| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: occurred, the date being about a year after her arrival at the
village. The preceding winter had been remarkably severe, the
snow drifting to a great depth, and the frost continuing for an
unexampled period, and the summer following was as noteworthy
for its extreme heat. On one of the very hottest days in this
summer, Helen V. left the farmhouse for one of her long rambles
in the forest, taking with her, as usual, some bread and meat
for lunch. She was seen by some men in the fields making for
the old Roman Road, a green causeway which traverses the
highest part of the wood, and they were astonished to observe
that the girl had taken off her hat, though the heat of the sun
The Great God Pan |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does.
There was no pleasure I did not experience. I threw the pearl of
my soul into a cup of wine. I went down the primrose path to the
sound of flutes. I lived on honeycomb. But to have continued the
same life would have been wrong because it would have been
limiting. I had to pass on. The other half of the garden had its
secrets for me also. Of course all this is foreshadowed and
prefigured in my books. Some of it is in THE HAPPY PRINCE, some of
it in THE YOUNG KING, notably in the passage where the bishop says
to the kneeling boy, 'Is not He who made misery wiser than thou
art'? a phrase which when I wrote it seemed to me little more than
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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 Symposium by Plato: another; and as Pausanias was just now saying that to indulge good men is
honourable, and bad men dishonourable:--so too in the body the good and
healthy elements are to be indulged, and the bad elements and the elements
of disease are not to be indulged, but discouraged. And this is what the
physician has to do, and in this the art of medicine consists: for
medicine may be regarded generally as the knowledge of the loves and
desires of the body, and how to satisfy them or not; and the best physician
is he who is able to separate fair love from foul, or to convert one into
the other; and he who knows how to eradicate and how to implant love,
whichever is required, and can reconcile the most hostile elements in the
constitution and make them loving friends, is a skilful practitioner. Now
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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 Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: against Ahriman--light against darkness, order against disorder.
Confusedly they fought, and sometimes ill: but their corpses piled
the breach and filled the trench for us, and over their corpses we
step on to what should be to us an easy victory--what may be to us,
yet, a shameful ruin.
For if we be, as we are wont to boast, the salt of the earth and the
light of the world, what if the salt should lose its savour? What
if the light which is in us should become darkness? For myself,
when I look upon the responsibilities of the free nations of modern
times, so far from boasting of that liberty in which I delight--and
to keep which I freely, too, could die--I rather say, in fear and
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