Since I was a little girl I have always been obsessed with the Elements. In particular, water, but the idea of the duality of all four acting on their own but also in tandem has always been astonishing to me. Naturally, when I came upon witchcraft this piqued my interest immediately.
To say I’ve had a bit of a love affair with the elements is accurate. I have always been in complete awe of them. Fire for its capacity to completely destroy and create something new out of it. Air to almost completely take your breath away and with it make you forget your worries for a bit. Earth for making me feel so very rooted and grounded while walking barefoot upon it, and lastly water for… everything it encompasses. There isn’t anything about water I do not like, I love to drink it, swim in it, run my hands
through its streams attempting to mold it. I feel most at home while swimming.
Upon starting my journey with witchcraft I had no idea what to do. You are inundated with all types of information some useful, most of it not. The thing that always stood out to me was the capacity to use the elements consistently when working with spells. Pantheons are a big thing when working under the Pagan umbrella, and I just personally have never prescribed to the idea of working with ‘the old Gods’. They aren’t modern in any sense, and more often than not are just a subset or a projection of how an element might manifest itself. For this reason, I felt lost for quite some time trying to get my feet grounded on how I should practice and what I should believe.
Then I came across my favorite Youtube witch Samantha Valens. I watched a lot of videos on how to do this spell, or went so far as to get a whole series of videos about what I should study on my year and a day studying while gearing up to be a full bore witch. Nothing was as informative as Miss Valens’ videos. She was the first person that made me stop and think about the information I was gathering logically.
The most notable thing she would always say in her videos was “What does this mean to you?” When you hold that crystal in your hands does it actually seem to promote wealth and prosperity or do you just believe that because its what you’ve been told over and over again. So her instructions in one of her videos was to sit with a crystal…. or with whatever deity you may want to work with and write down how it made YOU feel. Not what its supposed to make you feel based off a Pinterest post but what feelings were illicited when you attempted to work with said object or person. She used the Elements as an example, and I thought that was an awesome idea.
Meditation is probably the single most important thing in this day and age, and I will more than likely write an entire post on just that, but I cannot express to you how important it is to clear your mind regularly and just work on a singular thing. We are so inundated with chaos of every day life that taking time to breathe and release energy, or do energy work, or in this example work with the elements cannot be understated.
My little soapbox rant aside, I decided to do as she instructed. Instead of using a regular guided meditation I instead found either the sounds of a camp fire or crashing waves, and I worked independently with each element. When I say ‘work’ I mean you meditate and just open yourself up to whatever comes to your mind. What followed were some of the single most profound experiences I have probably ever had.
Each one of these elements came to me as beings, in some form or another. Fire being the most prominent of the bunch. What was initially meant to be a 10-15 minute session with each soon turned in to a 30 to 45 minute session with pages and pages written about these experiences. I realize a lot of this can be made in to being something strictly made up… imaginary if you will and maybe that is the case, but when I say that I felt completed in some sense, you cannot mistake that feeling, ever. If you have never felt that, then you will not know what I am talking about but that is how I felt when working with these elements.
Air, was unfortunately, the most evasive of the elements for me. Didn’t care to show herself and came to me more as fleeting images (seems kind of typical now that I am writing about it). I love windy days, and I feel like because I cannot mimic the environment she puts herself in, she didn’t care to manifest and show herself to me completely. I did write down plenty of ways that I felt in the moment listening to trees rustle in the wind. The interesting points in my notes being memories, losing control, speech and communication. They are interesting to me because they are opposite of what you would normally see on a sheet about ‘Air’.
Next was Fire and was one of the most incredible things that happened while doing this type of exercise. Again, I prompted my meditation with the sounds of a campfire and what ensued after that was nothing short of a wild ride. I was met with a very interesting looking man, he was dapper, well-dressed and charming. He reminded me of the Shadow man from Princess and the Frog. His presence was very prominent and it was if he was showing me around. It was an amazing experience, and one that I did not expect to have considering that Fire has never really been my affinity, or so I thought. If Fire has taught me anything its that he has my back.
I then worked with Water. Again, this was a fainted image of a person, but it was more in an animal form. My spirit animal, well my main one, is the dolphin (to no great surprise, considering I wanted to be a marine biologist when I was 9). The presence came more to me in that form and we took more of an adventure then worked on what Water meant to me. This makes sense considering I know what Water means to me, but I will say there are still some things that seem out of line than what you would normally what on ‘what does water as an element mean’ page. Those things were sleep, respect, and time.
And lastly, I worked with Earth. This was probably the next profound experience I have
ever had to date when it comes to meditation. When I worked with Earth I used the sounds of animals on a hike and others things of that nature it was nothing short of like rocking my foundation. I wrote the most notes on this one and I felt directly connected with Earth when writing about it, more so than the other elements. I had a full-bore break down. I started weeping and sobbing to the point of it almost being uncontrollable. The Earth cries out, because we are killing it, and all I had to do was tap in to that once to feel it. I cannot tell you how mind altering of an experience it was, words don’t describe it.. I am not the type of person to just sob at essentially nothing and I pretty much lost it. The thing to take away from that experience wasn’t what described it, or ‘who’ it came to me as, it was almost a calling from Earth itself to put me on the right path.
These were my first initial experiences ‘working’ with the elements. Since then I have incorporated certain aspects of them in my magic and I can tell you they work better for me than any ‘old god’. They are the Old Gods…. they are consistently something we encounter every day and the more time we spend with them, specifically myself, the more at peace I am.
different available pantheons. Now while I do not currently worship any old gods, that is not to say I have not used them in my practice and spell work. I personally do not ‘vibe’ with the old world deities and for that reason have not pursued relationships with them.
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