Fire
Heat, light, energy and transformation: the element of the sun, the hearth and the forge.
- Qualities
- Hot and dry (Aristotle)
- Zodiac
- Aries, Leo, Sagittarius
- Humor
- Yellow bile, choleric
- Tarot suit
- Wands
- Direction
- South, in modern pagan practice
For Empedocles, fire was one of the four eternal 'roots' of everything, mixed and separated by the forces of Love and Strife. Aristotle described each element by two qualities, and fire is the hot and dry one. Plato, in the Timaeus, gave it the sharp tetrahedron, the most piercing of the regular solids.
In astrology fire rules Aries, Leo and Sagittarius, the signs of enthusiasm and action. In the four-humor medicine that lasted into the 1700s, fire matched yellow bile and the quick, 'choleric' temperament. In modern tarot it is the suit of Wands, and in contemporary pagan ritual it is usually placed in the south.
Linking a goddess to an element is a modern practice, drawn from Renaissance magic, the Golden Dawn and contemporary paganism; the ancient sources don't assign goddesses to elements.