| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: high position, are you therefor forthwith set up for a tyrant?
Remember who you are, and whom you rule, that they are by nature
your kinsmen, your brothers, the offspring of God.
"But I paid a price for them, not they for me."
Do you see whither you are looking--down to the earth, to
the pit, to those despicable laws of the dead? But to the laws of
the Gods you do not look.
XXXV
When we are invited to a banquet, we take what is set before
us; and were one to call upon his host to set fish upon the table
or sweet things, he would be deemed absurd. Yet in a word, we ask
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: The building which we now entered was entirely roofless.
In its centre was a long tank of water, set below the level of
the floor like the swimming pool of a natatorium. Near one
side of the pool floated an odd-looking black object. Whether
it were some strange monster of these buried waters, or a
queer raft, I could not at once perceive.
We were soon to know, however, for as we reached the
edge of the pool directly above the thing, Xodar cried out a
few words in a strange tongue. Immediately a hatch cover
was raised from the surface of the object, and a black
seaman sprang from the bowels of the strange craft.
The Gods of Mars |
