Sun Sign, Moon Sign: Discover the personality secrets of the 144 sun-moon combinations. Charles Harvey

       Chapter Three ELEMENTARY, DEAR READERS

       Walk groundly, talk profoundly, drink roundly, sleep soundly.

      WILLIAM HAZLITT

      The zodiac divides people into 12 different types. Underlying the signs, however, is an even more basic division into what the ancients called the four elements: Fire, Earth, Air and Water. These were seen as the basic building blocks of all life. In this chapter, we will look at this four-fold division in detail.

      PEOPLE AS ‘TYPES’

      The 19th-century English critic William Hazlitt may not have known much about astrology, but his off-the-cuff summing-up rhyme of how a person should behave (quoted above) actually touches closely upon the four element types and the thing they each tend to do best. But before we look at these four types and why they are good at certain things, it is helpful first to think about categories and why we categorize people at all.

      People are different, and yet the same. Sameness and difference are what make the world go round. The sameness and difference about human beings has been argued about since the dawn of human life on Earth, but the differences are in fact what attract us to one another and bind us together in the tension of creative conflict. We say tension because if we can be attracted, we can also be repelled, but we are still bound by that repulsion – the repulsion of difference – and remain in some kind of dynamic relationship because of it.

      Something which is very different from us tends to fascinate us, and often we are compulsively attracted to it in order to develop and nurture something which is deficient in ourselves. An example, and a very common occurrence: the well-organized, logical ‘thinking’ type of man is often found in relationship with the romantic, somewhat dreamy and chaotic, emotional woman. Both irritate and yet fascinate each other. Communication is often difficult; each thinks the other quite odd at times; and their own particular realities are so different. They each develop typical defences which become more pronounced if they cannot recognize their mutual dependence on each other’s strengths. They may become accustomed to a habitual sort of tension and conflict and yet they need each other. They live in different universes but each affords the other more than a glimpse into another universe that enriches and expands their own. If they want more than a superficial understanding of the differences between them, they would be well advised to look into their own astrological strengths and weaknesses – and differences.

      So categorizing difference is just a natural way of trying to make sense of what we experience in life in all kinds of ways. People are different, need and want different things, see and value different things, and understanding just how ‘we’ are different from ‘them’ makes us feel better about ourselves. It gives us a starting point, a handle with which to negotiate with the ‘unknown’. Categorizing is also about defining, and defining is about affirming and respecting uniqueness.

      Harking back to Hazlitt’s rhyme, an astrologer can see the four element types poetically evoked by this ditty. The earthy individual tends to ‘walk groundly’ and seems rooted in the world like a 200-year-old oak. In fact, we rely on him to be that way: solid, immovable, absolutely dependable. The airy individual can usually ‘talk profoundly’, and we envy that gift of the gab and dexterity with ideas and people which make the air type the socializer par excellence. When we say the fiery individual ‘drinks roundly’, we are alluding to the intensely dramatic joie de vivre of this type which fuels his childlike faith in life, his romantic visions and his celebratory, dare-devil approach to most endeavours. And what do we mean by asserting that the watery individual ‘sleeps soundly’? A bit of poetic licence perhaps, but nevertheless, in human terms, water rules the realm of feelings and the instinctual, unconscious process of making evaluations. Water seeks union, safety and relatedness, and responds irrationally, always from the sleeping depths, from the heart, and from a need to safeguard his or her precious emotional possessions.

      No, William Hazlitt may not have known much about astrology, but as a good Sun-Aries he must have sown a few wild oats and learned a thing or two. It is said of Hazlitt that he ‘was possessed of a peculiar temper, which led to his quarrelling with most of his friends’. Maybe if they had known that he was a fiery Sun in Aries, for whom being assertive and argumentative is as natural as birds taking to flight, they would have chuckled and taken no offence. Indeed, understanding what makes others tick can help us get beyond stereotyping, which tends to make us dismiss people before we have a clue about where they are coming from – and what they might have to offer.

      THE FOUR ELEMENTS

      The four element types are of special interest to astrologers and psychologists. Ever since the Greek philosopher Empedocles offered his thoughts on the subject in the 5th century BC, there has been the idea that all things in the Universe are composed of a mixture of these four elements: Fire, Earth, Air, and Water. An ancient Eastern myth describes the Great Mother Kali as apportioning the elements to create life, with water giving blood, earth forming the physical body, air providing breath, and fire producing vital heat.

      The elements can be seen to represent four different types of energy, four distinct states of consciousness or approaches to the world. They have their counterpart in the four states of matter identified by modern physics: plasma (Fire), solids (Earth), gas (Air) and liquid (Water). Equally, the elements can be seen to correlate with the Great Swiss psychologist Carl Jung’s four main psychological types: Intuition (Fire), Sensation (Earth), Thinking (Air) and Feeling (Water). These correspond to the medieval personality classifications of choleric, melancholic, sanguine, and phlegmatic. Early on, the Greeks allocated these elements in an orderly sequence around the zodiac, starting with Fire for Aries and repeating the sequence Fire, Earth, Air, Water, three times, as shown overleaf.

      As you can see, three signs are allocated to each of the elements. The fire signs are Aries, Leo and Sagittarius; to Earth belong Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn; Air governs Gemini, Libra and Aquarius; and the Water signs are Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces. You can begin to understand the dominant characteristics of each element type by thinking of the imagery each element evokes.