ABSTRACT
An essential moment in every esoteric path is the passage of the initiate through the elements. The philosopher Gaston Bachelard maintains that the four physical elements are analogous to four different types and temperaments. He underlines their differences and antagonisms:
. . . it seems quite clear to us that there is some relation between the doctrine of the four physical elements and the doctrine of the four temperaments . . . Indeed, the tetravalence of reverie is as clear and productive as the chemical tetravalence of carbon. Reverie has four domains, four points from which it soars into infinite space . . . ‘Tell me what your favorite phantom is. Is it the gnome, the salamander, the sylph or the undine?’ Now – and I wonder if this has been noticed – all these chimerical beings are formed from and sustained by a unique substance: the gnome, terrestrial and condensed, lives in the fissure of the rock, guardian of the mineral and the gold, and stuffs himself with the most compact substances; the salamander, composed all of fire, is consumed in its own flame; the water nymph or undine glides noiselessly across the pond and feeds on her own reflection; the sylph for whom the least substance is a burden, who is frightened away by the tiniest drop of alcohol, who would even perhaps be angry with a smoker who might ‘contaminate her element’ (Hoffmann), rises effortlessly into the blue sky, happy in her anorexia.
