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ELEMENTS AND SEASONS

1. In relation to the Elements it could be said that summer corresponds to fire, winter to water, spring to vegetation (earth), and autumn to air, since it is generally the case that summer is the season of the sun par excellence, winter the season of rain and/or snow, spring the season of vegetative renewal, and autumn the season of wind.

2. Thus the seasons would seem to be divisible between the primary elements of fire and water, corresponding to summer and winter, and the secondary elements of vegetation and air, corresponding to spring and autumn.

3. Therefore summer and winter, being primary, would be the female seasons, as it were, of the year, with autumn and spring their male - and hence secondary - counterparts, since in the division of the genders females are indubitably primary and males secondary.

4. Thus the fieriness and wateriness of females, as of summer and winter, contrast with the vegetativeness (earthiness) and airiness of males, as of spring and autumn.

5. Taking the noumenal/phenomenal distinction between time and space on the one hand and volume and mass on the other - the former effectively upper class and the latter lower class - it transpires that summer and autumn correspond, in their fieriness and airiness, to the noumenal realm of time and space, while winter and spring correspond, in their wateriness and vegetativeness, to the phenomenal realm, 'down below', of volume and mass.

6. Thus summer and autumn stand above winter and spring as fire and air above water and vegetation or, in religious terms, as hell and heaven above purgatory and the earth, devils and gods above women and men.

7. Summer is not only heat but also light, whereas autumn signifies a diminution of this light towards the darkness, as it were, of winter, after which things open out towards the light again with the coming of spring.

8. Thus there is more light with summer than spring, and more darkness with winter than autumn, since the male seasons of spring and autumn are transitional, in their secondary natures, between the season of light par excellence and the season of darkness par excellence, viz. summer and winter.

9. In this distinction, admittedly somewhat pagan, between the light and the dark, which comes first - light or darkness? A straightforward answer would suggest the darkness, and in seasonal terms it is certainly the case that winter is the bedrock from which light eventually emerges in the form of spring, before this in turn is upstaged by the light of summer, prior to the ensuing of autumn and a gradual sinking towards the darkness again.

10. Hence winter - spring - summer - autumn, or darkness - half-light - light - half-darkness, as the seasons proceed from darkness to light and return to the darkness again.

11. If spring is an opening out from winter to summer, then autumn, conversely, is a closing down from summer to winter, which means that the male seasons both offer an escape from darkness and a return to it, once the light has run its summery course.

12. In elemental terms, however, it is arguably the case that fire precedes water as air succeeds vegetation, and that far from the darkness preceding the light it is the light of fire which precedes the darkness of water (for prior to light there is simply nothingness, not darkness) and the light or, rather, lightness of air which - in effectively Christian terms - succeeds the heaviness of earth (vegetation).

13. Can we therefore not speak of the light of summer preceding the darkness of winter, but of the lightness of autumn succeeding the heaviness of spring? No, we can't; for it is manifestly the case that summer precedes autumn, as light ... lightness, and winter precedes spring, as dark ... heaviness.

14. The question is then: Does summer and autumn precede winter and spring, or vice versa, and the answer to that would seem, contrary to the Elements, to be: that winter and spring precede summer and autumn, like purgatory and the earth preceding hell and heaven, or women and men preceding devils and gods.