What is a Sylph and what is its origin?”
Sylph is a faux-mythological creature in the Western tradition. “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. Description In current usage, the term is applied to a feminine spirit or fairy, and is often used in a figurative sense of a graceful, slender girl or young woman. Ethymology New Latin sylpha, perhaps blend of Latin sylvestris, of the forest (from silva, sylva, forest) and Latin nympha, nymph; Littre, however, takes the word to be Old Celtic, and meaning “genius,” and states that it occurs in such forms as sulfa, sylfi, &c., in inscriptions, or latinized as sulevae or suleviae. History/Beliefs Author The term originates in Paracelsus, who describes sylphs as invisible beings of the air, his elementals of air. There is no substantial myth associated with them. As alchemy in the West derived from Paracelsus, alchemists and related movements, such as Rosicruci
Sylph (also called sylphid) is a mythological creature in the Western tradition. The term originates in Paracelsus, who describes sylphs as invisible beings of the air, his elementals of air. There is no substantial mythos associated with them. Because of their association with the ballet La Sylphide, where sylphs are identified with fairies and the medieval legends of fairyland, as well as a confusion with other “airy spirits” (e.g., in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream), a slender girl may be referred to as a “sylph”. “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. Sylphs could create giant artistic clouds in the skies with their airy wings.
