| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: be carefully respected and reinstated; and what more could I ask?
So, the first stone they found bore the name of Margaret
Bothwell, 1585, and I have caused it to be laid carefully aside,
as I think it betokens death, and having served my namesake two
hundred years, it has just been cast up in time to do me the same
good turn. My house has been long put in order, as far as the
small earthly concerns require it; but who shall say that their
account with, Heaven is sufficiently revised?"
"After what you have said, aunt," I replied, "perhaps I ought to
take my hat and go away; and so I should, but that there is on
this occasion a little alloy mingled with your devotion. To
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: QUEEN.
Call hither Clifford; bid him come amain,
To say if that the bastard boys of York
Shall be the surety for their traitor father.
[Exit Buckingham.]
YORK.
O blood-bespotted Neapolitan,
Outcast of Naples, England's bloody scourge!
The sons of York, thy betters in their birth,
Shall be their father's bail; and bane to those
That for my surety will refuse the boys!
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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 Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: Beside the stumps of those willow-trees he erected a memorial tomb,
inscribed with divers holy texts; and he there performed many Buddhist
services on behalf of the spirits of Aoyagi and of her parents.
JIU-ROKU-ZAKURA
In Wakegori, a district of the province of Iyo (1), there is a very
ancient and famous cherry-tree, called Jiu-roku-zakura, or "the Cherry-tree
of the Sixteenth Day," because it blooms every year upon the sixteenth day
of the first month (by the old lunar calendar),-- and only upon that day.
Thus the time of its flowering is the Period of Great Cold,-- though the
natural habit of a cherry-tree is to wait for the spring season before
venturing to blossom. But the Jiu-roku-zakura blossoms with a life that is
Kwaidan |
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 Kenilworth by Walter Scott: were well-nigh ruinous, to the opposite side of the quadrangle,
where, in a subterranean apartment, now occupied by the chemist
Alasco, one of the Abbots of Abingdon, who had a turn for the
occult sciences, had, much to the scandal of his convent,
established a laboratory, in which, like other fools of the
period, he spent much precious time, and money besides, in the
pursuit of the grand arcanum.
Anthony Foster paused before the door, which was scrupulously
secured within, and again showed a marked hesitation to disturb
the sage in his operations. But Varney, less scrupulous, roused
him by knocking and voice, until at length, slowly and
Kenilworth |
