The Elements are one of the most important things we study in Wicca and they're no less important as we move on in the Journey to the One. This is presented here as a study for those who do not have too much experience with the Elements and as a review for those who do.

First of all, what are the Elements? They're not the same as the Elementals which are spirit forms and definitely sometimes mischievous. There is an Elemental associated with each Element but does not have to be connected all the time if you don't want them to be. The ancient people held to the belief that the world was composed of four Elements: Air, Fire, Water and Earth. Everything could be put into one of those categories. We know now that there are actually multitudes of chemical elements but as purveyors of the ancient beliefs we also know that the four Elements have been firmly established in the collective mind of the human race for many thousands of years and have served us well. We continue to make use of them in our daily lives. Every project we do will go better if we incorporate the principles of the Elements. All the Magick we do will be more probable with proper use of the Elements.

So, this is something we need to make a very thorough study of, have an intimate association with and be able to draw upon their wonderful powers whenever we need to. The diagram to the lower right shows the Elements positioned on the logo for the Journey to the One. Read the document titled The Logo of the Journey for more detail on this.

About Author:

"Anonymous" of course means "without a name" and is used when the author is not known--or sometimes, when a story develops out of an oral tradition over generations with possibly many storytellers contributing to and revising the tale before it is finally written down and becomes literature.

A notable amount of ancient and medieval literature is anonymous. This is not only due to the lack of documents from a period, but also due to an interpretation of the author's role that differs considerably from the romantic interpretation of the term in use today. Ancient and Medieval authors were often overawed by the classical writers and the Church Fathers and tended to re-tell and embellish stories they had heard or read rather than invent new stories. And even when they did, they often claimed to be handing down something from an auctor instead. From this point of view, the names of the individual authors seemed much less important, and therefore many important works were never attributed to any specific person.