| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Dreams & Dust by Don Marquis: Strong Death has Romance for his bride;
Their legends . . . Ask oblivion! . . .
"They had no poet, and they died."
Heroes, the braggart trumps that dinned
Their futile triumphs, monarch, pawn,
Wild tribesmen, kingdoms disciplined,
Passed like a whirlwind and were gone;
They built with bronze and gold and brawn,
The inner Vision still denied;
Their conquests . . . Ask oblivion! . . .
"They had no poet, and they died."
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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: reserve for him. Eventually there is to be a day of reckoning,
when Ahriman will be bound in chains and rendered powerless,
or when, according to another account, he will be converted to
righteousness, as Burns hoped and Origen believed would be the
case with Satan.
This dualism of the ancient Persians has exerted a powerful
influence upon the development of Christian theology. The very
idea of an archfiend Satan, which Christianity received from
Judaism, seems either to have been suggested by the Persian
Ahriman, or at least to have derived its principal
characteristics from that source. There is no evidence that
Myths and Myth-Makers |
