Elementals

Elementals are the spirits assigned to the four classical elements: gnomes to earth, undines to water, sylphs to air and salamanders to fire. This particular quartet, with these names, comes from Paracelsus, whose Liber de Nymphis was published in 1566, though earlier traditions had their own nature-spirits of the elements, nymphs, genii and the fairy folk of folklore.

Each kind of elemental is held to embody the qualities of its element and to inhabit its realm, and in the Western magical tradition they are the beings a practitioner may contact when working with a given element.

The four-fold scheme entered Western esotericism through Paracelsus and the later occult writers who systematised it, giving each element its ruler, its king (Ghob, Nichsa, Paralda, Djin in some schemes), and its place in ceremonial practice. The elementals sit between the human and the divine as the animating spirits of the material world.

The atlas gives each kind of elemental its element, its nature, and its place in the tradition. The four elements the elementals belong to are treated in the element category, and the practice connects to the ceremonial-magic section.