Ritual Quarters

Directions

Wiccan Quarter calls are based on a four part directional system. But the four directions are a subset of the seven directions. Judith Pintar in her book "A Voice from the Earth" uses a seven direction system with approximately these associations:

East	South	West	North	Below	Above	Within
Vision	Incarnation	Transformation	Transcendence	Gaia	All That Is	Stillness
Motivation	Actions	Lessons	Potential	Internal	External	Synthesis
intellect	will	emotion	strength	support	sky	spirit
Air	Fire	Water	Earth	The Earth	Great Spirit	Here And Now
yellow	red	blue	green	black	white	purple

The descriptions in bold are her words. Her correspondences associate the Earth with internal events. An attitude that is understandable if the Earth is speaking.

It is also understandable if you think of the individual as the center of their own world. The world and the self become interchangeable.

The Four

The Quarters are sometimes called the Elements. Some people feel they are being rational to point out that there are not just four elements there are over ninety (with more being made every year) and The Four are not among them on the periodic table of elements.

The word element is commonly used to mean a small part of a larger whole as in "Elements of style". When Paracelsus was trying to find the smallest parts that the physical world was made of he observed that everything he encountered was either hard like a rock, fluid like water, gaseous like air or was on fire which is none of the above. He called these the four Elements and he had a point, matter has four states: Solid, Fluid, Gaseous and Energy. Paracelsus did not limit his definition of fire to open flames he extended it to include any heat, from friction to the heat of a warm blooded animal. What he classified as Fire fits well under the modern name of Energy.

Einstein discovered that Energy is the fourth state of matter when he proved that E=mc2. (Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.) The law of the conservation of matter and energy states that in a closed system matter can become energy and energy can become matter but neither can be destroyed.

But what about the periodic table of elements?

Long after Paracelsus rational people continued to try to divide the world into smaller and smaller parts. At one point the parts they found were atoms. At the time they thought of atoms as little solid balls and they thought that they had found the smallest elements of matter. Atom means indivisible. But the atom is divisible it isn't solid and it is made up of even smaller parts called electrons, protons, and neutrons. And even those tiny parts are made up of even smaller "elements".

But even so, not everything in the universe is made of atoms. The universe is full of subatomic particles and energy. The purpose of all this research was to find out what the universe is made out of. The periodic table of elements is still only a type of answer not the "one true answer" to that question. Now the scientists trying to answer that question are quantum physicists. And the answers they are getting are more metaphysical every day.

So although The Four Elements did not turn out to be the elementary particles of matter they are still a valid way to cut reality into four pieces. Everything is either solid, liquid, gaseous or energy regardless of what it is made of.

Each of the quarters have specific characteristics:

Direction:	East	South	West	North
Element:	Air	Fire	Water	Earth
Color:	Yellow	Red	Blue	Green
Field:	Intellect	Will	Emotion	Strength
Manifestation:	Knowledge	Energy	Passion	Endurance
Body aspect:	Breath	Heat	Blood	Flesh
Use Aspect:	Scent	Sun	Rain	Soil
Material State	Gaseous	Energy	Fluid	Solid
World Aspect:	Wind	Earth's Core	Ocean	Rock
Tool:	Wand	Athame	Chalice	Pentacle
Symbol:	Incense	Candle	Bowl of Water	Caldron of Salt
Time of Day:	Dawn	Noon	Dusk	Midnight
Season:	Spring	Summer	Fall	Winter
Sabbat:	Eostar	Litha	Mabon	Yule
Time Of Life:	Childhood	Youth	Maturity	Old Age
Elemental:	Sprite	Imp	Undine	Gnomes
Paracelsusian:	Sylphs	Salamanders	Dryads	Elves
Fair folk:	Fairies, Pixie	Goblins	Nereids	Brownie, Kobold
Other:	Aerial		Mermaids, Selkie, nymph, nixie, Kelpie, Naiad, Limniad	dwarf, faun, Satyr
Animals:	Eagle, dove, wren, raven, owl, cockerel	Dogs, Wolf, Coyote, Lion, cats, fox	Dolphins, Whales, frog, butterfly, snake, salmon	Bear, deer, Elk, Buffalo, turtle, bull, boar