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Analysis / Elemental Powers

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Western Elements

The four classical Western elements — Fire, Earth, Air and Water — came about from Greek philosopher Aristotle and his attempts to figure out the basic "building blocks" of the universe (interestingly enough, the first venture into atomic theory was made at the same time Aristotle started to popularize his elements theory, but Aristotle being more popular with the public, his model ultimately prevailed, while atomic model was dismissed as implausible). According to elemental model, everything "under the moon" is made of one or more of aforementioned four elements — for example, coal was Earth+Fire, while a human, animal or plant was Air+Fire+Earth+Water. The difference between various things comes from proportions in which those four elements were within them — for example, the heavier the metal, the more Earth it has compared to other elements.

By Aristotle's model, then, an elemental magic user should be capable of using everything that contained their element, so Water wizard could also control plants, and Fire wizard would be capable of controlling most metals. This, of course, would produce some Story Breaker Powers, hence why in media, it's usually watered down into "pure" Earth, Fire etc. (this, plus Aristotles' view on building blocks of the universe isn't exactly most common knowledge). Excluding elements such as Wood or Metal, which hail from Eastern philosophy, many "extra" elements, like Lightning, Ice and Sunnote , come from writers "filling in" holes in the system that weren't present in the original model, as Aristotle intended for his elements theory to explain the nature of literally everything.

Eastern Elements

In contrast to the Western elements, there are five, not four elements in Eastern tradition: fire, water, wood, earth and metal. (Note that air or wind is absent.) All of these are associated with one of The Four Gods, a color, internal body parts, a direction and a season.

  • Water
    • Color: Black (not blue)
    • God: The Black Tortoise
    • Season: Winter
    • Direction: North
    • Organs: Kidneys (Yin), Bladder (Yang)

  • Wood
    • Color: Teal
    • God: The Azure Dragon
    • Season: Spring
    • Direction: East
    • Organs: Liver (Yin), Gallbladder (Yang)

  • Fire
    • Color: Red
    • God: The Vermilion Bird note 
    • Season: Summer
    • Direction: South
    • Organs: Heart (Yin), Small intestine (Yang)

  • Metal (also named Gold, as the word can also mean that)
    • Color: Grey
    • God: The White Tiger
    • Season: Autumn
    • Direction: West
    • Organs: Lungs (Yin), Larger intestine (Yang)

  • Earth
    • Color: Yellow
    • God: The Yellow Dragon
    • Season: None, represents the changing seasons
    • Direction: Center
    • Organs: Spleen (Yin), Stomach (Yang)

Similar to how the four Western elements play a part in certain forms of Wicca, the Eastern elements form a large part in Eastern divination, where it is referred to as Wu Xing that plays a role in feng shui. You see, these five elements have a push-and-pull effect when interacting with eachother. Wood feeds fire, water obviously puts out fire, but fire also generates earth (i.e ashes), and so on until the five of them are arranged in a pentagram.


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