Q is for Quarters

I have just finished reading the other posts about quarters, and I thought I'd just add my thoughts... A friend and I were discussing this the other week and we both pretty much said the other's was wrong. I realise now, as I did shortly after the discussion, that there is no right or wrong, it is all up to you as your interpretation.

Still, as a traditionalist I struggled with this for a time. All the books, as has been said many times before, say certain things which I just didn't get. Why would I put water in the west, when I am on the east coast of Australia and the Pacific Ocean is right there! Why would I put earth in north as to my west I have the Great Dividing Range and thousands of square kilometres of desert? It just didn't fit. So I thought about it, read some more Southern Hemisphere focused stuff and came up with the following:

North - fire, because of the heat of Northern Australia and the equator being up there. This is also the direction the sun travels across the sky. 

East - water, mostly due to the location of the ocean, there is little more thought than this...

West - earth, again little more thought than the thousands of square kilometres of mountain range and desert... (Sarcasm intended!)

South - air, at first it was placed here due to a process of elimination, but upon further reflection I realise that this, other than east, is where the wind comes from mostly in this part of Australia. The southerlies are beautiful and bring the cool in summer and the chill in winter.  

So there you have it, correspondences according to me! hehe I know that if I moved to Western Australia it would change, well east and west anyway... It may even change if I moved somewhere on the east coast where there was a river to the west and a large mountain to the east, depending on how I felt at the time. The key for me is that it is purely a personal thing and each person has a right to choosing their own correspondences. The hard thing is doing a ritual with people with different views!!!! 

To 'Fire North, or not to 'Fire North'?

There has been some talk around me lately about the directions for the elements while in ritual or any kind of working. I have done a fair bit of research myself about this, and have come to my own conclusions about it.

For me, it depends heavily on what you are surrounded by, either as a country or local area. As I live in Australia, everything is backwards (or truly forwards depending on your perception!!); the Sabbats are all opposite, so why not the elements?

So I (as usual) gave it a lot of thought and this is what I came up with:

Fire - North, because the equator is the hottest part of the world and the Summer sun arcs closer to it during the day.

Earth - West, because to the west of me there is a mountain range, then hundreds of kilometres of desert.

Water - East, because the Pacific Ocean laps at the shores on the east coast of Australia where I live.

Air - South. This one was a little difficult to reconcile. I placed it here initially because of the process of elimination, but then I was talking to a friend about the breezes I get running through the front of my house to the back (very strong, almost like I am sitting in front of a pedestal fan!). These were apparently the southerlies, bringing cold winds up from Antarctica to cool our hot summers!

The penny dropped with the last one really. If I could arrange it this way and the final quarter fits even thought I had not expected it to, then the rest should be right too, right?

The other thing is, if I decided to move to Western Australia the east/west would change, because the position of the water and earth has changed geographically. If I moved to Canada for example, the south/north would change for a similar reason (and possibly the east/west, or all of it, depending on where exactly I lived). My current arrangement feels right to me. I get it. It is meaningful. And if it is meaningful, then my rituals will also be meaningful; I wouldn't want to do something just because someone else said it was right then spend the rest of my ritual freaking out because it feels wrong. That would have a negative effect on the ritual, and no one wants to go to all the trouble of creating a ritual, only to force some aspect of it and ruin it!!!