| 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: the main thing, namely that Christianity was and is just
one phase of a world-old religion, slowly perhaps expanding
its scope, but whose chief attitudes and orientations have been
the same through the centuries.
[1] The same happened with regard to another great Pagan doctrine
(to which I have just alluded), the doctrine of transformations
and metamorphoses; and whereas the pagans believed in these
things, as the common and possible heritage of EVERY man, the
Christians only allowed themselves to entertain the idea in the
special and unique instance of the Transfiguration of Christ.
Many other illustrations might be taken of the truth of
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: One could not be sure that the sea and the ground were horizontal,
hence the relative position of everything else seemed phantasmally
variable.
Briden pushed at the stone in several places without
result. Then Donovan felt over it delicately around the edge,
pressing each point separately as he went. He climbed interminably
along the grotesque stone moulding - that is, one would call it
climbing if the thing was not after all horizontal - and the men
wondered how any door in the universe could be so vast. Then,
very softly and slowly, the acre-great lintel began to give inward
at the top; and they saw that it was balauced
Call of Cthulhu |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from When a Man Marries by Mary Roberts Rinehart: and disappeared, carrying strange articles. Anne with a rope, Dal
with his hatchet, Bella and the kettle, but I could get a
coherent explanation from no one. When the guards finally decided
that Jim was in earnest, and that the rest of us were not
crawling out a rear window while he held them at the door, they
came in, three of them and two reporters, and Jim led them to the
butler's pantry.
Here we found Anne, very white and shaky, with the pantry table
and two chairs piled against the door of the kitchen slide, and
clutching the chamois-skin bag that held her jewels. She had a
bottle of burgundy open beside her, and was pouring herself a
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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 In the Cage by Henry James: Anything seemed true that made him so radiantly assent.
This indeed is a small specimen of her cultivation of insidious
ways of making things easy for him--ways to which of course she
couldn't be at all sure he did real justice. Real justice was not
of this world: she had had too often to come back to that; yet,
strangely, happiness was, and her traps had to be set for it in a
manner to keep them unperceived by Mr. Buckton and the counter-
clerk. The most she could hope for apart from the question, which
constantly flickered up and died down, of the divine chance of his
consciously liking her, would be that, without analysing it, he
should arrive at a vague sense that Cocker's was--well, attractive;
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