Air - Water - Fire / Water, Wind, Fire, Sky and Earth

"The Book of Creation, or Sefer Yetzirah in Hebrew, stands out from most of ancient Jewish literature. Its central focus is a tale of creation: the making of a unified yet multiple reality. Sefer Yetzirah, in its poetic, cryptic, carefully structured words, proposes that the many aspects of our world stem from one creative force. This mystical work probes divine unity, yet is entirely focused on this world—on water, wind, fire, sky, and earth. Sefer Yetzirah is at home in the natural world; it is a celebration of the Place, the sacred universe in which we live."

Rabbi Dr. Jill Hammer - Return to the Place
The Magic, Meditation and Mystery of Sefer Yetzirah
("The Three Mothers: Feminine Elements and the Early Kabbalah")

Website "Return to the Place"
mit einem Zitat von Dr. Daniel C. Matt
https://www.gtu.edu/faculty/daniel-matt

Jill Hammer: "The choice of the phrase “Three Mothers” is fascinating. To my knowledge, this is the first time a Jewish text has referred to the elements as mothers. While the Mothers of Sefer Yetzirah are never personified in any anthropomorphic way, they do introduce the idea of the feminine as a creative force: or, more accurately, multiple creative forces. The phrase “Three Mothers” echoes the Talmudic phrase “four mothers” referring to Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah. Thus the elements become connected in the imagination to the matriarchs of the people. The “mothers” (in the sense of sources, origins) are God’s partners in creating the space-time continuum and bringing the world into being. They exist in relationship to one another, combining to create the diversity of reality. In a sense, they remind one of the “matronae” in Northwestern European mythology: ancestral mothers depicted in groups of three, whose feminine powers manifest in a group, never by themselves. 

The later editors of Sefer Yetzirah are somewhat uncomfortable with this focus on mothers, and this tension shows in a fascinating way. In some places, Sefer Yetzirah refers to “three fathers” born from, or identical with, the three mothers. For example, Chapter 6 section 1 in Aryeh Kaplan’s translation (using the Vilna Gaon’s version) reads: “These are the Three Mothers Aleph Mem Shin, and from them were born Three Fathers, and they are air, water, and fire, and from the Fathers, descendants.” Other versions eliminate the mothers entirely in Chapter 6 and speak only of three fathers. Scholar Peter Hayman notes that the place of the “fathers” in the cosmology in Sefer Yetzirah is inconsistent: in most places, it is the mothers who are synonymous with the elements, not the fathers—yet in Chapter 6, it is the fathers who hold the powers of air, water, and fire."