SpiritsJohn Dee, edited by Meric Casaubon
The Fourth Call, Enochian Calls
Source A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years Between Dr. John Dee and Some SpiritsJohn Dee, edited by Meric Casaubon
The Ninth Call, Enochian Calls
Source A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years Between Dr. John Dee and Some SpiritsJohn Dee, edited by Meric Casaubon
The Seventeenth Call, Enochian Calls
Source A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years Between Dr. John Dee and Some SpiritsJohn Dee, edited by Meric Casaubon
The Seventh Call, Enochian Calls
Source A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years Between Dr. John Dee and Some SpiritsJohn Dee, edited by Meric Casaubon
The Sixteenth Call, Enochian Calls
Source A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years Between Dr. John Dee and Some SpiritsJohn Dee, edited by Meric Casaubon
The Sixth Call, Enochian Calls
Source A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years Between Dr. John Dee and Some SpiritsJohn Dee, edited by Meric Casaubon
The Tenth Call, Enochian Calls
Source A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years Between Dr. John Dee and Some SpiritsJohn Dee, edited by Meric Casaubon
The Third Call, Enochian Calls
Source A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years Between Dr. John Dee and Some SpiritsJohn Dee, edited by Meric Casaubon
The Thirteenth Call, Enochian Calls
Source A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years Between Dr. John Dee and Some SpiritsJohn Dee, edited by Meric Casaubon
The Twelfth Call, Enochian Calls
Source A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years Between Dr. John Dee and Some SpiritsJohn Dee, edited by Meric Casaubon
Theoricus (Golden Dawn), Initiatory Grades

Theoricus is the air grade of the elemental series. The order's attribution of air to Yesod is its own and does not follow every kabbalistic table.

Source The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 6th editionIsrael Regardie
Yang, Polarities

Air, one of the two light and rising elements that make up the masculine signs.

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Yellow, Colors

The Golden Dawn assigns yellow to Air in its elemental colouring, used for the air dagger and the air triangle. The set is internally consistent inside the order's grade system and should not be read as a general Western attribution.

Source The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 6th editionIsrael Regardie

Related To

Air, Tattvas

The tattva Air is paired with the Western element Air in the tattva work the Golden Dawn took into its curriculum.

Source The Golden DawnIsrael Regardie
Sources
1. The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th edition
Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth and Esther Eidinow (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2012Aristotle: physics and cosmologyView the Source
The Presocratic Philosophers
G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven and M. Schofield, Cambridge University Press, 1983Empedocles and the four roots; air as hot and wet
Ancient Medicine
Vivian Nutton, Routledge, 2013blood and the sanguine temperamentView the Source
The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft
Ronald Hutton, Oxford University Press, 1999the Golden Dawn (1888) elemental attribution of the tarot suits and ritual quartersView the Source

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