Damigeron's Dungeon: Clear Cosmology: The Elements

🜃 ᚒ ᛟ ☷

Earth 01 - Earth as Substance
Earth 02 - Places of Earth
Earth 03 - Magic of Earth
Earth 04 - Earth Personified

Magic of Earth

Before we begin on this particular topic, we must restate the function of Earth, magically:

Earth is the World, the stage of action for all four(five) elements, the place of happening. It stands firm beneath all mortal drama, unmoving. It is that which gives way and holds, retaining the shape imposed upon it. It is the great attractor, the down which all that goes up must return. It is the giving mother, the gestating womb, the place where paths cross, the concrete. It is [salt], darkness, and complication. It both manifests the divine world of the abstract but also distracts from it. It is the deception of solidity and the truth of impermanence. It is becoming. It is life and death.

Eliphas Levi's pentagram from Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie.

With that out of the way, we can begin our exploration of Earth magic.

Icons/Characters of Earth

There have been numerous symbols used to represent the essence of the Earth throughout history, far too many to list here realistically. Instead, we’ll focus on the four shown above, which have a significant presence in modern occult practice, both as written notation and magical sigils. Each is loaded with layers of meaning related to Earth’s fundamental properties that can be accessed individually, in combination, or in totality.

Alt: Ura; Úr; Fraech; Ffynidwydden [Welsh]

From the ancient Celtic [ogham] script, the Úr (ᚒ; "OO-r") character makes the [u] sound. It represents Earth as soil, clay, and the physical ground itself. This character is also associated with heather, a low-growing shrub, and the lark, a ground-dwelling [bird]. Our sources identify Úr with the color light green.

Lulla arborea, the Wood Lark.

Considerations for Storytellers
While the ogham script is intended to be carved (in a negative or subtractive manner) in wood or stone along a straight line, nothing prevents you from employing this character in other (positive or additive) media, such as textiles or in carving as the positive shape in a cameo. This might be subtly worked into the stitching of a character’s headwear or collar. Perhaps it is the cultural fashion to wear the Úr as as a vertical pendant with three bars going through it, visually and culturally occupying a space similar to that of the Christian cross as an accessory.

The combination of light green, identified by our sources, and the pale purple-pink of heather flowers provides its own color language, as we described earlier, as does the plumage of the ground-dwelling lark.

Alt: Odal

From the Germanic Elder Futhark, Othala (ᛟ) represents the [o] sound. Othala stands out from other representative symbols of Earth as a substance, because it prioritizes the human relationship to the element—homeland, ancestral property, and inheritance. Rather than representing Earth in a vacuum, it highlights Earth as the stage of drama, of a thing possessed of proprieties. It is a rune of wealth, similar to [Fehu], but represents a possession that cannot be sold, whether it is land in the concrete or tradition in the abstract. This is a symbol of possession that transcends mere ownership.

This suggestion of substance and responsibility is why it is invoked in modern rune-magic and casting. It calls upon ancestral powers to protect and maintain the status quo, or to return to a status quo from a state of neglect and disrepair.

According to our sources, Othala is associated with the colors copper and brown, as well as the number 24.

Othala rune stamped into pewter.

Considerations for Storytellers
The Earth as ancestral homeland is both prominent and perfectly functional, but the Earth as responsibility and tradition angle is worth exploring independently of considerations of property. A character inspired by Othala, who fills your story’s role as a representative of Earth, might have no homeland or property to their name. Instead, they may embody Othala as a practice: a craftsman or practitioner of a traditional art whose obligation is to perpetuate their ancestors’ work. Unyielding in pursuit of their inherited duty, they may inspire the characters around them to rededicate themselves to that which they must do but have left undone.

Othala comes with its own color language, identifying copper and brown with tradition and obligation in a positive light.

Furthermore, Othala has an explicit value in numerology, which a subtle storyteller can utilize to convey meaning in group composition. The Othala-inspired character’s value may add up with other members of the group to form a number associated with wholeness, such as 100 or 72. This number may be accessed exclusively through the runes, or diverse scripting systems may be employed to encompass a broader scope of influencing cultures.

The 8th bagua, or “trigram,” of the I Ching, Kūn represents Earth in the “ground” phase. Wilhelm translates it as “the receptive” or “the field.” The I Ching has two common trigram arrangements: the “Earlier Heaven” arrangement attributed to the mythical figure of Fu Xi, and the “Later Heaven” arrangement attributed to King Wen of Zhou.

Under the “Earlier Heaven” formulation,* Kūn’s direction was north, and it was affiliated with the winter solstice. This may be where our other sources adopted the north/winter association, as Orientalist syncretism was popular with occult circles around the turn of the 20th century. “Fu Xi” identified Kūn with receptivity, the [Mother], and that which yields (accepts shape, complies, returns as a sown field).

King Wen of Zhou’s “Later Heaven” arrangement identifies Kūn with receptivity, the [Mother], and that which yields yet again. However, its season is Summer, and its directional affiliation is the southwest.

While many of the particulars of the I Ching are beyond this compiler as a matter of culture, a brief overview of Chinese elemental thought appears consistent with Western observation: Kūn is that which is receptive to and accepts shaping, and like the hyle accepts the shaping principle of the heavenly Will, manifesting principle into material reality. Kūn is the Earth as the matrix of Creation.

The "Earlier Heaven" of Fu Xi

The "Later Heaven" of King Wen

*Compiler’s Note: “Earlier” and “Later” here do not refer to a temporal relationship but an essential one. The “Earlier” is “First” as a defining rule of the cosmological structure along the axis of Essential Causality, whereas the “Later” is “Second” in that it refers to Accidental Causality or manifestation in linear time. See our article on [God] for further clarification.

Considerations for Storytellers
A lack of cultural familiarity with the bagua prevents us from providing any profound insight into Kūn. Still, the Wiki-level knowledge we have presented here offers numerous opportunities for a storyteller. The Kūn trigram itself is a simple visual motif that can be easily incorporated into character or environmental design. Those design choices could be further expanded to other characters if a storyteller wished to model their story on I Ching formulations.

Kūn suggests the role of mother literally and abstractly, inviting the development of a maternal character. Similarly, the moldability of Kūn can be likened to that of a student, a masculine form shaped in the likeness of a higher masculine will, yielding greater returns as the student surpasses the master (though we are led to believe such a notion might be a faux pas in Wuxia storytelling).

Given that the “Earlier” and “Later” Heaven arrangements are interpreted as reflecting different aspects of the same reality, they also offer some guidance on how a storyteller can incorporate Kūn-inspired characters. You might write a solar/Earth-inspired character using the Later Heaven arrangement. As the Later Heaven arrangement is traditionally used to interpret the manifest world, the character is a student hailing from the southwest, likely your protagonist or one of their companions. They head north and learn under a teacher modeled on the “Earlier Heaven” formulation, which represents the ideal, abstract world.

Earth Magic

Just as the Earth forms the foundation of the world, it also often serves as the foundation for magical action. This is most commonly exercised when stone is used as the support medium for carved images, in architecture, and the magic of [amulet lapidary]. Locations also serve as the place of magical performance, as we describe in our article on the [Pentagram].

As these topics are expansive enough to be discussed in separate articles, we turn our attention to forms of Earth magic that have been less explored.

28,000-year-old phallus found at Holhe Fels, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

Sometimes stones are magical simply by being stone and radiate those qualities out sympathetically.

Belief that the rigid, stable qualities of stone were sympathetic was widespread. Phallic stone objects were believed to enhance male virility and cure impotence. This overlaps significantly with the phallic qualities of monoliths, obelisks, cairns, and herms, an invocation of masculine virility to the surrounding environs.

Lead sling bullets from Greece. Left: a winged thunderbolt. Right: ΔΕΞΑΙ ("TAKE THAT")

The act of throwing stones is associated with death, especially in Hebrew tradition. In this context, it evokes both the punitive stoning of criminals and the righteous slaying of Goliath with a sling. This lends stone throwing to use in defixion and counter-defixion, striking a target down through action at a distance or toppling an oppressive magical presence.

Stone throwing also has a virile dimension. David slew Goliath, which presaged his later ascent to the throne of Israel. Slung stones also have a seminal quality, such that blows strike like [lightning].

Other observations syncretize with the lightning-fertility connection, such as the observation of descent in rain. In China, fights involving the throwing of stones were employed to promote precipitation. Less confrontationally, Australian Aborigines would break off chips from a quartz and cast them up into the air, their falling thought being that it would bring down the rains sympathetically.

In mythology, this didn’t just bring down rain but was used to repopulate the world. Following the Greek telling of the Deluge myth, Deucalion and his sister repopulated the world by throwing stones over their shoulders, which promptly transformed into new men and women.

Chinese Rock Garden

While “geomancy” is also a term for a form of divination, here we use it to refer to “the magic of place and orientation.” This is a relational magic derived from directionality, proximity, and alignment.

The most popular and accessible form of this magic is the practice known as feng shui. In the modern West, it has cycled through a form of fad spiritualism, enacted through interior design and decoration, with a focus on the “flow” of the living space and the relationship between an organized domicile and an organized mind.

While we hold a favorable outlook on deliberately organizing one’s space in accordance with cosmic principles, we must be frank and acknowledge that most Western practices are considered woo.

How feng shui manifests in its original Chinese context, however, is worth exploring seriously, as its organizing principles convey a historical cosmological outlook that translates into other cultural domains.

Chinese feng shui originated from the orientation of buildings with respect to the cardinal directions, utilizing the stars as references, thereby aligning the home or other structure with the cosmos at large. Given that important building projects were also initiated in relation to astrological predictions, understanding this dynamic can reveal a great deal about the culture and how it perceived itself with regard to its cosmography.

Or, you can learn from SsethTzeentach, 7:34-9:20.

Certain buildings were aligned with specific directions to invite the auspicious, and as a consequence, anything out of such an alignment was considered ominous, each cultivating the appropriate qi, or energy. One can, through the arrangement of the space under their control, influence their inner state and achieve harmony with the universe. This applied not only to the living, but also to the dead, and so feng shui was also an important practice for honoring one’s ancestors and bringing them peace.

At the other end of this form of geomancy lies the city-building cultures of the New World, specifically those of Central Mexico. As described in David Carrasco’s City of Sacrifice: The Aztec Empire and the Role of Violence in Civilization, the entire project of the Mesoamerican city was, in fact, a cosmogram, with the temple ritualized as the center of the universe.

Map of the city of Teotihuacan

Which temple? All of them. Each temple had its own context for ritual, and during ritual, it was regarded as the axis mundi, being the creative mountain-cave that we described in our Pyramid entry in [Article 02]. As such, the orientation of each pyramid, its relation to the road, and a host of other considerations were of utmost importance to the builders. This was a multifaceted endeavor, encompassing both religious, magical, and political aspects, all intricately intertwined with the complex considerations of city planning and engineering.

The temple-city was then the universe in microcosm, and its proper orientations enabled the drama of sacrifice to spread out into the world properly, ordering the disordered universe beyond to the very limits of the city’s influence.

The magic of city layout fed the influence of empire, which imposed order on an imperfect, chaotic world, all part of the grand cosmic machine that was the function of Mesoamerican civilization.

Considerations for Storytellers
The orientation of the commons of simple folk provides interesting options for the storyteller. Simple rules for how things are done and why, even if they don’t make sense to your characters initially, can be scaled up as their adventure progresses. A character making sense of the proprieties of an ancient ruin because he knew how his old master arranged the facilities of his farm elevates the world of the mundane into full participation with the magnificent.

Consider also political dimensions. As noted in the on Wikipedia's feng shui article, it was used as a point of counter-colonial cultural resistance. Failure to adhere to feng shui was used as justification to demolish the buildings of foreign powers. Principles of geomancy have a strong cultural and political dimension that is used to effectively separate the indigenous from the foreign as a secret code of active space.

Conversely, a Mesoamerican outlook could be employed in Old World-style Imperial expansion. The Romans constructed traditional administrative buildings, such as basilicas, in conquered territories as an expression of their military might and cultural influence. City planning and complete Romanization followed within a few generations.

A more aggressive culture informed by an overriding cosmological model may aggressively impose their religion/philosophy through wholesale city planning, forcing the holy buildings and sites of importance of conquered peoples into their foreign framework under threat of destruction. This would craft the urban landscape of captured cities to their whims, forcing the locals to conform to the Imperial religion or creed by using the roads and working in the spaces, even as they try to perform their local practices.

Brass tools for Divinatory Geomancy

Going by the names of geomancy, lithomancy, and astragalomancy, casting stones (precious or otherwise), bones, bits of wood, seeds, and dice has been employed worldwide as a divinatory practice. If stones, they might be stones of different colors or marked with the signs of planets or runes. They may be mixed in with knucklebones or bits of wood. Sometimes, meaning was derived from their arrangement or pattern. At other times, they were cast over dark surfaces, and meaning came from which one reflected the most light.

In considering rune- or sigil-carved stones, they mark the presence of the thing referenced, allowing it to reveal its influences in the casting context. In this way, the influence is rendered predictable and decipherable. The stone marked with the sign of Saturn reveals Saturn’s influence in its behavior in the cast, as the marked stone is rendered a synonym of the planet. Present in the cast, Saturn cannot help but manifest in the cast!

Modern runestones for casting

Considerations for Storytellers
Of primary consideration to storytellers is what any permutation of the above reveals about culture and character. What does the culture prioritize? Are precious stones preferred because they’re already transcendent? Is it the characters or markings that elevate the stones and bones into communion with the divine? Is the character’s interpretation of “shiniest rock” influenced by personal biases of color and quality? Are their methods out of fashion? Local or foreign?

Audiences will learn a great deal about your character and a little about the worldbuilding just by having them perform a divination. Don’t underestimate the storytelling work you can accomplish with a small gesture, such as casting stones.

Of great interest to folktales and the historical magical record is the magic of treasure finding. Which came first? We couldn’t say and can’t speculate, as this reads very much like a chicken-or-egg situation.

What we can say is that the notion of buried treasure doesn’t come from simple wishful thinking. Our modern frames of reference for buried or hidden riches come from stories of pirates like Captain Kidd, archeological finds like the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings, and the hidden hoards of dwarves and dragons.

The reality is that buried treasure in medieval Europe was much closer to hand. Hoards of gold, silver, copper, and bronze from pre-Roman caches, as well as rings, brooches, and combs could be found by peasants simply plowing up a neglected hillock.

There were also more contemporary sources of treasure: wealthy peasants and merchants burying their valuables in hidden places in preparation for invasion, siege, and occupation, only to die before they could ever reclaim their wealth. Europe abounds, then and now, in hidden riches!

It’s no wonder, then, that so much consideration is given in sorcerous texts to a demon’s ability to lead one to buried treasure.

The Ars Goetia alone identifies nine of the seventy-two infernal lords with this knowledge:

Barbatos (8th)
Purson/Curson (20th)
Foras/Forcas (31st)
Gomory/Gremory (56th)
Amy (58th)
Valac/Volac (62nd)
Cimeies/Cimeries (66th)
Seere/Sear (70th)
Andromalius (72nd)

Volac, as depicted by Louis le Breton in the 1863 edition of Collin de Plancy's Dictionnaire Infernal.

To give an example of this sort of sorcery, we’ll paraphrase a spell from Les livre des conjurations (1670): If one desires to find treasure, they must go to a place where they think it might be found. One then recites the words SADIES SATANI AGIR FONS TORIBUS and strikes their left heel into the earth three times. This process is to be repeated three times in a row, and on the third time, your desires shall be fulfilled.

It is not clear in the spell how one acquires the riches, but we see some clues. The word “SATANI” is a declension of the Latin name for Satan, “Satanus.” This is reinforced by the emphasis on the left (“sinister”) heel, the portion of Adam’s body bruised by the Serpent. The repetition thrice makes the call substantive.

This could be resolved in a number of ways. It could cause someone’s heel to meet the treasure on the third tap of the third repetition. It could cause the Devil to appear from the shadows and point to the spot where the treasure is buried. The caster could find nothing, and, turning to head home in disappointment, tripped over the now-revealed treasure. Lots of room for a storyteller to maneuver with this!

Treasure Detectors
More mechanically, numerous divinatory spells detect treasures using some device.

This may be a magic ring, as per Trésor, which permits one to find treasure. However, this might be achieved through the attraction of opportunity (as in business or favor of social betters), as dictated by the vagaries of magical description.

More explicit treasure detectors are found in the form of wands. Norwegian folklorist Anton Bang recorded such a device in his compilation, The Black Book of Jøelen: a wand of hazel cut two days before the new moon. This wand was intended for use in drawing a magical circle where the detection spell is performed.

Harry Potter's wand

Another wand, this time in the Swedish tradition, more closely resembles the modern idea of a metal detector. Folklorist Bengt af Klintberg collected Swedish folk magic in his 1965 work, Svenska trollformler. This entry, describing a late 19th-century practice (no. 67), provides a recipe for a treasure-detecting wand that would twist and turn in the magician's hands when in proximity to treasure.

Considerations for Storytellers
Treasure itself can do a lot of world-building work for you. Its quantity, nature, and potential strings that might be attached to it are all great tools to help you reveal the world to your audience and set up points of tension.

How treasure is acquired does a lot of heavy legwork towards creating your story’s atmosphere. Summoning demons to unearth treasures by pushing them up from the dirt is spectacular, while the treasure materializing for the petitioner from a place they weren’t looking is spooky and mysterious. The appearance of a demon to point the petitioner in the direction of riches suggests that the demon’s knowledge is simply criminal, and that the petitioner may have sold their souls for a price much pettier than they realize.

Moving onto the rings and wands, af Klintberg’s in particular is a historical validation of the catalog of “wondrous items” found in many modern fantasy RPGs. A significant amount of magic in the historical record, outside of fairy tales, is petty and sometimes quite silly in execution. Don’t be afraid of the spectacle of magic to manifest in the silly for small-minded reasons. People practice magic, and that’s how people are.

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