The Casimir operators of a Lie algebra are in one-to-one correspondence with
the symmetric invariant tensors of the algebra. There is an infinite family of
Casimir operators whose members are expressible in terms of a number of
primitive Casimirs equal to the rank of the underlying group. A systematic
derivation is presented of a complete set of identities expressing
non-primitive symmetric tensors in terms of primitive tensors. Several examples
are given including an application to an exceptional Lie algebra.