Esoteric Coffeehouse

As mentioned last time, I will now talk about the identity of the Navi and their religion from a Paracelsian perspective. Just as a reminder, Paracelsus was a revolutionary philosopher, alchemist and physician living in the 16th century (I already touched upon some elements of his life and philosophy here and here). Now, I’m not saying that Cameron was necessarily acquainted with Paracelsian speculation, but it must be kept in mind that the ideas of Paracelsus had a strong impact on the development of Western culture, though the extent of his influence still awaits research.

One of the first things that you notice about the Navi people is their size. They are approximately twice as big as the ordinary humans. They live in the thick forest, in brotherhood with all animals and plants. They are able to ‘fly’ by becoming one with their dragons and have developed a keen ability of falling from huge heights without really getting hurt.

All these characteristics made me think straight away of the mythology of the sylphs, originating in Paracelsus’ speculations. Paracelsus wrote a strange little work called ‘The Book of Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies and Salamanders and the Other Spirits’. According to the Book of Sylphs, there are spirits in nature which live in each of the four elements: water, fire, air and earth.

The water creatures are called undines (or nymphs), the fire ones salamanders, the air ones sylphs (or sylvesters) and the earth ones gnomes (aka pygmies). Each has its own characteristics and rapport with humans. Of all of these, the sylphs appear most humanly; Paracelsus informs us that they are ‘like men’ except they live in the forest, and are ‘cruder, coarser, longer and stronger’ than the human beings. They have intercourse with men, except, Paracelsus maintains in Renaissance vein, they have no soul since soul is reserved to human beings only. Otherwise, they don’t seem to differ very much from men: they work, eat, converse in similar ways to humans.

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