The elements as referenced in witchcraft explicitly mean the collective use of these four things: Fire, Air, Water, Earth. They each have their own magickal purpose, and they have purposes that can be specific to queer practitioners. The elements are foundational in learning tarot cards, group magick, and solo work, just to name a few. You can (and I often do) work with each element as an individual tool, but the work that is created when all four elements come together is absolutely Divine in every meaning of the word.
When we talk about divine energy we also welcome in a fifth element that many witches, myself included, believe in fervently and use as the centerpiece for all of our workings. That element is Spirit. In witchcraft I largely use Spirit to mean the idea of spirituality in general, the energy that comes from working with a goddess or specific spiritual energy, or the feeling that we get sometimes of being in the spell. Spirit is also the human spirit, especially the human spirit of someone who has been through the ringer. Spirit is the element of survival and strength, and to that end, when it comes to witchcraft, Spirit is our own ability to manifest our needs and desires. Historically, Spirit is also listed as idea. For innovation, creating change, and art we rely on Spirit to bring us new and fresh ideas.
The four elements that are not Spirit have tools and correspondences that are more tangible and straightforward. While some of these tools can be costly, I've tried to highlight affordable and free options for each one, too.
A fun fact about witchcraft is that the pentagram often associated with witches and Pagans is meant to encompass all five elements.
This goes back to Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa who, in the 15th and 16th centuries, attributed this symbol to magic, and used the points of the star to represent the elements. In a pentagram, the top point represents Spirit, and the other four correlate to the other elements. In ceremonial magick there are entire Greater and Lesser Rituals involving different types of pentagrams, so if this is something that interests you, don't stop at this book. Anything about Golden Dawn, chaos magick, or other forms of esoteric, ritual-based magick will include this work. A lot of these books have their problems with gender, binaries, and hierarchies that are a hindrance to queer people, so tread carefully and take care of yourself if you find exclusive and hurtful ideas and language.
The Elements are frequently used together in witchcraft when you begin a spell by casting a circle and calling the elements. Casting a circle just means pulling all of your necessary witchcraft materials into the area where you'll be doing your spellwork, and casting a protective circle around where you're working. Casting the actual circle usually means envisioning a protective white light coming from the floor and enveloping your room or area in a circle. This is meant to protect the work you're doing from outside eyes and ears, and to protect those practicing the magick from any ill-intentioned spirits that might try to sneak in. The circle, in my experience, also serves as a pressure cooker for all of the intention and magick that you deal with during the spell. By that, I mean it amplifies this energy by keeping it central and focused in this one area, allowing it to build to something really powerful instead of having it scatter all over the space you're working in.
Calling the corners as part of this means calling in each of the elements at the beginning of your process. This is largely a Wiccan practice, but one I often still do, as it is a way to connect to each element individually before I begin my work with those elements. I don't always call in every element either—if my spell is specifically mixing a potion for Water magick or unlocking the magick in a plant I'm growing, I'll just call in Water or Earth, respectively. I know witches who don't call the corners for any magick that isn't sitting in their sacred space or in a group working. I know witches who call all four corners every time they do anything. Like most things, I fall somewhere in the middle and like anything I talk about in Queering Your Craft, your voice and decision-making are the most holy things you have. Do what works for you—because otherwise it won't work for you.
If you want to call the elements into your work at any point, know that each element is thought to have a home and guardians of that element in the North, South, East or West. I'll include what directional corner they're coming from and a short mantra I use to call them in, in the individual element chapters. My mantras are largely influenced by my tarot practice and understanding, so a fun exercise is to pull some cards or do some divining about each element to see how each one wants you to address it.
Many witches, regardless of whether they call the quarters or not, use elementals, myself included. Elementals are a short one-word way to say that we work with energies or spirits related or connected to the elements. You'll see examples of those in the following sections as well.
Fire is often featured at the bottom right point of the pentagram. This is the element of passion, excitement, lust, and pleasure. Fire is that thing that wakes us up in the morning, puts that bounce in our step, and gets us amped up. It is that feeling of blood boiling, for better or worse. Fire is largely what inspires us to action in our own lives. Fire is the action and fight of the spellwork. Anytime we are doing magick, we should aspire to perform those actions on our own, which means most spells have an element of fire in them. The idea of action and fight gets tricky when we're queering our craft though. We have to take into account the myriad mental and chronic illnesses that disproportionately affect the queer community when we talk about and quantify action. Chronic and mental illness, especially with someone who is otherwise marginalized and running low on energy, means we don't always have the clarity, the wherewithal, or the physical prowess to perform the actions we need to better our lives within the ideal timeline. In addition to getting external action going, Fire energy can be used in these cases to inspire or motivate ourselves to start working or fighting again or to figure out the creative workarounds that so many of us use in our daily lives. Fire is creativity too, and for a lot of queer folks that is what we need to rely on as we think about which actions we can take, while also caring for ourselves.
Fire represents transformation. Because Fire burns away the old to make way for and create fertile ground for the new, there is also a history of linguistic tradition that aids this thought—like saying something tough and resilient is “forged in the fire.” When we're doing activist work or work that is meant to pull ourselves out of traumatic or oppressive situations, we want fire on our side. This element's ability to turn something or someone into a better, tougher, wiser version of themselves is exactly what we, as queer or otherwise marginalized people, want to do when we think about a troubling present versus a potentially beautiful future. Fire is one of our strongest allies for doing so. For trans people going through gender transition, Fire's relationship with transformation is the perfect thing to work with. Doing a fire-heavy spell while starting hormones, buying new gender-affirming clothes, and considering surgery options (if you choose to and have the resources to do so) will help you feel truly reborn as you navigate away from your assigned gender and into the best gender for you.
For a lot of queer people, our greatest passion is our gender and sexual identity, or it's the activism and advocacy for the rights of those identities that society basically forces on us. That means most queer people I know have endless fire spells going to aid them with any aspect of their life that needs it and even loosely correlates: relationships, standing up for ourselves, and the work itself (however we are defining that). Fire, as you'd expect, is big energy, but it can also be a peaceful and important spiritual ally for those of us struggling to name ourselves and come into our own.
Fire is useful for spells that intend to kick queerphobic people out of our life. We can then use that same fiery energy to rid ourselves of those hurtful peoples' influence. We can use Fire when we are working through dysphoria or gender transition. We can call on Fire to help us in our activist or social justice work. I've already mentioned that Fire is amazing for sex magick, and for queer people it can be an especially powerful ally. I've definitely used Fire magick during Pride month to help me celebrate my sapphic self by getting laid. As a fat, mentally ill, physically ill, genderfluid lesbian what I really need sometimes is the strength to get through the day and continue the part of my activist work where I resist just by being myself. Fire is wonderful for that. I'm in a really strong, wonderful queerplatonic partnership. Even though we choose to keep our partnership free of sexuality or sexual tension, we are so passionate about each other and our lives together that I use Fire in the ongoing spiritual work of keeping our relationship strong.
Fire energies are most often symbolized by salamanders, but when we get to the DIY portion of this book you might realize there is a completely different animal, spirit, or elemental (like a type of fae or an anthropomorphized flame) that you attribute to Fire. Always trust your inclinations over someone else's. Witchcraft, like any faith at its best, is supposed to focus on a personal relationship with whatever gods, spirits, or energies you believe in. Other common elementals used to bring fire into ritual include dragons, lions, scorpions, or a Phoenix.
Sometimes Fire is South and sometimes it's East. I usually work with it as South because that's the way I learned it a decade and a half ago. I should also point out that these are the the assignations in North America—if you're reading from somewhere else, your Fire might come in from somewhere different. Basically, wherever you feel the Sun is placed is where your Fire element should hail from.
The mantra I use most often to call in Fire is:
Welcome, guardians of the watchtowers of the South,
Keepers of fire—and therefore lust, passion, action, and excitement,
I welcome this element and its keepers to this circle tonight.
*Please note that these are just some examples to get you started. There are tons of correspondences for each element.
Water is my favorite element, but then again I am a Pisces with a Pisces moon and a Cancer rising so that energy is, and has always been, a driving force in my life. Water is all about emotions, expressions, and the manifestations of those things (like art or relationships). Water also oversees our journey towards emotional healing. Healing work is a critical part of witchcraft, whether we're talking about the emotional or the spiritual. Because water itself is a life source and is healing, I tend to use it in both kinds of magick. Even in the super practical we see this application—if you have a physical burn, the liquid part of the aloe plant is our best salve for that. If you're ill, they tell you to drink a lot of fluids. Water's healing energy is prevalent in science and medicine, so it's certainly applicable in witchcraft. If you're reading this book, you're likely concerned with collective healing too, and so much of that is done using Water as the primary force.
Water represents the “heart's desire” element that is so critical to witchcraft. This element forces us to get real about what we want so that we'll have the audacity to ask for it. As queer people especially, so many of us are divorced from our heart's desire because we spent a lot of time convincing ourselves we are wrong or mistaken about what we wanted back in our closeted days. Even if you've largely healed from that time as you've started coming out and coming into your own, denying yourself attraction and pleasure eventually dampens your ability to understand what you want. That makes formulating spells, even for the collective, difficult. For this reason, Water magick is often a first step in witchcraft. It can help us to see what we want more clearly and move forward from there.
Of course, because Water rules emotions and therefore love, Water is a great ally for love magick of all types. I cast spells for new friends (or to find time with old friends), and I know friendships and chosen family are generally a priority for queer people in a very specific way. Certainly Water can help us find new romantic relationships or strengthen standing ones. That clarity around your heart's desire is important here, but so is Water's natural capacity to aid us in other ways where love is concerned. Queer people are more likely than nonqueer people to deal with unsupportive or toxic members in our given family. While Water can be used in magick that is meant to bury the hatchet or smooth things over, when you get clear on your own desires you might find that what you really want is to not hurt from those scars anymore and to move forward in your own life. This is a combination of love and healing magick, and Water is excited to work with you in those instances.
Water is the element of artists and philosophers, and while Air also has a stake in literature and literary careers, Water is focused so much on expression that of course our written words are highlighted in this element as well. Along this line, Water is also super powerful for those using psychic prowess or intuition in their career. Water work is a key part of any of my career or money workings. Water wants what we want, which for me is to be a successful writer, tarot reader, and theatre maker. Because it works in those forms of expression too, it's wildly powerful in career work when our careers are, essentially, creative, psychic, or both.
However, Water is not concerned with overt success the way Earth or even Fire is. Water is about the expression and art or psychic work itself. That means most intuitives and creatives would do best using Water spells when they're stuck in a rut and can't access those parts of themselves, when they want to turn their ideas into something real and tangible, or when they are working through a project or process. Water as an aid for expression just wants it to be expressive, and can absolutely guide you on that process.
Water is associated with the West, and the mantra I use most often to call in Water is:
Welcome, guardians of the watchtowers of the West,
Keepers of water—and therefore emotion, love, beauty, and art.
I welcome this element and it's keepers to this circle tonight.
Air is the element I have the most trouble connecting with and, not surprisingly, it's the one that comes up the most as energy I need to fuse with or take on. Air correlates to the intellect, which I love, and is often the energy that writers or those whose jobs deal with a lot of communication need to call on to get through their work life. Because Air does connect so much to the mind, it's also the energy that anyone in a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) field would call on for success in their career. This piece of Air I love. It wants to get our brain going and nurture us on our journey. Air is all about helping us look for the right words to back up our actions.
Air is also (like Fire) all about those actions. Where Fire is about taking action, creating change, and inspiring new action, Air is sometimes the type of action we don't like to take. Air is using our mind to outsmart or outclever someone. Air is about getting rid of the excess things you don't need in your life, and working to cut out old habits and vices that don't serve you. Air is also sometimes (though not always) about being the bad guy.
As queer practitioners though, working with Air is a critical skill to learn as witches as much as we may struggle with it. In the personal, so much of what we need is to cut out and move on from toxic relationships with queerphobic people or systems in our life. In the collective, sometimes what we need are direct actions that will bring those systems to their knees. Air is perfect for this type of work and is therefore an energy that we must learn to wield successfully.
Another important piece of queer witchcraft that uses Air energy is something I talked about in the intro to this book—shadow work. Air brings clarity and sharpens our mind, which is a perfect first step towards facing your shadow head on. Air can bring up those difficult or traumatic times in our life (of which queer people have many), and while this isn't always pleasant, if we're trying to navigate through shadow work it's an absolutely necessary step. Often times shadow work is about cutting away the things that aren't serving our highest self, or coming to peace with and integrating them fully into our lives, which are actions we know Air is an agent of.
Air usually comes from the East if we're calling corners or guardians of the watchtowers. The mantra I use most often to call in Air is:
Welcome, guardians of the watchtowers of the East,
Keepers of Air—and therefore logic, judgement, and decision.
I welcome this element and it's keepers to this circle tonight.
If Air is the element I have grappled with the most, Earth is the one (alongside Water) that I have innately understood time after time. Air is all around us all the time, but we can't see it. Earth is right under our feet. Most of the things we pick up and hold on a daily basis have Earth imbued right into them. Earth is dirt, grass, herbs, wood, stones, and so much more. In the magickal, Earth is what grounds us and roots us. One of Earth's goals as an element is to keep our feet firmly planted on it, so that we don't get too overtaken by the other elements. Earth is also about planting seeds, watching things grow, and pulling in a harvest when it's time for that.
Traditionally, a whole lot of magickal practitioners use Earth when they're looking for growth in their career, finances, home, or family. These are things traditionally thought to root us. For queer practitioners, it's important to hold space for the fact that some of the images and values that those words conjure can cause tension or even distress. When your childhood home was fraught with tension, the idea or dream of “home” might be very vague, or potentially harmful. The same goes for family. It's important, though, for queer people to remember that we deserve those things, and even if they aren't present in our lives now (and even if we don't want them to be), we can use Earth energy to help us reconcile those images or feelings that come up with those words.
From there we can even reconsider or reconfigure what those words mean or look like to us as individuals, and stop chasing the societally approved versions of those things. The next step would be actually casting your spells, setting your intentions, and doing the work to acquire those newfound visions of home and family. I know not every queer person had a difficult upbringing and I'm not trying to isolate those who love their parents and have no issues with them. As a subculture though, queer people are usually not driving towards the same life and visions that our parents were, or that they wanted for us. Regardless of where you are on your own journey, Earth magick can help with all of the steps outlined above.
Career and finances are tricky for me as a queer person. I am really critical of the systems that push us to produce-produce-produce. I'm very aware of the fact that my community, especially LGBTQQIA2SP+ people of color, live in disproportionate amounts of poverty and struggle to get and maintain jobs at all, let alone anything that can be called or considered a career. It has made a number of us, myself included, disinclined to fall in line and hop on the 9–5 train for the sake of doing so. Yet we do live in a capitalist system, and we do need money to survive. That's the reality of it. Earth energy can be called on to keep ourselves and our community members financially safe, and from there we can focus our energy on success as we define it.
All of that being said, large numbers of queer people, myself included, do have very real hopes and dreams for our careers. While many of us have to start our magickal practice looking for a baseline of financial safety, from there we can cast spells and wishes (which are just short, fast spells) for those careers. It's also worth pointing out that a lot of our careers are tied up in our identities. A lot of us are working that nonprofit life trying to do good in the world, going into politics to try to protect the rest of us, creating resources for our community, or making art that highlights the plethora of untold stories from queer history and culture. Earth energy is absolutely what we want to call on in all of those cases.
Another use for Earth energy or magick that shouldn't be queer specific, except that queer people and people of color are usually the people I know who are most concerned with this, is setting up and establishing resources for community. So many in our beautiful community are not explicitly focused on the self and are much more interested in creating safer and better resources for their communities at large. Earth energy loves this type of magick and would be elated to be called on for this. I think this is the most pure and beautiful use for Earth magick, truth be told. As humans, we should be pushing towards community and interdependence, especially in a time of climate crisis and worldwide financial instability. Earth wants us to be stable and secure, and for that we need each other. Most of us have privileges, resources, and ideas that will benefit the community, and Earth energy wants you to give as much or more than you take.
Earth can be called on from the North almost always, regardless of where you are in the world. The mantra I use most often to call in Earth is:
Welcome, guardians of the watchtowers of the North,
Keepers of Earth—and therefore planning, growth, and stability,
I welcome this element and it's keepers to this circle tonight.
The four elements listed above are the ones found here on Earth and the ones that we can harness in very real and tangible ways. There is also a fifth element that is here on Earth with us, but it exists in such an ethereal way that some new or young witches really struggle to understand where it's coming from or how to use it. I'm talking, of course, about Spirit. Yet Spirit as an element doesn't need to be this big, mysterious thing.
Before you dive into the rest of this section, I first want you to sit back, close your eyes, and think about what even just the word Spirit brings into your mind. Let those feelings, words or images linger for a few minutes and then move on to the rest of this piece. Maybe take some notes about it, because you should incorporate that into your understanding of working with Spirit as an elemental.
Spirit can be thought of in a number of different ways, as I'm sure you realized when you were thinking through it. In terms of witchcraft, you can absolutely think about Spirit as the synthesis of the other four elements. Spirit is what happens when Fire, Water, Air, and Earth come together to move in and through your life. Individually these elements can make incredible things happen in your life, but when pulled together there's almost nothing you can't do. That, in essence, is Spirit.
When I think of Spirit I also think of the spiritual energies and entities that often come into our sacred spaces to work with us. This can be literal spirits or ancestor energy. It can be faeries, or animal allies, or even the spirits within your plant allies. It can be the actual deities you work with should you choose to work with them. This is a very literal interpretation, admittedly, but if we're queering witchcraft, then we need to make it accessible to people who may not have a lot of resources. That often means the literal is the most necessary, and certainly when we're talking about magick I would argue that the use of spiritual entities and energies is among the most important pieces of our work.
Spirit is also the human spirit, especially when we're queering the tarot and looking at marginalized identities. So often the missing piece in our spells is us. It's the magick that comes from ourselves, our hearts, our souls, our bodies. I say that this is especially true for queer and marginalized people because the human spirit is resilient, and that is never more true than when we're looking at people who have been oppressed and forced to the sidelines by society. Resilience is a key magickal ingredient regardless of what we're doing magick for. That comes from Spirit, which comes from us as much as it comes from outside of us. Spirit is the element that brings our work together and takes it to magickal realms while also keeping us full of the energy, confidence, and determination it takes to make our spells come true.
Spirit isn't hard to define, harness, or work with once you know what you're doing, but it is a mutable force. If in thinking about Spirit, none of the words or ideas I wrote work for you, that's okay. Spirit is what you want and need it to be, and that can't come from a single teacher. It needs to come from your ideas and your understanding. Whatever it takes to get you from thinking in vague ideas of what Spirit could be to thinking in incredibly straightforward terms about what Spirit is to you, is the right way to access Spirit and incorporate it into your work.
Because Spirit is so mutable, there aren't necessarily specific correspondences I want to list at this point. Often a spell will call on you to bring something you own, carry with you, or both into a spell and set it with your other tools. That is usually the correspondence I use for Spirit. Occasionally belongings of my loved ones who have passed on, images or idols of the gods I work with, and random string, trinkets, or stones I find, make it into a ritual or onto an altar as a correspondence to Spirit. It's always deeply personal and it changes every time—just as Spirit shifts, changes, and moves within you, around you, and way above you.
Working with the elements is a necessary (and hopefully fun) building block for your magickal practice, and it's where a lot of books start for a reason. One thing I really faltered with in a lot of my early witchcraft study was understanding what to do with my elemental knowledge. This book later gets into specific spells and rituals, group work, and the like, but I don't want you to feel totally lost in the meantime. As you're beginning your witchcraft practice, I strongly recommend building an altar to your craft itself. First find a flat surface that you can clear off, set up, and devote to the tools and symbols of your intended goal for as long as you need it, whether that goal is worship, connection, or something more specific that we'll get to later. To begin working with the elements, including Spirit, before you know much more, start decorating a simple altar with symbols and tools of all five elements. Visit it every day, touch or use your tools, and learn slowly over time through meditation, study, and this practice where you should be going from there.
Another thing to know about using and working with the elements is that for most spells you do, you'll pull either the element you're working with or all five elements off of your altar, set them on a separate spell space, and work with them more actively. I do advise casting a circle even if you choose not to call in the elements every time. This costs no money and only a few moments of your time before you begin a ritual. Once you have your elemental tools around you, imagine a spot on the floor, wall, or wherever you want, of glowing light, black smoke, or anything else that makes you feel calm and safe. Then envision that spot growing into a protective circle around your spell space. At the end of the ritual, you'll imagine that space coming down. The point of this pre-spell practice is to keep your space concentrated so the magick is really strong. It's a protective circle, too. No energy should be allowed in or out of the circle without your permission from then on. You might notice it feels really warm and cozy or cool and calm in the circle. It functions to make your spellwork as comfortable as possible. When we're more comfortable we're able to let our spiritual guards down. I especially recommend this practice for LGBTQQIA2SP+ people, people of color, disabled people, and those who are otherwise marginalized, because to me it so often represents that I'm blocking out a world that has been hurtful and painful and focusing exclusively on my goals, pleasure, and community for the time I'm in this spell. That visualization alone is a powerful spell because it prioritizes those things in your mind and allows you to take the first steps towards liberation.
A final thing I recommend doing with your new knowledge of elements while you're learning your path is spending time outside, on the Earth. Even if you live in a big city without a lot of green space, your feet hitting the cement or your face feeling the breeze is an organic connection to the magick of our world. Magick comes from inside of us. It comes from gods or the Universe if we believe in those things. It also comes from the Earth. Our job as witches is to respect and fall in love with the world we live in once again, and as we're learning to get a handle on the elements, getting outside and really rooting in and experiencing all of those elements at once is a beautiful way to awaken your own witchery.