| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: people to use it, though it may be made to open the gate of God's
Kingdom. His chief war was against the Philistines. That is the
war every child of light has to wage. Philistinism was the note of
the age and community in which he lived. In their heavy
inaccessibility to ideas, their dull respectability, their tedious
orthodoxy, their worship of vulgar success, their entire
preoccupation with the gross materialistic side of life, and their
ridiculous estimate of themselves and their importance, the Jews of
Jerusalem in Christ's day were the exact counterpart of the British
Philistine of our own. Christ mocked at the 'whited sepulchre' of
respectability, and fixed that phrase for ever. He treated worldly
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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 Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: the stately Arab to whom the animal had belonged, learned
that the seller was Kadour ben Saden, sheik of a desert tribe
far south of Djelfa. Through Abdul, Tarzan invited his new
acquaintance to dine with him. As the three were making
their way through the crowds of marketers, camels, donkeys,
and horses that filled the market place with a confusing
babel of sounds, Abdul plucked at Tarzan's sleeve.
"Look, master, behind us," and he turned, pointing at a
figure which disappeared behind a camel as Tarzan turned.
"He has been following us about all afternoon," continued Abdul.
"I caught only a glimpse of an Arab in a dark-blue burnoose
The Return of Tarzan |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: he knew of his mother and himself. Whatever virtues Fleeming
possessed, he could never count on being civil; whatever brave,
true-hearted qualities he was able to admire in Mrs. Jenkin,
mildness of demeanour was not one of them. And here he found per
sons who were the equals of his mother and himself in intellect and
width of interest, and the equals of his father in mild urbanity of
disposition. Show Fleeming an active virtue, and he always loved
it. He went away from that house struck through with admiration,
and vowing to himself that his own married life should be upon that
pattern, his wife (whoever she might be) like Eliza Barron, himself
such another husband as Alfred Austin. What is more strange, he
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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 Russia in 1919 by Arthur Ransome: bumpity drive to the station, reminding me of similar though
livelier experiences in the earlier days of the revolution when
lorries were used for the transport of machine guns, red
guards, orators, enthusiasts of all kinds, and any stray
persons who happened to clamber on.
At the Nikolai Station we found perfect order until we got
into our wagon, an old third-class wagon, in which a
certain number of places which one of the party had
reserved had been occupied by people who had no right
to be there. Even this difficulty was smoothed out in a
manner that would have been impossible a year
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