| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: me with some of those stories which the monks amuse simple people
with, and told me of a devil that haunted a fountain, and used to
make it his employment to plague the monks that came thither to
fetch water, and continued his malice till he was converted by the
founder of their order, who found him no very stubborn proselyte
till they came to the point of circumcision; the devil was unhappily
prepossessed with a strong aversion from being circumcised, which,
however, by much persuasion, he at last agreed to, and afterwards
taking a religious habit, died ten years after with great signs of
sanctity. He added another history of a famous Abyssinian monk, who
killed a devil two hundred feet high, and only four feet thick, that
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: myself in the ridiculous position of using argument to bring a young
man to the Harrises. In the end I prevailed, I know, out of sheer
good nature on Armour's part; he was as innocent as a baby of any
sense of opportunity.
We arranged it for the following Friday, but as luck would have it,
His Excellency sent for me at the very hour; we met the messenger.
I felt myself unlucky, but there was nothing for it but that Armour
should go alone, which he did, with neither diffidence nor alacrity,
but as if it were all in the day's work, and he had no reason to be
disobliging.
The files were very heavy during the succeeding fortnight, and the
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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 Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake: Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appal.
THE LITTLE GIRL LOST
In futurity
I prophesy
That the earth from sleep
(Grave the sentence deep)
Shall arise, and seek
For her Maker meek;
And the desert wild
Become a garden mild.
Songs of Innocence and Experience |
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 Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there.
Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting
work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human
slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralising. On mechanical
slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world
depends. And when scientific men are no longer called upon to go
down to a depressing East End and distribute bad cocoa and worse
blankets to starving people, they will have delightful leisure in
which to devise wonderful and marvellous things for their own joy
and the joy of everyone else. There will be great storages of
force for every city, and for every house if required, and this
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