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SECTION XIV.
The Four Elements.
MktaphysicalIvY and esoterically, there is but One Element in
Nature, and at the root of it is the Deity; and the so-called seven
Elements, of which five have already manifested and asserted their
existence, are the garment, the veil, of that Deity, direct from the
essence whereof comes Man, whether considered physically, psychically,
mentally or spiritually. Four Elements only are generally spoken
of in later antiquity, while five only are admitted in philosophy. For
the body of Ether is not fully manifested yet, and its noumenon is
the "Omnipotent Father ^ther," the synthesis of the rest.
still
But what
are these Elements, whose compound bodies have now been discovered
by Chemistry and Physics to contain numberless sub-elements, even
the sixty or seventy of which no longer embrace the whole number
suspected
Let us follow their evolution from the historical beginnings,
at an3^ rate.
The Four Elements were fully characterized by Plato when he said
that they were that "which composes and decomposes the co77ipound bodies
Hence Cosmolatry was never, even in its worst aspect, the fetichism
which adores or worships the passive external form and matter of any
object, but looked ever to the Noumenon therein. Fire, Air, Water,
Earth, were but the visible garb, the symbols of the informing, invisible
Souls or Spirits, the Cosmic Gods, to whom worship was offered by the
ignorant, and simple, but respectful, recognition by the wiser.
In their
turn, the phenomenal subdivisions of the noumenal Elements were informed
by the Elementals, so-called, the "Nature Spirits" of lower
grades.
In the Theogony of Mochus, we find Ether first, and then the Air;