Water/Joy

Element – Air
Direction – East
Theme – Joy
Season – Spring
Life Stage – Youth
Time of day – Sunrise
Location – Mind
Energy – High
Impact – Positive
Aristotle, 4 sources of happiness – Hedone (sensuous pleasure)
Hippocrates’ 4 humours – Blood
Galen’s 4 temperaments – Sanguine
Paracelsus’ 4 totem spirits – Curious sylphs
Adike’s 4 world views – Industrious
Aristotle causes – Final
Adler’s 4 personality types – Social useful
Spranger’s 4 value attitudes – Artistic
Kretchmer’s four character styles – Hypomaniac
Fromm’s 4 orientations – Productive
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator – SP Sensing Perceiving
Keirsay’s 4 temperaments – Artisan
Tarot Suits – Wands
Archangels – Raphael

This time let me
be happy.
Nothing has happened to anybody,
I am nowhere special,
it happened only
that I am happy
through the four chambers
of my heart, walking,
sleeping or writing.
What can I do? I am
happy,
I am more uncountable
than the meadow
grass
I feel my skin like a wrinkled tree
and the water below,
the birds above,
the sea like a ring
around my waist,
the Earth is made of bread and stone,
the air sings like a guitar.
You, by my side in the sand,
you are the sand,
you sing and you are a song,
today the world
is my soul:
song and sand,
today the world
is your mouth:
Let me
be happy

Ode to the Happy Day, Pablo Neruda, 1954

Joy

Happiness seemed evasive but I noticed patterns that can be summed up in the Snoopy happy dance.
Snoopy has a few variations on his dance but they mostly follow a pattern that starts with him tapping his feet, running/jumping on the spot , raising his arms to the side, raising them to the air then tilting his head back. A quick Google for ‘happy people’ returns results of people jumping, arms outstretched, leaping for the sky with heads back.
In the final scenes of “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946), George Bailey runs up the stairs, arms outstretched to gather up his children. More recently, Gru reluctantly takes to the dance floor in “Despicable Me” (2010). He finds the beat with his head then his arms go out and up. Maria sings to the hills in the Sound of Music (1965).
Again and again the physical representation of happiness shows arms outstretched.

Sufi Dancers

Whirling Dervishes are mystical dancers who, when dancing, exist between the material and cosmic worlds
They spin one revolution a second, representing the earth on its axis orbiting the sun. Whirling empties the mind of all distracting thoughts. The dancer conquers dizziness as his ego is released from his body. The dancers hand positions transmit God’s blessing to the earth like spiritual lightning conductors.
The costume is important, the hat represents a tombstone, white skirts funeral shrouds. The skirt when spinning is subject to the fictitious Coriolis force which can only exist under these, or hurricane conditions. The forces at play create a tetrahedron with the skirt.