| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: one of her kind or of the Silky Epeira, who works her gummy twine
in the same manner: then discretion is thrown to the winds; the
owner is fiercely ripped open and possession taken of the property.
Might is right, says the beast; or, rather, it knows no right. The
animal world is a rout of appetites, acknowledging no other rein
than impotence. Mankind, alone capable of emerging from the slough
of the instincts, is bringing equity into being, is creating it
slowly as its conception grows clearer. Out of the sacred
rushlight, so flickering as yet, but gaining strength from age to
age, man will make a flaming torch that will put an end, among us,
to the principles of the brutes and, one day, utterly change the
The Life of the Spider |
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 Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: shield, strapped to his arm, is the gate of a fortified city. O
amiable and natural weakness! O blessed simplicity of a gentle
heart without guile! Who would not succumb to such a consoling
temptation? Nevertheless it was a form of self-indulgence, and
the ingenious hidalgo of La Mancha was not a good citizen. The
priest and the barber were not unreasonable in their strictures.
Without going so far as the old King Louis-Philippe, who used to
say in his exile, "The people are never in fault"--one may admit
that there must be some righteousness in the assent of a whole
village. Mad! Mad! He who kept in pious meditation the ritual
vigil-of-arms by the well of an inn and knelt reverently to be
Some Reminiscences |
