Elements

What are the different elements? How many are there?

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The number of elements varies with different religion. For example, in Wicca, there's earth, wind, fire, water and spirit. In Hinduism, there's earth, wind, fire, water, space (or void). In Zoroastrianism, there are two major elements: fire and water. There is no specific number for each religion represents their elements differently.

I hope this helps. Blessed be.

ok! thank you. i also know of some other ones like darkness and lightning. is that of a certain religion?

Darkness and Lightning are not Elements. Lightening, for instance, would fall under the Elements of Air and Fire; so it would not itself be an Element.

But another system which hasn't been mentioned are the Chinese Elements of Earth, Air, Fire, Wood and Metal.

While I don't recommend Wikipedia as always being a reliable source, their discussion of the various Elemental Systems is actually pretty good. You can find it at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_element

thats what i thought. thank you for the information.

In my journey of knowledge these last few decades. I've come to learn that while they are known by different names when it comes to the various religions, they are in simplest of form as "Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Soul" where as the Soul element is apart of everything from the tiniest grain of sand, to the vast reaches of the universe and beyond. Just like with all things there has to be balance as well. One element cant exist without the others. So choosing your elemental basis for things is important. You see this everywhere take example of without water Earth and fire would become destructive, without earth air and water would become destructive, and so forth. there has to be a balance within the elements or else chaos tends to ensue.

thank you all for your help. all of this information everyone gave me greatly answers my question.

Depends which system you use.

Most common are the ones already mentioned, classical/greek/western and Chinese Wu Xing.

In I Ching there is eight trigram elements. Each element is made of a combination of three (tri) lines.

Each line is either male or female, yang or yin.

In the South is Heaven, 3 Yang lines.

In the North is Earth, 3 Yin lines.

In the East, Fire 2 Yang, 1 Yin.

In the West, Water 2 Yin, 1 Yang.

That is the cardinal elements and is very similar to the elements we use in western systems.

The Ordinal elements are as follows.

Wind in Southwest, Mountain in Northwest, Thunder in Northeast, Lake in Southeast.

this is a brief explanation but i hope it helps.