Elements & the Natural World

This section covers the categories by which the correspondence traditions sort the material world: the classical elements and the Japanese godai, the directions, the seven metals of alchemy, gemstones, plants, colours and incense.

These are the building blocks that make a system of correspondences usable. Once fire, water, air and earth (or wood, fire, earth, metal and water) are fixed, everything else (a planet, a direction, a stone, a herb, a colour), can be sorted under them, and a practitioner can move from one to another: this planet, therefore this metal, this day, this incense.

The habit of reading the world as a web of correspondences, as above, so below, runs through astrology, alchemy, magic and much of traditional medicine, and this section holds the natural-world terms of that web. The assignments are not uniform: different authorities give a stone or colour to different planets, and the entries note the main variants rather than imposing one.

The classical four- and five-element schemes here underlie systems throughout the atlas; the Chinese five phases, closely related in role, are gathered under Eastern Systems.