The Four Elements in Alchemy: Earth, Water, Air, and Fire
The four elements in alchemy: earth, water, air, and fire, their qualities, the quintessence, and the planetary correspondences.
The alchemist lights the furnace. He places a flask of mercury on the iron stand, fits the alembic, and waits. The mercury begins to rise. It climbs the walls of the flask, condenses on the cool glass, and runs down in a thin, bright stream into the receiver. The alchemist has heated it, vaporised it, and recondensed it. The alchemical reading is that he has also separated the volatile from the fixed. He has isolated the mercury principle. The four-element theory gives him the vocabulary for what he has just done: the heat of the furnace is the active quality of fire, the rising mercury is the volatile principle of air, the condensation is the coolness of water, the residual matter in the flask is the cold and dry body of earth. In the alchemical understanding, the alchemist at the furnace is acting on the elements themselves.
That double register — the laboratory operation and the elemental theory that describes it — is the most distinctive feature of the alchemical framework, and the four-element theory is the framework that makes it work. The theory was not original to the alchemists. They inherited it from the Greek natural philosophers, particularly Empedocles and Aristotle, and they applied it to the practical work of the laboratory. The application is what made the theory durable. It is one thing to assert, in the abstract, that all matter is composed of earth, water, air, and fire. It is another thing to use the assertion to design a distillation, predict the products of a calcination, and explain why a metal corrodes in acid, and that second, applied, use is the reason the theory survived in the alchemical tradition for two thousand years.
The origins: Empedocles and Aristotle
The theory of the four elements was developed by the Greek natural philosophers of the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, especially Empedocles, and was refined by Aristotle in the fourth century. The alchemists inherited the theory and applied it to the practical work of the laboratory, and the application is what made the theory the working vocabulary of alchemy.
Empedocles, the Sicilian pre-Socratic philosopher, was the first to systematise the theory in the form of four “roots” (rhizomata) — earth, water, air, and fire — which combine and separate under the action of two cosmic forces, Love (attraction) and Strife (repulsion). The four roots are the irreducible constituents of matter, and the differences among observable substances are differences in the proportions of the roots. The theory is a sophisticated piece of pre-Socratic cosmology, and it survives in fragments of Empedocles’ poem On Nature.
Aristotle refined the theory in two important ways. First, he added a theory of qualities: each element is defined by a pair of qualities, hot and cold, wet and dry. Earth is cold and dry, water is cold and wet, air is hot and wet, fire is hot and dry. The four elements can be transformed into one another by exchanging a quality. Second, he added a fifth element, the aither or quinta essentia, the substance of the heavenly bodies, which is unchanging and eternal and is found only in the celestial spheres. The alchemists inherited the Aristotelian theory in its developed form, and the theory is what they used as the foundation of their work.
The qualities
The four elements are defined by two pairs of qualities: hot and cold, wet and dry. Each element combines one quality from each pair. Earth is cold and dry, water is cold and wet, air is hot and wet, fire is hot and dry. The qualities are not properties of the elements; they are the principles that define the elements. To change an element is to change its qualities, and to change its qualities is to change its elemental character.
The system of qualities anchors the alchemical theory of matter. The alchemists held that every substance is a compound of the elements in some proportion, and the proportion of the elements is determined by the balance of the qualities. A substance that is hot and dry is dominated by fire; a substance that is cold and wet is dominated by water; and so on. The differences among substances are differences in the balance of the qualities, and the system of qualities provides the basis for the alchemical theory of transformation. A substance can be transformed by changing the balance of its qualities. To turn a cold and dry substance into a hot and dry one is to transmute the dominant element from earth to fire, and the substance is correspondingly transformed. The alchemist who can control the qualities can control the composition of matter.
The system was extended in the alchemical tradition. The original four pairs of qualities (hot/cold, wet/dry) were supplemented by additional pairs: fixed/volatile, masculine/feminine, active/passive, spirit/body. The extensions gave the alchemist a richer vocabulary for describing the behaviour of substances, and the extensions are the reason the four-element theory remained a working tool of the laboratory long after it had been abandoned in other areas of natural philosophy. Principe (2013, pp. 50–55) and Holmyard (Alchemy, 1957) are the standard introductions.
The elements and the alchemical operations
The four elements are associated with the alchemical operations of the laboratory, and the associations are not arbitrary. They reflect the way the operations are actually performed and the way the alchemists understood the behaviour of matter under heat and moisture.
Earth is the element of stability, fixity, and solidity, the principle of the dry and the cold, associated with the operation of coagulation, the conversion of a liquid into a solid. The alchemist who wants to fix the volatile component of a mixture works with the earth principle.
Water is the element of fluidity, dissolution, and the wet, the principle of liquidity, associated with the operation of dissolution, the dissolving of a solid in a liquid. The alchemist who wants to separate the soluble from the insoluble works with the water principle.
Air is the element of vaporisation, expansion, and the rarefied. It is the principle of the gaseous and the volatile, and it is associated with the operation of sublimation, the conversion of a solid into a vapor. The alchemist who wants to separate the volatile from the fixed works with the air principle.
Fire is the element of combustion, heat, and the active. It is the principle of transformation, and it is associated with the operation of calcination, the heating of a substance to drive off volatile components. The alchemist who wants to transform the matter works with the fire principle. The alchemical operations are not just physical procedures. They are operations on the elements, and the alchemist who performs them is acting on the elemental composition of matter. The cluster on spagyric alchemy examines how the operations are combined in the practical work.
The quintessence
Aristotle’s fifth element, the aither or quinta essentia, is the substance of the heavenly bodies. The quintessence is unchanging, eternal, and different in kind from the four terrestrial elements, found only in the celestial spheres. It is the medium by which the celestial bodies influence the terrestrial world.
The alchemists adopted the theory of the quintessence and gave it a new practical significance. The quintessence is the goal of the alchemical work. The alchemist who can extract the quintessence from a substance can produce a medicine of extraordinary power, capable of curing disease and prolonging life. The quintessence is also the agent of the philosopher’s stone: the stone, properly prepared, is the quintessence of the metallic world.
The search for the quintessence was one of the most enduring projects of the Western alchemical tradition. The alchemists developed a series of procedures for extracting the quintessence, including repeated distillation, calcination, and dissolution. The procedures were the ancestors of the modern chemical techniques of fractional distillation, sublimation, and extraction, and the search for the quintessence was a major stimulus to the development of the laboratory apparatus of the alchemical tradition. The word “quintessence” passed from the alchemical tradition into common speech, where it still survives.
The elements and the planets
The alchemists inherited the planetary system of the Babylonians and the Greeks, and they developed a set of correspondences between the four elements, the planets, and the metals. The correspondences anchor the alchemical theory of metallic composition, the alchemical theory of astrological influence, and the alchemical practice of timing operations by the calendar.
| Element | Quality | Metal | Planet | Day |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fire | hot, dry | Gold | Sun | Sunday |
| Water | cold, wet | Silver | Moon | Monday |
| Air | hot, wet | Copper | Venus | Friday |
| Earth | cold, dry | Lead | Saturn | Saturday |
To this table the alchemists added the remaining three wandering planets with their metals: Mars → iron (Tuesday), Jupiter → tin (Thursday), and Mercury → mercury itself (Wednesday). The full seven-planet schema, in which each day of the week takes its name from a planetary deity and each planet rules a metal, is the basis of the alchemical theory of correspondences. The alchemists also added correspondences with the bodily organs, the colours, the humours, and the zodiacal signs. The long-tail page on alchemy and astrology examines the planetary system in detail. The planetary correspondences are not decorative. They are working tools. The alchemist who wants to prepare a solar medicine works on a Sunday, in a sunny room, with gold and substances ruled by the Sun. The alchemist who wants to prepare a lunar medicine works on a Monday, with silver and substances ruled by the Moon. The alchemist who wants to time a critical operation watches the planetary hours. The alchemists were not being superstitious. They were working within a coherent theoretical framework, and the framework gave the laboratory work a structure that the modern chemist, working without the planetary correspondences, has to supply in other ways.
The Chinese and Indian parallels
The Chinese and Indian alchemical traditions developed parallel systems of elemental theory that are different in detail but similar in structure. The parallels are striking, and the question of whether the parallels are evidence of transmission or independent development is one of the more interesting open questions in the comparative history of alchemy. The Chinese system is the theory of the five phases (wuxing): wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. The five phases are not elements in the Greek sense; they are phases of transformation, the basic processes by which matter changes. Wood generates fire, fire creates earth, earth produces metal, metal carries water, water nourishes wood. The system is cyclical, and the alchemical work is the harmonisation of the practitioner’s bodily processes with the cosmic processes of the five phases. Pregadio (ed., The Encyclopedia of Taoism, 2008, vol. 2, pp. 975–979) is the standard reference.
The Indian system is the theory of the pancha mahabhuta, the five great elements: earth, water, fire, air, and ether. The Indian system is closer to the Greek than the Chinese, and includes the fifth element of ether that corresponds to the Aristotelian quintessence. The Indian alchemical tradition uses the pancha mahabhuta as the foundation of its theory of matter and of its pharmacological practice. Wujastyk’s The Roots of Ayurveda (1998) is the standard reference.
The question of transmission is unresolved. The most cautious position is that the three systems (Greek, Chinese, Indian) developed largely independently, with some possible transmission of the Greek and Indian systems through the Hellenistic and early medieval trade routes. The Greek and Indian systems in particular share a number of features — the inclusion of ether as a fifth element, the doctrine of the bodily humours, the theory of metallic composition — that are too detailed to be coincidence, but the historical evidence for direct transmission is thin. The scholarly consensus is that the systems are largely independent developments that converged on similar structures because they were addressing similar problems. White (The Alchemical Body, 1996) and Wujastyk (1998) are the right places to read the argument.
The four elements and the theory of matter
The four-element theory anchors the alchemical theory of matter, and the theory is the foundation of the alchemical theory of metallic composition. Every substance is a compound of the four elements in some proportion, and the differences among the metals are differences in the elemental balance. Gold is the perfectly balanced metal, in which the four elements are harmonised. Lead is the imperfect metal, in which the cold and the dry predominate. The alchemist’s work is to rebalance the elements in a base metal, producing a noble metal.
The alchemists also developed empirical procedures for probing the composition of substances: calcination revealed what was volatile and combustible, dissolution revealed what was soluble, distillation revealed what was vaporisable. These operations gave the alchemists a working vocabulary for the laboratory study of matter, and the techniques were the ancestors of the modern chemical methods of analysis. The elemental theory, though wrong in its details, was a serious attempt to understand the composition of matter. Newman (Promethean Ambitions, 2004, ch. 2) is the right caution: the alchemists were wrong about the constituents, but they were asking the right questions.
The decline of the elemental theory
The theory of the four elements was challenged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Robert Boyle’s Sceptical Chymist (1661) argued that the elements are not the ultimate constituents of matter and that chemistry should be based on the careful analysis of substances into their components. The phlogiston theory of Becher and Stahl (early eighteenth century) was a post-alchemical, corpuscular-mechanist framework rather than a continuation of the alchemical elemental theory; it was displaced by Lavoisier’s oxygen-based chemistry in the 1770s and 1780s. Lavoisier’s Traité Élémentaire de Chimie (1789) marked the decisive break.
The modern theory of chemistry, with its periodic table of more than one hundred elements, is incompatible with the alchemical theory of the four elements. The alchemists were wrong about the number of the elements and about their character, but their conviction that matter is composed of a small number of basic constituents, and that the differences among substances are differences in the proportions of those constituents, remains a foundational idea of modern chemistry. The alchemists were wrong in detail, but right in structure. Principe (2013, ch. 1) makes the point well.
FAQ
Q: Did Empedocles invent the four elements? A: Empedocles (fifth century BCE) is the first Greek thinker to systematise the theory as four “roots” (rhizomata). Earlier thinkers (Thales, Anaximenes, Heraclitus) had each singled out one substance as the arche of all things, but Empedocles combined them into a four-element framework.
Q: What is the fifth element? A: Aristotle’s aither or quinta essentia, the substance of the celestial spheres, unchanging and eternal. The alchemists adopted the theory and made the quintessence the goal of the practical alchemical work: the “quintessence” of a substance, properly extracted, was believed to be a medicine of extraordinary power. Q: Did the alchemists assign an element to each of the seven planets? A: Only in a partial sense. The alchemists assigned Sun → gold (Fire), Moon → silver (Water), Venus → copper (Air), Saturn → lead (Earth), and also Mars → iron, Jupiter → tin, and Mercury → mercury itself. The remaining three planets (Mars, Jupiter, Mercury) had their own metals but did not correspond to additional elements.
Q: Is phlogiston theory alchemical? A: No. Phlogiston theory (Becher, Stahl) was a post-alchemical, corpuscular-mechanist framework, not a continuation of the four-element theory, displaced by Lavoisier’s oxygen chemistry in the 1770s and 1780s.