| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: punishment which his crime had merited. He was transformed
into a wolf, that he might henceforth feed upon the viands
with which he had dared to pollute the table of the king of
Olympos. From that time forth, according to Pliny, a noble
Arkadian was each year, on the festival of Zeus Lykaios, led
to the margin of a certain lake. Hanging his clothes upon a
tree, he then plunged into the water and became a wolf. For
the space of nine years he roamed about the adjacent woods,
and then, if he had not tasted human flesh during all this
time, he was allowed to swim back to the place where his
clothes were hanging, put them on, and return to his natural
Myths and Myth-Makers |
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 Princess by Alfred Tennyson: Rapt to the horrible fall: a glance I gave,
No more; but woman-vested as I was
Plunged; and the flood drew; yet I caught her; then
Oaring one arm, and bearing in my left
The weight of all the hopes of half the world,
Strove to buffet to land in vain. A tree
Was half-disrooted from his place and stooped
To wrench his dark locks in the gurgling wave
Mid-channel. Right on this we drove and caught,
And grasping down the boughs I gained the shore.
There stood her maidens glimmeringly grouped
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