Very simply, polarity can be seen as the divide of agency and nature (purush and prakruti, yin and yang).
Air and Fire are the yang signs. The masculine to the feminine, the shiva to the shakti, the purush to the prakriti. Fire signs represent identity, enjoyment of the self, and values of the self. Air signs represent connections with peers, partner, and community. These qualities are very self contained, qualities that you can build upon or imbibe, no matter your circumstances. These are the signs where you can make choices easily, and where you have a lot of freedom and agency. It gives energy to the self, to act in any way you want.
Earth and Water are the yin signs. The feminine to the masculine, the shakti to the shiva, the prakriti to the purush. The Earth signs represent your resources, your health, and your reputation in the world. The water signs represent your family, your fears or trauma, and your deep unconscious. The yin signs are of things you have no, or very little control over.
There are ways to access and change the yin signs, but it is not as direct as the way to access the yang signs. The water and earth signs correspond with the dushtanas (6, 8, 12. I also personally include the 2nd house), which are considered bad or evil houses (literal translation), because they cannot be seen by the first house.
When we say that the dushtanas are evil, it is not necessarily always a matter of those houses being just indicative of negative things, but rather, they are indicative of things we aren’t able to directly confront. It is hard to know what our traumas are, it is hard to know what our unconscious contains, and it is hard to know where we go wrong with our routines.
When we strive for change, or we strive to improve our situation, the motivation for that always come from the fire signs, or the dharma trines (1, 5, 9). How we define ourselves, or who we take inspiration from can often come from the people we see in the world, through the air signs, the kama trines (3, 7, 11). Once we have an understanding of who we are, what we want to emulate, and what we need to be, we can start understanding where we fall short.
Where we fall short often comes from our lack of resources, and especially, our lack of ability to control our own moods and our body. These are the yin houses. The yin polarity needs to be dealt with far more indirectly. Too deal properly with our emotions or our unconscious, we go towards spirituality and psychology. We understand the ways that our environment and resources, the earth signs, or the artha trines (2, 6, 10) affect our bodily behaviour, the water signs, or the moksha trines (4, 8, 12).
The reason I associate water with the body is because water is our hormonal flow and our brains. We take care of our mental and emotional function through the security of our resources. We also attract resources through our unconscious beliefs. This is why water is the moksha (freedom) trine. When we go towards understanding our own physical and bodily limitations, we understand our habits that have led us to this point. We understand perhaps even the past lives that led to these habits.
When we are set free from our unconscious actions, our karma, we begin to attract resources more easily. We begin to have better health, and we can take care of ourselves. Your limitations come first from your body, and then, the inability to use the world’s resources to take care of your body.
In one sense, you can also further create a polarity of spiritual and environmental, with fire and water being spiritual, and air and earth being environmental. Water and Fire have more to do with the self, and is best nurtured by yourself. Air and Earth are environmental, so they have to do with other people, and the world’s resources, and you must interact with the world to enrich these houses.
To understand the difference between fire and water, I recommend reading my articles on Sun and Moon. In one sense, you can think of Air as being related to other people’s souls, and Earth as being related to the bodies of others (especially if you are interested in animism. Then you will understand that even a rock has its own soul).
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