Fire

The business of four elements is a strange one anyway. In chemistry we learned there are actually well over a hundred and yet no witch I know has ever called the corners for Helium, Boron and Magnesium. When we speak of the elements we speak on another and older level, and yet, because it’s the language of poetry, there is always something left out. For me, when blessing the circle or the witch’s sphere, it is air that is left out, and blessed by the stang. I have the bowl with water, that with earth, I strike the fire and bear it about, but I do not have the bowl of air, and yet, of course, every bowl is the bowl of air.  Air is all around. What is more, Fire doesn’t play like the other elements, the water remains on the altar: though, of course, in time it would evaporate left unattended. The salt symbolizing earth remains. Fire, however, burns itself out fairly quickly. It is the very essence of  transience. It is Agni and Ellegua, the God who comes from heaven and returns carrying our offerings. It is the intelligence of Mercury the messenger. Fire is the one element created and the one that soon dies. It is the one that can envelop everything, change everything, reshape the world by its visitation or, give few signs of ever having been.

            Elizabeth Goudge says the butterfly is strange because it isn’t quite a bird, and it isn’t quite a flower. The same can be said with fire. Not quite solid, it is not quite air. It comes into being literally out of nowhere, when two earthly bodies strike each other and are fed by air, the fire comes into being. When the waters in the heavens strikes against itself, lightning is made. When this heavenly fire strikes the earth, earthly fire blooms on the earth. In this later regard Water is the Mother of the uncontrollable fire. But in the regard of the Fire of East, the Fire of Creation and the Forge, the Castle of Air and Stone is the incubator of fire, Air and Stone its Mother and Father.

            Of the elements fire is most like a spirit, there and not there. Powerful and consuming, but silent inside of every tree and rock. Not in this world until the moment we bring it into the world, then soon gone. Fire is the torch by which the vegetation of Cain became the offering that ascended to heaven. Fire, fed by Air through the bellows, makes the smithy work. Even in Christian mysticism, the fire and air retain this relationship. Jesus declares of  the children of God, “The wind blows where it wills and you know not where it comes from or where it departs. So are the children of the Spirit.” But at Pentecost this Wind which is always present, this Sophia, Lady Wisdom, the Mother Breath, becomes Brigit, the Fire of the Holy Spirit, settling on tongues upon the disciples and the Blessed Virgin. Some thought is required here. This amazing story, often ignored by many Christians or intentionally misunderstood, is teaching us something. The earth striking earth is the body of those waiting and in love with the Divine. We are striking each other, coming together, and that striking, touched by Air, produces the Burning One in this world, in every aspect of our witchly lives.