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A sylph (also called sylphid) is an air spirit stemming from the 16th-century works of Paracelsus, who describes sylphs as (invisible) beings of the air, his elementals of air. A significant number of subsequent literary and occult works have been inspired by Paracelsus's concept: Robert Alfred Vaughan noted that "the wild but poetical fantasies" of Paracelsus had probably exercised a larger influence over his age and the subsequent one than is generally supposed, particularly on the Rosicrucians, but that through the 18th century they had become reduced to "machinery for the playwright" and "opera figurantes with wings of gauze and spangles".
An alternative theory is that it derives from sílphē (), which a number of etymological sources gloss as "moth".E.g. French etymological sources often derive it from a Latin word sylphus, glossed as "genius" (in the Latin sense, a type of spirit) and only known from an inscription rather than literary Latin. The Deutsches Wörterbuch however indicates that this idea arises from a 19th-century misreading of the inscription in question. Similarly, the σίλφη etymology can be dismissed from the lack of an objective historical and thus semantic connection. The idea of an intentional portmanteau is also considered doubtful, though extensive evidence can be found that indicates that Paracelsus considered the various sylvan spirits and wild men of legend to be examples of sylphs, which he occasionally took to be earth elementals rather than air elementals.
In the Liber de Nymphis of the Philosophia Magna, Paracelsus discusses the characteristics of the elementals at length. Sylphs, he says, are rougher, coarser, taller, and stronger reuher, gröber, lenger und sterker than humans. The elementals are said to be able to move through their own elements as human beings move through air. Because of this, sylphs are the closest to humans in his conception because they move through air like we do, while in fire they burn, in water they drown, and in earth, they get stuck.
The French pseudo-novel Comte de Gabalis (1670) was important in passing sylphs into the literary sphere. It appears to have originated the derivative term "sylphid" (French sylphide), which it uses as the feminine counterpart to "sylph". While modern scholars consider Comte de Gabalis to have been intended as a satire of occult philosophy, many of its contemporaries considered it to be an earnest exposition of occult lore. Its author, Abbé de Montfaucon de Villars, was assassinated on the road in 1673 and one rumor had it that he had been killed by a gang of sylphs for disclosing their secrets. (2025). 9789004258235, Brill. ISBN 9789004258235
One of the best-known discussions of sylphs comes with Alexander Pope. In Rape of the Lock (final ed. 1717), Pope satire French Rosicrucian and alchemical writings when he invents a theory to explain the sylph. In a parody of Epic poetry and the "dark" and "mysterious" alchemical literature, and in particular the sometimes esoterically Classical heroic poetry of the 18th century in England and France, Pope pretends to have a new alchemy, in which the sylph is the mystically, chemically condensed Humorism of peevish women. In Pope's poem, women who are full of spleen and vanity turn into sylphs when they die because their spirits are too full of dark vapors to ascend to the skies. Belinda, the heroine of Pope's poem, is attended by a small army of sylphs, who foster her vanity and guard her beauty.
The poem is a parody of Paracelsian ideas, inasmuch as Pope imitates the pseudo-science of alchemy to explain the seriousness with which vain women approach the dressing room. In a slight parody of the divine battle in Pope's Rape of the Lock, when the Baron of the poem attempts to cut a lock of Belinda's hair, the sylphs interpose their airy bodies between the blades of the scissors (to no effect whatsoever). (2025). 9781443833295, Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 9781443833295
Ariel, the chief sylph in the Rape of the Lock, has the same name as Prospero's servant Ariel in Shakespeare's The Tempest (ca. 1611), and Shakespeare's character is described literally as an "airy spirit" in the dramatis personae.Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Vol. XLVI, Part 5. The Harvard Classics. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909–14; Bartleby.com, 2001. www.bartleby.com/46/5/ This name is generally thought to have been original with Shakespeare, though the exact inspiration for the character is unclear.Johnson, W. Stacy. "The Genesis of Ariel." Shakespeare Quarterly. (July 1951) 2.3 pgs. 205-210 Pope explicitly cited Comte de Gabalis as a source for elemental lore in the dedication.
In the 1778 British novel The Sylph, a sylph appears as a guardian spirit for the female protagonist.
By 1765, the French author Jean-François Marmontel had found the sylph legend notable enough that he included among his Moral Tales the story of "the Sylph-Husband," in which a young woman obsessed with the idea of marrying a sylph is deluded into falling in love with her arranged-husband after he impersonates one.
In Fernando Pessoa's "Book of Disquiet", (entry 214 - New Directions, 2017) he writes (translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jill Costa): "And as with books so with everything else...Given that anything can be dreamed to serve as a real interruption to the silent flow of my days, I raise eyes of weary protest to the sylph who is mine alone, to the poor girl who, had she only learned to sing, could perhaps have been a siren".
"Sylph" has passed into general language as a term for minor spirits, elementals, or faeries of the air. Fantasy authors will sometimes employ sylphs in their fiction, for example creating giant artistic clouds in the skies with airy wings.John Grant and John Clute, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, "Elemental" p 313-4,
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