The Five Elements: You Always Have Options
In this fourth episode in the Summer of Support series, I'm sharing what I've learned about the five elements: Earth, Fire, Water, Nature, and Mineral. Working with these five elements and the one each of us carries as our primary element can show us more creative ways to move and grow in our lives.
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Welcome to a Wild New Work, a podcast about how to compost capitalism and the norms of dominant culture and answer the soulful callings of these times we live in, which includes the call to deepen our relationship with the earth. I'm Megan Leatherman, a mother, writer, teacher and guide. I live in the Pacific Northwest and I'm your host today.
Well, hi friend and welcome. Thank you for coming to the show today. I hope that if you've been listening to the summer of Support series, you are really enjoying it and getting a lot out of it, and I hope you've already noticed some shifts or extra sweetness with regard to tracking and working with your wives and well ancestors, which are the topics that we've covered in the last two episodes.
And if you listen to those and you set an intention to look for signs or receive affirmations, or if you've set an intention to ask for help every day from your wise and well ancestors, I hope you will just keep going, keep noticing, keep asking for the help that you need. For most of us, these are new patterns that need to be strengthened over time with practice.
So I hope that you will keep going in the directions that feel most beneficial to you. And there was one thing that I didn't mention in last week's episode about the ancestors that I realized I should revisit, which is that, you know, we talked about how in dominant western white supremacist culture, many of us lost.
Touch with the practices that our ancestors would've used to help their dead crossover to become ancestors. And now we're experiencing the ramifications of long periods going without those practices and inheriting, you know, descendants who are trapped in between or are ghosts or aren't fully in their power as ancestors.
And we talked about how helpful it can be to work with just your wise and well ancestors to receive the support and strength that you need, and that they will show you how you can help tend to your dead and to your lineage. And. One thing that I wanted to add is that you can always send messages to your beloved dead through your wise and well ancestors.
So while we may not want to invite a bunch of help from our recently deceased to may not be fully crossed over or who are in process, we can always ask our wises and well ancestors to relay messages and relay our love and, um, communicate that to those that we've lost. So I just wanted to add that in case it feels helpful or clarifying.
For our purposes today, we are talking about the five elements, and I learned about the five elements through both the Daoist tradition, the Chinese cultural practice of Daoism and the Dagara tradition taught by Malidoma Patrice Some, and of all the summer of support episodes that we'll be covering in this series, this is the trickiest one because I feel like I'm walking a really thin line of sharing what I think is really helpful and is available to all people. And on the other side of that, some cultural appropriation. So I want to try to, I'm gonna try to do this with integrity and I'm open to the fact that I might be getting it wrong, but the five elements I think offer us a to receive.
Pretty profound support for ourselves and our human communities, and also our wider network of kin all across the planet. But we need to learn that material and work with it in a way that's not extractive and appropriative. And it feels okay for me to teach this material in this way right now. One, because I'm not sharing any like secret wisdom that I received, or, you know, rituals associated that I haven't done or wasn't taught or given permission to talk about.
Um, I've also worked with this material in my own life and given it roots and given it a home in me, I think with anything. We really need to take at least a year with something to learn about it and work with it and give it a home inside of us. Because things change with every season. Every season has its own elemental makeup.
The landscape changes across seasons. So if we're not working with the five elements or with other big areas of study for at least a year, it just doesn't seem to have. Any kind of roots to really dig into. So this is material that can be studied for a lifetime and beyond, and there will still be mysteries about it.
I'm not saying that I know everything there is to know about the five elements, not. By far, but I feel that I've learned enough, um, and that it's material that wants to be shared and that was ready to be born through the summer of support series. So I'm going cautiously and I hope you'll come with me and see what lands for you.
And I will let you know in a minute where these teachings came from specifically so that you can learn from those teachers yourself if you would like to. And since we have already talked about ancestors a little, a little bit, I'll just say that, you know, my ancestors, my Celtic and Germanic ancestors, as far as I can tell, they didn't work with the five elements per se in this kind of system.
But they absolutely learned from and merged with the natural forces of this world. The five elements are. Really just how the world works. As far as I can tell. They are like huge realms of intelligence and understanding. They are some of the key forces that are holding this planet together, and I'll talk about what they are in throughout, in depth through this episode.
But I wanna say at the outset that working with the five elements is like learning from real ancient intelligence that can feed you. In feeding you not kill our planet in this time where it feels like everywhere I turn, I'm bumping into more artificial intelligence and it's crazy making and I need to like record or write something about it.
But you know, there's a lot of harm coming from artificial intelligence and I'm not saying that's, you know, it's not this like singular evil or that it's all bad, but it's not. It's certainly not a net gain for humanity or for the other beings that we share this planet with. Every time we engage with ai, artificial intelligence, were drawing up significant amounts of water that the planet and other beings need.
So. Working with the five elements, we can actually turn toward much older forms of intelligence that actually work. We can find real sturdy support in ways that engender even more support, not just for us, but for others too. So we're not drawing down the water table. Every time we turn to one of the elements.
We're actually bringing greater harmony and sturdiness into this. Planet. Working with the five elements offers us a way to understand how life flows together harmoniously, and how we can bring that harmony into our personal and collective experiences so that we can stop trying so hard and stop trying so hard with kind of lackluster results.
We need better results. We need more harmony. We need more balance and ease in a way that creates more ease for everyone, and I think that's the promise of the five elements. I'm really excited to share this in depth episode with you today. It will be the most I've ever said about the five elements, and I hope it is just an immense blessing to you in the way that it's blessed me.
A couple of announcements before we dive in. The first is that my class on July 29th will be a culmination of everything that we're covering in the summer of support. It's called the First Harvest, and we're gonna get together in real time if you can, and we're going to cover tracking and what, what you need to know about your path.
Right now. I will lead a guided visualization where you'll be invited to meet one of your wise and well ancestors. If you would like to. We will talk about the five elements, and specifically the transition from the fire element to the f. To the earth element. That will be underway in late summer. And then we will talk about some ways to communicate with the land and deepen that relationship in this time in the wheel of the year.
So it's gonna be a really robust, rich gathering, and it's available to everyone. There are discount codes on the registration page if you need, and a recording will be sent out afterwards to everyone who registers. So that's Tuesday, July 29th and I'd love to see you there. My other announcement is that I'm planning for teaching and classes in the fall and my next round of The Meant For More program, which is offered in a group setting and in a one-on-one setting that will begin in late September.
And that is a journey through essentially. Everything I know right now about how to find our way into the work we're meant to do, while also being able to pay our bills and show up for the responsibilities that we have. So if you are in a place where something in your vocational life feels like it's changing or it needs to change, or if you're feeling like you're at the end of something, but.
Don't know what is coming next. I would love to have you and welcome you into that program, either through the group or one-on-one work, and you can learn more about that at a while. New work.com. I'm also gonna be teaching composting capitalism this fall, which is a class that a lot of you have probably taken.
We'll begin October 1st. It's an eight week journey into Sylvia Federici's incredible book, Caliban and the Witch, where we're studying the origins of capitalism in Western Europe in the Middle Ages and the so-called Age of Enlightenment. And spoiler alert. The age of enlightenment was very bloody and um, there's a lot in the class that I think will surprise and empower you.
So if you have been on the wait list for either Meant for More or Composting capitalism, I will be reaching out to you via email this week or early next before registration opens to everyone. And if you would like to learn more about composting capitalism, you can also go to a wild new work.com and find it there.
This podcast and this series specifically is being nurtured by Eagle Creek, which is a relatively new endeavor. It's a way for people who listen to the show or benefit from my work and want to see me continue making it. It's a way for them to financially support me and show up for this work. And there are a few things that we do together, just me and Eagle Creek, including monthly, behind the scenes updates and a few other things.
Um, and it's just a way to come in sort of closer to this work and help me create it and help it to flow stronger and with more precision so that it can reach the people that it needs to. So if you love this show, if you benefit from the work that I do, I would welcome you into Eagle Creek, and you can learn more about that at a wild new work.com/eagle-creek.
Alrighty. So with that, let's shift to into our opening invocation and settle into our flow for today. So wherever you are, you might just take a deep breath. You might wanna let out a sigh, give yourself a little hug or place your hand on your heart. May each of us be blessed and emboldened to do the work we're meant to do on this planet. May our work honor our ancestors known and unknown, and may it be in harmony with all creatures that we share this earth with. I express gratitude for all of the technologies and gifts that have made this possible, and I'm grateful to the Multnomah, Cowlitz, Bands of Chinook and Clackamas tribes among many others who are the original stewards on the land that I'm on. May this episode be one small stitch in the great reweaving of right relationship that so many indigenous teachers are calling us into. And so it is. Okay.
Well, I wanna start out to today by naming some of the teachers that introduced me to the material of the five elements. And the first teacher I should mention is, of course the land itself.
The five elements are expressed through the land. And I have been so fortunate to have developed a relationship with the land where I live since I was a young girl. And to deepen that relationship in the last 10 years, especially the land is my primary teacher about the elements because it's where the elements thrive and where we can see them in their power and most natural state.
I first heard about the Daoist five element tradition through a five element acupuncturist. I met about 10 years ago, Lindsey Buchanan. And that five element acupuncture, which is different than traditional Chinese medicine acupuncture, um, was really the only acupuncture that has ever really worked for me.
Um, there's something about balancing the elements in the body that just really, really landed for me and I didn't know enough then to study it or just wasn't the right time. But I've held the truth of that experience and the kind of felt sense that I received about what it meant to balance those elements in my being.
And then over a year ago I met a teacher that I mentioned in last week's episode, old school, Nate, who introduced me to the work of melanoma, Patrice Somme, an elder from the Dagara peoples in Western Africa. And I really credit old school Nate for giving the five elements real shape and helping them to land in a personal way that I could hold and understand.
And so I learned from Nate over. Uh, I don't know, about six months or so. Um, and he pulled from Daoist teachings that he had received and from melanoma Patrice, so May's teachings that he'd received, and then I've been studying it on my own, um, for the last. The next six months or so, uh, reading and working with the elements on the land, I've also learned so much in sharing little threads, kind of the little sprouts of this information with those who have been in Mint for more this year.
And those of you who have read My Living the Season's journals, which began to incorporate the five elements in the winter season. So thank you to all of you who have asked questions and shared with me how the material landed and what you are noticing about the elements. I've really benefited from that.
And I guess I also wanna say that nothing I'm sharing today or that I ever share really is original. And I don't mean that I'm like plagiarizing everywhere, but I mean this in a way that like everything that I'm sharing, it's kind of like it's growing from the ground up. It's not from me exactly. I'm a channel for it.
And I put my own perspective and spin on it because it's how, it's how I'm making sense of the world. But nothing that I ever share is just some inspiration that is only from me. It comes from my wise and well ancestors. It comes from other human teachers. It comes from the teacher of the land. It grows up from the earth herself.
So I offer this very, very humbly. And I want to also say that any teaching anywhere is never, um, this says I wanna tread lightly here because we wanna give credit where credit is due and. You know, the idea of like everything being copyrighted or patented is a very western idea. Um, so I think if we can go very slowly and humbly, we can share ideas and see what's working, and again, give them back to the earth and let the truth sort of come up from the earth herself.
So I don't know why I felt called to say it, but I there it is. Um, and I hope it makes sense. So let's shift into talking about what the elements actually are. I feel like I've kept you in suspense. Um, the elements are physical forces of life. They are energies that flow through life. They make up life, but they also each carry specific principles and teachings.
To me, they don't really feel like people. Like they, it's it. They don't feel like sentient beings that I would relate to or just have a conversation with. I think some people have that experience, but it's not been mine. But I can absolutely relate to them as like alive living forces and the elements exist in a wheel.
They exist in relationship. Every element contains the other elements and is balanced by them in this really elegant system that we so often see in the natural world. So in Dagar teachings, the elements are. Mineral water, nature, fire, and earth. In the Taos traditions that I've learned about, the elements are the same except that mineral is called metal and nature is called wood.
So let's, let me give you just a very quick overview of what these are to get you started. So mineral or metal includes stones, bones. Decaying matter, like the dead leaves of fall. It is the minerals that enrich the soil that enrich our water, that come from the rocks, the salt, old deep time. The water element is all of water in its various forms flowing, liquid ice, steam, mist, salt water, fresh water, et cetera.
The nature element or the wood element is all of the living. Beings on this earth. So if mineral is the, the decaying beings, then nature and wood is the plants. It's the fungi, the animals, the living creatures of this world. The fire element is all the fire, the fires that we use to heat our homes, cook our food, the candles that we light, and the great fire of the sun, which gives life to this planet.
The earth element in these traditions is the soil, all kinds of soil, all of the other elements go into the earth eventually. The earth is at the center of everything. It is the capacity for nature to grow. It's where the mineral goes, it's where water goes. And I'll talk a lot more about these in a minute, but that's just a very quick overview of what the elements are.
I also like this idea by John Kirkwood, who wrote a book called Living the Five Seasons, that the elements might also be thought of as stages of a process that they, you know, they flow with the seasons. So as we move through the seasonal cycles, you know, instead of just moving through these terms like spring, summer, fall, and winter, what if we're actually moving through nature fire, mineral water with the earth element in between each of those seasons?
So that might be interesting to play around with if you want to. Um, just considering that the elements could also be phases of a process that we go through every year as we move around the sun. One of the first questions that I get from people when I am talking about the five elements is why five instead of four?
Why not the four elements that come from the European tradition, which would be fire, water, earth, and air. Um. As far as I can tell, the European four elements come from pre-Socratic, Greek philosophers, someone named Edle specifically, who wrote about and studied what he called the four humors or the four sort of pieces of balance in the human body.
And this was sort of the root of the four element system that grew through into Europe through the Middle Ages. And we see it in alchemy and into the early modern period. I think later some systems added a fifth element, uh, ether or the void. And these were thought to be the four roots that make up life.
Air, water, fire, and earth. And I say this without any judgment, but this elemental system just never made sense to me. I work with the tarot. I have worked with the tarot for like nine years. I do tarot readings for people, and the tarot is all built on the four elements and they just never really landed in my being, especially the air element.
And, um, there is this idea that I heard about from Sophie Strand that, um, there was this shift in Greek thought that led into, of course, European thought this shift from like the earth gods and this very like, rooted, earthy. Pantheon and way of orienting to the world. And we see this transition into like sky gods the great, you know, pantheon of male sky, gods, uh, the Christian God who lives in the sky.
This like obsession with transcendence and becoming heir, you know, and, and like. Um, not living down in the muck of the earth, but avoiding it and coming up into air and becoming supreme over all of that. So I'm not saying that that was anyone's intention or that working with the five element or the four elements is bad, but um, it just didn't make sense.
What I learned in the five element system is that, um, it's not that air isn't a force or that wind isn't a force, but that the wind is really more like the breath of the earth, but not an element in itself. The four element system, I think that's, that we see in the tarot and in European traditions, it just doesn't feel very balanced or grounded to me.
It's not in a wheel. I can't see it whole in the landscapes. I see the air or I see the, the effects of the air rather the wind, but it's not a permanent fixture of the land like the other elements are so. I'm not here to convince you that one system is better than the other, but I just wanted to address that upfront because it's one of the things people ask about.
And I encourage you, like always to see what makes sense to you. And I have found some ways to still work with tarot in a, and help it compliment my five element perspective and work. But you know, you have to do what feels most true to you at this time. So before I go into each of the elements specifically, I wanna talk first about your primary element, because I think this is a really helpful way to make the elements feel more real, to give you kind of an entryway into them and help you understand.
Where more balance might be needed to see yourself as part of the great weaving of these elements across the land. Um, this is just a really nice kind of entryway in. So I learned that in the dagar tradition there is, it's thought that every person is born with a primary element and that kind of like the Chinese zodiac elements come to the fore each year.
So you know, instead of the year of the snake in the five element tradition, this would be the year of earth because it's a five year. So everyone born in this year carries the earth element as their primary element, that that is a major part of the medicine that they carry, that they bring to the village in Taoism, there's something called your constitutional element, which sound, I think it's.
Very similar, but the way that it's determined is really unique and a practitioner would have to do that with someone and by, you know, examining their body and how the elements are fitting into their body. So there's a quick kind of way to understand what your primary element might be. And it seems too simple to be effective on its face, but just see how it lands for you.
And I will repeat these numbers with each of the elements, but you think of the last number of your year of birth. Okay, so I was born in 1986, so my primary element number is six. Okay. So if you have, if the last digit in the year you were born is a zero or five, the earth would be your primary element.
If you were born with the last digit of your year being a one or a six, you'd be a water person. If it's two or seven, your element would be fire. If it's three or eight, your element would be nature, and if it's four or nine, your element would be mineral. Okay? So hold that in your mind or pause and make a note real quick.
And now I'm gonna talk about each of the elements as these great physical forces of life, but also what it might mean for you if you carry it as your primary element. And we'll just weave something together and see what lands for you. So as I talk, I encourage you to listen and hear the whole picture, and then when we come to your primary element, listen for what might resonate and feel most true for you personally.
So I'm gonna start with fire because we're in fire season. It's the season of summer and it's pretty self-explanatory. What the fire element is. It's the flame. It is the flame which emits heat and light. It's the great flame of the sun, which makes life possible. Every element is found in the body in different organs of the body and in the human body.
Fire is found in our hearts, in the pericardium, the protective sac around the heart, in the small intestine, and in the Taoist tradition, it's found in a. It's not an organ, but it's a, a component of the body called the triple heater. So fire is very present in our bodies and there is more fire in our bodies than other elements.
There are four centers of fire in the body where, whereas in the other elements there are two centers in the body. So fire is really our ability to connect. The fire in your heart draws you outward toward another. That warmth of the heart's flame is what can guide us into the right connections for us, but it can also transform a situation, a dynamic.
Whatever we are in presence with fires, heat and light inevitably causes transformation. Fire is not subtle. You don't light a flame and then you, you can't like, make a flame completely dark. It doesn't, it's not gonna feel cold. If you approach the flame, you're gonna know that you're getting close. So fire unlocks energy through photosynthesis.
If you put dough in a hot oven, it's gonna become bread. Fire is necessarily transformative. Fires direction is outward. The light, the heat radiates outward. The core emotions associated with this element. Every element has specific emotions related to it. For fire, the core emotions are sadness and satisfaction.
Contentment. If the fire within us is too dim, we feel sadness. That kind of low emptiness or dissatisfaction. When the fire is burning in balance, we feel satisfied, connected. Our heart is full. Fire is consumptive. It eats a lot. It needs a lot of wood, a lot of the nature element in order to burn.
Sometimes our fire is so big that we can't feel settled or at peace or satisfied with the connection that is here. When any of the elements is out of balance, either more of that element is needed. Or other elements are needed to come in and draw down or balance that primary element. If your birth year ends in a two or a seven, then fire would be your primary element.
You might notice that you are drawn outward into the world, that that is a, a natural thing for you to do, to want to connect from your heart to the hearts of others. Or maybe it feels really hard to connect that. That might show you that your fired needs tending. You likely carry gifts that are related to helping a place or a people or a situation change.
Just by bringing the light and warmth within you, there's nothing you really need to do. What you need to do is to stoke and balance that flame in you and to bring it. Be discerning in where you bring it and see how something is transformed as a result of it. And if you've ever, I think this becomes really obvious for those of us who has been like held in a really loving, warm gaze.
Like maybe you've had a mentor or a lover or a friend who just. Like looks at you in awe or love whose heart is just shining. And we can just kind of rest in that and we feel like we can sort of become our best selves just as a result of that kindness and that warmth. That's really the power of fire to me.
And the sun shows us this every year on the land. In the summer, the sun shines and the sun is just being the sun. It doesn't have to come down to the earth and force anything or grab anything. It just does what it does. It is who it is. And the fruits ripen. The flowers bloom in response to it. That's incredible power.
So someone with the fire element as their primary element will need to be utilizing their gifts, their nature element, because that is the wood that their, their flame can eat. That will be what they need in order to stoke a healthy and meaningful flame in their life. If that's not present, if someone with a fire element, as their primary element isn't in touch with their gifts and their authenticity, the fire can become superficial and it's just outward activity in everyone's business trying to connect with lots of of people just for the sake of activity, not the sharing of their gifts.
So again, if your primary element is fire, if your birth year ends in a two or a seven, I hope you will give yourself permission to move outward to be led by your heart. And to just be sure that that stays balanced because dominant culture pushes all of us beyond our limits. So often with fire, asking us to pour our hearts, our warmth, our heat, to, to make things really hot, to transform constantly.
So we have to be discerning about where and with whom we share our light and our warmth with so that our fire stays healthy. The risks with fire include burning too hot, being too active, burning connection away because we expected too much from others. We're not easily satisfied, um, acting too much when the medicine is actually to be still and wait.
Fires color is red, and in the dagara wheel it is balanced across the wheel by water. Okay, so we have fire and summer and red on one side, and we have water, winter and blue, black on the other side. They, they need to be in balance. Fire is the most young of all of the elements. It is our activation, our spark.
It is the impulse to move and be out and share our warmth with others. Think about what it's like to share abundance from your garden in the summer. It's that kind of an energy and it's also a sort of, it's our portal of connection into working with the ancestors as well. And I'm not gonna go into this a lot, but if you are.
If you listened to last week's episode and you would like to connect to your wise and well ancestors more, it's a great practice to light a candle or, um, envision a small flame in your heart, kind of lighting the way into the villages of your ancestors and connecting through that heart gateway. So that's fire.
Next we're gonna move to talk about the earth element in the DAUs tradition. The earth's season is the late summer. It's that Virgo season when summer is waning and we're transitioning into fall, but it is also the transitional seasons between each season. So it's the earth seasons come between autumn and winter.
Between winter and spring, between spring and summer. It's those few weeks when we don't feel like we're quite in one season or the other. There's some kind of turning of the wheel happening. Those are earth seasons. The earth is the soil. It is all the different kinds of soil that make it possible for nature to grow in all of its myriad forms across the planet, it is dark, it's often moist or cool.
It's quiet. It is the ground that we walk on. It is literally the stability beneath us. Think of like when everything goes wrong, we say, we have this phrase like, I feel like the ground fell out from beneath me, right? The earth is the ground that gives us the stability we need in order to live and to function.
It's not the growth per se, that's the nature element, but it is the container for growth. It is the womb in the body. The earth lives in our stomach and our spleen. It's color is yellow, and it is the energy of home. It's the energy of welcoming of cycles. Again, the earth shows up between, in the transition periods between all of the other seasons, the stomach in our bodies accepts what comes to it and helps to discern what is useful and can be used as energy and what's waste when we put something on or into the soil, the earth.
All of the beings and the minerals that make up the soil will do the same as our stomach. They will turn it into more energy and eat it and create more energy as a result, or they will compost it as waste and it will become part of the soil. So the earth offers us the chance to literally be grounded.
The earth contains all of the other elements. The earth contains all of our energy. The earth is not a live wire that's just, you know, manic or shooting off electricity or that could damage us. The Earth invites us to ground the wire, relax into their support, and it reminds us that we do not have to hold anything, even whatever we are holding.
Ultimately, it is the earth that is holding us. So in the Dagar medicine wheel, the earth element is at the center and all of the other elements pass through it. Water, fire, nature, and mineral. They all eventually end up back in the earth, so the earth is the place for starting over. Our ancestors' bodies went back into the earth and the elements that they were comprised of became soil, became the minerals in the soil, became the microbes in the soil, became a new form of life.
Earth's direction is revolution. The earth as a whole is literally revolving in space, and also the cycles of the seasons revolve. We turn and we come back to where we started, but we're different now. So someone with the earth as their primary element, a birth year ending in a zero or five, they carry the gifts of the earth of welcoming.
Of being that energy of home, of being a solid stabilizing presence where we can just relax these people, understand the power of starting over, that maybe that's a wise choice to knock it all down, to come back to the foundation and build up from the ground again. I think the fact that the earth comes in the transitional points between seasons speaks to this as well.
What happens this summer will need to either be composted and let go of, or retained and made into new food to help us stay strong in the coming autumn. So we're always given these opportunities between seasons to come back to the ground again and to start over. The people I know whose primary element is Earth are people who just seem to be able to hold a lot.
Either they've been through a lot themselves or they are just capable of hearing or receiving a lot from others. They might be therapists or facilitators or community builders. I find that they can really hold a space in which one can feel welcomed at home. And that's really where growth begins. We don't need to launch right into the nature element and the growth.
We need to start by feeling welcomed, welcoming ourselves, feeling at home on the ground. So if you are someone whose primary element is Earth, I encourage you to give yourself permission to be someone who starts over regularly. Who reviews in cycles, who reassesses a lot, who who gives themselves permission to be at home, wherever they are, and to renegotiate what home means whenever they need to, whenever you need to.
And a big important thing about being someone with the earth element that we all need to remember because we all have all of the elements, is to remember to let the earth hold all of what you are holding to connect to the ground regularly. Like literally to be sitting on the ground, to have your hands in the soil to take a nap on the ground.
Um, this is really important. We're talking about energy here. So your earth needs to meet the earth, so stomach on the ground, spleen connected to the ground. Um, that will be really important for all of us, but especially for someone with the earth as their primary element. I think some of the risks with the earth element are that we can get into patterns of always revolving, you know, always kind of spinning, never stopping, and being like, okay, well now I'm in summer, so I, I am ready to move outward, or I'm ready to move upward or down or inward.
Um, there can be this risk of kind of always circling and assessing. Uh, and at some point we do need to build. And that's just part of it. There's also this risk of always welcoming everyone else home or making home for everyone else and forgetting to do that for ourselves. So if the earth is your primary element, you'll need to make sure you have practices that help you welcome yourself home and help you to feel at home and held by the earth herself.
So that's earth. After earth season comes the autumn, which is mineral, and in the Chinese five element system, it's called metal. These are the stones. It's the periodic table of elements. It's decaying matter. It's the leaves that die and become the soil. It's the minerals in the soil. It's the rocks, the sand, the bones.
That which is no longer growing but is decaying. It is the crystals hidden deep within the earth or inside of the mountains. It's the veins of gold or tin in the rock. It's coins, it's currency. Mineral teaches us what is sacred, what is necessary to hold onto, and what is no longer valuable. Mineral is the accumulation of information of data, the facts, the analysis, what is happening, what is truly here, and what is its value accounting for this, for that.
Defining things so that we can actually work with them. This is that this is not that, so that we can make sense of our world in our bodies. Mineral is found in our lungs and our colon. So it is the intake, the in breath, but also the necessity of letting go. The exhale, the elimination. Minerals direction is downward.
It takes us down into grief and gratitude. Those are its primary emotions. We feel grief when we have lost something sacred. What really mattered to us, something that had value. Gratitude comes when we realize the value of what we have or have experienced. So it is the downward force of gravity. It is the leaves falling in the autumn.
It is, it is death. Us falling to the ground and becoming the ground again. All of death is related to mineral. Minerals color is white and it lies opposite the nature element on the wheel. So mineral death, decay is necessary in order for nature to come alive and grow. They are in relationship. Someone with mineral as their primary element would've been born in a birth year, ending in a four or a nine, and they may possess the gift of seeking and digesting information.
A friend of mine who whose primary element is mineral, literally started her own library. Okay? So she is like a storehouse of information. It can be easy for mineral people to acquire data and knowledge, and not just that, but to remember and cultivate that which is truly valuable in life. They can be masters of ritual.
Of remembrance, of cultivating what is sacred, helping the village to remember what is actually valuable and what needs to be composted. I find that people with mineral is their primary element. Also, like the stones have a deeper, longer sense of time and what it takes to cultivate value. What it takes to end up with something that's really sacred, where, you know, we are talking about like geologic time.
You know, these people aren't like, they don't need fast, quick results all the time. They're willing to put in the effort to get to the heart of something and to cultivate something that is really valuable. I'm saying cultivate, which is more of like a nature growth kind of word, but I guess it would be like.
The awareness that it takes time for diamonds or crystals or gold to form inside of the mountain or inside of the stone, and someone with mineral gifts would understand when it is actually appropriate and. Or if it ever is appropriate to pull sacred minerals out of the stone, out of the mountains, um, and for what purpose?
So understanding currency and how we exchange, and how we assign value and understanding ultimately, the sanctity that has been lost because of our current system, capitalism, which has such a out of touch view of value and what is actually meaningful. So someone with mineral as their primary element could really help us redefine what is value and to live in alignment with that.
And another gift of mineral for all of us. But es especially those whose primary element this is, is the ability to reassess our definitions and how we define. Different things and what categories we put them in. You know, was this a success or a failure? Well, who decides we can use Mineral to be precise and say, is this framework, is this mental concept really working and fitting and creating the value that I need?
Is it true or is it a belief and a, a perspective, a system that's ready to be composted so that something new can be seen and assessed differently? Some of the risks with mineral are that we can get very rigid and stonelike and unable to move. Uh, we can also become sort of locked in time and in old definitions that are no longer helpful, where we have maybe a false sense or an outdated sense of what is valuable.
We can get into patterns of over analysis. Where we're trying to define everything and get it onto the balance sheet, and we're forgetting that the great mystery of life can sort of throw that balance sheet out to the wind at times. So mineral will definitely need to be balanced out by more nature at times.
And adaptability. There can also be the need for mineral folks to go deeper down into their caves to remember the beauty and abundance that is there, and that has been there for a long, long time. So that's mineral. After Autumn comes winter, which is the season of water. And when we're talking about the element of water, we're talking about water in all of its forms.
Steam, liquid, ice. It's the rain, it's the ocean, it's the water running through your veins that comes out in your tears, and we learn about water by watching water. What does water do? It pools. It gathers in on itself. It flows where it's easiest to flow downhill. It finds the lowest point and accumulate there.
One of my teachers talked a lot about how water teaches us about acceptance. That if you throw a rock or a shoe into the lake, that still water will just accept it. Water doesn't overthink things. It just is gonna go. It goes where there's an opening. It takes whatever comes, it moves around the logs or the stones that are in the path of it, of its flow.
The feeling states primarily associated with water are fear, which is that kind of inward sense of collapse or feeling frozen, or we're feeling a rushing river of adrenaline fear and wisdom. And you might think of wisdom as like these. Raindrops that are traveling all around the world, they're, they're seeing all of these different things, gathering all of this different information, and they come to the great ocean of understanding where wisdom is possible.
So wisdom is all of the data gathered through mineral, but then having it and knowing what to do with it, those are two different things. So water offers us wisdom. It is how to get in touch with our own innate wisdom. Water's direction is inward. It's into the quiet. It's the yin energy. It's that dark quiet of winter.
It reminds us that it is within us where we encounter our fears and our wisdom, where both of those things reside in our bodies. The water element is held in our kidneys and in our bladders. Its color is blue, black. So someone with the water element as their primary element would've been born in a birth year, ending in a one or a six, and they will need to live like water.
They will need to have lots of inward time to pool lots of alone and quiet time to gather their resources. Again, they will need to be able to flow where there is ease and opening to maybe not physically travel far and wide, but to travel far and wide in their ideas or experiences and keep gathering wisdom through them and not only gather that wisdom, but find a way to share that with others and allow it to flow out of them.
Not in a way that's like fire and is super out there kind of evangelizing or out, you know, on the road sharing their messages, but is in a role or a lifestyle or a way of being where they can kind of be like a river that people can come to, to feel wisdom, to feel that quiet and that hydration and that acceptance.
It's not easy being anyone in capitalist culture, but it's really not easy being a water person and. Dominant culture will never give any of us permission to turn inward, to be quiet, to be still, to trust the source of wisdom that is inside of us, to go with the flow of life. So you have to choose that path for yourself if you're a water person or if you're at a water point in your life.
And we all need to make this choice every winter when water's invitations are so close. Some of the risks of the water element are becoming frozen like ice. So kind of like that mineral element, we can become like stone or ice and incapable of moving, which is an adaptive strategy sometimes and is not always bad.
But there can be this risk of forgetting how to shift forms. You know, I can become like rain or the river or the ocean, or I can become like the water deep inside of the earth. And just remembering that we have those different options to go very deep or to keep things shallow. And there's also the risk of flooding that we might have too much water and we need more earth or mineral to channel those fears or our wisdom, or we need more fire to kind of warm things up and help the water to evaporate and get lighter.
So those are some of the risks and possibilities that are available when we're working with the water element or if you carry the water element as your primary element. The last one that we come to is the nature element or the wood element, and this is the spring Nature beings are all the living, growing ones.
They grow from the earth's soil, which has been enriched by mineral. They need water to grow, and they grow and transform because of the fire of the sun. So we're talking about the fungi, the plants, the animals, the bacteria, the microbes, all living, growing life. Nature's color is green and it lies opposite the mineral element.
The nature element teaches us about how to grow in an authentic way because authenticity is the surest path to growth and to living out our nature. Nature also teaches us about our gifts. Because our gifts are the nature element growing through us. So your gifts, the special qualities about you that you have to offer to our world, those gifts are just like the acorns of an oak tree or the song of a songbird.
They must grow and be given away in order for you to live authentically, to live well. For your nature element to be balanced. The nature element is a force. All of the elements are a force. They all impact what is around them in a unique way. If you drop a stone on something that has an impact. If water is beating a stone for thousands of years, that has an impact.
The nature element also has an impact enough forest. It is the plant growing through the concrete no matter what. It's active, it's got fortitude. Spring is a busy time, and when that force. Authentic need to grow is thwarted. We experience one of nature's primary emotions, which is anger. Your anger may be a sign that your desire to grow, your need to grow, your need to live into your authentic self is being thwarted in some way.
Your roots can't stretch out enough or someone just cut off one of your branches. Capitalist culture in general is impeding a lot of our nature element. The desires and plans we've had for our lives, the ways we need to authentically grow and give of our gifts is constantly hemmed in and managed and pruned and cut off, and as a result, there's anger, there's rage, and we don't wanna stay there.
But if we can approach that with. An understanding of where the anger comes from and what it is, then we may be able to offer ourselves the growth or authenticity that we need in other ways or to honor it or to soothe it more effectively. The other primary emotion associated with the nature element is hope.
It's that, again, kind of upward growth where we feel like there's a reason to keep growing. We can turn towards something, we can be our authentic selves. In our bodies. The nature element exists in our liver and in our gallbladder. In Chinese medicine, the liver is thought to be where we can envision plans for our future, where we can make good plans from.
And the gallbladder helps us discern what choices we can make in accordance with those plans. So if your birth year ends in a three or an eight, your primary element is nature and you will probably need to grow a lot in your life. And that's different for everyone. But you will probably need a regular sense of.
Growing. You're probably someone who's active or busy or curious about a lot of different things. You may find that it's hard for you to thrive without a plan or a vision for your life that you are living in alignment with. And the key here is to stay flexible and adaptable, responding to the conditions that are at hand and adjusting the plan accordingly.
And living out your gifts will help with that a lot because that seems to be how the nature element comes through most strongly by doing what comes naturally to you. That is yours to give. And episode 1 48 of the show. Um, in that episode, I covered more on gifts specifically and the nature element, so you might wanna tune into that as well if you haven't already.
Some of the risks with the nature element are overdoing it, overgrowth or rigidity with the plan. Like this is the plan and the anger gets so loud that we can't even hear the hope anymore because we thought, we thought we were gonna grow in this way, and that's no longer possible, or it's not possible at this time.
So nature needs to be growing and active, but it doesn't always have to be at the same pace. It responds to the conditions that are here. Every spring is different, and one of the really beautiful things about nature and fire as we move from spring to summer is that there can be a lot of growth in the spring and the nature gets really big and maybe overgrown, and then fire comes in and burns away.
That under layer that's no longer needed, it purifies and helps us get back to what's really necessary right now. So. That is the nature element. So we've covered all five of the elements, and I know this can be a lot to hold and might feel kind of vague or hard to grasp at first, but once we start seeing how it fits together on the land and in our lives, I think it will be begin to feel very elegant.
So as you look out at a landscape, see if you can find all five of the elements. If you were looking at the ocean, you would see water, you would see mineral through the salt that's in the water, and probably the rocks that are containing the ocean. You would see the nature beings who are living in the ocean, the kelp and seaweed that's growing, the animals that make their home there, you would see the fire as the sun shining down to help make the plants in the ocean grow.
And of course, the earth is at the bottom holding it all. Holding it together with mineral. If you were in a forest, you would look and see the soil of the earth right there. You would see the nature of all of the trees and plants growing, the deer, the animals that make their home in that forest, the fungi, you would again see the fire of the sun making that forest.
Possible that all of the plants are there growing as a result of the sun's power. You might see rocks in the soil or feel the minerals within the soil itself. The water is coming down as rain or being stored in aquifers deep in the earth. So all of the elements are present in every landscape, but they can be hard to see at first.
It's also true that the elements are always there for us to learn from and pull from in our own day-to-day lives and human troubles. One, they just live in the body and need to be balanced. And there can be a lot of healing available by working with someone who is a five element practitioner and can offer healing to the body.
Um, but we can also bring this in in situations that feel challenging and the elements remind us that there is never one way or only one way to approach or relate to a situation. There are always five directions available to us, and I wanna give an example in case it helps make this more real. So, you know, I think about and talk a lot about work and capitalism and how we can do work that's meaningful to us while also earning an income.
So let's say that someone is feeling really stuck about work and how to earn a living, and they want to do something that feels more meaningful, but they're not sure how. So what are some ways that the elements could come in and offer us support? Well, you might start with your primary element, and let's say we'll start with Earth.
So let's say that earth is your primary element or is just the place that you wanna begin. What would it mean to welcome this situation that you're in? What would it mean to welcome this sense of feeling stuck to not fight it, but welcome it in? How could we feel more at home inside of this situation, this feeling of being stuck?
You might consider, if you've been in a cycle like this before, when was the last time you felt this way? What were the conditions? Then what's different this time and get oriented in this specific phase that you're in. What does it mean to be in a familiar place but differently and how could I feel at home and even welcoming to it?
So that would be maybe a place that Earth could offer support. Maybe your primary element is fire, or you feel drawn to working with this situation from a fire perspective, your direction would be outward. So do you need to have a heart to heart with someone who knows what this feels like? Do you need to reach out to someone from a heartfelt place?
Do you need to make a fire or light a candle and burn something away so that you can connect from your heart or listen to the wisdom that your heart has with regard to this situation? If your primary element was water, or you wanted to take a water approach, your direction would be inward. Do you need to go into solitude and listen deeply to yourself about what you need right now, what you're afraid of?
What does your quiet, inner wise one have to say? Do you need to go to the ocean or the river or a lake or a creek and tell water how you feel? If you wanted to work with mineral, the direction would be downward. Do you need to have a good cry about how hard this feels or express grief for the fact that capitalism gives us very little choice?
Do you need to remember your gratitude and shift your focus to what you still have that is truly valuable? Do you need to change your definitions about this situation so that you can feel more free? This is a big one. What does it mean to be stuck? Can you define that? Are you truly stuck? Mineral can help us redefine so that we can have agency and see the truth.
If your primary element was nature or you wanted to work in a nature way, the direction would be upward. Do you need to take a risk? Do you need to grow in some new way? Spend some more time studying your gifts and let them show you what to do next? Do you need to make a plan or express anger about how this feels?
Maybe you might consider how other nature beings would handle the situation Eagles, sloth bear. What would they do? What would the fungi do in your situation? So there is never just one way. You always have options if you're used to going one direction all the time. Like let's say you always feel the need to make a plan like nature.
Maybe instead this time you're gonna go with mineral and you're gonna go down into your grief and your definitions instead. So you can decide what you wanna do, how you wanna approach and relate to things that are feeling difficult or stuck, or just need a refresh. There are some very simple ways to start working with and receiving support from the elements.
One is just learning more about them, and I'll put some books in the show notes for you, um, so that you have some places to turn. But one of the best ways is to start just spending more time with them. You can make an altar for all five of the elements. You might have a stone or a shell on there, or bones for mineral, soil for earth, something living and growing for nature.
A candle with fire and a small dish or bowl of water, and you can study them, ask for help. Help them to remind you that you have agency and choice in the ways that you navigate through your day-to-day and through your life. You also might wanna get to know your primary element specifically. So if, if you know your primary element and you want to work with it more, you might give them a prominent place on your altar or have them around more and begin learning.
What it might mean to move like they move in your life and begin acting in alignment with that primary element. Or go visit them. Go visit old rocks or big bodies of water or the ground where it feels good, or nature beings that you have a relationship with, or build a big fire or spend time studying the solar cycles, the cycles of the sun.
It's really about, I think, working with our primary elements specifically. It's really about giving ourselves permission to be what we are and isn't permission one of the best sources of support. You don't need to do anything differently. You just need to be what and who you are. Your primary element is needed.
We need you. Our planet is grasping for greater balance. The five elements need to be in balance with themselves. So we need you to live as yourself. Whatever element that is, it's perfect and beautiful, and it might take a minute to get to know it and help it make that make sense for you. Um, but once you're there, I encourage you to give yourself permission to flow and be and show up in your life as your primary element and all of the medicine and wisdom that that comes with.
I hope today's episode has been really a blessing to you. I know we covered a lot and I hope it lands with ease and that it integrates peacefully. If you want to know more, again, this is material that I teach in my meant for more small groups and one-on-one work. Also, I'll put some links in the show notes for resources, but some good books would be The Way of The Five Seasons by John Kirkwood and The Healing Wisdom of Africa by melanoma Patrice Somme.
But really the best way to start learning is to take yourself out on the land and study it and see what you notice, even just your backyard or looking outside your window and noticing what elements you see and how they're manifesting, where you are learning from the elements directly. Next week I will be here with an episode on land communication.
So this is gonna be kind of bringing everything we've talked about together. How do we develop a deeper relationship with and learn from the land directly, the land being where our ancestors went, where the elements live, and the place where we can best hear. The signs and synchronicities that we need to in order to track through our lives.
So I'm excited to share that episode with you. Again, I'll be teaching a class on July 29th. That will be another sort of accumulation of all of the information that I'll share on the summer of support series. We will be harvesting all of this material in your life, and you can learn more about that class at a wild new work.com/events.
Of course, thank you again to Eagle Creek members who are helping to fund and support this show and make it sustainable to me. I really, really appreciate your support and presence there. I hope you all take such good care and I will see you on the other side.