Medieval Literature

Christianity, and spiritualism into a religious philosophy. Scottish scientist and hermetic magician Robert Ogilvie-Crombie (1899–1975), sometimes referred to simply as ROC, was a theosophist known for talking to nature spirits in the botanical gardens of Edinburgh. His ideas were incorporated into Findhorn, a spiritual community in northern Scotland founded in the 1960s that became world-famous for working with plants and nature spirits.12 In addition to being called devas, the nature spirits there are sometimes referred to as the Findhorn fairies.

While faeries and nature spirits may have an affinity with one of the four elements, calling them elementals is a misnomer. Elementals are, well, more elemental than faeries and nature spirits. However, this is not to imply that they are a type of simple, little being, because they are complex in their own way. In my opinion, they are a presence and to some extent a force of nature rather than a being in the way faeries and nature spirits are.

During the Middle Ages, there was a belief in the existence of creatures that consisted purely of one element. Despite a popular notion that elementals were devils, alchemists viewed them as semi-material spirits of the elements. Swiss physician and alchemist Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1493–1541), who called himself Paracelsus, advanced the concept of elementals and standardized the names for them.13 He provided descriptions of them in his treatise A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies and Salamanders and Other Spirits. Although it has a different connotation today, the term pygmy comes from the Greek pygmaois, meaning “dwarfish,” which was derived from pygmē, a unit of measure also known as the cubit.14 Nowadays, elementals are more commonly referred to as undines (water), sylphs (air), gnomes (earth), and salamanders (fire).

While Paracelsus regarded elementals as anthropomorphic, he believed that they had a parallel evolution to humans and while they inhabited a separate realm from humans, they could also pass into ours. Picking up where Paracelsus left off,

12. Stewart, The Living World of Faery, xxi. 13. Pogačnik, Nature Spirits & Elemental Beings, 59. 14. Barnhart, The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, 622.

9