| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare: Accomplish'd in himself, not in his case,:
All aids, themselves made fairer by their place,
Came for additions; yet their purpos'd trim
Pierc'd not his grace, but were all grac'd by him.
'So on the tip of his subduing tongue
All kind of arguments and question deep,
All replication prompt, and reason strong,
For his advantage still did wake and sleep:
To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep,
He had the dialect and different skill,
Catching all passions in his craft of will;
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Twilight Land by Howard Pyle: for seven years. First, he had him build a splendid palace, the
like of which was not to be seen within the bounds of the seven
rivers; then he made him set around the palace a garden, such as
I for one wish I may see some time or other. Then, when the Demon
had done all that the king wished, the king conjured him into a
bottle, corked it tightly, and set the royal seal on the stopper.
Then he took the bottle a thousand miles away into the
wilderness, and, when no man was looking, buried it in the
ground, and this is the way the story begins.
Well, the years came and the years went, and the world grew older
and older, and kept changing (as all things do but two), so that
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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 Adieu by Honore de Balzac: shoulders to the wheel; it was a true image of the building of Noah's
ark. The young countess, seated beside her husband, watched the
progress of the work with regret that she could not help it; and yet
she did assist in making knots to secure the cordage.
At last the raft was finished. Forty men launched it on the river, a
dozen others holding the cords which moored it to the shore. But no
sooner had the builders seen their handiwork afloat, than they sprang
from the bank with odious selfishness. The major, fearing the fury of
this first rush, held back the countess and the general, but too late
he saw the whole raft covered, men pressing together like crowds at a
theatre.
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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 Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: of lycanthropy.
The first of these phenomena is the Berserker insanity,
characteristic of Scandinavia, but not unknown in other
countries. In times when killing one's enemies often formed a
part of the necessary business of life, persons were
frequently found who killed for the mere love of the thing;
with whom slaughter was an end desirable in itself, not merely
a means to a desirable end. What the miser is in an age which
worships mammon, such was the Berserker in an age when the
current idea of heaven was that of a place where people could
hack each other to pieces through all eternity, and when the
Myths and Myth-Makers |
