Elemental

Although Paracelsus uses these foundations and the popular preexisting names of elemental creatures, he is doing so to present new ideas which expand on his own philosophical system.

In his 16th-century work A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders, and on the Other Spirits, Paracelsus identified mythological beings as belonging to one of the four elements.

[2] He wrote the book to "describe the creatures that are outside the cognizance of the light of nature, how they are to be understood, what marvellous works God has created".

His fundamental classification scheme on the first page of Tractatus II of the Book on Nymphs is based on where the elementals live, and he gives the following names: Of the names he used, gnomus, undina, and sylph are all thought to have appeared first in Paracelsus' works, though undina is a fairly obvious Latin derivative from the word unda meaning "wave."

Sylphs are the closest to humans in his conception because they move through air like we do, while in fire they burn, in water they drown, and in earth, they get stuck.

However, he did not give special names for the classes: "In like manner they distribute these into more orders, so as some are fiery, some watery, some aerial, some terrestrial."

Agrippa did however give an extensive list of various mythological beings of this type, although without clarifying which belongs to which elemental class.

A 1670 French satire of occult philosophy, Comte de Gabalis, was prominent in popularizing Paracelsus' theory of elementals.

[12] The Four Heavenly Kings rule over the eastern, southern, western and northern cardinal directions which are inhabited by gandharvas, kumbhandas, nāgas, and yakshas, respectively.

[13] In Jainism, there is a superficially similar concept within its general cosmology, the ekendriya jiva, "one-sensed beings" with bodies (kaya) that are composed of a single element, albeit with a 5-element system (earth, water, air, fire, and plant), but these beings are actual physical objects and phenomena such as rocks, rain, fires and so on which are endowed with souls (jiva).

Even by the 17th century, elemental spirits after the Paracelsian concept appeared in works by John Dryden and in the Comte de Gabalis.

[16] Alexander Pope cited Comte de Gabalis as his source for elemental lore in his 1712 poem The Rape of the Lock.

Another example is the DC Comics superhero team The Elementals, composed of the characters Gnome, Sylph, Salamander, and Undine.