| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians by Martin Luther: VERSE 10. For if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of
Christ.
Observe the consummate cleverness with which the false apostles went
about to bring Paul into disrepute. They combed Paul's writings for
contradictions (our opponents do the same) to accuse him of teaching
contradictory things. They found that Paul had circumcised Timothy
according to the Law, that Paul had purified himself with four other men
in the Temple at Jerusalem, that Paul had shaven his head at Cenchrea. The
false apostles slyly suggested that Paul had been constrained by the other
apostles to observe these ceremonial laws. We know that Paul observed
these _decora_ out of charitable regard for the weak brethren. He did not
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Grimm's Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm: made the owner invisible, or gave him any form he pleased; and a pair
of boots that carried the wearer wherever he wished. Heinel said they
must first let him try these wonderful things, then he might know how
to set a value upon them. Then they gave him the cloak, and he wished
himself a fly, and in a moment he was a fly. 'The cloak is very well,'
said he: 'now give me the sword.' 'No,' said they; 'not unless you
undertake not to say, "Heads off!" for if you do we are all dead men.'
So they gave it him, charging him to try it on a tree. He next asked
for the boots also; and the moment he had all three in his power, he
wished himself at the Golden Mountain; and there he was at once. So
the giants were left behind with no goods to share or quarrel about.
Grimm's Fairy Tales |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: even that there is no imposture, there must be a human being like
ourselves by whom, or through whom, the effects presented to human
beings are produced. It is so with the now familiar phenomena of
mesmerism or electro-biology; the mind of the person operated on is
affected through a material living agent. Nor, supposing it true
that a mesmerized patient can respond to the will or passes of a
mesmerizer a hundred miles distant, is the response less occasioned
by a material being; it may be through a material fluid--call it
Electric, call it Odic, call it what you will--which has the power
of traversing space and passing obstacles, that the material effect
is communicated from one to the other. Hence, all that I had
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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 Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: that supplied their food. When hunger bade, they halted and
prepared their meal on the bank of some unpolluted forest brook,
which, as they knelt down with thirsty lips to drink, murmured a
sweet unwillingness, like a maiden at love's first kiss. They
slept beneath a hut of branches, and awoke at peep of light
refreshed for the toils of another day. Dorcas and the boy went
on joyously, and even Reuben's spirit shone at intervals with an
outward gladness; but inwardly there was a cold cold sorrow,
which he compared to the snowdrifts lying deep in the glens and
hollows of the rivulets while the leaves were brightly green
above.
Mosses From An Old Manse |
