Something occurred to me tonight - why are the four classic elements (earth, air, fire, and water) the four classic elements?
It is an easy game of 'one of these things is not like the others'. So who thought fire belonged with the other three?
Really, there are three basic elements - not coincidentally, there are also three basic states of matter. OK, once you get a fair amount of energy or the ability to look at really small things a fourth one shows up, but plasma is a latecomer at best and a stretch at worst.
Even if you do insist on four elements, why fire? Why not the one stable thing you can have in a primitive world that is not like earth, air, or water... life.
You can't, at least not in a primitive world, have a bucket of fire. True, it is hard to conceptualize that an empty bucket is a bucket of air, but once you do it becomes clear that fire doesn't belong, yet there is one thing in your world that is not earth, not air, not water, and yet can fill a bucket: living things. Flesh and leaf, blood and feather. Life becomes the fourth element that weaves through the other three, while most fire can only survive in one.
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One of my swords. Live blade from Albion Swords http://www.albion-swords.com/swords/albion/late/sword-lady-vivamus.htm
Do you know yourself? Do I?
Why "Five Questions"?
The Five Questions I refer to are:
Who are you?
What do you want?
Why are you here?
Where are you going?
Who do you serve, and who do you trust?
They are drawn from the TV shows "Babylon 5" and "Crusade". They are, I think, a very comprehensive set of questions that identify a person. Of course, because of that, they are virtually impossible to properly answer.
Who are you?
What do you want?
Why are you here?
Where are you going?
Who do you serve, and who do you trust?
They are drawn from the TV shows "Babylon 5" and "Crusade". They are, I think, a very comprehensive set of questions that identify a person. Of course, because of that, they are virtually impossible to properly answer.
The Lady Vivamus
One of my swords. Live blade from Albion Swords http://www.albion-swords.com/swords/albion/late/sword-lady-vivamus.htm
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1 comment:
Off the top of my head, the four classic elements are only the four classic GREEK elements, from which western culture takes so much. Move to a different culture, and the FIVE elements become
wood,
fire,
earth,
metal,
water.
As to why fire is one of the basic elements, It's because it's really easy to see. Things burn, and that's really important in a primitive society(and in a modern one too) Fire is something you can point to, and most fires, even if they come from different sources, look an awful lot alike. So thinking of fire as a pure element that is "released" from wood is not a bad starting point. Think of fire as elemental instability, or elemental change.
Against life as an element, if you believe everything has a spirit, then everything is "alive". Also, a lot of religions put life on it's own special little shelf, separate from the rest of the world.
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