| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: I continued two years at my residence in Tigre, entirely taken up
with the duties of the mission--preaching, confessing, baptising--
and enjoyed a longer quiet and repose than I had ever done since I
left Portugal. During this time one of our fathers, being always
sick and of a constitution which the air of Abyssinia was very
hurtful to, obtained a permission from our superiors to return to
the Indies; I was willing to accompany him through part of his way,
and went with him over a desert, at no great distance from my
residence, where I found many trees loaded with a kind of fruit,
called by the natives anchoy, about the bigness of an apricot, and
very yellow, which is much eaten without any ill effect. I
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: himself. And he would have been a beast and a cur to wish a single
thing altered. Andrew would be a better man than he had been. Prue
would be a beauty, her mother said. They would stem the flood a bit.
That was a good bit of work on the whole--his eight children. They
showed he did not damn the poor little universe entirely, for on an
evening like this, he thought, looking at the land dwindling away, the
little island seemed pathetically small, half swallowed up in the sea.
"Poor little place," he murmured with a sigh.
She heard him. He said the most melancholy things, but she noticed
that directly he had said them he always seemed more cheerful than
usual. All this phrase-making was a game, she thought, for if she had
To the Lighthouse |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Heap O' Livin' by Edgar A. Guest: I believe that all things that are living and
breathing
Some richness of beauty to earth are bequeath-
ing;
That all that goes out of this world leaves
behind
Some duty accomplished for mortals to find;
That the humblest of creatures our praise is
deserving,
For it, with the wisest, the Master is serving.
I
A Heap O' Livin' |
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 Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: was once owned by a certain Undhlebekazizwa. He was an arbitrary
person, for "no matter what was discussed in our village, he would
bring it to a conclusion with a stick." But he made a good end; for
when the Zulu soldiers attacked him, he killed no less than twenty of
them with the Watcher, and the spears stuck in him "as thick as reeds
in a morass." This man's strength was so great that he could kill a
leopard "like a fly," with his hands only, much as Umslopogaas slew
the traitor in this story.
Perhaps it may be allowable to add a few words about the Zulu
mysticism, magic, and superstition, to which there is some allusion in
this romance. It has been little if at all exaggerated. Thus the
Nada the Lily |
