| 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: [3] The Soul of a People, by H. Fielding (1902), p. 250.
There are also in India and elsewhere popular rites of
MARRIAGE of women (and men) to Trees; which suggest
that trees were regarded as very near akin to human
beings! The Golden Bough[1] mentions many of these, including
the idea that some trees are male and others female.
The well-known Assyrian emblem of a Pine cone
being presented by a priest to a Palm-tree is supposed
by E. B. Tylor to symbolize fertilization--the Pine cone
being masculine and the Palm feminine. The ceremony
of the god Krishna's marriage to a Basil plant is still
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: of the orators.
ALCIBIADES: True.
SOCRATES: But now see what follows, if I can (make it clear to you).
(Some words appear to have dropped out here.) You would distinguish the
wise from the foolish?
ALCIBIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: The many are foolish, the few wise?
ALCIBIADES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And you use both the terms, 'wise' and 'foolish,' in reference
to something?
ALCIBIADES: I do.
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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 Middlemarch by George Eliot: grow up from a youngster of fourteen, and I am so much at home
in the house that the children are like nephews and nieces to me.
But it is a difficult case to advise upon. However, he has
asked me to come and tell you that he is going away, and that he
is so miserable about his debt to you, and his inability to pay,
that he can't bear to come himself even to bid you good by."
"Tell him it doesn't signify a farthing," said Caleb, waving his hand.
"We've had the pinch and have got over it. And now I'm going to be
as rich as a Jew."
"Which means," said Mrs. Garth, smiling at the Vicar, "that we
are going to have enough to bring up the boys well and to keep
Middlemarch |
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 Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: of the circus-clown's ironic efforts to lift a feather. It met,
in short, at every point the demand of lovely woman to be painted
"strongly" because she was tired of being painted "sweetly"--and
yet not to lose an atom of the sweetness.
"It's the last he painted, you know," Mrs. Gisburn said with
pardonable pride. "The last but one," she corrected herself--
"but the other doesn't count, because he destroyed it."
"Destroyed it?" I was about to follow up this clue when I heard
a footstep and saw Jack himself on the threshold.
As he stood there, his hands in the pockets of his velveteen
coat, the thin brown waves of hair pushed back from his white
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