The Element of Earth
The Element of Earth is the essential matter, it is the most stable and fixed of the elements and has no mobility whatsoever. It is passive but solid, inflexible and concrete. It is ground and form and also the material body of living things.
The Earth is dry and cold, formative and determing. it is structuring and materializing. While Air and Fire ascend and Water descends, the Earth is fixed at the bottom; it is the secure, solid foundation of being, the ultimate physical body.
Earth is the element most depending on the other elements for Earth alone is dead and lifeless, rigid and cold, mere material without the trace of anything alive in it. It needs Water to be fertilized, Air to be animated, and Fire to be inspired. On the other hand, it is the most important base for all others to be grounded - therefore it is associated with Malkuth, called 'the Kingdom' in the Tree of Life.
In the Kabbalah Earth is associated with Nefesh - the 'Animal Soul' and the world of Assiah which is the world of Making, the world of Action. It is the one world where all forms take place and are finally united, the spiritual principle of stable, inflexible synthesis, the passive imposition of form.
At this point one should note that the Kabbalah actually does not equate the Earth with an element in the same veign as Fire, Water and Air. When we remember the nature of Malkuth it is not anything emanating from above but a fixed plane, the ultimate receiver where all emanations take their final form. It is root and origin because it is there where the physical, comprehensable existance actually begins to manifest.
As an example: figure you want to write somthing, an essay, a poem, a novel. Fire would represent your spirit to do so, Water would give depth and meaning to what you want to write, Air would provide the means to develop and structure your writing, put it into an eligible literary form. Earth would be the ink and the paper (or any other means required to transform your aspirations into actual, physical existance).
In Tarot Earth is represented by the Disks, standing for all things material - which does not only mean 'profane materials' but the actual body and form of our existance. |
