| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: as though puzzled to find so little remained of mother, except the earrings
shaped like tiny pagodas and a black feather boa. Why did the photographs
of dead people always fade so? wondered Josephine. As soon as a person was
dead their photograph died too. But, of course, this one of mother was
very old. It was thirty-five years old. Josephine remembered standing on
a chair and pointing out that feather boa to Constantia and telling her
that it was a snake that had killed their mother in Ceylon...Would
everything have been different if mother hadn't died? She didn't see why.
Aunt Florence had lived with them until they had left school, and they had
moved three times and had their yearly holiday and...and there'd been
changes of servants, of course.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: depth of poverty and physical wretchedness that we have just now
been contemplating. But, there is this difference in the two
extremes; <82>viz: that in the case of the slave, the miseries
and hardships of his lot are imposed by others, and, in the
master's case, they are imposed by himself. The slave is a
subject, subjected by others; the slaveholder is a subject, but
he is the author of his own subjection. There is more truth in
the saying, that slavery is a greater evil to the master than to
the slave, than many, who utter it, suppose. The self-executing
laws of eternal justice follow close on the heels of the evil-
doer here, as well as elsewhere; making escape from all its
My Bondage and My Freedom |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll: equally unlovely one. I closed my eyes again, saying to myself
"--couldn't have a better chance for an experiment in Telepathy!
I'll think out her face, and afterwards test the portrait with the
original."
At first, no result at all crowned my efforts, though I 'divided my
swift mind,' now hither, now thither, in a way that I felt sure would
have made AEneas green with envy: but the dimly-seen oval remained as
provokingly blank as ever--a mere Ellipse, as if in some mathematical
diagram, without even the Foci that might be made to do duty as a nose
and a mouth. Gradually, however, the conviction came upon me that I
could, by a certain concentration of thought, think the veil away,
Sylvie and Bruno |
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 The Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift: There is a sort of rude familiarity, which some people, by
practising among their intimates, have introduced into their
general conversation, and would have it pass for innocent freedom
or humour, which is a dangerous experiment in our northern climate,
where all the little decorum and politeness we have are purely
forced by art, and are so ready to lapse into barbarity. This,
among the Romans, was the raillery of slaves, of which we have many
instances in Plautus. It seemeth to have been introduced among us
by Cromwell, who, by preferring the scum of the people, made it a
court-entertainment, of which I have heard many particulars; and,
considering all things were turned upside down, it was reasonable
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