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Fire

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Origin 360 BCE to 320 BCE

Fire is the first of the four classical Western elements, the element of spirit, will, and vitality. Its qualities are hot and dry: active, radiant, expansive, and quick to rise. In astrology it forms the fire triplicity of Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius, signs of enthusiasm, courage, and inspiration, and in tarot it is the suit of Wands, the suit of energy, creativity, and enterprise. In the doctrine of the four humors it corresponds to the choleric temperament, ruled by yellow bile, marked by boldness, drive, and a hot temper. In the Golden Dawn scheme of directions it is placed in the South, the region of noon and greatest heat, and its season is summer, when the sun is strongest. Fire is the creative spark and the drive to act, the animating warmth that turns intention into motion. Across systems it is consistently the principle of transformation and life-force, the counterpart of the fiery phase in the Chinese five 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
Old English fyr, from a Germanic root shared across the Germanic languages, ultimately from the same Indo-European root that gives Greek pyr. 1
Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting Source
Hot and dry. In this physics fire is defined by its pair of qualities and by its natural motion upward, not by temperament, will or passion. 1Tradition: Aristotelian physics: the four elements and the quintessence
Learn More
Fire in the Western Scheme

Fire is one of the four classical elements of the Greek tradition, set out by Empedocles in the fifth century BCE as one of the four roots of all things and systematised by Aristotle, who paired each element with two of the qualities hot, cold, wet and dry: fire is hot and dry. In that physics fire is the lightest element after none, rising upward, and it is associated with heat, energy, transformation and the active principle. The tradition assigns the three fire signs of the zodiac, Aries, Leo and Sagittarius, to it, and in the four-temperament medicine descending from Hippocrates and Galen fire corresponds to yellow bile and the choleric temperament, quick to anger and to action.

In Western esotericism fire is one of the four elements invoked at the cardinal points of ritual, conventionally placed in the south and linked to the will and to spirit. Its later attribution to the suit of Wands in the tarot is a Golden Dawn addition of 1888, not part of the ancient scheme. Fire's symbolism throughout is of energy, passion, purification and the transformative.

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

Fire in Western Practice

Beyond the natural philosophy, fire carries a set of working attributions in the Western esoteric tradition, and those attributions belong to particular systems rather than to the element as such.

In astrology fire is a triplicity, a group of three signs standing at a hundred and twenty degrees from one another: Aries, Leo and Sagittarius. The grouping is old, it is in Ptolemy, and it is the mechanism by which an element attaches to a chart at all. Nothing about the individual signs follows from the element on its own.

In the tarot, fire is conventionally the suit of Wands, and in the Golden Dawn system it is placed in the south, given the wand as its working implement and the archangel Michael as its regent. Those attributions are documented, they are internally consistent, and they date from a specific late nineteenth century synthesis rather than from antiquity. A different school assigns the wand to air and the dagger to fire, and the disagreement is old enough that neither side can be called an error.

The Hebrew letter shin, the Kabbalistic ascription to Atziluth in some schemes, the fire tattva as an upward red triangle borrowed from Indian sources: each of these belongs to a named system and travels with it. The atlas records them as attributions within those systems and not as properties of fire, because the moment they are detached from their scheme they begin to contradict each other.

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

Carnation, Plants

Cunningham's magical herbalism sets the carnation to Fire, matching the solar rulership he gives it.

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

Cunningham's magical herbalism sets cedar to Fire, matching its solar rulership.

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

Cunningham's magical herbalism sets the chrysanthemum to Fire, matching its solar rulership.

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.

Europe, Continents

The fire triplicity governs the northwest quarter of the inhabited world.

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Judgement, Tarot

In the Golden Dawn Kabbalistic attribution, Judgement is assigned to the element Fire 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
Michael, Archangels
Nutmeg, Plants

Cunningham's magical herbalism sets nutmeg to Fire, which reads the warmth of the spice rather than the Jupiterian rulership of the herbals.

Source Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Magical HerbsScott Cunningham
Philosophus (Golden Dawn), Initiatory Grades

Philosophus is the fire grade and completes the elemental series of the First Order.

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

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn assigns red to Fire in its elemental colouring, used for the fire wand, the fire triangle and the invoking pentagram of fire. The attribution is a nineteenth century ritual convention of that order, not an inheritance from classical sources.

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

The salamander is the creature of the fire element in the Paracelsian scheme, and the association passes from there into ceremonial magic.

Source Liber de Nymphis, Sylphis, Pygmaeis et Salamandris et de Caeteris SpiritibusParacelsus (Theophrastus von Hohenheim)
Snapdragon, Plants

Cunningham's magical herbalism sets the snapdragon to Fire, matching its martial rulership.

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

Cunningham's magical herbalism sets the sunflower to Fire, matching the solar rulership.

Source Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Magical HerbsScott Cunningham
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 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
Yang, Polarities

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

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

Related To

Fire, Tattvas

The tattva Fire is paired with the Western element Fire 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; fire as hot and dry
Ancient Medicine
Vivian Nutton, Routledge, 2013yellow bile and the choleric 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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