undine

Undines (; also ondines) are a category of elemental beings associated with water, stemming from the alchemical writings of Paracelsus. Later writers developed the undine into a water nymph in its own right, and it continues to live in modern literature and art through such adaptations as Danish Hans Christian Andersen's 1837 "The Little Mermaid" and the 1811 novella Undine by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué. Etymology The term Undine first appears in the alchemical writings of Paracelsus, a Renaissance alchemist and physician. It derives from the Latin word unda, meaning "wave", and first appears in Paracelsus' A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders, and on the Other Spirits, published posthumously in 1566. Ondine is an alternative spelling, and has become a female given name. Elementals Paracelsus believed that each of the four classical elements – earth, water, air and fire – is inhabited by different categories of elemental spirits, liminal creatures that share our world: gnomes, undines, sylphs and salamanders respectively. He describes these elementals as the "invisible, spiritual counterparts of visible Nature ... many resembling human beings in shape, and inhabiting worlds of their own, unknown to man because his undeveloped senses were incapable of functioning beyond the limitations of the grosser elements." Description and common attributes