readoldthings

Yesterday I shared a particular assignment of the classical virtues to the Four Elements, viz:

Earth: Courage

Water: Justice

Air: Wisdom

Fire: Temperance

In the comments section, JPRussel mentioned that this differs from the assignment given to the elements in the Dolmen Arch system.

I wanted to share, first, why I assign the elements in this fashion, and, second, some alternatives.

Systems of Correspondence

Structures like this one are called "systems of correspondence." They are universal in magical systems, and, in fact, in traditional systems of learning in general. The Cabala itelf is little more than one vast system of correspondences-- I believe it was Israel Regardie that referred to the whole system as a "filing cabinet." The point of such systems is to allow one to immediately contact particular states of consciousness, and thereby to produce particular modes of change.

Again, these systems are not limited to magic, but occur in pre- and non-modern modes of thinking in general. For example, as Western culture has its seven traditional virtues, and Helleniuc culture its four, traditional Chinese culture has five. It's actually not very easy to translate these into English, but, roughly speaking, they amount to: Benevolence, Righteousness, Propriety, Wisdom, and Faithfulness. (Notice, as an aside, that these are different from the four virtues of Plato, and that cultivating these five, rather than our four or seven, produces a different sort of virtuous person. This is a clue to the deeper meaning of cultural difference.)

In Taoist philosophy and Traditional Chinese Medicine, these five virtues have the following correspondences:

Benevolence-- Wood Element-- Liver-- Sour-- Springtime-- Green-- Vice:Anger Jupiter

Propriety-- Fire Element-- Heart-- Summer-- Bitter-- Red-- Vice:Excitement Mars

Faithfulness-- Earth Element-- Spleen-- Present or Late Summer-- Yellow-- Vice:Anxiety Sweet-- Saturn

Righteousness-- Metal Element-- Lungs-- Autumn-- Pungent-- White-- Vice:Grief Venus

Wisdom-- Water Element-- Winter-- Kidneys-- Salty-- Blue-- Vice:Fear Mercury

This system of correspondences allows a Taoist adept, or a TCM practitioner, both to cultivate particular states of consciousness in themselves and even to treat disease in their patients. For example, a client suffering from a lung condition might be found to have been attacked by an excess of grief. This can be treated by a qigong exercise which at once opens the chest and activates the muscles along the lung meridian, while the patient visualizes inhaling healing white light into the lungs and exhaling smoky gray light containing grief and sorrow. This can be combined with acupuncture and massage focusing on the lung points, and regularly taking pungent herbs in soup and tea.

Such systems of correspondences are not arbitrary, but they also aren't universal. It's neither one right way, nor anything goes. To give an example, the season of Winter may be plausibly assigned to the element of Water or Earth, as both are slow, heavy, and cold. It makes rather less sense to assign Winter to Air-- unless, perhaps, you live in a part of the world in which Winter is marked by wind storms. It makes very little sense at all to assign the element of Fire to the Winter season-- unless you're using the elements in a different way, which I'll discuss in a moment.

Personal Elements

The arrangement of the elements that I provided yesterday is personal to me, as I said, but I want to talk a little about why this is so.

The virtue of Courage is defined by Plato in the Laws as a knowledge of divine goodness that sustains us through every danger, and also through every pleasure. He is also at pains in the Laws to point out that Courage is the first and lowest of the virtues-- although it holds together cities like Sparta and Crete, it is insufficient to elevate the soul to the higher worlds. Aristotle, meanwhile, points out in Nichomachaean Ethics that Courage is not the opposite of cowardice, but a mean between cowardice and rashness. For Aristotle as for Plato, all of the virtues are means, with vices of excess and deficiency on either side.

Now, when I consider the virtue of Courage, I find that I am not lacking in the ability to face danger. Not that I throw myself into dangerous situations on purpose-- not these days, anyway-- but I have on a number of occasions had the opportunity to face physical danger and death, and acted in a way that I felt was appropriate.

On the other hand, one of my greatest vices is my inability to see projects all the way through. My harddrive is full of half-written novels, but no finished ones. I can read Spanish and Latin at a child's level (Iulia puella parva est); I can identify 1 or 200 words in Chinese and write the corresponding characters. I know the guitar well enough to play in a punk band, provided none of my bandmates is older than 16. I have a similar degree of proficiency in the dao or Chinese broadsword, and less in the jian, the Chinese straight sword. I recently acquired a bata, or Irish fighting stick, and if my pattern holds, in a year I'll know it well enough to fight an unarmed civilian.

What's the point of all this self-effacement?

Only the following: When it comes to assigning an element to Courage, I ask myself: "What is it that I need in order to cultivate the virtue?" For me, the answer is stability and endurance. Of all the elements, Earth represents this most strongly-- to my mind at any rate. And so I assign the virtue of Courage to the element of Earth, which is to say, I ask the powers of Earth for help in developing Courage.

But that doesn't mean this is a universal assignment. If I had no problem with stick-to-it-iveness, but I was terrified of physical danger, I might invoke Fire for Courage, as I might find its burning strength a great help in facing my fears. If, on the other hand, my issue was one of rashness-- that is, an excessive love of danger for its own sake-- I might invoke the calming power of Water. Finally, if I simply needed help getting started on my projects or adventures, I might invoke Air.

And I repeat the process with the remaining virtues.

Justice is defined as a right relationship between things. Plato describes it in the Republic as every part of the soul performing its own correct task; Aristotle defines it in the Ethics as giving everything what is due to it. I personally, usually, invoke Water to cultivate Justice. The reason for this is that Water is binding, unifying, and giving. I have a tendency toward selfishness and an equal tendency to be temperamental; these things stand in the way of giving to others what is due to them, whether a tip at a restaurant or a kind word on the street, and in the way of proper relationships with the people in my life, who often need my love rather than irritation or sarcasm.

Wisdom is described by Plato in the Phaedo as a separation of the soul from the body, and contact with the higher reality of the spiritual world. To my mind Air perfectly symbolizes this idea, as Air is the element of the sky (which is the symbol of the Noetic world), the mind, and Form.

Temperance, finally, means self-control, and for me this is symbolized by Fire, which is above all the element of power. Real power is power over the self, especially the lower self and its cravings.

In order to cultivate these virtues, I often say the following prayer, especially in the morning:

May I take up my hammer to work,
May I take up my cup to give,
May I take up my book to learn,
May I take up my sword and live.

The hammer symbolizes the gnomes who labor in the north; the cup is the cauldron of life; the book is the wisdom of philosophy and nature; the sword is my personal symbol of success and self-mastery.

External Elements, and Other Arrangements

In a sense, this way of working with the elements is a form of medicine, taylored to the individual. When designing a system of magic or initiation, it seems that it is often more important to choose a more universal arrangement.

It seems to me that a more universal Druidic arrangement might look like this:

Earth: Courage
Water: Wisdom
Air: Justice
Fire: Temperance

This again draws on Plato's Laws, which describes Courage as the first and lowest of the virtues, and Justice as a mean between Wisdom and Temperance. Water has straightforward associations with wisdom in Celtic lore, in the form of the Salmon of Wisdom who dwells in the sacred well. The animal associated with Justice is the Hawk of May, whose name, "Gwalchmai," is the Welsh form of Gawain, who was in the oldest tales one of the most important of Arthur's knights; his encounter with the Green Knight is itself a lesson in Justice. Temperance, finally, is assigned to Fire. In ordinary American English the word "temperance," if it's used at all, means something like "Not getting drunk," and maybe also "...and keep it in your pants, too." Its original meaning in Greek, dikaiosune, means "self-mastery." This is the final virtue, as Fire is the highest of the elements.

The following arrangement works equally well:

Earth: Justice
Water: Temperance
Fire: Courage
Air: Wisdom

This arrangement follows the assignment of the virtues to the parts of the human soul, and the parts of the soul to energy centers in the body, in Plato's Republic. To the abdomen, which is called the "lower dantien" in Chinese internal alchemy and the lower cauldron in the Dolmen Arch system, corresponds the Epithymia, which is the lowest part of the soul, the appetites for food and reproduction that we share in common with every animal. To this center corresponds the element of Water. The proper virtue here is Temperance, as Temperance is control over the appetites and the re-direction of the generative power of the lower cauldron toward productive ends. To the heart, which is called the middle dantien or middle cauldron, corresponds the Thymos, and the element of Fire. The Thymos is the seat of the social emotions, and here the proper virtue is Courage, which compels a warrior to stand with his comrades on the battle-field. The head, which is the upper dantien or cauldron, is the seat of the Nous, and the element of Air. The Nous is the reasoning mind, and also the part of the mind that extends beyond ordinary reason and is capable of direct contact with the higher worlds. Only the Nous can attain the virtue of Wisdom.

Finally, Justice is the unity of all three parts of the soul, and their performance of their proper function, under the command of the Nous. United, the soul functions as a microcosm of the whole world, and thus the element of Earth is associated with the body as a united whole, and also has special reference to the lower body as it conveys the upper body through the material world.

Ladders of Virtue

The later Neoplatonists assigned multiple definitions to each of the four virtues. These definitions then corresponded to the highest form of that virtue a person could achieve, depending upon their particular station in life. The virtues were arranged into hierarchies. In the writings of Plotinus, the virtues exist at two levels, the political and the purificatory. The political virtues are given the definitions of Plato's Republic and Laws; their cultivation allows us to exist together in society. But having established himself in the political virtues, the philosopher then cultivates the purificatory virtues, based on Plato's Phaedo, which aim at the union of the soul with God. This simple twofold hierarchy of virtue was then elaborated into four by Porphyry and seven by Iamblichus.

It seems to me that a Druidical take on this system would work by assigning the elements to the virtues in different ways at different degrees of initiation. Perhaps one assignment exists at the first degree, another at the second, but at the third, the initiate must discover his own set of correspondences. There is much to think about here.

The Structure of Virtue

The human mind grasps objects more easily when it can divide them into categories. This is a fact of human life, found the world over. It is also the case, however, that one given object may admit of many different sorts of divisions. The object "animals" may be divided into those that swim, those that crawl, and those that fly; or into the wild and the tame; or into the edible and inedible; or into the Lynnaean taxonomy that we all learned as schoolchildren; or into more recent taxonomies based on cladistics; and according to many other means.

Excellence in human beings, also called in English "virtue," from the Latin "virtus," is no exception to this rule. Virtue taken as a whole is best pursued by being divided into several virtues which may be pursued separately. There are, however, many ways of doing this, and cultures the world over have produced lists 4, or 5, or 7, or 9 sub-virtures which, taken together, produce the entire quality Virtue.

Here are several examples.

For Plato and his contemporaries, the highest virtues are four, and these are Courage, Justice, Temperance, and Wisdom.

The Neoplatonists elaborated on Plato's scheme by producing a set of 7 gradations of virtue, fit for the various stages of human development.

The Christians also elaborated on this scheme, labeling the Four as the Cardinal or Natural Virtues, and appending to them the Supernatural or Theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity.

Confucius also taught virtue, but his categories are different. For Confucius and his intellectual descendants, the Five Constant Virtues are Benevolence, Righteousness, Trustworthiness, Propriety, and Wisdom. (Those are the English translations, in any case; the Chinese words do not always translate exactly.

What matters is not what particular organization of the virtues that one chooses to follow, but only that one chooses a set, and follows them.

How We Become Virtuous

Virtue is not natural to human beings except in a very limited sense. A newborn baby is able to eat, cry, sleep and defecate, and not much else. While natural aptitudes exist, so that one, owing to a larger mental capacity, has a greater aptitude toward Wisdom, while another, owing to a naturally strong constitution, is more given to Courage, the virtues are only attained through learning.

In On the Virtues of Women Plutarch of Chaeronea asked whether virtue was the same in men as it is in women, and answered that it must be so. If painting is the same art whether done by a man or a woman, and if poetry is the same, why would virtue be different? Courage consists in the ability to endure steadfastly through both danger and pleasure, as Plato taught in the Laws. This is the same whether it is a man or a woman tempted to flee from danger, or to pleasure.

Moreover, if, whilst we go to make appear that the poetic or comic art is not one thing in men and another in women, we compare Sappho's verses with Anacreon's, or the Sibylline oracles with those of Bacis, can any one justly blame this way of argumentation, because it insinuates a credence into the pleased and delighted hearers? No one surely would say this. Neither can a man truly any waybetter learn the resemblance and the difference between feminine and virile virtue than by comparing together lives with lives, exploits with exploits, as the products of some great art; duly considering whether the magnanimity of Semiramis carries with it the same character and impression with that of Sesostris, or the cunning of Tanaquil the same with that of King Servius, or the discretion of Porcia the same with that of Brutus, or that of Pelopidas with Timoclea,— regarding that quality of these virtues wherein lie their chiefest point and force. Moreover, virtues do admit some other differences, like peculiar colors, by reason of men's dispositions, and are assimilated to the manners and temperaments of the bodies wherein they are, yea, to the education and manner of diet. Achilles was courageous in one manner, Ajax in another; the subtlety of Ulysses was not like that of Nestor, neither were Cato and Agesilaus just after the same manner; neither was Eirene a lover of her husband as Alcestis was; neither was Cornelia magnanimous in the same way with Olympias. But, for all this, we do not say that there are many kinds of fortitude, prudence, and justice specifically distinct, so long as their individual dissimilitudes exclude none of them from the specific definitions.

Men, Women, Boys, Girls

There is a difference between a man and a woman, and there is a difference between a man and a boy. There is also a difference between a man and a man who acts like a boy. The differences are clear in each case:

A man is an adult human who possesses the virtues, and who takes the masculine role in acts of generation. A woman is an adult human who possesses the virtues in whole or in part, and who takes the feminine role in acts of generation.

Make no mistake about what masculinity and femininity are as they pertain to generation. To take the masculine role in generation means to participate in generation by providing semen. The feminine role in generation means to participate in generation by providing an ovum. Considered with respect to creation as a whole, masculinity means to create by going outside of oneself, while femininity means to create by drawing something from the outside into oneself. Masculinity and femininity in this sense pertain only to acts of creation. To attend a party is masculinity; to host a party, femininity. In relation to creative activity, masculinity and femininity have no other meaning.

A boy is an immature human male, who necessarily does not yet possess the virtues, because he has not yet had the opportunity to attain them.

A man who acts like a boy is a mature human male who lacks the virtues, because he has refused to attain them.

From this it is easy enough to define a girl, and a woman who acts like a girl.

Now a man who acts like a man is called masculine, while a woman who acts like a woman is called feminine. Note, though, that "masculine" and "feminine" have here a different meaning than above, because they pertain to virtue as a whole, not to generation in particular. A man who acts like a boy is called puerile. The female equivalent, for a woman who acts like a girl, would be "puellile," and as far as I know this word does not exist. But it ought to, because men who act like boys and women who act like girls, and also men who act like girls and women who act like boys, are in very large supply right now.

More on the Topic of Virtue

Three more things need to be said on this topic before we can continue.

Though the virtues are the same in men and in women, men and women have different natural aptitudes, taken as a whole. There is a virtue which we may call gentleness or nurturing; there is another which we may call severity or strictness. Men often find strictness easier to practice than women, and women often find gentleness easier to practice than men. We can call the virtues that come more easily to women "feminine virtues," and those that come more easily to men "masculine virtues." But we can only do this if we understand that we mean men in general and women in general, and that knowing the general gives us no knowledge about the particular. Gentleness practiced by a man is still gentleness, and strictness practiced by a woman still strictness, and there will always be some men more inclined to the feminine virtues, and some women more inclined to the masculine.

The opposite to virtue is vice. However, this isn't precisely true, as virtue, as Aristotle discussed in the Nichomachaean Ethics, can also be seen as a mean between two vices. Thus Courage is a mean between cowardice and rashness, temperance a mean between gluttony and self-denial. And so on, for the entire list of virtues.

Moreover, the virtues can conflict with one another. In the Statesman, Plato gives the examples of courage and temperance, the latter of which can also be understood as self-restraint. A state whose citizens have an overabundance of courage will go to war regularly, until they either start a fight with an enemy too great for themselves, or else induce their neighbors to league against them, and are conquered. But a state whose citizens have an overabundance of temperance will suffer the same fate, as they will be unwilling to fight even when it is necessary.

Children and the Childish

Children are not naturally vicious, but they do lack virtue, having not yet attained it; thus their behavior is akin to vice, even if it isn't properly called vice. Some of these vices or semi-vices are more common in boys, others more common in girls. Social pettiness, vengefulness, and hatred of boys or men are more common vices in girls; violence, sexual profligacy, and hatred of girls or women more common in boys.

Adults who act like children are properly called vicious, because they have chosen to live without virtue.

This has been a great many words to bring us to a very simple point.

An adult male who acts like a man is masculine, and he is virtuous.

An adult male who acts like a boy is puerile, and he is vicious.

An adult male who acts like a girl is girlish, and he is also vicious.

What of an adult male who acts like a woman?

He cannot be a woman, because this requires the ability to take a feminine role in acts of generation. But he can possess those virtues which are more common to women than to men. And if that is the case, he is virtuous, not vicious. Moreover, an adult woman who possesses those virtues more common to men than to women is masculine, and she is also virtuous, not vicious. But an adult woman who possesses the vices common to boys is puerile, or boyish, and she is also vicious.

What's the Point?

This is all necessary to say because an enormous amount of nonsense has been written on this topic in recent years. In particular, on the internet, an entire cottage industry has grown up dedicated to teaching men "masculinity." This is called the "manosphere" or "mgtow" and any number of other silly names. It's been my experience that in almost every case, what is actually being taught is puerility. To possess the vices of a boy is to be vicious.

Of course, the "manosphere" came into existence as a reaction to the radical feminist movement, which, at the present time, is no mere cottage industry but a big business on the scale of oil, pharma or tobacco. This movement sought to liberate women from men, and in so doing it taught women that they only have value insofar as they are able to be men. Since most women are more naturally inclined toward the feminine than the masculine virtues, it therefore set them up for failure. It then compensated for this by blaming men, thus descending from a mere failure of femininity to a full-on embrace of girlish vice. From there, it has set about, especially through the entertainment industry, to teaching women to act not with the vices of girls but those of boys. Thus our whole society becomes vicious.

Nothing can be understood to exist without an opposite. White can be seen because of black, sweet tasted because of bitter, hardness felt because of softness. Everything, then, only exists in relation to an opposite. The same for men and women. But the opposite to a man is not a woman, but a boy, because a boy can become a man, but a woman cannot. The opposite to a woman is not a man but a girl, because a girl can become a woman, but a man cannot. Many men are only capable of the masculine virtues; a few, only of the feminine; most, a balance, tilting toward the masculine side. Similarly, many women are only capable of the feminine virtues; a few, only of the masculine; most, a balance, tilting toward the feminine side. But it is better by far for a man to have the virtues of a woman than the vices of a boy, and vice versa.

True masculinity, then, consists in embracing manhood not in opposition to womanhood, but in opposition to boyhood.

Today, a note from Aristotle, on the nature of the virtues:

Let us consider this, that it is the nature of such things [i.e., such things as the virtues are] to be destroyed by defect and excess, as we see in the case of strength and of health (for to gain light on things imperceptible we must use the evidence of sensible things); both excessive and defective exercise destroys the strength, and similarly drink or food which is above or below a certain amount destroys the health, while that which is proportionate both produces and increases and preserves it. So too is it, then, in the case of temperance and courage and the other virtues. For the man who flies from fear and everything and does not stand his ground against anything becomes a coward, and the man who fears nothing at all but goes to meet every danger becomes rash; and similarly the man who indulges in every pleasure and abstains from none becomes self-indulgent, while the man who shuns every pleasure, as boors do, becomes in a way insensible; temperance and courage, then, are destroyed by excess and defect, and preserved by the mean.

A virtue is not the opposite of a vice, but rather the balance point between two equal and opposite vices. This is one of the most important ideas I have ever encountered.

When I look at the behavior of our media and political elites and many people that I know personally over the last year, I can't help but conclude that they are cowards, and that we have become a nation of cowards. Now, the opposite of cowardice is not courage, on Aristotle's account, but rather rashness-- and so I am not suggesting taking no precautions against the coronavirus. I take precautions, and I took far more precautions when the virus seemed more dangerous than it has proven to be. Washing your hands regularly, and avoiding crowds if you are part of an at-risk population groups, is just good sense. Wearing a mask by yourself out of doors is cowardice.

One more thing, from earlier in the same book:

...Moral virtue comes about as a result of habit, whence also its name ethike is one that is formed by a slight variation from the word ethos (habit). From this it is also plain that none of the moral virtues arises in us by nature; for nothing that exists by nature can form a habit contrary to its nature. For instance, the stone which by nature moves downwards cannot be habituated to move upwards, not even if one tries to train it by throwing it up ten thousand times; nor can fire be habituated to move downwards, nor can anything else that by nature behaves in one way be trained to behave in another. Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit.

I can go on all I like about my disgust for the American people and our would-be thought leaders, but that doesn't make me good, even if I am right. I am not made good or bad by my opinions, but by my habits. We become courageous by practicing courage. We become temperate by practicing temperance. It is by our habits, and not our opinions, that we become virtuous or vicious.