Elemental Magick: Emotional Tides

Droplet of water. (Photo credit: examiner.com)

For people who fall under the domain of the Water element, we’re told that they tend to be highly emotional. In Astrology, Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces all belong to the Water element. You can see how emotions play a big part of their personality. People of Water place emotion and intuition above most things, living through feeling. Under the Water element, people can be good-natured, introverted, pensive and even seem melancholic. Water people live by a hard, yet undefinable, desire to do what feels right, even if it doesn’t make much sense logically or practically. These people also go through mood swings, sometimes gentle and subtle, other times harsh and contrasting.

While balance in every element is important, it’s most important for those belonging to the Water. With Air, we can get air-headed whims and nonsensical tangents that, while creative, are as shapeless and formless as their element. With Fire, a fiery passion or burning belief can lead to angry words and fights until an understanding is brought to light, then it is quickly dropped. With Water, however, the emotional state of a person can ebb and flow in a constant state of flux. They can be sweetly romantic and affectionate, but then experience moods of jealousy and possessiveness with their loved ones. It doesn’t matter which direction their emotions are going, if you go against the current then you’ll have difficulty getting anywhere with the person. Once two people find a rhythm, however, it’s smooth sailing aside from the occasional storm.

There is a book I once read that dealt with emotional psychology. The book assigned colors to four main emotional traits and among listing the “type” each color represented, it also used natural elements as metaphors. Red was the Type-A, fiery personality. Yellow was the light-hearted, whimsical personality. Blue was the Type-B emotional personality, yet it wasn’t likened to water.

Water was reserved for the white personality, which the author described as the ultimate “go with the flow” type. He likened blue to down-to-earth types who know their emotions thoroughly, even if they’re having ups and downs. White, however, was like water in that the people move through life either quietly like a brook or loudly like a large river. You can hop on for a relaxed ride and have a spontaneous time with a white personality type or you could ask them to join you and chances are, they won’t have anything stopping them from enjoying a change of pace. The author explained that a white-type personality can be extremely indecisive when they’re imbalanced, but it’s only because they don’t want to disappoint a person with one answer or the other. People with a white-type personality have destinations in mind and make important decisions in their life, just like a river knows it’s flowing back to the ocean and roughly decides its course. Yet like a river that splits off, forks or turns into smaller veins during its journey, white-type people don’t mind detours and spontaneous adventures as long as they know they can return to where life is taking them.

I like the combination of astrology and this author’s ideal on the Water signs. One fits for emotional depth and the other complements the relaxed nature of most people who feel at home around water. One feels like you’re being carried by the tide, following a natural emotional course of action while the other sounds like someone who has paid attention to their element and tries to embody the characteristics that they’ve observed.