♃ OCCULTIST CORNER #4: The History of the Four Elements - part 2

On the 1st part of the article about the history of the 4 elements, I mostly referred to the ancient greek theory of Hippocrates who associated fire, water, wind and earth with the Humors, categorizing people based on this interesting concept.

Let's note again the fact that Hippocrates was the first among many intellectuals who applied the forces of natural elements to the human psyche.

Carl Jung also managed to do the same, applying the natural forces of elements to the human psyche but his theory seems to be completely different from Hippocrates's, although C.Jung did use the Humors theory as a basis for his own.

According to Carl Jung there are 4 types or Jungian types of individuals and each one of those personality types corresponds to the 4 elements. Carl Jung defines the first category of the fire element as Feeling, the second category of Water is defined as Thinking, the Air is defined as Intuition and the Earth category is defined as Sensation.

Carl Jung considers that the 4 elements are Archetypes and they exist in the collective unconscious of any individual. Jungian psychology is focused on the concept that Air and Fire represent the active, masculine side of a person, thus Water and Earth represent the feminine, passive side of a person.

So, Carl Jung states that all 4 elements are supposed to be balanced on some level in our conscious mind and if we combine them with the way or the level that they exist in our collective unconscious then we will be able to determine the traits of the personality to a certain individual.

So, a person cannot be defined by only one element. One element may be more dominating than another but still all elements exist as Archetypes in our unconscious and the key is to achieve the balance of all four.

But what happens in the event of an opposition or a complementation between 2 elements? Which are the effects to the human psyche? For example: What happens when a person may have to face a situation in their life (good, bad etc.) which surfaces the elements through the form of certain thoughts, emotions or behaviour in general?

The Jungian psychology suggests that in the case of an opposition or complementation of the elements there are three different possibilities:

• the person manages to generate psychic energy
• one element may neutralize the other (Water may very well neutralize Fire)
• or the elements may be united by combining their qualities (Fire or Water may very well be combined with Earth).

The difficult way to determine if you are "balanced" is by proceeding to a rather complicated method which involves the use of Hippocrates theory on Humor types as well as Aristotle’s Square of Opposition which depicts the elements' qualities.

However, there is always an easier method which is not so scientific but it is insightful and very fun. This method involves the determination of your elements by the calculation of your astrological birth chart through planetary and signs alignments.

There are plenty of websites - usually related to astrology - which offer free information on elements' qualities, as well as free, small element related charts with short interpretations of them.