5
For some reason, when I think of 5, there’s one thing that I just can’t escape, and that thing has certainly earned itself a sinister reputation in Christian circles. That’s right, ladies and gents, I’m talking about the pentagram.
Dan Brown did an adequate job in THE DAVINCI CODE with debunking the myth that the pentagram is inherently evil. In reality, it is a somewhat beautiful symbol…probably one of the reasons why it has been used to represent one of the most beautiful things we know, the star. Interesting, too, that the two Judeo-Christian stars, the Star of David and the Star of Bethlehem, are six- and four-pointed, respectively.
In the days of my youth (and adolescence…and adulthood…sigh) I played a lot of fantasy roleplaying/action games. I dig the genre. And, of course, part of a general education in said genre is an understanding of the five elements, which play a role in a whole heckuva lot of games. Fire, Wood, Water, Earth, Metal is one list; others substitute Air variously. Either way, though, I’ve always been intrigued by the neatness of these primordial schemas for understanding the substance of Creation.
For instance, there was Thales, a pre-Socratic philosopher who thought that everything in the universe consisted of water. Hericlitus saw in Fire the foundational principle of constant change that, to him, defined the nature of existence. Hundreds upon thousands of generations have found joy in the riches of what Tolkien’s Hobbits loved: “Good tilled earth.”
There does seems to be something about these basic building blocks of the universe that appeals more to the human mind than the periodic tables. Maybe they are echoes of a simpler, pre-scientific time (if such a time can be said to have existed) when the make-up of things wasn’t quite as complex. Maybe there’s something attractive to the balance of interaction between the elements…one can much easier perceive the effects of mixing Water and Fire than chlorine and potassium.
And so, perhaps at the risk of being accused of occultic influence, I’ll still maintain that, as I writer, I find the five elements (whatever five you choose) to be imbued with a kind of magic…the kind that is in all material creation, but also the kind that has been developed by the accumulation of enough meaning to make each one rich with impression. We know exactly what is meant when a character has “a spirit of fire” or “an airy voice.” If a character’s hands are stained with earth, we know something about his or her priorities in life. There’s something magical invoked when we introduce the stuff of Creation into writing. I like that latent meaning. It’s good, strong stuff, striking the same chord in me as BEOWULF does…clear, vibrant, maybe not all that subtle, but beautiful in its straightforwardness, nonetheless.
