Elemental Magick: Sylphs

Cirrus clouds to most, Sylphs to others. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For today’s discussion on Air, we’ll be looking at spirits belonging to the Air realm. The elemental spirits for Air are called slyphs, with Peralda as their ruler. Whether you study magick or have only heard stories your whole life, the word sylph might seem familiar. We get the word from the Greek “sylpha”, meaning butterfly. For this association, sylphs and butterflies tend to be synonymous.

Of all the elementals, summoning sylphs may be the easiest to invite as air is found everywhere. If you’re an artist, poet, musician or a hard-working writer, then sylphs will eagerly gravitate toward you. As I mentioned yesterday, the Air element works great for creative expression and those born under the element tend to be great thinkers with wild imaginations. No wonder the Air elementals love creative minds. Sylphs like to help in creative communication and most artists of all kinds have attributed a gentle breeze or soft invisible touches to encouragement from nature itself.

Sylphs also help the creatively inclined by giving power to our speech, songs and written word. Much like the Muses inspire, sylphs provide enchantment to our creative endeavors. More than that, sylphs stimulate our mental balance, let us enjoy our freedom and stir up our curiosity. By sparking our intellect, sylphs help us in verbalizing our perceptions and help us to see things for what they really are as well as give us meaning to things we don’t understand. The sylphs bring us harmony through opening the doors to the realm of possibility and ideas. As humans, we’re spurred by what we can do, not what we can’t do. Having that realm open to us fuels our passion and brings us closer to happiness.

Of course, just as the Air can be gentle and guiding, yet destructive and indifferent, sylphs may act the same. Their flighty nature may leave us clouded and grasping for meaning or understanding in our projects. If you’ve ever felt writer’s block, you know what I’m talking about. Fortunately, sylphs never avoid us creative types for long. They enjoy our company as much as we enjoy theirs.