| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Rig Veda: Yea, let young children sing their lauds as a strong castle
praise ye
him.
9 Now loudly let the viol sound, the lute send out its voice
with
might,
Shrill be, the music of the string. To Indra. is the hymn up-raised.
10 When bither speed the dappled cows, unflinching, easy to
be milked,
Seize quickly, as it bursts away, the Soma juice for Indra's
drink.
The Rig Veda |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: VAILIMA, UPOLU, SAMOA, JULY 7, 1894.
DEAR MR. MARCEL SCHWOB, - Thank you for having remembered me in my
exile. I have read MIMES twice as a whole; and now, as I write, I
am reading it again as it were by accident, and a piece at a time,
my eye catching a word and travelling obediently on through the
whole number. It is a graceful book, essentially graceful, with
its haunting agreeable melancholy, its pleasing savour of
antiquity. At the same time, by its merits, it shows itself rather
as the promise of something else to come than a thing final in
itself. You have yet to give us - and I am expecting it with
impatience - something of a larger gait; something daylit, not
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: of the slave system. I grew up to manhood in the presence of
this hydra headed monster--not as a master--not as an idle
spectator--not as the guest of the slaveholder--but as A SLAVE,
eating the bread and drinking the cup of slavery with the most
degraded of my brother-bondmen, and sharing with them all the
painful conditions of their wretched lot. In consideration of
these facts, I feel that I have a right to speak, and to speak
_strongly_. Yet, my friends, I feel bound to speak truly.
Goading as have been the cruelties to which I have been
subjected--bitter as have been the trials through which I have
passed--exasperating as have been, and still are, the indignities
My Bondage and My Freedom |
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 Young Forester by Zane Grey: Match after match I struck, and when the box was empty I must have been a
mile, two miles, maybe more, from the starting-point. I was wringing-wet,
and there was a piercing pain in my side. I plunged across the brook, and
in as deep water as I could find knelt down to cover all but my face. Then,
with laboring breaths that bubbled the water near my mouth, I kept still
and watched.
The back-fire which I had started swept up over the slope and down the
brook like a charge of red lancers. Spears of flame led the advance. The
flame licked up the dry surface-grass and brush, and, meeting the pines,
circled them in a whirlwind of fire, like lightning flashing upward. Then
came prolonged reports, and after that a long, blistering roar in the
The Young Forester |
