Fire, Water, Air, Stars: The Old "Gods" That Still Enslave

In the previous post I wrote about elemental beings, the spirits of fire, water, air, and earth who can appear in human form. Today I want to continue that exploration by looking at how Paracelsus, the Renaissance physician and mystic, described these beings in his writings.

Paracelsus took the old stories of nymphs, sylphs, pygmies, and salamanders seriously. For him, they were not just folklore but real creatures of God, hidden inhabitants of the natural world. Each belonged to one of the four elements: undines in the waters, sylphs in the air, pygmies in the earth, and salamanders (Jinn) in fire. What is striking is how he described them as looking human, living in communities, building homes, even having children. They were intelligent and social, closer to humanity than to animals. And yet, he said, they lacked the immortal soul. They were “queer and marvellous creatures,” humanlike in appearance and behavior, but not descended from Adam, and therefore outside the covenant of salvation.

Because of this, Paracelsus said they longed for something they did not possess. He believed that undines, especially, desired union with humans for this reason.

He even recounted legends to illustrate the reality of these marriages. One of the best known is the story of von Staufenberg, a nobleman who had married a nymph but later abandoned her. On the day of his wedding to another woman, the nymph struck him down. Paracelsus defends her actions by noting that she had no legal rights in the human world yet had been wronged. For him this was not simply a tragic tale but evidence that such unions were real and meaningful, even if misunderstood by society.

The marriage union is never one-sided. If the elemental gains a soul, the human is offered something in return; power, wealth, hidden knowledge, vitality, or the lure of unearthly beauty and pleasure. Folklore is full of men who took these bargains and reaped wealth, protection, or forbidden delights. Yet every story carries the same shadow: the gift comes at the cost of bondage. What seems like enrichment is actually an entanglement, a counterfeit covenant where the soul trades its birthright for temporary gain.

Mark 8:36

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

Paracelsus also described where the elementals lived. The undines in brooks, rivers, and lakes, the sylphs in the airy spaces near humans, the pygmies in the mountains and hidden places of the earth, the salamanders in fiery realms. They appeared rarely to men, usually in extraordinary circumstances, and when they did, it was often as a sign or a warning. They guarded treasures of nature; ores, waters, fire; and their very existence testified to the mystery of God’s power, that He could have created beings almost like us, yet lacking the one thing that defines us: the immortal soul.

At the same time, Paracelsus was careful to make a distinction. In their natural state, elementals were neutral beings of nature, incomplete but not wicked. However, when corrupted or overtaken by darker forces, they became something else entirely. A nymph or sylph “possessed by the devil,” as he put it, was no longer truly an elemental but had become a demon. In this way Paracelsus separated the natural order of hidden creatures from the malevolent spirits that seek to deceive and destroy.

For Paracelsus, the lesson was clear. These beings were not demons, but they were also not fully human. They occupied a liminal place, reminding us of the nearness of unseen worlds and of the fragile line that separates mankind from other intelligences. Their desire for souls was both a reflection of their incompleteness and a revelation of the strange ways in which creation itself longs for redemption.

The Bible has its own language for what later writers called “elemental spirits.” In the New Testament the Greek phrase stoicheia tou kosmou appears repeatedly, usually in Paul’s letters. Paul warns the early believers that before Christ they were “in bondage under the elemental things of the world” (Galatians 4:3). He asks how, after coming to know God, they could turn back again to “the weak and worthless elemental spirits” and desire to be enslaved all over again (Galatians 4:9). In Colossians he cautions against being taken captive through “philosophy and empty deception” according to the traditions of men and the elemental principles of the world rather than Christ (Colossians 2:8). Then he adds that those who have died with Christ have died to the elemental spirits, so why should they submit themselves again to worldly decrees (Colossians 2:20).

The word stoicheia could mean the elements of nature; fire, water, earth, air; but it also carried the sense of cosmic rulers, astral powers, and spiritual intermediaries. Early Christian commentators like Origen and Chrysostom understood these verses as referring to demonic beings tied to stars and planets, powers that tyrannized over humanity until Christ set us free.

The Old Testament background is equally clear. Israel was warned not to lift up their eyes to heaven and worship the sun, moon, stars, or “the host of heaven” (Deuteronomy 4:19). Jeremiah speaks of those who loved and served the host of heaven, bowing to the elemental lights instead of the Creator (Jeremiah 8:2). The Wisdom of Solomon, part of the Jewish apocrypha, says that those who did not know God mistook fire, wind, swift air, turbulent water, and the stars for the gods that ruled the world. The tendency to worship the elements and the powers behind them is one of the oldest human errors, and the prophets continually condemned it.

The Bible does not stop at warning against the stoicheia. It also describes the darker reality of soul-hunting, images of predation that parallel stories of spirits feeding on human vitality. In Ezekiel 13 the prophet rebukes the women who “hunt the souls of my people to make them fly.” They are accused of using charms (talismans) and rituals to trap souls. God declares he will tear the souls from their arms and set his people free. The Psalms echo this imagery, crying out for deliverance from those who seek to tear the soul like a lion, from deadly enemies who compass the righteous about (Psalms 7 and 17). Proverbs and Micah portray the wicked as those who swallow the innocent alive, who devour flesh and flay the skin of God’s people, a shocking picture of spiritual consumption.

The New Testament sharpens the focus. Jesus himself says the thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy, but he has come that his people may have life abundantly (John 10:10). Peter warns that the devil prowls like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8). Paul speaks of seducing spirits and doctrines of demons leading many astray in the last days (1 Timothy 4:1). He describes Satan’s working with power, signs, and lying wonders to deceive those who refuse the truth (2 Thessalonians 2). The apostles knew that behind false teachers and false prophets were wolves in disguise, drawing away disciples and consuming the flock.

Yet alongside these warnings is the assurance of preservation. Jesus promises that of all the Father has given him he will lose none, but will raise them up at the last day (John 6:39–40). He is able to save to the uttermost all who come to God through him, for he ever lives to make intercession (Hebrews 7:25). Paul prays that the God of peace will sanctify us wholly, preserving spirit, soul, and body blameless until the coming of the Lord (1 Thessalonians 5:23).

Taken together, these passages show that the Bible does not treat elemental spirits as harmless. They enslave, they deceive, and in prophetic language they “hunt” souls. The message is consistent: apart from Christ, humanity is vulnerable to these powers.

After looking at Paracelsus and then the warnings of Scripture, it is worth remembering that the ancient philosophers also spoke of the elements and the spirits bound up with them. Plato, in the Timaeus, described fire, air, water, and earth as the very building blocks of the cosmos, animated by a world-soul. The Stoics later believed that the elements were pervaded by pneuma, a divine breath or fiery spirit that held all things together. They did not sacrifice to elementals the way common people sacrificed to the gods of sun, moon, wind, or river, but they still treated the elements as divine principles. The line between reverence and worship was/is always thin, and in popular religion the elements were openly adored.

Even Socrates, the “father of philosophy,” admitted he was not always speaking from himself. He claimed to be guided by a daimon, a spirit-voice that would warn or restrain him. His most famous words were delivered under that influence. Later writers saw in this confession proof that even the wisest of men could be vessels for unseen powers, speaking not from their own mind but from a spirit that possessed or overshadowed them.

Colossians 2:8

"See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, and not according to Christ."

The Bible speaks with urgency about the reality of deception, predation, and the attempt of dark powers to lay hold of human souls. Again and again the language is vivid: hunting, ensnaring, stealing, destroying. These are not just poetic images but spiritual truths meant to alert us to the danger of being led astray and the greater promise of safety in Christ.

Ezekiel gives perhaps the clearest picture of what might be called “soul stealing.” He condemns the women who “sew magic charms on all their wrists and make veils of various lengths… to entrap souls” (Ezekiel 13:18–20). The prophet speaks of souls being caught like birds, bound by deception, manipulated for profit.

The New Testament writers expand on this theme. Paul tells Timothy that “in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons” (1 Timothy 4:1). Here the danger is not only from outside sorcery but also from within the community: seductive teachings, doctrines of demons, pulling people off the narrow way. Paul also warned the elders at Ephesus that “fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock,” and that even from within the church men would rise up “speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:29–30). The imagery is of predators moving in, devouring, luring souls away from safety.

Peter takes the same imagery further, likening Satan to a roaring lion prowling for prey: “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). It is not subtle. The adversary’s goal is consumption and destruction, not mere distraction.

And yet over against all this imagery of theft, deception, and devouring, the words of Jesus ring with assurance. “And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day” (John 6:39–40).

The Bible never denies the reality of dark forces that ensnare and seek to devour. But its message is consistent: deception and destruction belong to the enemy, while freedom and preservation belong to Christ. Those who entrust their souls to Him are guarded by a power greater than any thief or devourer.

Paracelsus wrote about the elemental beings with both wonder and caution. In the Sigerist translation of A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders, he says:

“This creature, however, is both, but has no soul, and yet is not identical with a spirit. For, the spirit does not die, but this creature dies. And so it is not like man, it has not the soul; it is a beast, yet higher than a beast.”

That phrase, “a beast, yet higher than a beast,” sums up their place in his thought. They die like beasts, they lack the immortal soul, and yet they are closer to humanity than to any other creature. They can look like men and women, live in communities, and even long for human marriage as a bridge to obtain what they lack.

In this way he placed them in a borderland of creation. Man is unique in having an immortal soul, spirits are eternal by their nature, but elementals are neither. They reveal something hidden and mysterious in the order of the world: beings that mirror us so closely, and yet remain outside the covenant of Adam.

Revelation 13:18

“Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six"

(The beast appears like a man but has no soul!)

The Bible speaks often and forcefully against the worship of the created world. One of the clearest voices comes from the Wisdom of Solomon, which says that men who were ignorant of God “thought either fire or wind or swift air, or the circle of the stars, or turbulent water, or the luminaries of heaven were the gods that rule the world” (Wisdom 13:1–2). In other words, they mistook the elements for divinity itself.

The temptation was strong, for these lights and powers seemed to govern human fate, providing warmth, rain, and life. Yet the prophets constantly reminded the people that these things were created, not creators.

To worship the elements is to confuse the Creator with His creation. The fire, the wind, the stars, the water; all testify to the majesty of God, but none of them are God. When Scripture calls the Lord a “consuming fire,” it is metaphor, pointing to His holiness and His essence. When pagans bowed down to the flame itself, they mistook the sign for the reality. They worshiped a creaturely thing rather than the living God who made it.

This is why idolatry of the elements is so consistently condemned. It replaces the source with the reflection, the maker with what is made. It is not only false worship but a turning of the soul away from the one true God toward forces that cannot save. To worship the elements is to exchange the glory of the Creator for the shadows of creation, a trade that always leads to bondage rather than freedom.

Nowhere is this clearer than in ancient Rome, where fire, water, air, and the stars were treated not as created things but as divine beings.

The Romans enshrined fire itself in the cult of Vesta. Her temple in the Forum held the eternal flame, tended day and night by the Vestal Virgins. That fire was not just symbolic; it was literally worshiped as a goddess, the living heart of Rome. If the flame went out, it was considered a national disaster. Sacrifices, festivals, and statues all centered on the sacred fire. What Scripture calls a created thing, Rome adored as divine.

Water, too, was filled with spirits. Every river had its god, every spring its nymph. The Tiber River was personified as a reclining bearded figure, carved on coins and in marble. Shrines were built at fountains and wells, where offerings were thrown for healing, fertility, and safe travel. Roman religion treated flowing water as inhabited by beings who could bless or curse.

The air and winds were no less honored. The Romans inherited from the Greeks the cult of the Anemoi, the four winds. These were pictured as winged spirits, their images carved into the Tower of the Winds in Athens and copied in Roman art. Farmers, sailors, and travelers prayed to them for safe passage. The winds were treated not just as weather but as personalities with power over human lives.

And above all stood the host of heaven. The sun was worshiped as Sol Invictus, the “unconquered sun,” whose cult became official under emperors like Aurelian. The moon was venerated as Luna, often depicted driving a chariot through the sky. The planets, each identified with a god, were believed to control fate through astrology. Rome’s temples, mosaics, and altars honored the heavens as living forces that ruled the world.

This was elemental worship in its clearest form. Fire, water, air, and stars were confused with the divine, adored in stone and ritual, served as if they were the source of life. Exactly the danger warned against in Wisdom, Deuteronomy, and the prophets; the worship of creation instead of the Creator.

Strangely, we meet their silhouettes again in a place that "claims" to renounce them: a sunburst monstrance with a “luna” at its heart, lifted high, placed on an altar, and bowed before. The question presses in: how can this be called glorifying Christ when it so precisely mirrors the very forms Scripture forbids; bowing before the host of heaven (Deuteronomy 4:19) and honoring what is “made with hands” (Acts 17:24–25; 7:48)? Christ told us how the Father is to be worshiped: in spirit and in truth (John 4:23–24), not by the choreography of celestial symbols. Paul adds that we must not be taken captive by traditions of men and the elemental principles of the world (Colossians 2:8), nor provoke God by flirting with idolatry (1 Corinthians 10:14–22).

The defense, of course, is that no one is worshiping the sun or moon; the rays and the “luna” are merely decoration, and the adoration is directed to Christ (that old chestnut again!) But biblical logic cuts deeper than intentions. First, God repeatedly forbids not only false objects of worship but also the forms themselves. In the second commandment He says plainly: “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or on the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them” (Exodus 20:4–5). The prohibition begins at the level of manufacture, not only at the act of worship. Why? Because God knows that what hands fashion, hearts will soon revere. Rome altered this commandment in its catechisms to soften the force of “do not make,” and in doing so it opened the door to precisely the kind of religious art that trains men and women to kneel before idols, which demons can inhabit.

The "Mother" Church merges that prohibition into the first commandment, which it states simply as:“I am the Lord your God. You shall not have strange gods before me.”

The explicit “do not make graven images” part is not listed separately as a commandment. Instead, Catholic (not Christian) teaching interprets it as already included in the broader ban on idolatry. But here lies the irony. The very commandment that warns against making images is the one that has been blurred, minimized, and reshaped. And this is done despite the fact that God’s Word explicitly warns, “You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take from it” (Deuteronomy 4:2). Paul himself charged the Galatians not to turn to “another gospel” (Galatians 1:6–9). Jude urges believers to “contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).

So how can a church claim fidelity to Christ while altering the very structure of His law? How can it defend bowing before crafted images when Scripture again and again commands, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21)? The irony is doubled: not only is the second commandment recast, but the apostolic warnings against tampering with the faith are set aside in the same breath. The prohibition was never just against foreign gods, but against the making of likenesses themselves; the very practice that later became central to Catholic devotion.

What God inscribed with His own finger was meant to stand unchanged (Exodus 31:18). To change it is not only to ignore His command, but to contradict the very faith once delivered, replacing it with traditions of men.

Second, Scripture does not ask, “What do you mean by this image?” so much as, “What does this image do to hearts?” Does it teach believers to walk by faith and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7), or does it train them to rely on what can be displayed, lifted high, and bowed before? Does it direct their trust toward the living Christ seated at the right hand of God, or toward a wafer locked in a glass circle called the “moon,” radiating from a golden “sun”?. In practice, it rehearses the very confusion the prophets condemned; adoring the host of heaven, exchanging the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of created things (Romans 1:23–25).

Third, history itself testifies to the danger. The bronze serpent was originally God’s own instrument of healing in the wilderness, yet when Israel began to burn incense to it, Hezekiah did not excuse it as “decoration” or “symbolism.” He smashed it to pieces and called it Nehushtan; just a piece of brass (2 Kings 18:4). If even a God-given symbol became a snare once people began to bow before it, how much more dangerous is a sun–moon apparatus never commanded by Christ or His apostles?

Finally, the New Testament insists that the glory of worship is Christ crucified and risen, proclaimed by word and Spirit, not enthroned in planetary imagery.

So the issue is not whether worshipers intend to adore Christ; it is whether the form itself obeys His voice and guards His glory. God did not say, “Make them, but don’t worship them.” He said, “Do not make them.” To kneel before a sunburst crowned with a luna is to borrow the grammar of the heavens and call it Christian. But the Word of God calls it something else: idolatry, a counterfeit covenant, a confusion of Creator with creation.

The danger of idolatry is not a side issue. It is a matter of eternal destiny. Scripture does not soften the language: “Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers … will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9–10). Paul warns again, “Everyone who is covetous, that is, an idolater, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God” (Ephesians 5:5). To the Galatians he writes with urgency that idolatry is among the works of the flesh, and those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God (Galatians 5:19–21). And John, in his vision, is even more direct: “But … idolaters … their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death” (Revelation 21:8). “Outside are … idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood” (Revelation 22:15).

The Word of God leaves no room for reinterpretation. Idolatry in any form; whether bowing to carved images, venerating celestial symbols, or excusing rituals that borrow the grammar of the host of heaven; is spiritual treason. However ornate, however piously explained, it remains rebellion against the command written by God’s own finger: “You shall not make for yourself a carved image … you shall not bow down to them or serve them.”

And whose to say that behind such worship the elemental spirits themselves are not hunting for souls? Scripture speaks of false prophets who “hunt the souls of my people to make them fly” (Ezekiel 13:18–20). Paul warns of stoicheia tou kosmou, the elemental powers of the world that enslave. If elementals long for what they lack; the human soul; what better way than to draw men and women into covenants of adoration, rituals of bowing, exchanges of worship? What appears as piety may in fact be a snare, where the worshiper gives away the very soul he thinks he is saving.

And Peter himself gives the final warning: “Through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you” (2 Peter 2:3). In other words, false teachers and false prophets will turn souls into their trade; buying, selling, and consuming lives for their own gain