| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Arizona Nights by Stewart Edward White: beat into our skulls, and the dry, brittle hills looked like
papier-mache, and the grey sage-bush ran off into the rise of the
hills; and then came sunset and the hard, dry mountains grew
filmy, like gauze veils of many colours, and melted and glowed
and faded to slate blue, and the stars came out? The English
hills are rounded and green and curried, and the sky is near, and
the stars only a few miles up. And do you recollect that dark
night when old Loco and his warriors were camped at the base of
Cochise's Stronghold, and we crept down through the velvet dark
wondering when we would be discovered, our mouths sticky with
excitement, and the little winds blowing?"
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: two mirrors on your toilet table, and see that with proper care you
dress body and mind before them daily. After the dressing is once
over for the day, think no more about it: as your hair will blow
about your ears, so your temper and thoughts will get ruffled with
the day's work, and may need, sometimes, twice dressing; but I don't
want you to carry about a mental pocket-comb; only to be smooth
braided always in the morning.
Write down then, frankly, what you are, or, at least, what you think
yourself, not dwelling upon those inevitable faults which I have
just told you are of little consequence, and which the action of a
right life will shake or smooth away; but that you may determine to
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Miracle Mongers and Their Methods by Harry Houdini: safety. His experiment is stated to have
given satisfaction. The pompiers were
clothed in asbestos, over which was a network
of iron. Some of them, it was stated,
who wore double gloves of amianthus, held
a red-hot bar during four minutes.
Sir David Brewster, in his Letters on
Natural Magic, page 305, gives a more detailed
account of Aldini, from which the natural
deduction is that the Chevalier was a showman
with an intellect fully up to the demands of
Miracle Mongers and Their Methods |
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 Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: muslin dress, a handkerchief broidered with the initials
"A.L.B.,"--were secured as clews; and the little body was
interred where it had been found.
And, several days before, Captain Hotard, of the relief-boat
Estelle Brousseaux, had found, drifting in the open Gulf
(latitude 26 degrees 43 minutes; longitude 88 degrees 17
minutes),--the corpse of a fair-haired woman, clinging to a
table. The body was disfigured beyond recognition: even the
slender bones of the hands had been stripped by the nibs of the
sea-birds-except one finger, the third of the left, which seemed
to have been protected by a ring of gold, as by a charm. Graven
|
