Alchemical Elements
The Prima Materia or First Matter, called Hyle by the Greeks, is the astral light. It is from the Prima Materia that the four alchemical elements (Earth, Air, Fire and Water) are divided.
This first matter has been described in various ways. It has been described as water, but not in the sense of the water we drink but instead it is a smoke or humid vapour, thick and dark.
The famous alchemical write Antoine-Joseph Pernety wrote: "Thales, Heraclitus, Hesiod, have regarded water as the First Matter of things. Moses appears, (Genesis, Chap. 1), to favor this idea by giving the names Abyss and Water to this First Matter; not that he understood water as the element which we drink, but as a kind of smoke, a humid vapor, thick and dark, which is condensed, more or less, according to the greater or less density of the things which has pleased the Creator to form from it. This mist, this immense vapor, was condensed or rarefied into a universal chaotic Water, which thus became the principle of all for the present and for the future."
The four alchemical elements are conditions in which a substance is found. This is comparable to the modern conditions of solid, liquid, gas and radiation. Fire has the properties of heat and dryness (expansion), Water the properties of coldness and wetness (contraction), Air the properties of heat and wetness (expansion), and Earth the properties of dryness and coldness (contraction).
In Nature and the Physical World, the alchemical elements are always found mixed in varying quantities. They are never found by themselves. The alchemical elements undergo constant transmutation in a life, death, and rebirth cycle as part of the substance which they form. An example of this process is a tree. While it is living it can be said to be ruled by Water (contraction and dampness). When the tree dies the wood is transmuted into a dry hard substance, and is said to be ruled by Earth (contraction and dryness).
There is a fifth element in Alchemy known as Quintessence, or Spirit. The Quintessence is the fifth essential property, the spirit or life-force of an object or thing. The Quintessence (fifth element) only comes in to existence when the four prime alchemical elements are brought together into a state of equilibrium or harmony. This is essentially what the process of alchemy is about.
The Book of Genesis reveals the formation of the World from the Prima Materia (Prime Matter) as an alchemical process that begins with the First Light (Fire). This Fire was congealed into Water, then separated by Air. The lower Waters congealed into Earth. The Prima Materia is separated into base matter, purified and brought into equilibrium to create divine matter.
