Element Systems and the Wrongs of "One Truth" Spirituality

There is a concept in New Religion spaces that holds that every religion pays homage to an ultimate truth or reality, which descends from a Renaissance-era theological concept called prisca theologia. Nowadays, prisca theologia is sometimes also referred to as perennial theology or perennialism. This doctrine was written by Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, whose motivations were rooted in connecting Christian ideology to ancient Greek philosophies.

Both Ficino and Mirandola lived about 300 years after Marco Polo's travels on the Silk Road. They died slightly after Christopher Columbus' journey to the Tainos' land in so-called "Central America" and right before the beginning of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. So they may had some awareness of religions east of what we now call the Middle East, but certainly had no knowledge of the diversity of religions in the indigenous Americas and African continents. Their defining of prisca theologia did not have any overtly imperialist aims and did not take these other religions into account. However, their work very much framed Christianity as the supreme and only correct religion.

Perennial theology started to take on a more colonialist bend when it resurfaced in the 19th century. Some Christian sects, such as Transcendentalism and Universalism, were responsible for this, but we also could see it in new religions. Through thinkers like Helena Blavatsky of Theosophy, Aleister Crowley of the western occult revival, and William Walker Atkinson of New Thought who was the most probable author of The Kybalion, this time ancient Egypt as well as Eastern religions were brought into the notion of there being one source theology or religion.

To Blavatsky, this was the first of eventually seven Root Races. To Crowley, this was Kemeticism. To Atkinson, a strange form of neo-Hermeticism if he believed his claim in The Kybalion, "From old Egypt have come the fundamental esoteric and occult teachings which have so strongly influenced the philosophies of all races, nations and peoples, for several thousand years."

At the same time as this rise in perennialism, plenty of other ideas that we now understand to be deeply harmful and oppressive—such as eugenics and phrenology—were seeing high levels of popularity. This brought some inevitable crossover to these new popular religions. Even today, however, the texts of these thinkers and their spiritualities or impact on spiritual spaces have lasting legacies. Their individual connections and justifications of problematic power structures are not frequently enough examined nor discussed.

Deep dives into each of these thinkers will likely come in future blogposts. But in the meantime, in response to the number of people I have met who are under the impression that perennialism is correct and/or useful, I would like to present an alternative narrative. For these purposes, I would like to discuss the two best known elemental systems in world philosophy and theology.

Elements are essentially considered metaphysical foundations of matter. The West, starting with possibly Mesopotamia, has the originally four element system of fire, air, water, and earth plus aether as added by Aristotle who also articulated further significant developments. The East, originating from Daoism, always had a five element system with fire, water, earth, wood, and metal. I am going to let Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Renaissance-era occult writer who authored the encyclopedic Three Books of Occult Philosophy, and the three writers of the textbook Five Elements Constitutional Acupuncture explain more thoroughly:

There are the four elements, and they are the primary foundation of all corporeal things: fire, earth, water, and air. All interior bodies are composed from these elements, not by heaping them together, but by transmutation and union [...]

None of the sensible elements are pure, but are more or less mixed, and are transmuted into one another, just as earth is dissolved into mud in water and then hardens and thickens with earth. But with heat, it evaporates and crosses over into air, then when inflamed into fire, and when extinguished reverts back to air.

Plato thought that the earth is entirely unchangeable, but the other elements changed both into themselves and into each other. [...]

Each of the elements have two specific qualities. The first quality is held as its own, and the other is, as it were, a middle in common with the next: indeed fire is hot and dry, earth is dry and cold, water is cold and moist, air is moist and hot.

— Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, The Three Books of Occult Philosophy Chapter 3, translated by Eric Purdue

The Five Elements, which are Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water represent the fundamental qualities of all matter in the universe [...] the word 'Element' is somewhat misleading because it implies something more akin to a basic constituent of matter. For this reason, the translation 'The Five Phases' is often used [...] but the reader should be clear that an Element is a process, movement, or quality of qi, not a fixed 'building block.'

[quoting Shu Ching, —4th century] Water is that quality in Nature which we describe as soaking and descending. Fire which we describe as blazing and uprising. Wood which permits of curved surfaces or straight edges. Metal which can follow the form of a mould and then become hard. Earth which permits of sowing, growth and reaping.

—Angela Hicks et al., Five Element Constitutional Acupuncture: Second Edition, Chapter 2

So while there are indeed two esoteric systems of elements with an emphasis of their interrelating and changing into one another, they are not descriptively the same. Even as Agrippa tries to stress that none of the elements "are pure" he yet mentions characteristics unrelated to change and motion (which were first assigned by Aristotle, even if only Plato is cited). In contrast, Shu Ching defines each element according to dynamic features. The authors of Five Element Constitutional Acupuncture later note in the same chapter that Western students "are more inclined to focus on the 'things' relating rather than on the relationships themselves." Indeed, there are witches and spirit workers today who work with the four elements in western esotericism as if they are distinct spirits.

The Five Element system strongly corresponds each of the elements with a season.* There are additionally four cycles of interrelation (generating, controlling, insulting, weakening) where a medical interventionist may use one element to increase or decrease another in order to bring all five into harmony.

The elements also have sympathies with emotions, colors, and planets. For instance, the element metal has sympathy with the planet Venus. This is because metal resonates (as Hicks et al. uses instead of "corresponds") with decrease and grief as well as white, which in turn are features or associations of death. Venus appearing as a bright white light in the sky means she is is resonant with death in this system.

This is where prisca theologia starts to crack. I could make a joke, "hey, my acupuncturist told me I have a lot of metal, maybe that's why the planetary spirit Venus likes me so much!" but that would grossly misrepresent my worship and relationship with her. As I have discussed before, my style of planetary polytheism is traceable to the Medieval Middle East, but certainly goes back further in history. In this model, the same bright white light Venus emits in Earth's sky associated the planet with beauty. Alongside that assignment were qualities of love, marriage, sex, union, friendship, collaboration, art, music, fashion, laughter, the growing of plants, and women. All my interactions with Venus have involved a deepening of understanding love and gifts of comfort or kindness, usually granted by women.

In Hellenistic astrology and onward, Venus is considered cold and moist like water. This is probably because Aphrodite was born of the sea. We now know the actual material planet is super hot with runaway greenhouse gasses and it being the brightest body in the Earth's sky is because the Sun's light reflects off its smoggy atmosphere. This misalignment drives me insane, as Grace will tell you. But this elemental assignment greatly influences Venus position in western traditional astrology, such as how she's considered to have dignity in the water signs due to the concept of triplicity. In Chinese astrology, the elements also play a big role, although I am less familiar with the mechanics.

A perennialist will still say, "Well, there's elements and they interrelate and then they influence astrological systems, so of course there's One Truth in the universe!" However, those broad similarities really don't say all that much. If both systems actually came from one place and shared a singular truth, it can be assumed that they could talk to each other and seamlessly work together. Except, they can't.

Again, I am not familiar with the mechanics of elements in Chinese astrology because Chinese astrology is an entirely different language than western astrology. Put a western astrologer and a Chinese astrologer in a room and set a timer on your phone for how long it takes for them to stop and give each other blank stares. I guarantee it will take you less than two minutes because I have been the western astrologer.

Yet, if you take a veteran astrologer from each line and have them give readings to the same person, both will likely give accurate readings even when talking from entirely different frameworks, approaches, and probably even topics. You can try to combine the two frameworks, and who's to say that is impossible, but you will certainly find endless more complications than having Venus represent both beauty and death (and what of Saturn, who in the Western tradition represents death?). Even so, that doesn't mean you're rediscovering Truth, rather you're creating a new system.

So, since a countless number of people live their lives according to these two very different systems and both provide accurate or conducive results, there is something truthful to both of them. How is that the case if there is not one truth?

It's because more than one thing can be true. It means there are multiple truths, not just one.

Modern perennial theology is convenient. It feels neat, especially if you grew up in an environment with a lot of rules or influenced by monotheism. And if you're a privileged person, it makes it easy for you to say to someone from a marginalized background, "Hey, we are all One so give me that ritual of yours" without realizing or accepting that perpetuates centuries-old harms.

But if we can accept that individuals each have their own perspectives and own truths, it's not a stretch to realize belief systems can as well. Examine that thought, can you see it as freeing? Can you see it as interesting? Can you see it as full of expansive possibility?

I hope we eventually hit a time in our culture where we can move past prisca theologia and its aims toward Christian supremacy and colonialism. I hope new religious movements can come to a point of respect, compassion, and diversity for the plentiful beliefs and systems that exist in humanity. I truly hope we move past the urge to compress everything into a clean, easily understood and overly simplified ball so that we can be messy and creative in our spiritual and living processes. That is so much more appealing to me than being crushed by someone else's idea of truth.

*In this system, "summer" and "late summer" are considered their own seasons. Indeed, the seasons and nature are the basis for the elements in the Daoist system whereas in the West there is no direct connection between the elements and natural cycles although they certainly play a part. Again, with this we see an inherent motion with the Daoist framework whereas the Western system assumes an "is-ness" that feels more stagnant.