| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: as if I had been in charge of a pair of little grandees,
of princes of the blood, for whom everything, to be right,
would have to be enclosed and protected, the only form that,
in my fancy, the afteryears could take for them was that of
a romantic, a really royal extension of the garden and the park.
It may be, of course, above all, that what suddenly broke
into this gives the previous time a charm of stillness--
that hush in which something gathers or crouches.
The change was actually like the spring of a beast.
In the first weeks the days were long; they often, at their finest,
gave me what I used to call my own hour, the hour when, for my pupils,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Smalcald Articles by Dr. Martin Luther: Church to continue and to exist without the Pope.
And supposing that the Pope would yield this point, so as not
to be supreme by divine right or from Gods command, but that
we must have [there must be elected] a [certain] head, to whom
all the rest adhere [as their support] in order that the
[concord and] unity of Christians may be preserved against
sects and heretics, and that such a head were chosen by men,
and that it were placed within the choice and power of men to
change or remove this head, just as the Council of Constance
adopted nearly this course with reference to the Popes,
deposing three and electing a fourth; supposing, I say, that
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| 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: They ground the ship full of salt and sank it, and so the
quern was lost forever, but the sea remains salt unto this
day.
Mr. Kelly rightly identifies Frodi with the sun-god Fro or
Freyr, and observes that the magic mill is only another form
of the fire-churn, or chark. According to another version the
quern is still grinding away and keeping the sea salt, and
over the place where it lies there is a prodigious whirlpool
or maelstrom which sucks down ships.
In its completed shape, the lightning-wand is the caduceus, or
rod of Hermes. I observed, in the preceding paper, that in the
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 The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs: "But the chest!" expostulated the other. "What in the
world would he want of that enormous and heavy chest?"
"He might have thought that it contained treasure,"
hazarded von Horn, in an innocent tone of voice.
"Bosh, my dear man," replied Professor Maxon. "He knew
nothing of treasures, or money, or the need or value of either.
I tell you the workshop was opened, and the inner campong
as well by some one who knew the value of money and wanted
that chest, but why they should have released the creatures
from the inner enclosure is beyond me."
"And I tell you Professor Maxon that it could have been
The Monster Men |
