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(...Continued
From The Four Elements Pt1)
The Earth Element:
The Realistic Person
The world of the earth individual is the world of facts, experiences,
order, and structure. She values and relies on everything
that she can grasp and examine with her senses. The earth
individual does not warm up to fiery speculations, elevated
theories are too unfounded for her, and watery fantasies don’t
really appeal to her sense of reality. She will always prefer
a bird in the hand to two in the bush! What counts for her
is the bottom line, what she has in her pocket, and what she
can take home with her. Earth-oriented people may be slow
and deliberate in their actions, but they are persistent and
have staying power as a result. Once they get involved in
a plan, they will follow it directly and consistently until
they reach their goal. Their strong trust in pragmatic values
makes them the keepers of tradition and simultaneously suspicious
of bold utopias. They value tried-and-true methods far more
than modern solutions, in the same way that the past and present
are more important than a fictitious future that is still
unstructured and will ultimately always be unpredictable.
The rooted earth individual
usually lacks the willingness — and sometimes just simply
the necessary imagination — to warm up to the world
of ideals, longings, or ideas. She lavishes care and attention
on the familiar since this is what she knows and can depend
on. This is why she loves routine and repetition, and has
a difficult time with changes and innovations. Others are
sure to have had a hard time with her stubbornness, lack of
flexibility, and resistance to anything unaccustomed. However,
when her need for security lets her hold on too tight to things
proven and achieved, when she desperately clings to money,
property, possessions, and reality, there is the danger of
losing sight of life’s meaning and that all of life’s
joys will be smothered because of her lack of inspiration
and visionary strength.
Earth with the other signs
The lively, restless air signs sometimes make too much fuss
for the earth individual. Without further ado, they too easily
stir up her clear structures, constantly come up with some
sort of lofty and much too modern ideas that don’t interest
her at all. She cannot comprehend why she should get mixed
up in such high-flown “mental acrobatics”, especially
since theory and practice seem to constantly contradict each
other here. She only values perceptions when she can truly
do something with them. Having a perception for perception’s
sake appears to be quite superfluous to her. At the same time,
more receptiveness for the air world could actually be good
for her, since the inventive spirit of air could actually
bring easy solutions and make some things go more smoothly.
Earth has a very special problem
with fire because fire has a carefree way of “burning
up” all the reserves that earth has so carefully developed
and leaves nothing behind it but scorched earth. The earth
individual not only finds the impetuous forward-surging fire
to be uneconomical, but also much too thoughtless in the face
of uncalculated risks. However, the warming fire is good for
the earth, since it can bring healthy excitement and intensity
into her life through the momentum, joy, and constantly flaming
optimism of the fire individual.
The Air Element:
The Intellectual
The air individual moves easily in the world of theories,
thoughts, and abstractions. He possesses a quick grasp and
nimble verbal ability to express himself. His need for contact
and exchange drives him from one place to the next, but the
desire for freedom and independence prevents him from spending
much time anywhere. So the air individual approaches other
people in an open and friendly way but usually makes an impression
that is somewhat distanced and cool in the process. His train
of thought frequently moves in leaps and bounds, primarily
on the surface of things. These people are brilliant, informative,
create ideas, impart knowledge, make connections, think in
relative terms and question things, but usually manage to
avoid commitment and depth, as well as emotional involvement.
This light, lively, curious mood frequently leads to impatience,
nervousness, and fragmentation.
Their inexhaustible interest
(Latin = being in between) in everyone and everything prevents
them from taking a clear position and makes them lightweights
without a homeland. The future is the favorite playing field
for their thoughts since this is where they can be devised
and invented. Things that are new keep all the possibilities
open and leave leeway for experiments and utopias.
Although the air individual
constantly strives for clarity and objectivity, he may sometimes
get lost in the elevated labyrinths of his own mental world.
There he is like the comical professor who experiments in
his ivory-tower laboratory with high-flown theories that no
one would know how to use, even if they ever did prove to
be more than a flop.
Air and the other signs
Air often has a difficult time with earth in the truest sense
of the word. Earth’s unwavering sense of reality lets
some of those lovely castles in the air smash to pieces on
hard ground. On the other hand, however, this combination
is valuable because airy ideas only become useful in the practical
sense when they interact with earth.
The water signs are usually
a closed book for the air individual as well. The world of
feelings is too vague for him, he cannot comprehend it; it’s
not logical, at best psychological — and he can only
smile about that. Yet, the water signs in particular are capable
of breathing life into his abstract ideas and making them
more human.
The Water Element:
The Emotional Person
The water individual intuitively attunes herself to her surrounding
world. Her antennae are permanently set on reception, which
gives her an excellent sense of empathy, on the one hand,
but also makes it considerably more difficult for her to draw
the line against outside influences. Water people take in
a great deal and in this process let themselves be influenced
by energies and forces that aren't even meant for them. Their
sensitivity lets them always know what the other person expects
from them. As a result of their great willingness to react
to other people’s wishes, these are the people with
a thousand faces who are capable of appearing in whatever
way the person with whom they are dealing at the moment wishes
them to be.
In accordance with this, water
people have difficulties in developing a feeling for their
own identity and their own boundaries. Despite all this, it
would still be wrong to underestimate their instinctive urge
toward goals because nothing can ultimately stop water from
following its true destiny, even if it has to make detours
that appear very curious in the eyes of the other elements.
A willingness to help, sympathy, sureness of instinct, empathy,
and often a good deal of intuitive ability are the strengths
of water, which is why these people frequently dedicate themselves
to therapeutic tasks.
Although the water individual
can tell beautiful stories, she has difficulties in expressing
herself in formal terms and explaining something factually,
since the world of sober rationality is not hers. She is much
more at home in the rich world of images, of the imagination,
and the soul. She is the born soul-doctor who can listen to
others, be truly sympathetic, and show deep understanding.
And she is naturally also the teller of fairy tales, the poet,
the artist, or the magician.
Her sensitivity lets her be
less daring than the other elements and sometimes even less
able to cope with life. When the demands of the outer world
become too hard, so that she no longer feels capable of coping,
she often retreats into her own inner life or into a fantasy
world, and hopes to somehow wrangle through on the outside.
In extreme cases, this leads to escapism, stubborn denial
of reality, a leap into the irrational, or flight into intoxication.
Then the past, with its images, has a firm hold on her and
her glance tends to wander more backward than forward.
Her soul gets caught up in
memories time and again, revealing old, familiar things in
intensive dreams even years after everything has long been
over. Like no other element, water draws into the depths and
only becomes calm when it has landed at the bottom. Water
does not move on its own power. To do this, water needs impulses
from the outside or, even better, a slant that gives it a
direction, as well as a setting that provides it with support.
Water and the other signs
The water person values the proximity of earth individuals,
who give her structure and security. However, this applies
only as long as they don’t start to dry out her water
by, for example, trying to suppress the inner correlation
that she senses with their unimaginative factual thinking.
From the deep water perspective,
air tends to be a superficial element. When air approaches
are too cold and hostile, water shuts itself off by forming
a sheet of ice and thereby preventing the coldly analytical
intellect from looking into the depths of her soul. But where
these two elements connect well, we can find artists who know
how to express the images of the soul in words or through
music, as well as the true spiritual helpers and guides.
Water flees from the hot fire
signs. The combination steams. Water quickly feels herself
to be overpowered or easily has her feelings hurt by the heated
directness. On the other hand, the momentum of a fire person
— his optimism and joy in life — can sometimes
rouse the water type out of her apathy.
Authors Details: Hajo Banzhaf &
Brigitte Theler.
Excerpt from "Secrets of Love & Partnership"
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