Fire Elementals

[Maxine Carr]

Hi folks,

I have a small problem that I would appreciate help with. I have tried to find out what creatures are fire elementals and the only ones I can find are salamanders and phoenixes. Is that all there are? Or are there others that I have been too dumb to find?
Thanks for any help or ideas you may have.

 

[CupofJoe]

You can make them be what you want
But from the Chinese view of things you could add Horse and Snake [why either I don't know - the flowing mane on a horse looks like fire?]
And this page has a whole lot of them....
Elements and Correspondences
including Crickets and Ladybirds - how sweet

 

[S.T. Ockenner]

Use your imagination!
But yes, historically, salamanders were considered fire elementals

 

[Queshire]

Are you specifically looking for examples from real world mythology or just general inspiration? If it's the second then D&D is your friend with an entire plane of fire, and it would be easy to take inspiration from the various fire type Pokemon to come up with your own.

 

[Malise]

According to the Fantasy Enclypodia by Judy Allen, the four elementals are gnomes (Earth), salamanders (Fire), sylphs (Wind), and Undines/Nerids (Water).

However, you can go the djinn route (which D&D does) and make the elementals specters-like sprits with control of their specific element. Likewise, dragons can also make perfectly good elemental sprits. Personally, I think it would be interesting to combine the dragons and djinns together to create spectral elemental dragons.

 

[Chasejxyz]

Additional things: fire keese (bats on fire), hell hounds (lava-y dogs), dragons, lava golems....lots of different things.

 

[Malise]

@ Cup of Joe

My last name literally means "Horse" particularly the one in the Eastern Zodiac, and I have three theories on why it's associated with fire.

The first reason is the first person with my last name was a prince whose claim to fame was being a Libertarian's nightmare. He murdered people who couldn't pay their property taxes as the head of the ancient IRS, as well as being the few generals that successfully dunked on the wall-building Qin army. So yeah that guy, had a really really firey temper and got called "Horse" because of it.

The second reason for fire=horse, is that horses are associated with scorched earth techniques by the Mongols because their hit-and-run techniques also involved hit-and-run horse-back arson. So lots of fire and horses in warfare in East Asia.

The third reason is that there's no wind in the Chinese zodiac, so things like freedom, energy, and wildness (also associated with horses) got attributed to fire instead.

 

[TJPoldervaart]

In the western zodiac, the signs aries (ram), leo (lion), and sagittarius (often depicted as a centaur, which is part horse), are all associated with the element of fire. So, a ram, a lion, or a horse might make sense. If you want to go the animal route, there's also fireflies.

Then you could take the religious route. The Jinn of Islamic culture are referred to as being created out of "smokeless fire", while the Seraph (a type of angel, depicted as six-winged) from Judaism/Christianit/Islam literally means "burning one". Sometimes devils are connected to fire as well.

There're also the will-o'-the-wisp (atmospheric ghost light leading travellers into swamps) and the kitsune (a nine-tailed fox which is said to create fire and lightning).

 

[Maxine Carr]

Thank you, this is very helpful. I didn’t know about the Seraph or the will-o’-the-wisp.