Sylphs: The Air Elementals, Dancers of Wind and Divine Inspiration
Marie Taglioni in La Sylphide (1832) — the Romantic ballet that crystallized the sylph's image as a luminous, ethereal being of flight, longing, and impossible beauty. They move in the breath of wind through autumn leaves. They ride the currents of inspiration that carry the poet's hand across the page. They spiral in updrafts above mountain peaks where the air grows thin and thought expands beyond its ordinary limits. Sylphs — the air elementals of the Western esoteric tradition — are among the most beautiful and elusive of all the spirit beings catalogued by Renaissance and alchemical thought, invisible companions to every gust of wind, every creative impulse, every moment when the mind rises above the weight of earth. Their story moves through alchemy and Rosicrucianism, appears in one of the finest comic poems in the English language, and reaches its most vivid popular expression in the Romantic ballet. But beneath these cultural forms lies a consistent and coherent...