Fire - Winter
"The Emperor was in the Forest of K'an with the old sage. It was approaching the solstice, and they sat in the coldness of the early morning, which was to be the shortest day of the year. They found that within that day there was unusual life within the forest. Animals had gone to their burrows, rechecking their security; birds flew around nervously. It was an unusual day, for it was the last day of that year. The moon would be at its highest and the sun would be at its lowest. The morning of the 21st, throughout the world, was the birth of the sun, as it came forth in an energy to begin to replace the long days of darkness with light and beauty.
"The old sage was to teach the Emperor, in the year that he stepped away from his palace, the elements of the earth in relation to the spiritual attitude of man. And the sage asked the Emperor to throw away his heavy cloak, rid himself of those things that bound him. But the Emperor said, `I will cease; the coldness of the winter will not allow me to live.' ‘Ah...’ said the sage, ‘but in the birth of the sun, at the Solstice, nothing will die that learns the energy of Fire.'
“The Emperor looked at the sage and said, ‘teach me.'
“So the sage came forward and showed him a beam of sun, and there he sat. He said, ‘Take this sun and pull it within your body. It will be the recharging, the heat generator of this day and of the long night ahead. It will be the warmth that you surround yourself with. Pull it to you.' They sat; and the sun came into the sage and the Emperor began to feel warming and perspiration on his brow. Slowly, over the days that followed, the sage taught him to be a storage, not only of power, but of the energy, the Fire. Then, one night, the sage said to the Emperor, ‘tonight we burn a Fire, and I will teach you to pull the energy from the Fire.' They sat; and the sage said, ‘Do not sit so closely. Sit back.' The Emperor did; and the sage said, ‘Close your eyes and say after me: may the spirits of Fire come within my vibration and bring healing, warmth, and strength during the darkest days.'
"So the sage taught the Emperor, in the darkness of the night, to heat himself throughout, by looking at the Fire as a heating Element from within, not from the skin without. The next day there was no sun. There were clouds and snow. They walked in the snow and saw no animal, save the deer and an occasional bird. The Emperor said, ‘Why are we not within a pagoda, or a cave? Why do we not go to your cave that I have been to before?' But the sage said, ‘You must learn that the coldness of nature is a regenerator and if man feels that he is cold on the outside, the inside can melt the hardest core.' The Emperor said, ‘Why do you go here? Why do you not cover yourself?'
The sage said, ‘It is within the winter that things are, in essence, rebuilding. It is a time of energy; it is the time of strength. The sun is making the night grow shorter. The day is becoming longer and we are becoming warmer, for we have more sun to pull from each day. We are becoming brighter through the light. And it is in this that we see that, as the animals sleep, as the trees and bushes and grass are covered with snow, there is heat, warmth, and energy beneath. It is getting ready to spring into spring. It is a time of regenerating, of understanding the sun and using its strength.
"In the middle of February of the northern year, it was so cold that the ice froze the thickness of a deer. When you would breathe, you could not see because the smoke the breath would make. The sage and the Emperor walked through the forest of K'an learning of the inner energy; learning of the power of Fire, of the sun, learning the lesson of the flowers and the trees and the flowers and the bushes, of the animals; that it was within; learning that it was the energy that they were dealing with, from within themselves, that gave them great strength.
"They came to the beautiful lake of Li, within the forest of K'an, and the sage said to the Emperor, ‘Come, you do not need to know great wisdom and ancientness to walk across this lake now.'"
The Fire Element
The seasons are but a reflection of man himself. If you watch them and listen for each Elements story, then you will understand everyone you come into contact with.
The Element of Fire is the time of Winter. It is the time of greatest potential; it is the promise of things to come. The new growth, the new idea, the germination of the seed. Within this Element there is a stark landscape. The trees are bare; there is little life to be seen; there are few if any birds and most animals are not to be seen. But underneath the cold exterior is the inner warmth of germination. It is a time of great sensitivity to the moving sun, for in the sun is the fire and the light which is the key to appreciating this Element. The Winter is a time of imagining and anticipation.
In relationships it warms the other Elements; it is calmed or doused by Water; fanned or starved by Air; allowed a solid footing or suffocated by Earth; and consumed by itself. Two Fire Elements together without a generous helping of the other Elements is like watching a bush fire in action. The colour of Fire is red and the shape is the triangle. Just imagine for a moment the effect when a triangle pushes its way into your space and you can get some idea what happens when first coming into contact with the Element of Fire. Beyond the sharp point is a gentleness and passion that is hard to ignore.
The Element of Fire has its seat in the solar plexus and rules the cardio-vascular system and liver. Its nature is animated, ascending, hot, bright, and vibrant and its energy has a tendency to move upward and outward. Some of the major keynotes of the Fire element are heat, expansion, incandescence, acceleration and excitation. In alchemy fire stands for the principle of combustion, which is necessary to distill the alchemical substance. Its negative root emotions are pride, conceit, excessive enthusiasm and loquacity. When the heart's "desires and passions" are out of control they dominate the temperament and lead the person astray. In a balance or in health the Fire type warms and excite every one they come into contact with. The passion of the Fire element can change the world.
The Fire type is intuitive, festive, and spontaneous and tends toward being optimistic. The strengths of the Fire type can be summed up by the words passionate, expansive, social, joyful, optimistic, convincing, spontaneous, enthusiastic, dynamic, lively, demonstrative and compassionate. In their negative states they are desirous, prideful, indiscriminate, arrogant, and full of denial, authoritative, cruel, inconsistent, frivolous, naive, exhibitionist, meddlesome, loquacious, manic, repetitious, humiliated, flustered or mortified. Just like the element of Fire itself, in a balance it brings mankind great joy; out of a balance and it can consume and burn everything to the ground.
The fundamental basis of consciousness in Fire types is the perceptive principle. This led Carl Jung to describe them as extroverts as well as the "intuitive type". They tend to act through inspiration rather than reason and feelings instead of thought.
Fire types are often supportive, enthusiastic, expansive, social, erotic, jovial, festive, and talkative. At the same time they can be courageous, fiery, bold, and gregarious. They flush easily on emotion and have exalted states of fancy and become over enthusiastic and often are too passionate in what they believe. They have a tendency to run out of energy and exhaust themselves or even lose energy around a project or idea if it no longer excites them. They have a hard time admitting that anything is wrong or apologizing to those they may have hurt because they don't see their own mistakes very easily. In this way, they can appear as being too positive. They find it easy to walk away from one idea or project if the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence. They find it easy to start new projects, but if they are bored or the project is not going anywhere they will lose energy and walk away. It is the same with relationships. They are born leaders but they have a habit of dominating other people and situations as well as showing off.
The Fire person can appear to be arrogant and vain but this only acts as a shell as they are easily hurt. They live for the appreciation of others. Fire has the ability to see the big picture and so what sometimes can appear to be arrogance is more likely that they can see where to go or where everything is heading. They often compensate for their lack of inner confidence by becoming haughty, ardent, and bossy. When they lose their temper they become irate, hot blooded, wild, fierce, and furious and boil with rage. They can become bloody minded, who at their worst are cruel and enjoy inflecting pain on others. The rubric "over joyful" is a keynote of the Fire type because they enjoy everything they do for better or worse, and laugh whether they are being kind or cruel. This is why they make the friendliest, but at the same time, the most sadistic types of people.
Strengths
Expansive
Intuitive
Visionary
Big picture
Social
Joyful
Optimistic
Spontaneous
Enthusiastic
Dynamic
Lively
Demonstrative
Convincing
Passionate
Compassionate
Weakness
Desire
Proud
Incredulous
Haughty
Indiscriminate
Arrogant
Denial
Authoritative
Cruel
Inconsistent
Frivolous
Naive
Exhibitionist
Meddlesome
Loquacious
Repetitious
Humiliated
Mortified
Flustered
Manic
Physical Constitution
The physique of the Fire person is muscular, strongly boned and they have triangular athletic builds; especially if the are Fire/Earth. The seat of their energy is in the heart from where it spreads through the blood vessels to the muscles. Most of the time they walk with buoyant dynamic steps and they are normally very vital people. The larger Fire/Earth types have big chests and huge pelvis bones, large hearts, and a tendency to become obese because they accumulate fatty tissue easily. On the other hand, some fire/water types are narrower at the hips but they still have a triangular shape and athletic builds. All Fire types have a strong liver component, for the liver is the organ of the future and for Fire types who are always in the future it is one of their most important organs.
The Fire types are active, animated, warm, and sweaty and suffer easily from laboured breath. In actual fact it is breathing out that gives them the most difficulty. They have a tendency toward hyper adrenal states and are often excessive in their movements and activity. In the Fire/Earth you will find this expressed in physical sports, whereas the Fire/Water type this movement is expressed in dance or other forms of creative movement.
The Fire type has a full, florid face, rosy cheek, red lips and flushes easily on emotions and exertion. They have iridescent radiant pupils and irises that twinkle with a certain brightness. The whites of their eyes are often bloodshot with red veins and spots.
Their hands can have large palms and long fingers. The stronger the influence of Earth and they become thick, strong, warm, and humid with wide palms. Their nails are rosy colored, wide, and solid with very clear moons. When shaking hands the male Fire element has a strong athletic grip and shakes the hand vigorously. The Fire female usually smiles and likes to hug strongly and kiss and can be quite flirtatious.
The skin of the Fire type is generally red, warm and moist because of their hot and moist constitutions.
Fire/Earth types are often big eaters who enjoy to "wine and dine" and pay the price for it in being over weight and suffering form heartburn. Fire eat food for the excitement of it; especially the social side of eating. They love company and are at their happiest when surrounded by friends and acquaintances. They love anything where they are the centre of attention or when they have an audience.
When the Fire type is healthy they feel warm and like cool open air. When they become sick they feel hot, suffocated, anxious and fearful and are < worse hot environments, closed rooms and in tight clothes. In general, they are < worse in hot seasons and climates, hot applications and hot influences. It would be strange, rare and peculiar for a Fire type to be better by heat and worse open air.
Next we will look at the Element of Water which aligns with the season of Spring.
After we have had a short look at each of the four Elements we will begin to have a look at the differences and also how you can use this information to understand yourself and others.
The 33rd Sage is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository, Watersons, Xlibris and a number of online book stores.
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