| 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: of this chapter that two of the main 'characteristics'
of Christianity were its insistence on (a) a tendency
towards renunciation of the world, and a consequent cultivation
of a purely spiritual love, and (b) on a morality
whose inspiration was a private sense of duty to God rather
than a public sense of duty to one's neighbor and to society
generally. I think, however, that the last-mentioned
characteristic ought to be viewed in relation to a third, namely,
(c) the extraordinarily DEMOCRATIC tendency of the new
Religion.[1] Celsus (A.D. 200) jeered at the early Christians
for their extreme democracy: "It is only the
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: his victim with the fangs of his mandibles, he was not satisfied,
like most Spiders, to suck her head: he chewed her whole body,
shoving it piecemeal into his mouth with his palpi, after which he
threw up the masticated teguments and swept them away from his
lodging.
'Having finished his meal, he nearly always made his toilet, which
consisted in brushing his palpi and mandibles, both inside and out,
with his front tarsi. After that, he resumed his air of motionless
gravity. The evening and the night were his time for taking his
walks abroad. I often heard him scratching the paper of the bag.
These habits confirm the opinion, which I have already expressed
The Life of the Spider |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: a new man, I saw all that was still lacking, and how to reach it,
and I watched you, unknown, at a distance. Then I heard of your
engagement: you were lost, and something of which I had begun
to dream, became insanity. I determined to trample it out of my
life. The daughter of the master-builder, whose first assistant I
was, had always favored me in her society; and I soon persuaded her
to love me. I fancied, too, that I loved her as most married men
seemed to love their wives; the union would advance me to a
partnership in her father's business, and my fortune would then be
secured. You know what happened; but you do not know how the sight
of your face planted the old madness again in my life, and made me
|
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 My Antonia by Willa Cather: In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions.
I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are realities,
and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.
I owe it to Lena Lingard that I went to see Antonia at last.
I was in San Francisco two summers ago when both Lena and Tiny
Soderball were in town. Tiny lives in a house of her own,
and Lena's shop is in an apartment house just around the corner.
It interested me, after so many years, to see the two women together.
Tiny audits Lena's accounts occasionally, and invests her money for her;
and Lena, apparently, takes care that Tiny doesn't grow too miserly.
`If there's anything I can't stand,' she said to me in Tiny's presence,
My Antonia |
