Fire

The tattvas are, in Indian philosophy, the fundamental principles or "thatnesses" from which the manifest world is composed; in the fivefold elemental scheme used in Tantra and Yoga they are the five gross elements, the pancha mahabhuta. Tejas or Agni is the fire tattva, the principle of heat, light, transformation and combustion, associated with the sense of sight and, in the subtle body, with the region of the solar plexus and digestion. In the classical Indian sources the five tattvas are a metaphysics of the elements, each with its subtle counterpart and its sense-faculty.

The element was later borrowed into Western esotericism: Rama Prasad's Nature's Finer Forces of 1890 introduced the tattvas to English readers, and the Golden Dawn adopted them as meditative symbols, giving fire the emblem of a red triangle. That Western use, from 1888 onward, is a modern overlay; the tattva doctrine itself is ancient and Indian, and fire's attributes of light and transformation belong to that older tradition.

Sources Classical Samkhya: An Interpretation of Its History and MeaningGerald James Larson with Nature's Finer Forces: The Science of Breath and the Philosophy of the TattvasRama Prasad

Beyond its place in Indian philosophy, Tejas found a second life in the West through the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which in the late nineteenth century adapted the five tattvas into a set of coloured meditation cards used for scrying and visualisation, a practice distinct from, and not a continuation of, the tattva's original doctrinal role in Tantra and Yoga. In that adaptation Tejas is represented by a red equilateral triangle, its colour and sharp form chosen to evoke fire's heat and upward, consuming movement.

The Golden Dawn method has the practitioner gaze steadily at the painted triangle, then close the eyes and hold the afterimage, using it as a gateway into meditative or visionary states associated with the element; later occultists including some in the Thelemic current continued the practice largely unchanged, treating the tattva cards as one tool among several rather than as Indian ritual objects.

This Western use should not be mistaken for the tattva's role in its own tradition, where Tejas is a metaphysical category describing the composition of the manifest world and the physiology of sight and digestion, not primarily an object of visual meditation. The card practice is a genuinely separate, later invention that borrowed the tattva's name, colour associations and elemental logic while building a new method around them.