| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake: And the skylark sings with me:
O what sweet company!
But to go to school in a summer morn, -
O it drives all joy away!
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay.
Ah then at times I drooping sit,
And spend many an anxious hour;
Nor in my book can I take delight,
Nor sit in learning's bower,
Songs of Innocence and Experience |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: damnation is really over-individuation and that salvahon is escape
from self into the larger being of life. . . .
What can this "religion of the future" be but that devotion to the
racial adventure under the captaincy of God which we have already
found, like gold in the bottom of the vessel, when we have washed
away the confusions and impurities of dogmatic religion? By an
inquiry setting out from a purely religious starting-point we have
already reached conclusions identical with this ultimate refuge of
an extreme materialist.
This altar to the Future of his, we can claim as an altar to our
God--an altar rather indistinctly inscribed.
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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 The Reef by Edith Wharton: wanted to linger with him in a world of fancy and yet to
walk at his side in the world of fact. She wanted him to
feel her power and yet to love her for her ignorance and
humility. She felt like a slave, and a goddess, and a girl
in her teens...
XIII
Darrow, late that evening, threw himself into an armchair
before his fire and mused.
The room was propitious to meditation. The red-veiled lamp,
the corners of shadow, the splashes of firelight on the
curves of old full-bodied wardrobes and cabinets, gave it an
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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 Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: such a fact, and it seems highly improbable, that, in some subtle manner
now incomprehensible, there might tend to be a subtle correlation between
that condition of the brain and nervous system which accompanies ability in
the direction of certain modern forms of mental, social labour, and the
particular form of reproductive function possessed by an individual. It
may be that, inexplicable as it seems, there may ultimately be found to be
some connection between that condition of the brain and nervous system
which fits the individual for the study of the higher mathematics, let us
say, and the nature of their sex attributes. The mere fact that, of the
handful of women who, up to the present, have received training and been
allowed to devote themselves to abstract study, several have excelled in
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