| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Anthem by Ayn Rand: But we did not cry out.
The lash whistled like a singing wind.
We tried to count the blows, but we lost count.
We knew that the blows were falling upon our back.
Only we felt nothing upon our back any longer.
A flaming grill kept dancing before our eyes,
and we thought of nothing save that grill, a grill,
a grill of red squares, and then we knew
that we were looking at the squares of the
iron grill in the door, and there were also
the squares of stone on the walls, and the
Anthem |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Poems of William Blake by William Blake: Till we arise link'd in a golden band and never part:
But walk united bearing food to all our tender flowers.
Dost thou O little cloud? I fear that I am not like thee:
For I walk through the vales of Har, and smell the sweetest flowers:
But I feed not the little flowers: I hear the warbling birds,
But I feed not the warbling birds, they fly and seek their food:
But Thel delights in these no more because I fade away
And all shall say, without a use this shining women liv'd,
Or did she only live to be at death the food of worms.
The Cloud reclind upon his airy throne and answerd thus.
Then if thou art the food of worms, O virgin of the skies,
Poems of William Blake |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: See also the pretty story of the knight unjustly imprisoned,
id. p. cii.
In these traditions, which may possibly be of Aryan descent,
due to the prolonged intercourse between the Jews and the
Persians, a new feature is added to those before enumerated:
the rock-splitting talisman is always found in the possession
of a bird. The same feature in the myth reappears on Aryan
soil. The springwort, whose marvellous powers we have noticed
in the case of the Ilsenstein shepherd, is obtained, according
to Pliny, by stopping up the hole in a tree where a woodpecker
keeps its young. The bird flies away, and presently returns
Myths and Myth-Makers |
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 Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: fingers, like the brilliants in a river of gems around a woman's neck.
Lastly, this species of Japanese idol had constantly upon his blue
lips, a fixed, unchanging smile, the shadow of an implacable and
sneering laugh, like that of a death's head. As silent and motionless
as a statue, he exhaled the musk-like odor of the old dresses which a
duchess' heirs exhume from her wardrobe during the inventory. If the
old man turned his eyes toward the company, it seemed that the
movements of those globes, no longer capable of reflecting a gleam,
were accomplished by an almost imperceptible effort; and, when the
eyes stopped, he who was watching them was not certain finally that
they had moved at all. As I saw, beside that human ruin, a young woman
|
