Gender and the elements
By Psyche | February 17, 2010
This is a subject I’ve been frustrated by for some time now, and I’d like to air my thoughts and see what you think about it.
The basic gender assignment which are still frequently in use today date back to the 5th century BCE. The fragmentary writings that survive from Empedocles, among other things, establish the four roots (later elements) as Earth, Air, Fire and Water, and that further, these are associated with specific gods: Hera, Zeus, Hades, and Nestis (Persephone).
These associations had complex geographical and mythical attributes which are rarely (if ever) taken into consideration. They don’t specify mystic sexual or gender-based properties inherent in the elements themselves, but rather describe mystic attributes relevant to these specific divine couples.1
Taken out of context, the elements often get (mis)classed as: Earth/female, Air/male, Fire/male, Water/female. This tradition has become entrenched in modern occultism, and it is patently absurd.
If we take a surface reading of gender stereotypes as presented, they make little sense. Is the person the fiery temper represented by nurturing Earth or deep water simply because she’s female? Must the practical labourer who’s held the same job for so many decades be viewed as intellectual air or fiery inspiration, simply because he has a penis?2 It simply doesn’t hold up, and perhaps it never really has.
We can still make use of the elemental associations in light of what they represent, for example:
- Earth – fertile, steadfast, practical
- Air – intellectual, remote, changeable
- Fire – passion, inspiration, transformation
- Water – emotional, nurturing, hidden
and various esoteric attributes, but we need not pretend these associations must be attributed to binary gender conventions.34
Objects are no more imbued with mystical power than abstract concepts. The sword or wand ought not represent “male energy” (whatever that is) due to a faint phallic resemblances; there are no physical resemblances between a chalice or pentacle that suggest “femininity”. There are more relevant – and more potent – concerns inherent in the symbolism without forcing genders upon them.
Do we lose anything by dropping these arbitrary gender distinctions? What do we gain?
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Footnotes:
- For more on Empedocles and the establishment of the four classical elements, see Peter Kingsley’s Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic: Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition
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- Yes, these are characterizations. Of course there are exceptions – many! That’s why they’re absurd. [back]
- This topic arose in part due to a comment made on the previous post, “Sexism in contemporary occulture“; the commentator was making a point about gender associations in Chinese Medicine, and the polarity of yin and yang. [back]
- Further, while I remain unconvinced in the wisdom of ascribing binary attributes to all things, I find this especially so in gender-assignments, and particularly in regards to occult subjects. It doesn’t translate that negative/positive, passive/active, shady/sunny are all sides of the same coin, and it makes even less sense when we attribute gender to them. [back]
Related posts:
- Masculinism and gender equality
- Sexism in contemporary occulture
- Yin, phalluses and Crowley’s sexism
- Sexism revisited
- Model this
Category: Essays & Opinion,Magick
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I think you might be confusing physical sex with gender. Linking the male gender with Fire and Air does not mean men are fiery or airy, nor does linking the female gender with Water and Earth mean that women are watery or earthy. As you are no doubt aware, men can be feminine and women masculine. So a man can be feminine by being earthy and nurturing, for example, while a woman can be masculine by being aggressive and fiery.
Regarding the chalice, I think you’re missing the point there. The chalice is a receptive vessel, and as we know by studying polarities receptivity is a feminine principle. This is where that link comes from. Couple that with the fact that a chalice usually holds water or wine and you can link it with the womb (which receives the phallus) via the waters of life, menstrual fluid (blood = wine), or the blood of life in general.
Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is a problem here, in my opinion, as the gender polarities are very important to many elements of occultism. It has nothing to do with physical sex and therefore has nothing to do with sexism.
LVX,
Dean.
The problem I’ve always had is that the roots of the terms masculine and feminine still have a certain amount of gendering. This is why when I talk about these concepts in sex magic (and elsewhere) I usually use “active” and “passive”, and even then I have issues with these being presented as a strict duality.
Yes, there is no denying that the gender polarities are based, at least in some regard, on the sexes. The active nature of the “breadwinner” male going out to hunt while the female “passively” stayed at home to rear the children (not that you can really be passive while doing this). This is but one archaic example of where these polarities ultimate derived, but that is no longer the society we live in (thankfully enough), but these basic principles are strongly printed in our psyches. They are just a long list of correspondences, however. Just as active is linked to male it is also linked to positive, light, day, and so forth. All of these help us understand difficult concepts and express them so that others can also understand them.
LVX,
Dean.
It’s still running on a false dichotomy. What about transgender people, and intersex people? Or the fact that a large proportion of the species on this earth are not sexually dimorphic?
Additionally, precedent is no reason to retain something out of nostalgia or “because it’s there”. Take racial stereotypes, for example. These may be based on schemas of people in the past who helped to establish these stereotypes, but that’s no reason to preserve them. There are numerous ways to understand artificially created correspondences without resorting to gendering.
I’m not sure I’d agree with you there. A trans-gender individual can be both masculine and feminine. In fact, most people are both, but to varying degrees. This does not invalidate the associations of the genders. Do you see some of these associations as negative? All of them are necessary, which is what polarity is all about.
LVX,
Dean.
I guess I missed somewhere that this is how the elements were aligned, traditionally. (I mentioned in another comment somewhere that I came from a rather rigid school of science, and hadn’t started studying anything occult at all until a few years ago). I think that the tradition holds use, but not to the exclusion of another perspective.
That being the case, I generally considered each element both masculine and feminine, while still not considering masculine and feminine mutually exclusive. When I have worked with earth’s rocky, foundational heft and strength, I appeal to the masculine aspect of earth, and many times I try to imbue that masculine aspect into my female (feminine or not depends on the hour) self. When my work appeals more to the nutritious, nurturing nature of the soft soil, then it’s the feminine qualities of earth I draw about myself.
As someone who hasn’t been inculcated into this paradigm, I’m interested to see what use and power the traditional ascriptions hold for me.
All in all, I think the lesson really is the same thing I’ve been painfully learning since setting out on this journey: If it doesn’t work for you, try two more times. If it still doesn’t work for you, then it doesn’t work for you, try something else.
Loving your site so far, by the way.
I remain unconvinced. What are we studying that suggests this in practical terms?
…and the human body holds blood, and urine, and mucus, and tears, and that squishy stuff in your eyeballs…The body plays host to a variety of liquids, water makes up some 80%. The uterus isn’t a fluid filled sack waiting for sperm to swim in.
We might as well suggest that twin chalices are masculine, because they represent the testes. It’s so arbitrary and utterly meaningless.
I think you may need to revisit sex ed, the penis enters the vagina, it doesn’t penetrate the womb (see here for a diagram).
What interests me over and above the stereotypes so often being reinforced is, are they actually of any use?
Can we find more meaningful ways of expressing the same symbolism, rather than clinging to outmoded characterizations of what it means to be “feminine” or “masculine”?
”
What interests me over and above the stereotypes so often being reinforced is, are they actually of any use?
Can we find more meaningful ways of expressing the same symbolism, rather than clinging to outmoded characterizations of what it means to be “feminine” or “masculine”?
”
Maybe it’s just me, but I always thought it was just an expedient metaphor that some people maybe took to places it didn’t need to go. When you plug your headphones in to some device, the end connected to your headphones can be described as the “male” end; the end connected to the device can be described as the “female” end. This is an expedient way of describing the two parts of the connection, and one that I think is pretty easy and natural to make sense of. Next thing you know, “Headphones are male! Women with headphones are feminazi dykes going against natural law!” (Or whatever it is people might say/think to confuse the issue.)
Similarly, to my mind at least, the relationship of gender to some elements (or yin/yang or whatever else) is sensible to the extent that it is an expedient description. I think “active” and “passive” or “receptive” seem to work fine much of the time also. My understanding might not be complete, but it seems to me that for example in the tetragrammaton formula, the “active” is seen as in some way “impregnating” the passive to form a “child” product. In such a context, seeing one as male and the other as female so that they couple to produce a child seems like it could be a pretty useful metaphor — maybe not perfect, but it’s something very easy to begin to make sense of.
I suspect that the problems that arise from this are related to what some people call “mixing of the planes”. Here, I take that to refer to the act of taking a symbol used in one context and applying it somewhere else inappropriately.
Anyway, what are your recommendations for replacing this particular symbolism? And on a related note, do you think that there should be no distinctions between male and female in any way under any circumstances? If not, how/when is it appropriate for those distinctions to be made? And what kinds of distinctions are appropriate?
I think that the concept of polarities does have fundamental occultic worth, particularly in the rituals where the goal is to ‘journey’ through the experience of the other, or in a creation ritual of some sort – the symbolism of birth is a powerful one, with many (but certainly not all) women probably identifying more as the birther than the inseminator. However, if this metaphor is used for ritual, there is no reason to confine it to hetronormative gender and sex roles. Magicians work with symbolism – we can also create our own symbolisms. Magic is the Will, not the symbols we use to express the Will.
As for elements, Fire may be the creative element of the Source, but anthropromorphising an element based on our experience of sentient biology is a little short sighted in the context of a universe, as large as it is. Fire is often regarded as penetrating and therefore masculine – but what about the enveloping qualities of flame? Its all so arbitrary.
We can make distinctions between male and female – some people really strongly identify as one or the other and embrace the classical symbols thereof. Many don’t. Try telling any high-femme, Venusian Domme that she’s ‘receptive’ or ‘passive’ by her biological nature, just because she’s feminine.
The gender associations are arbitrary, as indeed are the other qualities associated with the elements. You can just as well say that the duality is one between 0 and 1; that the elements 00 and 10 are 0 in nature, and that the elements 01 and 11 display the qualities of 1.
Fabulous post, Psyche, and great themes.
Obviously it is a magical practice to try and see and interpret one’s experience in simpler terms or systems (the four elements, yin-yang, the tarot trumps, etc.) That is valuable, but I have this reservation:
Forget about binaries! In my tradition any binaries are seen as dangerous ways to think. There are always more than two things going on in any experience, so at least use a trinity!
I see this especially so with the male/female binary. Its use almost always demonstrates the limited conceptual abilities of the speaker. Lots of new agers and occultists here in San Francisco will say: “its not male or female, sex or gender, its archetypal energies, one of which is masculine and the other feminine.” But it still comes out sounding like the tried and true philosophy of the patriarchy.
My angelic sources (and modern biology) teach us that “male” was something that the evolutionary process threw up some billions of years ago. I am firmly of the opinion that it is a mark of androcentrism to even suggest that “male” is equal to the “female”…one was here first and the other wasn’t!
Enough ranting! I can’t wait to read the Hine article!
Also note that the latest scholarship on Empedocles (Wright, “The Fragments of E.”) makes the following assignations to the elements:
Hera, lifebringer Air
Hades Earth
Silvery Zeus Fire
Nestis, whose tears are
the source of all mortal Water
streams
I like it because it messes with the usual attributions air/fire=male, earth/water=female.
My Order claims Empedocles, so I use these attributions in my morning workings. The Wright book is great for a glimpse into the very early Mediterranean magic/philosophy/metaphysics…
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