Sylph

[1] A significant number of subsequent literary and occult works have been inspired by Paracelsus's concept: Robert Alfred Vaughan noted that "the wild but poetical fantasies" of Paracelsus had probably exercised a larger influence over his age and the subsequent one than is generally supposed, particularly on the Rosicrucians, but that through the 18th century they had become reduced to "machinery for the playwright" and "opera figurantes with wings of gauze and spangles".

Jacob Grimm uses this phrase as a gloss for the Anglo-Saxon wudu-mær (roughly equivalent to "woodmare"), which he also takes as a metaphorical name for an echo.

[5] Jan Baptist van Helmont, a near contemporary of Paracelsus and coiner of the word "gas", uses sylvestris in the sense of "wild" to describe gaseous emissions, which may be connected to the Paracelsian usage.

[6] Thorpe's Northern Mythology connects the adjective sylvestres and the related silvaticas to European wild man legends.

[7] A related idea is that "sylph" is from a hyper-urbane respelling of a Latin neologism silves, but in either case this connection to the Latin root silva ("forest") is supported by Paracelsus' use of sylphes as a synonym for schrötlein, a German word for a tree spirit or especially an earth spirit in his Liber de Sanguine ultra Mortem.

Because of this, 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.

The poem is a parody of Paracelsian ideas, inasmuch as Pope imitates the pseudo-science of alchemy to explain the seriousness with which vain women approach the dressing room.

[17] In Fernando Pessoa's "Book of Disquiet", (entry 214 - New Directions, 2017) he writes (translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jill Costa): "And as with books so with everything else...Given that anything can be dreamed to serve as a real interruption to the silent flow of my days, I raise eyes of weary protest to the sylph who is mine alone, to the poor girl who, had she only learned to sing, could perhaps have been a siren".

Fantasy authors will sometimes employ sylphs in their fiction, for example creating giant artistic clouds in the skies with airy wings.