The four classical elements

http://wordfaceoff.blogspot.com/2008/11/air-vs-earth-vs-water-vs-fire.html

Google popularity of the four classical elements (2004-2008)
(Don't get confused: fire is green, water is yellow).

By Rafael Alberti

Giuseppe Arcimboldo - Giuseppe Arcimboldo - Water

I voted for fire but now I'm thinking I should have voted for earth.




Wiki:

According to Aristotle in his On Generation and Corruption:

Air is primarily wet and secondarily hot.
Fire is primarily hot and secondarily dry.
Earth is primarily dry and secondarily cold.
Water is primarily cold and secondarily wet.

One classic diagram (above) has one square inscribed in the other, with the corners of one being the classical elements, and the corners of the other being the properties. The opposite corner is the opposite of these properties, "hot - cold" and "dry - wet".

Aristotle added aether as the quintessence, reasoning that whereas fire, earth, air, and water were earthly and corruptible, since no changes had been perceived in the heavenly regions, the stars cannot be made out of any of the four elements but must be made of a different, unchangeable, heavenly substance.

The Four elements, Seasons and Zodiac. Miniature from English medieval manuscript. Dates from the end of 11th century.

My zodiac is between aer and ignis... conclusion: I am hot

Speak for yourself... I am pure Fire!

Indeed Wiki says Agni is ever young:

Agni



Agni (Sanskrit: अग्नि) is a Hindu deity, one of the most important of the Vedic gods. He is the god of fire and the acceptor of sacrifices. The sacrifices made to Agni go to the deities because Agni is a messenger from and to the other gods. He is ever-young, because the fire is re-lit every day, and also immortal.

Agni, the Vedic god of fire, has two heads, one marks immortality and the other marks an unknown symbol of life has made the transition into the Hindu pantheon of gods, without losing his importance. With Varuna and Indra he is one of the supreme gods in the Rig Veda. The link between heaven and earth, the deities and the humans, he is associated with Vedic sacrifice, taking offerings to the other world in his fire. In Hinduism, his vehicle is the ram.



Varuna


The God Varuna on his mount makara, 1675-1700.

In Vedic religion, Varuna (Sanskrit varuṇa वरुण) is a god of the sky, of water and of the celestial ocean, as well as a god of law and of the underworld. He is the most prominent Asura in the Rigveda, and lord of the heavens and the earth.

In Hindu mythology, Varuna continued to be considered the god of all forms of the water element, particularly the oceans.

"If we go back far enough, we find that the first acts of civilization were the use of tools, the gaining of control over fire, and the construction of dwellings. Among these, the control of fire stands out as a quite extraordinary and unexampled achievement.... Psycho-analytic material, incomplete as it is and not susceptible to clear interpretation, nevertheless admits of a conjecture – a fantastic-sounding one – about the origins of this human feat. It is as though primal man had the habit, when he came into contact with fire, of satisfying the infantile desire connected with it, by putting it out with a stream of his urine. The legends that we possess leave no doubt about the originally phallic view taken of tongues of flame as they shoot upward. Putting out the fire by micturating – a theme to which modern giants, Gulliver in Lilliput and Rabelais' Gargantua, still hark back – was therefore a kind of sexual act with a male, an enjoyment of sexual potency in a homosexual competition. The first person to renounce this desire and spare the fire was able to carry it off with him and subdue it to his own use. By damping down the fire of his own sexual excitation, he had tamed the natural force of fire. This great cultural conquest was thus the reward for his renunciation of instinct. Further, it is as though woman had been appointed guardian of the fire which was held captive on the domestic hearth, because her anatomy made it impossible for her to yield to the temptation of this desire."

Sigmund Freud (from Civilization and its Discontents)