It’s 12:05am. Monday. George and K have already gone to bed. The lights are still on, so I suspect they’re going through their own night time rituals. I’m sitting here, feeling a bit lonely, a bit depressed, and quite a bit horny. I know that this is not news, but it is definitely on my mind. I’ve got to make a move towards some sexy-time soon. I’ve begun to whine about it, and I hate whining. I really hate whining.

But on to more interesting things. I’ve been saying I was going to write about Fire Principle and Water Principle for a few days now, and here I am, finally with nothing else more pressing on my mind, so lets go for it.

I started thinking about this because Herbis Orbis posted about the upcoming Summer Solstice. Litha, Midsummer, is the celebration of the longest day of the year. It is the height of the suns power. In the Brotherhood we have Apotheosis in early july, to celebrate the power of the phoenix at the height of his ascent, the culmination of her transformative power.

But Herbis Orbis brought up a good point. The longest day is also the shortest night. It is the day/night when the power of the sun, the Fire Principle, pierces the veil (indeed, midsummer is often considered the time when the veil of the unknown, of the Faerie, is opened wide and the mysteries of the hidden realms revealed and exposed to the noumenal world) of the Water Principle, creating the spark of life that nourishes that darkness, gives us a nugget of spirit to seek out in the dark times, and prepares for the rebirth of the sun at midwinter.

I tend to look at these principles from a somewhat hermetic standpoint, although my own slant on it is definitely not cannonical bardon. Live is the intersection between fire and water. The expansive force is always trapped in the contractive force. If we look at the very universe we exist in, it is largely a void of nothingness, an empty vacuum that is cold. Ironically, though this vacuum is cold, and is often thought to rip things apart (due to the decompression matter experiences when exposed to a vacuum), it is actually the most powerful example of contractive force there is. For in a vacuum the power of gravity is best observed. Two masses are drawn inexplicably to each other with no explanation. The power of contractive force is this pull. What we understand as a function of matter, that it has an inexorable force which attracts it to other matter, might be from another perspective, a function of the void in which that matter exists, contracting, forcing that existence into more potent, more solid, more dense forms.

Another way of looking at it, perhaps the best way, is to observe that Water principle, contractive force, is at it’s base the principle of stillness. If contractive force ruled, there would ultimately be no motion. In too large a quantity it is stagnation and death. It is entropy.

The Fire principle, Expansive force, is the chaotic movement of choice, of life. It is the energy that is bound up in material existence. It is, at it’s base principle, that which prevents stagnation. It is choice.

I visualize these principles interacting as a clockwise spinning mass of blue/water. This energy is ever tightening upon itself, struggling to create a singularity where there is no motion, to contract until it can contract no more. The Fire principle, is red or orange, and it is contained inside the contracting water. It spins counter-clockwise, expanding against the contractive force of water.

Where these forces meet, at the ring of bubbling force, of integration that I see as purple, although bardon would say yellow, is the stuff of life. It is the hard won balance between stillness and chaos. It is the truth that life is not all about choices as we would sometimes prefer to believe, but is about choices balanced by understanding, by compassion.

This is perhaps why so many people who are strong in their choices seem to be unbalanced and chaotic. If you are overly ruled by the fire principle you may often make choices based upon your own right to make a choice, and doing so, like the fire principle, you act only to sustain chaos, to create more motion in the universe. If you are making a choice, choosing to act merely to exercise your ability to act, then you are exciting chaos. This is not my way, but I do not feel it is a wrong way. It is simply a way of existing.

Similarly, there are many people in the world who seek to abdicate as much of their ability to choose as they can. Their mantra is ‘go with the flow,’ and in so doing they create power for the contractive force, balancing and countering disturbances made by the expansive force of those making choices.

And the middle path, to exercise our right to choose in a way that emphasizes the purple ring, making a larger area of interaction between expansion and contraction. I work to exist here, although it is my instinct to go with the flow. I must make a constant effort to choose, to act, and to do so in a compassionate, aware, and vital way that will empower myself and those around me.

This is all important, and is all on my mind now, because Summer Solstice is one of the times when we can see an interesting part of the dance between contractive and expansive forces. As Herbis Orbis notes, this is the time when the light of the sun pierces to the very heart of darkness, and empowers it for the coming season. In my model as described above, it is more accurate to see that the fire principle spikes, and sears through the contractive force of water, bleeding it’s chaotic expansive force into the void elsewhere, thus ensuring that the cycle continues. The existence of chaos outside the localized contractive bubble begins the creation of a new bubble, a new set of balances, a new universe, a new fountain of life.

The void that is space, that is the essence of contractive force, that is the murky waters of Netzach, engulfs and swallows the bright light of the escaping sun, surrounding it, and contracting against it. For a time that contraction grows ever stronger and it seems inevitable that the fire of chaos will be extinguished. But eventually, at midwinter, the pressure reaches a critical point, and the chaotic force, which has now been driven down to a point smaller than we can understand (imagine the big bang theory and the beginning of the universe as we know it here) explodes outwards, pushing the contractive force back and creating an enormous sphere of purple, with a tiny dot of orange in the middle, and a small coating of blue on the outside.

And we find ourself at midsummer again, with the power of the sun about to burst out into the void to create new universes, expending itself and allowing the contractive force of water principle draw down upon it again.

And that, in theory, is fire principle and water principle. Share the gift!