Thanks Jeremy,

I've heard this idea before too, and I wonder about it. Most  
specifically, I wonder about relating the qualities of hot, cold, moist  
and dry to fire, earth, water and air respectively.
I'm about to plunge into more research to confirm this, but I believe  
that - at least in Aristotle - the dominant qualities of the elements  
were as follows:
Earth - Dry
Water - Cool
Air - Moist
Fire - Warm

I realize that this is a counter-intuitive arrangement, but it works  
excellently in the elemental square of opposition.
Water is cool and moist
Earth is dry and cool
Fire is warm and dry
Air is moist and warm

If the primary qualities of the elements were as Ptolemy's winds:
Earth - Cool
Water - Moist
Air - Dry (?)
Fire - Warm

Then no matter what the secondary quality was for each element, Air  
would still need to be a dry element.
This, unfortunately, conflicts with the GD's first knowledge lecture,  
which lists the elements with their standard qualities, and Air as  
"Heat and Moisture". Now, you did point out that Air was a special  
case, so there may be a complication here that I'm not aware of...

But if the Aristotelian primary qualities are assigned to Ptolemy's  
winds, we would have:
Water = North
Air = West
Fire = South
Earth = East

Anyways, this is the mystery I'm looking to solve by finding out the  
origins of the GD system. Thanks for your input!!!

All the best,
Matt



On 26-Jun-06, at 2:03 PM, Jeremy Glick wrote:
>
> On Jun 26, 2006, at 7:56 AM, Matt Habermehl wrote:
>> Does anyone know of any sources that discuss the rationale or the  
>> history of the adoption of the Golden Dawn's directional elemental  
>> attributions (Earth = N, Air = E, Fire = S, Water = W)
>
> Matt,
>
> The rationale I remember hearing is that it corresponds to the  
> classical four winds, and this seems to fit.  Ptolemy, for example,  
> writes in Tetrabiblos (the classic text on astrology) about the four  
> winds, called Apeliotes (east), Notus (south), Zephyrus (west), and  
> Boreas (north): see  
> http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Ptolemy/Tetrabiblos/ 
> 1B*.html#10.
>
> Now, these don't correspond exactly to the elemental attributions,  
> since Ptolemy doesn't use the four elements model, but rather the four  
> properties of hot, dry, cold, and moist.  Still, he states that Notus  
> is "hot and rarifying", Zephyrus is "fresh and moist", and Boreas is  
> "cold and condensing".  The only major point of divergence is that he  
> refers to Apeliotes as "without moisture and drying in effect", when  
> Air is typically thought of as being hot and moist.
>
> Still, the correspondence is pretty close, and I'd imagine that this  
> is the source of the attributions, though I don't have any direct  
> evidence to support that.  So I guess this isn't much help in figuring  
> out the history of the Golden Dawn's use.  For what it's worth, the  
> Wikipedia article on the four cardinal winds  
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anemoi) doesn't mention any classical  
> connection to the elements, though that doesn't mean too much by  
> itself.  Anybody know for certain?
>
>
> I also thought I'd take this opportunity to introduce myself, since I  
> haven't posted to the list before.  My name's Jeremy Glick, and I'm a  
> soon-to-be grad student in psychology, focusing on neural network  
> models of mind.  The study of magic is a side pursuit of mine, one  
> which I greatly enjoy, but it's not where most of my academic  
> credentials lie.  I hope to learn a great deal from the conversations  
> on this mailing list; I've enjoyed what I've read so far.  Thanks.
>
> Yours,
> Jeremy