Abstract
The purpose of the article is to analyze matter, and more specifi cally the elements, which were understood in a similar way in diff erent cultures. The following basic qualities of the elements are revealed: water is the source of all being and vitality, earth is stability and corporality, air is space, as well as the “breathing” of the spirit, fi re is the guiding and purifying principle. Fire, especially in its most refi ned manifestation of light, and also air act as a pair of «upper» celestial, active elements. Earth and water follow the «upper» elements and complement them. «Axis of the world» connects the earth and sky, uniting all the elements. As its manifestations, which set the vertical and center the cosmos, are the world mountain and tree, as well as fi re, such as the «center of the universe», Hestia of the Pythagoreans. Natural numbers such as 2, 3, 4 set the structure and dynamics of the development of nature and man. In mythopoetic perception, the realistic setting of everyday consciousness is inextricably woven into the holistic panpsychist symbolic picture of the world. It is concluded that the archetypal mythopoetic ideas about the elements act as a source of meaning for philosophical knowledge: for the philosophy of art, anthropology and ontology.
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