Fire
Also called the upward triangle
Empedocles’ roots; Aristotle’s physics; alchemy’s shorthand
Alchemy symbolsFire meaning
The alchemical sign for fire is an upward triangle. It names heat, the choleric, and the operation of burning. It is not the Greek letter delta, which is a different triangle with a different history.
Heat that rises, and the temper called choleric.
The name. An upward triangle. Hot and dry.
Where it comes from
Empedocles named four roots. Aristotle gave them qualities and a place under the moon. Fire is hot and dry. In humoral medicine it pairs with yellow bile and the choleric temper, with summer, with the will as later occultism would say it. East Asian five-phase theory — wood, fire, earth, metal, water — is a different system. Do not merge them because both contain the word fire.
Alchemy
A quality before it is a substance
The triangle is not a drawing of a campfire. It is the claim that a certain way of behaving — hot, dry, upward — shows up in flames, in choleric people, in combustible minerals. The element is a pattern you can point at in more than one kingdom.
Astrology
The signs are not the element alone
Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius are called fire signs, and then they differ. If you stop at the triangle you have the column heading, not the person. The old system was always more particular than the poster.
Near this
Sources
- Early modern alchemical notation for the four elements
Named when the entry depends on a text, a date, or a standard. Catalog numbers are not invented.
Your margin
Private. It stays in this browser and never joins the canon.
symbol.wiki, edited as Sigilla. Last reviewed 2 October 2026. A reading of public tradition, not a ruling.