Mythical Creatures
Salamander
Elemental Spirits
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Origin As the elemental of fire, Paracelsian and 16th-century
The salamander of occult tradition is an elemental, and its position in the system is precise: in the treatise on nymphs, sylphs, pygmies and salamanders attributed to Paracelsus, four kinds of being inhabit the four elements, salamanders in fire, undines in water, sylphs in air and gnomes in earth, and they are described as having bodies but not souls of the human kind. The scheme was taken up in Rosicrucian and later ceremonial magic and is now standard in Western esoteric correspondences. Behind it is a real animal and an old error: classical writers including Pliny reported that the salamander could put out fire, probably from the moisture such amphibians exude when heated.
Facts
Open Questions
Origin of the NameNo settled derivation for the word salamander, Greek salamandra, has been established. 2 A popular derivation reads the word as a Persian compound, sam ("fire") plus andar ("inside"), fitting the fire-dwelling animal the ancient sources describe. Most Persian lexicographers reject this reading as a folk etymology, a later back-formation from the Greek word into Persian rather than its true source, and Robert Beekes, in his Etymological Dictionary of Greek, classifies salamandra itself as Pre-Greek: a word with no successful derivation from any known Indo-European root, inherited into Greek from an earlier Aegean substrate language rather than coined from Greek roots or borrowed intact from Persian. The animal itself is ancient and independently attested (Pliny already reports it extinguishing flame), but the word naming it has no settled origin. Attestation
HistoricityNot a historical person: a divine or other-than-human being 1 Meaning in the Attesting SourceFlesh and blood, mortal, without souls 1Tradition: Paracelsus, Liber de Nymphis, Sylphis, Pygmaeis et Salamandris Meaning in the Attesting SourceOne of four orders of elemental being; lives in fire as nymphs live in water 1Tradition: Paracelsus, Liber de Nymphis, Sylphis, Pygmaeis et Salamandris Meaning in the Attesting SourceParacelsus insists they are creatures, not spirits 1Tradition: Paracelsus, Liber de Nymphis, Sylphis, Pygmaeis et Salamandris Cult
Attributes and IconographyPictured as a small being living within fire itself, one of four classes of elemental inhabiting the elements alongside undines, sylphs and gnomes. 1 Function
Domain / FunctionDomain of fire in the four-element scheme attributed to Paracelsus: salamanders inhabit fire, alongside undines in water, sylphs in air and gnomes in earth, described as having bodies but not souls of the human kind. 1 Origins
Origin PeriodAs the elemental of fire, Paracelsian and 16th-century 1Tradition: Paracelsus, Liber de Nymphis, Sylphis, Pygmaeis et Salamandris Origin PeriodThe animal is ancient; Pliny already reports it quenching flame 1Tradition: Paracelsus, Liber de Nymphis, Sylphis, Pygmaeis et Salamandris Origin PeriodThe system of four elemental beings is the Liber de Nymphis, printed 1566 1Tradition: Paracelsus, Liber de Nymphis, Sylphis, Pygmaeis et Salamandris Learn More
The Lizard in the Fire, and the Elemental of Fire
Two things called salamander should be told apart. The first is a widespread ancient and medieval belief about a real animal: the European fire salamander (Salamandra salamandra), whose habit of sheltering in damp, rotten logs meant it sometimes crawled out when the wood was thrown on a fire, giving rise to the persistent claim, reported by Aristotle and Pliny, elaborated in the bestiaries, that the creature is born of fire, lives in it and can put it out, its cold, moist skin resisting flame.
Cloth said to be woven from "salamander wool" and cleaned by throwing it in the fire was in fact asbestos. The second is the occult elemental: in the treatise on nymphs, sylphs, pygmies and salamanders attributed to Paracelsus, four kinds of being inhabit the four elements, salamanders in fire, undines in water, sylphs in air, gnomes in earth, and the salamander becomes the living spirit or personification of the element of fire. This second, systematic salamander, taken up by later ceremonial magic, derives from the first, the fireproof lizard, but has been abstracted into a piece of cosmology.
How a Wet Animal Came to Mean Fire
The observation behind the belief is real and anyone with a wood fire could make it. Salamanders hibernate in rotting logs. A log goes on the fire, the animal wakes and runs out through the flames, and its skin secretes enough moisture to survive the trip. Something that comes out of a fire alive and cool to the touch looks like it is extinguishing what it walks through, which is exactly what the ancient accounts say.
From there the claim moved to material. Cloth that could be put in a fire and come out clean was sold in the medieval and early modern world as salamander wool, said to be woven from the creature's hide or hair. It was asbestos. Marco Polo, who saw the mineral being mined in Central Asia, said so plainly and complained that the story was a fraud, and he was ignored for several more centuries.
The animal also became a device. Francis the First of France took a salamander in flames as his personal emblem with a motto about nourishing and extinguishing, and it is carved and painted throughout the chateaux built in his reign, at Chambord in particular. By then the creature meant something closer to a ruler who survives what destroys others. When Paracelsus assigned the salamander to fire in his scheme of elemental beings, he was formalising an association that had been running for well over a thousand years.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Fire, Elements The salamander is the creature of the fire element in the Paracelsian scheme, and the association passes from there into ceremonial magic.
Attributed To
Paracelsus set out the four elemental peoples in Liber de Nymphis and gave the salamander to fire.
Belongs to Tradition
Sources
1. Liber de Nymphis, Sylphis, Pygmaeis et Salamandris et de Caeteris Spiritibus
Paracelsus (Theophrastus von Hohenheim)On the four kinds of elemental beingQuote, On the four kinds of elemental being
Salamanders inhabit fire, undines water, sylphs air and gnomes earth; they are described as having bodies but not souls of the human kind.
2. Etymological Dictionary of Greek
Robert S. P. Beekes, with Lucien van Beek, Brill, 2010
Naturalis Historia (Natural History)
The Secrets of Alchemy
Lawrence M. Principe, University of Chicago Press, 2013on the Paracelsian elementalsView the Source Open Questions (1 open question)
What Is the Origin of the Word Salamander?
The Persian compound reading (sam, "fire," plus andar, "inside") most Persian lexicographers now treat as a later back-formation from the Greek word rather than its source, and the standard modern authority on Greek etymology, Beekes, classifies salamandra itself as Pre-Greek, meaning no successful Indo-European derivation for the word has been established.
What would resolve this Either a securely attested Pre-Greek Aegean word the name can be shown to derive from, or new philological evidence settling the direction of borrowing between Greek and Persian rather than leaving it a rejected folk etymology on the Persian side.
Historical and comparative Indo-European linguistics, Pre-Greek substrate studies, Iranian philologyRobert S. P. Beekes, with Lucien van Beek, Etymological Dictionary of Greek
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