Whilst on this subject, I thought I might mention a further set of attributes that the Encircled Cross adopts.

I'm thinking here in particular of the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, which is probably the original version of the four-elements type temple layout, or at least the one from which most modern rituals are derived. The LBRP was/is part of the Golden Dawn teachings.

(As a side note, I thoroughly recommend that each and every one of you goes out and buys /The Golden Dawn/ by Israel Regardie. It is an essential volume. While your at it, get /Liber ABA; Book 4/ by Aleister Crowley as well. You'll spend about £100 in total, but the books are worth their weight in Gold. And boy, are they heavy books!)

There is a commentary on this ritual in the Golden Dawn teachings. It describes the ritual as follows: the magician is standing in the centre of the circle, facing East. Ahead of him is the Golden Dawn; the point at which the Sun rises.
This is attributed to Tiphareth, being the Sephirah corresponding to the Sun.

Behind him, is Yesod, attributed to the Moon. To his left is Hod, which is Mercury. To his right is Netzach, which is Venus.

The magician is therefore standing at the junction of the paths of Peh and Samekh. This is the highest point of consciousness attainable in the untrained mind. Tiphareth consciousness (which is the next level up) is not normally directly accessible to a human. You need to work at it to get there.

So the LBRP was designed both to banish unwanted influences, and to invoke the force of Tiphareth - being the Next Step - which I think is why most occult ritual starts with the East, the point of the Rising Sun, i.e. the birth of Tiphareth consciousness.

Now I was going to try and use Sephirothic correspondences to deduce the relevant elements, but the results aren't as satisfactory as I'd hoped for.
See Hod is Mercury, which is most definitely Air, and that is to the left of the magician, which is the North (since he is facing East). So at the very least, this schema seems to confirm that Air is in the North.

And then we have Yesod to the South, which is the unconscious mind, allied with the Moon, and the flux and flow of the lunar current suggests Water (tides, menstruum, etc, etc: the ultra-feminine, ultra-impressionable, fluid, taking any shape and so on).

Now things get a bit broken, because I wanted to say Tiphareth was Earth, and Netzach Fire, but that's quite backwards to me.

Tiphareth is the Sun, which is more naturally Fire to my mind. And Netzach is Venus, Hathoor, etc, etc, i.e. the Green of the fields and beast; which is very strongly Earth.

So although I've got Air and Water in the "right" place, I've just succeeded in justifying swapping over Fire and Earth!

Perhaps what I am trying to say is that you can beat this thing around for hours, coming up with a whole bunch of reasons why each element should appear in any particular quarter, all equally sensible and justifiable, and not much to pick between them.

Maybe the wisest thing would be to never get drawn in to assigning the elements absolutely to the Quarters. Every single ritual should have them rearranged, so that you never get stuck into one pattern.

After all, all this analysis and symbolism is saying exactly that. The elements aren't static. They are continually interpenetrating, interchanging, and transforming the one into the other. Fundamentally indivisible. And it is precisely this nature which gives rise to the Fifth Element. This nature /is/ the Fifth Element!

Why then should we insist on categorizing them apart, and sticking rigidly to patterns which the elements themselves refuse to follow?

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Mike Alexander
-( Eko Ishtar )-
. . . Eko Hathoor . . .
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