| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter: life diverted from its true uses of Generation and
Regeneration[1] and appropriated by the individual to his own
private pleasure--no sooner was its religious character as a
tribal service[2], (often rendered within the Temple precincts)
lost sight of or degraded into a commercial transaction--than
every kind of evil fell upon mankind. Corruptio optimi
pessima. It must be remembered too that simultaneous
with this sexual disruption occurred the disruption of
other human relations; and we cease to be surprised that
disease and selfish passions, greed, jealousy, slander, cruelty,
and wholesale murder, raged--and have raged ever since.
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from O Pioneers! by Willa Cather: "Yes. It's back there in the straw. Didn't
you notice the box I was carrying? I tried it all
morning in the drug-store cellar, and it worked
ever so well, makes fine big pictures."
"What are they about?"
"Oh, hunting pictures in Germany, and
Robinson Crusoe and funny pictures about
cannibals. I'm going to paint some slides for
it on glass, out of the Hans Andersen book."
O Pioneers! |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Lesson of the Master by Henry James: the company had already been interesting to watch the interest
would now become intense. He shook hands with his hostess, who
welcomed him without many words, in the manner of a woman able to
trust him to understand and conscious that so pleasant an occasion
would in every way speak for itself. She offered him no particular
facility for sitting by her, and when they had all subsided again
he found himself still next General Fancourt, with an unknown lady
on his other flank.
"That's my daughter - that one opposite," the General said to him
without lose of time. Overt saw a tall girl, with magnificent red
hair, in a dress of a pretty grey-green tint and of a limp silken
|
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: natural, the tones of her voice were divinely sweet,--this was all
that she suffered others to discover. In her complete seclusion, her
sadness, her beauty so passionately obscured, nay, almost blighted,
there was so much to charm, that several young gentlemen fell in love;
but the more sincere the lover, the more timid he became; and besides,
the lady inspired awe, and it was a difficult matter to find enough
courage to speak to her. Finally, if a few of the bolder sort wrote to
her, their letters must have been burned unread. It was Mme.
Willemsens' practice to throw all the letters which she received into
the fire, as if she meant that the time spent in Touraine should be
untroubled by any outside cares even of the slightest. She might have
|
