Re: Soul Mirrors and the Elements - EARTH

["Martin <martincosgrove@...>" <martincosgrove@...>]

--- In BardonPraxis@yahoogroups.com, Amberlyn <amberlyn@c...> wrote:
> Greetings All,
> 
> One 
> who is headstrong is stubbornly, often recklessly willful (i.e. 
Fire within 
> Earth). Stiff-necked implies stubbornness combined with arrogance 
or 
> aloofness (Air within Earth). Bullheaded suggests foolish or 
irrational 
> obstinacy (Water within Earth), and pigheaded, stupid obstinacy. 
Mulish 
> implies the obstinacy and intractability associated with a mule. 
Dogged 
> emphasizes stubborn perseverance: dogged persistence. Pertinacious 
stresses 
> a tenacity of purpose, opinion, or course of action that is 
sometimes 
> viewed as vexatious. 

This is interesting; your approach to breaking down the 'nature' of 
traits here seems to be based greatly on semantics/linguistics. This 
made me wonder how much our language influences our thoughts and as 
a result, how we view characteristics in terms of the elements. 
Surely a characteristic should have a 'pure' form which is above 
semantic classification, or else people who speak different language 
will classify traits differently because of the different linguistic 
implications of a particular word. For example, you talk about 
someone being 'headstrong' and say that this is a trait of fire 
within earth. But what about 'hotheaded'? Is that fire simply 
because of the implication of heat? The Spanish translation 
of 'hotheaded' would be 'exaltado' which has no connection with 
heat; would a Spaniard then find it as easy to classify this trait? 
The Spanish word for 'mulish' would be 'trozudo' but there is no 
connection with a mule, it simply means stubborn... so languages 
which may not have as many synonyms might also have shorter soul 
mirror lists ;-)

Thanks for your postings about the elements, I've found them to be 
extremely interesting and thought-provoking.

Martin