| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: creature emerged, fair and youthful, clothed in white linen, an Indian
from creation issuing her palms. Her golden hair rippled over her
shoulders, her eyes glowed, a bright mist clung about her, a ring of
gold hovered above her head, she shook the flaming blade of a sword
towards the spaces of heaven.
"See and believe!" she cried.
And suddenly I saw, afar off, many thousands of cathedrals like the
one that I had just quitted; but these were covered with pictures and
with frescoes, and I heard them echo with entrancing music. Myriads of
human creatures flocked to these great buildings, swarming about them
like ants on an ant-heap. Some were eager to rescue books from
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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: Odysseus is ensnared and kept in temporary bondage by the
amorous nymph of darkness, Kalypso (kalnptw, to veil or
cover). So the zone of the moon-goddess Aphrodite inveigles
all-seeing Zeus to treacherous slumber on Mount Ida; and by a
similar sorcery Tasso's great hero is lulled in unseemly
idleness in Armida's golden paradise, at the western verge of
the world. The disappearance of Tannhauser behind the moonlit
cliff, lured by Venus Ursula, the pale goddess of night, is a
precisely parallel circumstance.
But solar and lunar phenomena are by no means the only sources
of popular mythology. Opposite my writing-table hangs a quaint
Myths and Myth-Makers |
