The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter: he got there, he does not say. Walt Whitman, also
a keen observer, speaks of a tulip-tree near which he sometimes
sat--"the Apollo of the woods--tall and graceful,
yet robust and sinewy, inimitable in hang of foliage and
throwing-out of limb; as if the beauteous, vital, leafy creature
could walk, if it only would"; and mentions that
in a dream-trance he actually once saw his "favorite trees
step out and promenade up, down and around VERY CURIOUSLY."[1]
Once the present writer seemed to have a partial
vision of a tree. It was a beech, standing somewhat
isolated, and still leafless in quite early Spring. Suddenly
 Pagan and Christian Creeds |
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 Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: made the ground below his feet dark.
Peter Halket looked up at him; the man seemed dead. He touched him softly
on the arm, then shook it slightly.
The man opened his eyes slowly, without raising his head; and looked at
Peter from under his weary eyebrows. Except that they moved they might
have been the eyes of a dead thing.
Peter put up his fingers to his own lips--"Hus-h! hus-h!" he said.
The man hung torpid, still looking at Peter.
Quickly Peter Halket knelt down and took the knife from his belt. In an
instant the riems that bound the feet were cut through; in another he had
cut the riems from the waist and neck: the riems dropped to the ground
|