Welcome to Gaia! ::

Listing everything would take a while. Heh. I made up my mind early on to work based off the 'original' system as much as possible. In other words, most of how I assign things can be traced back in some way to the philosophies on the Four Elements espoused by Greek philosophy, especially Aristotle. It works elegantly as a system this way and it crushes me every time I think about the fact that I haven't seen this approach presented well anywhere in any of the published books out there. What's the foundation? It's pretty simple.

Air. Primarily moist and secondarily warm.
Fire. Primarily warm and secondarily dry.
Earth. Primarily dry and secondarily cool.
Water. Primarily cool and secondarily moist.

Of course, then you have to know what 'moist,' 'dry,' 'warm,' and 'cool' really mean with respect to the Greek philosophers. Most sources you'll see out there seem to take them a bit too literally. The philosopher's weren't necessarily talking literal moistness; rather by moistness they meant the quality of not being intrinsically limited (and dry, then, they meant the quality of being intrinsically limited). Warmth was the force that separated units out of a whole and cold was the force that brought units together into a whole. From this basic foundation one can extrapolate a whole bunch of correspondences that work well as a system. This is a hasty overview of it; I've been running more in-depth articles on it in The Blessed Be guild here on Gaia (which if people want, I can stick up in here somewhere for reference).

Here's a nice and happy basic table with some stuff in it based on this system (well, not really because Starlock isn't smart enough with HTML anymore to make it actually look like a table):

Air ---> Moist(Hot)
- Season: Spring
- Time of Life: Youth/Beginnings/Mornings
- Direction: outward
- Viewpoint: explorative
- Mental Ability: creativity
- Emotional Ability: carefree
- Spiritual Ability: journeying
Fire ---> Hot(Dry)
- Season: Summer
- Time of Life: Adulthood/Climaxes/Afternoon
- Direction: upward
- Viewpoint: energetic
- Mental Ability: discernment
- Emotional Ability: passion
- Spiritual Ability: energy work
Earth ---> Dry(Cool)
- Season: Autumn
- Time of Life: Elder/Resolutions/Evening
- Direction: inward
- Viewpoint: conventional
- Mental Ability: common sense
- Emotional Ability: steadfast
- Spiritual Ability: grounding
Water ---> Cool(Moist)
- Season: Winter
- Time of Life: Between/Uneventful/Night
- Direction: downward
- Viewpoint: laid back
- Mental Ability: syncretism
- Emotional Ability: serenity
- Spiritual Ability: meditation

These are the elements we work with in my system, minus the guardian names.

Fire represents passion, fertility, creativity, inspiration, warmth, protection, purification, motivation, action, change, courage, leadership, anger, fury, hate, rage, jealousy, war, ego conflicts.

Water represents serenity, emotions, compassion, intuition, healing, curiosity, meditation, patience, persistance, laziness, instability, lack of emotional control, insecurity.

Air represents optimism, joy, knowledge, mental quickness, sweeping away mental blocks, communication, social interaction, renewing, frivolity, gossip, fickleness, inattention, bragging, forgetfulness

Earth represents respect, endurance, responsibility, stability, prosperity, thoroughness, purpose in life, health, rigidity, unwillingness to change or to see another side of a problem, stubborness, lack of conscience, vacillation

Storm is a combination of all of the elements. It only manifests when an extreme balancing is needed. Not one to invoke on your own, it will also manifest when a quick spiritual awakening is required.

Light(light half of spirit) represents healing, creation, illumination of secrets, justice, purification, comfort, rallying force, balance, seeking truth, bettering life on all levels, positive attitude, self-righteous, always right

Darkness (dark half of spirit) represents contemplation, protection, concealment, cunning, isolation, discord, destruction, seeking truth, deep anger, hate, fear, unjustified revenge, mentally distorting psychic messages so you hear what you want to

Combination of my former paths and personal experiences mostly (all three paths I've worked with have heavy elemental work)... light/dark just make sense to me to split them and work with them evenly (like when calling a ritual we don't do spirit, it's dragons of light and dark). Storm I saw that way when I was studying shamanism but didn't see in a religious context till one of Conway's books.... It was also in my divination system so I incorporated it and haven't had bad experiences.

Storm is a combination of all of the elements if you break it down:

Light- lightning
Dark- dark clouds, darkness that comes with the storm
Fire- lightning, fires from the strikes, heat
Water- rain
Air- high winds
Earth- the grounding from the lightning strikes hitting the ground

(this isn't used in ritual or called to manifest, it'll manifest when it's needed to quickly force a balance when the other elements are way out of balance).

I use all but storm when setting up the ritual when calling the guardians, before the circle we'll call light and dark then the other four are when calling the guardians. We'll call the guardian and the elements that s/he guards if that makes sense. Sometimes we just call the elements themselves.

I'll use one or more when doing spellwork, depending on the spell at hand. For instance a healing spell will have water and light involved. I have a progressive curse I use to defend myself when someone's gone past regular forms of protection (only used twice) that incorporated all plus a few non-reg element types (metal, desert, etc). Mind you the addition of the non-reg elements (as I like to call them) was at the council of one of my friends who said they would give the spell more punch. And well it did lol.

I'll also add that they make an appearance in our divination system.

hmm seems I must get on the ball about getting that information posted for ya hehe. If for some reason I haven't by the time you need it just prod me lol.

I've always worked with all of the elements. But I'm always attracted to fire/water/dark mix. I have a very powerful Fire/Water/Dark energy gaining elemental attunement. ^-^