Intriguing Instruments: The Magician's Tools

Here at Damigeron’s Dungeon, we are interested in tools. Tools for writers. Tools that help writers tell their stories, convey character, and engage their audience. These tools provide incredible utility across numerous fronts.

The tools we’ll be talking about today are, conveniently, literal tools.

The magician’s tools.

What are the Magician’s Tools?
The magician’s tools are a standardized set of tools employed in Western magical practice, which correspond to the four elements: the pentacle (earth), the cup (water), the wand (air), and the sword (fire).

Ripped from a .pdf scan of the 2004 Indian publication of Nevill Drury’s The Dictionary of the Esoteric. This compiler has the 2004 UK edition in hard copy.

The Standard Set
Before we get into the virtues of the magician’s tools individually, we want to sell you what the tools are to you as a storyteller: a standard set.

A standard set is a consistent set of expected components. Any audience, in prose or visual media, will recognize a standard set, and with familiarity comes engagement. Once they start picking up on these recurrent features, be it in story structure or in diegetic articles (things within the story's world), the audience is rewarded for paying attention with a sense of understanding. When the storyteller takes advantage of this understanding, they can exploit it for foreshadowing or subverting audience expectations. You can only deliver a compelling twist if you've mastered the audience's expectations.

We see standard sets employed for character design in media all the time: from the four elements (Avatar: The Last Airbender) to the four humors (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), the zodiac (Saint Seiya), the Major Arcana of the Tarot (Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders). These devices give you a set number of roles to fill, themes and motifs to work with, and expectations to realize, subvert, or subvert through novel realization. The limited nature of these sets helps to provide a consistent aesthetic while also providing room for some incredibly creative interpretation and reinterpretation.

In the case of the magician’s tools, all four are physical objects that any single character can carry and interact with, and each is an avenue for characterization. Suppose the toolset is, in fact, standard across multiple characters. In that case, the contrast in behavior between characters can be isolated along these avenues, allowing the audience to compare and contrast the characters through direct parallels.

A standard set of tools is even more valuable in visual media as it creates a shared visual language. The standard set becomes a reference point for meaning, providing the audience with a manual for interpreting character design choices.

Using standard sets gives the storyteller an easy tool for building characters and worlds and a tool for the audience to engage in the work more actively. The more actively engaged your audience is, the better!

Why the Magician’s Tools?
So, I’ve made a quick case for standard sets as a category and even touched on standardized sets of tools, but that hasn’t said anything about the value of the magician’s tools in particular. There are several practical reasons, but let’s examine why the magician’s tools are the magician’s tools.

Pentacle: This is often a medallion, a disk, or may be drawn upon the ground. The pentacle is just another name for a pentagram, which represents the universe (the circle) and all the phenomenology of the five elements (the unicursal, five-pointed star). The pentacle, therefore, represents the universe as a stage on which all the elements interact. This is the passive feminine.

Cup: The cup is the partitioning of matter from general to particular, the first measure, from water to this water. It is a womb, a receptacle where the previously chaotic potential is put to ordered purpose by an active will. With the instruction of the shaping will, the generating potential is realized, and something new is brought into the world. This is the active feminine.

Wand: Also, the rod or club. The emblem of authority, the wand directs the attention of man, spirit, and element, manifesting the magician's will by direction. This is the passive masculine, like the king on his throne (Major Arcana: The Emperor).

Sword: The magician wields the sword, performing his will actively in the world. It is a device of direct, aggressive action. This is the active masculine (Major Arcana: The Charioteer).

Image of the Aces shamelessly ripped from http://overthemoon-oraclecards.blogspot.com/ , original source A. E. Waite's Tarot deck from The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910).

Practical Considerations
Stepping away from the mystical qualities of these tools, depending on the kind of story you might be trying to tell, there are practical concerns. 

Diegetic concerns involve the practicability of the tools themselves. In your more typical medieval fantasy narrative, all of these tools are readily available and fall into the realm of basic traveler’s gear. Could you imagine your hero going on a journey without a cup (or waterskin, drinking horn, or a bowl)? What about a walking stick? It would be perfectly normal for someone traveling a great distance to carry a hanger or other weapon to defend themselves. These are all things your magician would have with them even if they weren’t a magician! It also encourages them to be resourceful if they get separated from their belongings.

Pentacles are trickier. What if the practice of magic is illegal? Jewelry can be hidden under clothes or hidden in pouches or pockets. If their magic requires a more literal stage, they may draw it in the dirt with their shoe or use powder on hard surfaces.

A Step Further
We can now move past the traditional tools themselves and back into something more meta: the abstractions that govern the magician’s tools:

• The Stage
• The Vessel
• The Instrument
• The Tool

The Stage: The place of magical action, either literally in a platform or demarcated space or in more representative form, in the medallion, the disc, the coin, the shield ring, the combat shield, the roundel, etc. 

Magic is an abstract notion, so particular actions performed must be elevated out of their material particularity. They must operate on the abstract plane of ideas to achieve action-at-a-distance. On or before the stage, he may thrust his sword in the direction of his target in malice and thus wound their spirit (which may be creatively interpreted a million different ways). Alternately, the magician might create a potion of reagents whose literal chemical contents may be poisonous but perform an offering of the concoction from the magical stage, pouring out the brew from his cup to the patient and thus confer the symbolic associations of the reagents to the patient’s spirit.

The magical stage indicates, clarifies, and elevates activity into the dimension of magical phenomena. 

The Vessel: The vessel is a womb in which creative potential is generated and the particular conceived. This may be the standard cup of water, chalice, goblet, or bowl, but it may also be the crucible, oven, or the furnace as womb. Unshaped matter or broken/dis-purposed material goes in with an ordering intent, and what comes out is a new, realized thing. Chaos to order, order to chaos, or from one order to another.

Alternately, it can deny action by indefinite holding, as King Solomon imprisoned the demon Kunopaston in a phial.

The Instrument: The instrument is any device that directs, be it by authority in the case of the wand or rod by directing attention, or physically, in the case of the fan or the oar. Musical instruments, too, can serve this function, altering the space in range of hearing and exciting the audience. The tool governs relationships between things and passively shapes the space of magical action by changing those relationships indirectly.

The Tool: The sword is a tool that performs a direct action. In the case of a literal sword, that direct action is to cut and destroy. 

Deliberate destruction can directly shape the world by removing the undesirable or more carefully employed to create something new. In the hands of Marduk, the sword was a creative tool used to split the dragon Tiamat in two. He used Tiamat's halves to make the dome of the heavens above and the land of the earth below. Similarly, the sculptor takes his chisel and destroys the stone medium until it is an acceptable shape, and the stone becomes a particular thing, such as a statue, a frieze, or a block. Carpenters do the same, deliberately destroying wood until it is the desired shape, and it ceases to be just material and becomes a purposed object.

With the tool, the magician performs the desired magical action, personally removing or transforming something in the world as the direct agent of change.

Taken from the 2001 Benjamin Rowe digitization of Eliphas Levi’s The Dogma and Ritual of Transcendental Magic: Part I. On top of numerous other symbols in this pentagram, you can see the four tools of the magician: the disc, the cup, the wand, and the sword. Additionally, you can see two ritual daggers.

Can the Magician’s Tools be Substituted?
Of course!

In the previous section, I mentioned a handful of substitutes that fit the function of the relevant abstraction. Each of these substitutions suggests a wildly different relationship between the magician and the universal phenomena of the elements. Not only are the traditional tools subject to near-infinite permutation but there are a nearly infinite number of opportunities for substitution, which expands the creative possibilities for magical expression in your narrative and a more excellent vocabulary for the language of your character design!

In the future, we will do an in-depth analysis of each tool for the meaningful qualities of permutation and a detailed analysis of a host of substitutions.

What About Substituting Elements?
Substituting one elemental association for another is perfectly fine, too. Historically, there has been some argument over the associations between wand and sword, with the leader of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, MacGregor Mathers, stating that the wand is the instrument of fire (with the wand as a torch) and the sword the instrument of air. This is especially present in matters concerning the minor arcana of the Tarot.

There has been some suggestion that Mathers was lying to obfuscate arcane knowledge from the uninitiated with his own deck (I can't cite an exact source, but I've seen it in multiple places). However, we cannot ignore that the minor arcana of the Tarot leans into a subordinate-active and dominant-passive masculine dynamic in the treatment of the Knight and the King cards for each suit. This dynamic is definitely worthy of exploration, as it adds another layer of complexity.

Some of our substitution examples violate elemental prescriptions, treating the crucible and the oven, both associated with fire, as being in the same category as the cup, the water instrument.

This can have far-reaching consequences on your characters’ magical practice. Resourceful characters will mix and match in a pinch. Still, characters whose magical style is typified by these altered elemental associations should hold a worldview reflected in such substitutions.

What About Other Tools?
We have limited this list to the four elemental tools for brevity. Some of you reading may have done your own research already and know that often other tools are involved in ritual magical practice. First, as shown in Levi’s pentagram in the “Why the Magician’s Tools” section, is the dagger (often called the “athame”), which is employed in numerous activities in the ritual, both for magical and strictly utilitarian reasons. Usually, such daggers have unique qualities, such as the color of their handle.

Additionally, if you’re familiar with the Wiccan practice, the witch's tools, which can further include the thurible/censer, the candelabra, the scourge, altar cloth, ritual cords, the besom/broomstick, and the cauldron.

Those familiar with the Key of Solomon will know that it calls for "the knife, sword, sickle, poniard, dagger, lance, wand, staff, and other instruments of magical art.” That is, in fact, the entire title of a chapter of the work. According to Joseph H. Peterson, some of these are repeated misidentification of the same tool, conflating synonymous terms, or misunderstanding obscure Latin.

Clavicula Salomonis, Mathers translation, Plate XIII.

Clavicula Salomonis, Mathers translation, Plate XIV.

We have opted not to explore these expanded toolsets too deeply, as they’re particular to specific practices and not as broadly applicable, and they do map on neatly to the elements. While new tools can increase the sophistication of a practiced system in your story, larger sets are cumbersome and unwieldy and diminish opportunities for novel action compared to a more straightforward standard set.

Putting it All Together
The suggested rules of our standard set sound fine and dandy, but we have yet to see the above suggestions adequately implemented. To this end, we will provide four example characters: three with the standard set and one with substitution.

DONAR THE CRUEL
Donar the Cruel is a sorcerer tyrant, an aged but active man who believes all his eyes fall upon is subject to his will. His pentacle is a medallion on a string of beads wrapped around his left hand (the hand that takes), conveying that the whole world is in his sinister possession. His cup is a goblet of jewel-encrusted gold made from the tributes he has extracted from the noble houses he has brought to heel. His rod terminates in a dominating hand, index finger extended in command. His sword is short and narrow, its blade acid-etched with the infernal pact granting him his sorcerous powers.

EURIC THE KING’S MAN
Euric is one of the king’s men, a knight, and the king’s own cupbearer. He serves as an investigator of the royal house, cunning in magic. His pentacle is a signet ring bearing the mark of the royal house, which grants him authority in all the kingdom, secular and mystical. His cup is the badge of his office, given to him when he was appointed cupbearer. His sword is a straight, double-edged arming sword, the same sword he wears in travel and war: simple, straightforward, functional, the emblem of his subordination to his liege. He bears a processional mace for his wand, used during coronation ceremonies, with its gilt bronze head cast in the shape of the sun. Where Euric goes, he roots out threats to the kingdom, his investigations the shining, revelatory light of royal attention.

LEANNÁN THE TRAVELER
Leannán is a young man with some magical wit, off to seek his fortune. He sleeps under the stars wrapped in his cloak and only stands out from other men on the road by his bright eyes and broad smile. He uses his dirk to draw a pentacle in the dirt or carve it in a tree, if necessary. He keeps a small wooden drinking cup in his kit, in the same pouch as his horn spoons, flint, and iron. He never goes anywhere without his shillelagh, which he uses as a walking stick but can use to ward off troublemakers in a pinch. A short hanger (side sword) at his hip is curved with enough of a sharpened back edge to be useful both ways in a fight.

ULYSSES THE BLACK
Ulysses is one of the worst pirates around, named “the Black” for his all-consuming maliciousness. Not simply a pirate, he’s a magician even fouler than Donar the Cruel. He is a nihilist and acts only in the interests of satisfying his most basic and vulgar appetites. His pentacle is etched upon a whale's tooth, in line with his belief that all that exists is only to be devoured by an all-consuming void. Instead of a cup, he drapes a cape of net over his left side, unfurling it to snare whatever spirits he commands to do his bidding. His wand is a stolen telescope, which he uses to sight his prey and direct his crew, men, and spirit alike. He has a hanger at his hip, but for magic, he uses a harpoon, his every magical act in service of pulling in his prey. He cannot create; he can only destroy.

Conclusion
Any standard set provides a host of options for any storyteller, and any author of the fantastic would do well to consider the opportunities provided by severe exploration of these possibilities.

To that end, we will explore these tools in their dedicated articles, their general symbolism, their permutations, their alternative associations, and the same for their substitutions.

*    *    *    *    *

See Also:

Clear Cosmology

Introduction to the Elements

Intriguing Instruments

Instrument of Earth - The Pentagram [Pending]

Instrument of Water - The Cup [Pending]

Instrument of Air - The Wand [Pending]

Instrument of Fire - The Sword [Pending]

*    *    *    *    *

BIBLIOGRAPHY

-Academy, OTM. “The Role of Tarot Suit Emblems.” Over The Moon Oracle Cards, 14 Jan. 2016, http://overthemoon-oraclecards.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-role-of-tarot-suit-emblems.html. Primary image source A. E. Waite's The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910).

-Drury, Nevill. The Dictionary of the Esoteric: More than 3,000 Entries on the Mystical & Occult Traditions. First Indian Edition ed., Motilal Banarsidass, 2004. Original Publisher Watkins Publishing Limited, London.
https://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Esoteric-Nevill-Drury/dp/8120819896
https://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Esoteric-Nevill-Drury/dp/1842930419

-Levi, Eliphas. Dogma Et Rituel De La Haute Magie, Part I: The Doctrine of Transcendental Magic. Translated by Arthur Edward Waite, vol. 1, Rider & Company. Transcribed and converted to Adobe Acrobat format by Benjamin Rowe, June, 2001. Page 25.
https://darkbooks.org/pp.php?v=1693947022 

-Mathers, Samuel Liddell MacGregor. The Key of Solomon the King, “Chapter VIII - Of the Knife, Sword, Sickle, Poniard, Dagger, Lance, Wand, Staff, and Other Instruments of Magical Art.” Www.sacred-Texts.com, 2003, https://www.sacred-texts.com/grim/kos/kos44.htm. Scanned at sacred-texts.com, July 2000. J. B. Hare, redactor. Reformatted August 2003. Plates XIII and XIV.

-Peterson, Joseph H., and Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers. The Key of Solomon the King, “Foreword”, Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC., Newburyport, MA, 2016, p. xiii.
https://www.amazon.com/Key-Solomon-King-Clavicula-Salomonis/dp/1578636086

Clear Cosmology - Introduction to the Elements v2.0

Compiler's Note: In a previous version of this article, we spent a great deal of text going over various elemental models that we weren't investigating and burying the lead, which is counter to the purpose of this article series. We apologize to anyone who read through that absolute mess.

THE ELEMENTS
Taking our first significant step into the abstract world of magical cosmology, we have opted to start at the ground level of material phenomenology. This subject should be something familiar to all readers: the four elements.

The four elements are an omnipresent motif in modern media. Earth, Water, Wind, and Fire serve as such a long-standing framework thematically that their use often degenerates into cliche. Whether the four elements are utilized with low conceptual resolution (Final Fantasy I) or with great care and attention (Avatar: The Last Airbender), many storytellers and game developers have found the model useful.

Despite the widespread and long-standing implementation of the four elements as an organizing model in fiction, our research has led us to regard this implementation as largely shallow, lacking in some of the model's most crucial features. Here, we want to demystify the four elements and maximize their potential as a tool for other writers.

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE FOUR ELEMENTS
The four elements naturally map onto the four states of matter: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma.

EARTH/SOLIDS
Solids are typically opaque, dense, and heavier than the liquids or gases around them. The first point of reference for solids is the ground at their feet. On top of that, solid, opaque things were heavy and would fall down to other material of its kind. Therefore, nearly all solids were understood as earth or stone. 

WATER/LIQUIDS
All liquids flow over, down, and into the earth, seeking the lowest point. The first and most essential liquid is water. Therefore, all liquid behavior is framed by water. All liquids, regardless of their actual water content, can be categorized as a variety of water.

AIR/GAS
Gasses are thin and typically transparent to the point of invisibility. They are primarily perceived through physical contact: a gust of wind, a foul smell, a burning of the eyes. Visible gasses like steam, fog, or mustard gas flow up into the atmosphere, and even the dense gases coalesce over earth and water, resting above the lower elements. The most ergonomic way for the ancient man to summarize the entire gas phenomenon was by analogy of the air in his lungs.

FIRE/PLASMA
Controlled human interaction through ionizing, light-producing processes has been limited throughout our history to fire. It was the only means by which we could produce our own light, and our most significant light source was the sun, which burned our skin and heated the world. Naturally, we connected all light production to some variety of fire, as the fire was the only light source we could regularly and tangibly interact with. We also observed that flames rise upwards as though reaching for the lights in the heavens, which themselves appear to float upon the air.

The above descriptions seem straightforward enough, and in many works, they utilize most of these features to inform character, culture, and design. What are we on about when we say most models ignore one of the model's most crucial features?

ELEMENTAL VERTICALITY
The four elements describe a vertical hierarchy of superior-to-inferior elements.

(Diagram shamelessly copied from The Language of Creation)

We did not understand this until we read The Language of Creation: Cosmic Symbolism in Genesis by Matthieu Pageau. Pageau's book uses diagrams to describe the structure of biblical narratives and images and developed this model from Genesis 1, which represents the physical placement of the elements in the universe based on opacity and density.

Once we read this, we recognized the same model described in the Corpus Hermeticum, the body of Neo-Platonic texts that form the basis of the philosophy of Hermeticism, which in turn informed European alchemical and magical tradition. From the second book of the Corpus Hermeticum, Poemander, verses 6-7:

6. Then from that Light, a certain Holy Word joined itself unto
Nature, and out flew the pure and unmixed Fire from the moist
Nature upward on high; it is exceeding Light, and Sharp, and
Operative withal. And the Air which was also light, followed the Spirit
and mounted up to Fire (from the Earth and the Water) insomuch
that it seemed to hang and depend upon it.

7. And the Earth and the Water stayed by themselves so mingled
together, that the Earth could not be seen for the Water, but they
were moved, because of the Spiritual Word that was carried upon
them.

and 16-17:

16. And the Circulation or running round of these, as the Mind
willeth, out of the lower or downward-born Elements brought forth
unreasonable or brutish creatures, for they had no reason, the Air
flying things, and the Water such as swim.

17. And the Earth and the Water was separated, either from the other,
as the Mind would: and the Earth brought forth from herself such
Living Creatures as she had, four-footed and creeping Beasts, wild
and tame.

Anecdotally, this compiler has run into this model repeatedly in these texts, and the assumptions that come with this model are clear as day when one digs into magical tradition.

We'll refer to this model hereafter as the Hierarchy of Elements.

THE HIERARCHY OF ELEMENTS

Hierarchy? In my Cosmos?
We recognize why this feature has been under-utilized, as vertical hierarchies are tricky and often unfashionable. Many audiences would read "the superiority of fire" as a moral or value statement rather than a description of its normative spatial position. Why, if the Fire Nation in Avatar: The Last Airbender was given a model of the world that placed their inherited element closer to the stars, there'd be no convincing any of them they weren't rightful rulers of the world!

We recognize that Avatar's political and cultural considerations are not well-suited for this dimension of the four elements. However, Avatar is not the only story that can be told (or re-told) using these devices. Understanding the hierarchical nature of elemental phenomenology is essential to making an informed decision on whether to cut or incorporate. Regardless of your decision as a writer, it will most certainly be a decision after reading this.

Okay, so Hierarchy
This vertical hierarchy operates along the axes of density, opacity, animation, abstraction, and complexity, which are reinforced by the ancient notion of "like-attracts-like" (which can be directly observed as noted in the phenomenology of the states of matter).

(Diagram shamelessly refined from The Language of Creation)

EARTH
Earth is the densest material, composing the lowest point of our phenomenological reality. Earth falls to earth. Earth is opaque, too complicated for us to see through. Earth is the least animate and most feminine (generative) of the elements, passively generating stone, metal, and plant life. All other elements rest atop the earth.

WATER
Earth is less dense than earth but denser than air. Water flows together down to the lowest point it can reach. Water can be opaque, translucent, or transparent and possesses an opacity gradient at depth. Water is more animate than earth but less animate than air. Water acts upon earth, changing it to mud, facilitating chemical reactions, and instructing the plant seed to grow. Water is active on earth but passively conforms to the earth's shape where unchanged, and is brought to animation by the shaping of the wind which whips it into waves.

AIR
Lighter than water but denser than fire, air moves as if under its own accord. When it flows into a container (earth), it does not occupy the lowest point but instead the whole of the shape. When released, it escapes the earth and out of any liquid, up into the sky and out in all directions. It is usually transparent, more typically invisible, and far less complicated than earth or water. Air blasts stone and whips water but is compelled to move this way and that by the heat of fire.

FIRE
Fire is the lightest of the elements, the tongues of its flames not shooting outward into the atmosphere but reaching up to the celestial fires of the sun, moon, and stars. The inverse of opacity is not transparency, but the production of light and fire reveals and clarifies what is shrouded in darkness. Fire converts the complicated unknown into the simple known. Fire dances and imparts its animation to the other elements, changing the composition of earth, boiling water, and warming the air. Fire is the most masculine (shaping) element, forcing change onto the other elements, especially to the ends of an active human will. 

AETHER, THE FIFTH ELEMENT
The fifth element, aether, can be summarized as the principle of animation. The exact meaning of "animation" will be explored in its dedicated article, in conjunction with individual articles on earth, water, air, and fire (articles forthcoming).

VERTICAL SCARCITY

Is this Really Underutilized?
If Wikipedia is anything to go by, then yes! At the time of this writing, the verticality of the elements featured nowhere in the classical elements* article, which instead focuses on the interpretations of Aristotle and Proclus. While these are reasonably simple to understand, they don't translate well to a broader understanding of ancient cosmology, which was influenced heavily by the verticality of observed phenomena. 

The Aristotelian Model

The Proclean Model 

The dryness and relative temperature of the elements can have value in your narratives if that's how you choose to parse them. Still, the model needs to translate to an easily observed cosmic structure. This is how you get weird things like the plane maps from Dungeons and Dragons.

Unsure which sourcebook this map is from.

How do we read the orientation of the elemental planes? Is fire closer to the lower planes than the upper planes? Are they coequal with the material plane? What governs these choices of presentation? Without clear guiding principles, the subject is easily confused.

*While Wikipedia is far from an ideal source, it's suitable for broad strokes and can be used as a rough gauge of public knowledge on (uncontroversial) subjects. The fact that the vertical hierarchy needs to be included in this article speaks to the ignorance of the subject on the part of Wikipedia editors and, by extension, the public.

VERTICAL VALUE

Okay, So What?
The vertical hierarchy of the elements is missing from our media, so what? Other than some thematic features that a few authors might exploit, there only appears to be direct application outside the elements themselves.

This might be the case where the elements themselves are descriptions of the normative phenomena in the universe. When ancient peoples witnessed things that violated this simple model, what they perceived was not a failure of the model to describe the universe but instead an instance that transcended the model. In other words, they were looking upon something divine.

Transcendence of Boundaries and Magical Substances
One of the most important advantages of the hierarchical model is that it places the normative states of matter on a ladder that scales from concrete at the bottom to abstract at the top. Materials transcending these boundaries therefore bridge the concrete and abstract, allowing room for idea to become instance, and for instance to touch platonic ideal. These substances and devices that cross boundaries are a vector for magical action, allowing you to start from the four elements and into more derived materials as vectors for magical action. Quicksilver is celestial for its metallic qualities but behaves as a simultaneous manifestation of earth and water, the passive elements of generation. Sulfur is a stone that burns brilliantly and produces a powerful fumigant, revealing itself as a simultaneous manifestation of fire and air, the shaping elements.

We can even find magic in seemingly mundane substances, like pumice!

Magical Pumice
Pumice is a volcanic orthoclase feldspar that is lightweight, porous, and full of gas cavities. As a result of its low density, pumice can float on water. The properties of density and buoyancy are well understood today and were understood well enough in the ancient world that they could sail the seas. However, not everyone had ready access to this material, and the idea of a stone that floated upon the water unassisted violated the very definition of stone! This categorical disconnect led to the mystification of the material and fabulous stories of willful stones that floated upon the sea at night and hid themselves from the sun by diving into the depths during the day (a sort of story that would later be conflated with pearls).

This "willful stone" that acted on its own desires by floating was imbued with magical powers and, in the romantic tales of Alexander the Great, was one of many mystical stones the young conqueror was said to have used. Under the name "eldor," these stones were attached to the harnesses of his men's horses, enabling them to ambush their enemies in the Land of Darkness.

If this one little deviation from normative phenomenology can spiral into sentient stones and magical powers, you have a framework that creates windows for magic constantly! The elements stop being boxes that you have to write within or bones you have to work off of, but a toolset that can bring to any instance to reinterpret mundane material into an opportunity for dramatic action!

TAKEAWAY
The hierarchy of elements not only serves as an organizing principle of cosmology but also as a valuable tool for the reinterpretation of all matter. They are as grand as the fixed structure of the cosmos and as versatile as any tool you carry in hand. The model is dynamic and naturalistic and leaves plenty of room for writers to refocus, reframe, and reinvent old relationships. 

Our future articles on the elements will explore the numerous ideas tied to the individual elements and the creative possibilities to be found there, and articles on transcendent materials are likewise forthcoming.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Wikipedia

“Classical Element.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 23 May 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_element.

Texts

Lecouteux, C. (2012). E: Eldor. In A lapidary of sacred stones: Their magical and medicinal powers based on the earliest sources (p. 137). essay, Inner Traditions.

Pageau, Matthieu. “Chapter 11.” The Language of Creation: Cosmic Symbolism in Genesis: A Commentary, Manufacturer Not Identified, Columbia, SC, 2018, p. 40.

Trismegistus, Hermes. “Book II Poemander by Hermes Trismegistus.” Magick Books Library, https://darkbooks.org/pp.php?v=1018287740.