Wind Spirit

Small Sylph from Pope's The Rape of the Lock

The Sylphid (French Sylphide, English Sylphid, Latin sylphida) is the decisive canonical adaptation of the small Sylph or young Sylph introduced as 'sylphid' in line 50 of Canto 1 of the satirical poem The Rape of the Lock (1714 5-canto expanded edition) of Alexander Pope (Alexander Pope, 1688-1744) published in England on 4 May 1712. The etymology combines the Latin sylphus (Sylph, air spirit) of Paracelsus of 1566 with the Greek-Latin diminutive-feminine suffix -ida — the decisive canonical vocabulary — and the iconography depicts an elegant, light spirit with small butterfly- or dragonfly-like wings in white attire. The decisive canon is the ballet La Sylphide premiered at the Salle Le Peletier opera house in Paris on 12 March 1832 — composed by Jean-Madeleine Schneitzhoeffer, choreographed by Filippo Taglioni, with Marie Taglioni in the lead role — establishing the decisive origin of 19th-century Romantic ballet as the first pointe-shoe performance in ballet history. The 1822 novella Trilby, ou le Lutin d'Argail of the French writer Charles Nodier (Charles Nodier, 1780-1844) is the decisive source of the 1832 ballet libretto, and the Danish version premiered at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen on 28 July 1836, choreographed by August Bournonville (1805-1879) and composed by Herman Severin Lovenskiold, is the decisive Danish ballet canon preserved to 2024.

Air Spirit from Shakespeare's The Tempest

Ariel (English Ariel, Hebrew Ariel ('lion of God' or 'messenger of God'), Latin Ariel) is the air spirit in the last solo play The Tempest of 1611 by the English playwright William Shakespeare (1564-1616), the faithful servant of the sorcerer Prospero who, in invisible form, freely commands tempests, illusions, and music — the decisive canonical iconographic figure of the English-literary air spirit. The etymology derives from the Hebrew Ariel ('lion of God' or 'messenger of God') — the alternative name of Jerusalem in Isaiah 29:1-2 of the Old Testament — and in the European Kabbalistic mysticism of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, Ariel was canonised as the angel of the air element (Air) among the seventy-two angels of the Shem HaMephorash, decisively recorded in Book 3 of the De Occulta Philosophia Libri Tres of the German mystic Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535) of 1533. The decisive canon is Shakespeare's play The Tempest, premiered on 1 November 1611 at Whitehall Palace in London, England (published in the First Folio Volume 1 of 1623) — the plot in which Ariel, who had been imprisoned in a pine tree by the witch Sycorax for twelve years, is rescued by Prospero and bound to serve him for twelve years in exchange for the promise of freedom (Acts 1.2 to 4) — is the decisive canon of the English-literary air spirit. The sylph Ariel in the satirical poem The Rape of the Lock of 1714 by Alexander Pope (1688-1744) extended the eighteenth-century English-literary air-spirit canon, and the Air Elemental and Sylph canon of the 1977 D&D Monster Manual by Gary Gygax of TSR in the USA is the decisive canonical iconography of the modern fantasy RPG air spirit.

Air Spirit of Paracelsus

The Sylph (Latin Sylphus, English Sylph, French Sylphe) is the decisive canonical spirit of air (Aer) among the four element spirits in the posthumous 1566 Latin treatise A Book of Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders (Liber de Nymphis, Sylphis, Pygmaeis et Salamandris) by the Swiss physician-alchemist Paracelsus (Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, 1493-1541). The etymology is the Latin Sylphus — coined by Paracelsus as a compound of the Greek silphe (silphe, 'butterfly, moth') and the Latin sylvestris ('of the forest') — and the iconography depicts a free-spirited, translucent humanoid with dragonfly- or butterfly-like wings. The decisive literary canon is the satirical poem The Rape of the Lock by the British poet Alexander Pope (Alexander Pope, 1688-1744) published in London on 4 May 1712 (5-canto expanded edition of 1714) — female souls become sylphs after death and protect virgins — and the decisive ballet canon is the ballet La Sylphide premiered at the Salle Le Peletier opera house in Paris on 12 March 1832 (composed by Schneitzhoeffer, choreographed by Filippo Taglioni, starring Marie Taglioni) — the first pointe-shoe performance in ballet history, establishing the decisive 19th-century Romantic ballet canon.