| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter: To reconcile their claims it was agreed that he should
spend half the year (summer) in the upper world, and the
winter half with Proserpine below. He was killed by a
boar (Typhon) in the autumn. And every year the maidens
"wept for Adonis" (see Ezekiel viii. 14). In the spring
a festival of his resurrection was held--the women set out
to seek him, and having found the supposed corpse
placed it (a wooden image) in a coffin or hollow tree, and
performed wild rites and lamentations, followed by even
wilder rejoicings over his supposed resurrection. At Aphaca
in the North of Syria, and halfway between Byblus and
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: on the tinsel in splotches.
CHAPTER X.
SIX months later appeared "The Right of Way," the last chance,
though we didn't know it, that we were to have to redeem ourselves.
Written wholly during Vereker's sojourn abroad, the book had been
heralded, in a hundred paragraphs, by the usual ineptitudes. I
carried it, as early a copy as any, I this time flattered myself,
straightway to Mrs. Corvick. This was the only use I had for it; I
left the inevitable tribute of THE MIDDLE to some more ingenious
mind and some less irritated temper. "But I already have it,"
Gwendolen said. "Drayton Deane was so good as to bring it to me
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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 Little Britain by Washington Irving: Being a single man, and, as I observed before, rather an idle
good-for-nothing personage, I have been considered the only
gentleman by profession in the place. I stand therefore in high
favor with both parties, and have to hear all their cabinet
councils and mutual backbitings. As I am too civil not to agree
with the ladies on all occasions, I have committed myself most
horribly with both parties, by abusing their opponents. I might
manage to reconcile this to my conscience, which is a truly
accommodating one, but I cannot to my apprehension--if the
Lambs and Trotters ever come to a reconciliation, and compare
notes, I am ruined!
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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 Camille by Alexandre Dumas: has been in one of its most audacious moments of expansion. The
science of good and evil is acquired forever; faith is
refashioned, respect for sacred things has returned to us, and if
the world has not all at once become good, it has at least become
better. The efforts of every intelligent man tend in the same
direction, and every strong will is harnessed to the same
principle: Be good, be young, be true! Evil is nothing but
vanity, let us have the pride of good, and above all let us never
despair. Do not let us despise the woman who is neither mother,
sister, maid, nor wife. Do not let us limit esteem to the family
nor indulgence to egoism. Since "there is more joy in heaven over
Camille |
