Learning to cultivate an awareness of how the Four Elements play a role in your personality, daily life, and how you are feeling at any point in time can assist you in address things that need healed (shadows, traumas) to find balance.Īs stated earlier, I am going to address the medicine wheel in the Native American and Plant Medicine cultures. While Earth embodies stability and vitality a feeling of groundedness and abundance, yet it can be expressed as a sense of lack, unworthiness, sadness, depression, or suppression. Air symbolizes love but also our fears and doubts, and the stress and anxiety that can go with it. Water expresses joy or sadness and grief. For example, Fire signs are associated with passion but also anger or rage. The Four Elements regarding your personality are dual in nature. For example, if you are a Sagittarius, it is associated with fire and your birth element gave clues as to how you would function on your life path and how you manifest your life’s journey. Depending on when you were born, you embodied one of the Four Elements more than others. Personal imbalances were associated with a specific element, and when this was understood healings could be given to bring a person back into alignment. However, some people tend to embody one more than the others. Our ancient ancestors understood this and believed that each person was made of all Four Elements. When it comes to one’s personality, the Four Elements take on similar meanings. In Wicca for example, it includes a fifth element-spirit or the self, while in Asian Feng shui the element of metal is included. Other traditions, a fifth element is included. In plant medicine of the Amazon (particularly Incan, Peruvian) the Four Elements hold a significant place in ceremony. In Native American tradition, the Four Elements are recognized as an integral part of life and how we address and move through it. Cups can also speak of going after the things that bring us in true alignment with ourselves and our path, as well as love and compassion. In tarot, cups symbolize water and our emotions in its full spectrum. It also represents how you go with the ‘flow’ of life. It can also embody our intuitive or psychic abilities, and how we go inward for self-reflection and the contemplation of issues we wish to heal or resolve. Water-represents our emotions and how we hold or release it, such as sorrow or grief. In tarot it can be how we handle challenges, forward movement, conflicts within ourselves or between others, as well as creativity and what we create. Fire speaks to one’s will power, inner strength, and perseverance. In tarot, air is represented by swords, the mental body, wisdom, and things that create obstacles, stress, or anxiety.įire-represents energy, it is transformative, the empowered action we take and our inner strength. Your mental thoughts also influence your action(s). In tarot, earth is represented by coins or pentacles and speaks of not only financial abundance, but other gifts, forms of abundance and blessings we receive.Īir-represents our thoughts, intellect, the setting of intentions, connection to the universal life force, and things of the ethereal or higher spiritual realms, and various types of communication or how we communicate. They are also represented in the four suits of tarot.Įarth-represents grounding, the foundation of life, substance, things that are tangible, connection to life path, family roots, primal or animal instincts, and it is associated with the root chakra (red) in the body’s energetic system. The Elements are also sometimes referred to as ‘temperments’ and represent different strengths and weaknesses of human nature. Each caused not only different effects, but they could also change in form (example: water-liquid, air/steam, ice) of which occurred at an atomic level. In essence, they were alchemized and held together or pushed apart by the cosmic forces of polarity (attraction and repulsion). The elements are matter and therefore changeable. The early Greeks believed that these elements were unchanging in nature, and everything was created from them. They have played a role in metaphysics and the mystical since ancient times. The Four Elements are Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water. For the purpose of this article, I will be addressing them individually and collectively, and how they are used in the plant medicine tradition of the Amazon and Native American culture. Depending on the culture, you will find similarities and similar symbology. The Four Elements, the Four Directions, and the Medicine Wheel are used in spirituality and in many cultures.
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