What is a sylph?
A sylph is a spirit of wind (air). The 16th-century Swiss physician and alchemist Paracelsus taught that spirits live in each of the four elements that make up the natural world, water, air, earth and fire, and the sylph is the spirit of air. Together with the undine (water), the gnome (earth) and the salamander (fire), they are called the “four elementals.”
Features of the sylph
According to Paracelsus, the four elementals had human-like forms but no souls. Sylphs live in the air, so light they are invisible to the eye, and are said to be slender and beautiful. In the 18th-century English poet Alexander Pope’s poem The Rape of the Lock, they are depicted as tiny air spirits who protect the heroine.
The sylphide and fantasy
Sylphs are also known by the feminine form “sylphide,” and in 1832 the ballet La Sylphide, about an air spirit who falls in love with a young man, premiered in Paris and became a representative work of Romantic ballet. In modern games and fantasy, they are familiar as spirits or summons that use wind magic.
