| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson: Pelleas is dead--he told us--he that hath
His horse and armour: will ye let him in?
He slew him! Gawain, Gawain of the court,
Sir Gawain--there he waits below the wall,
Blowing his bugle as who should say him nay.'
And so, leave given, straight on through open door
Rode Gawain, whom she greeted courteously.
`Dead, is it so?' she asked. `Ay, ay,' said he,
`And oft in dying cried upon your name.'
`Pity on him,' she answered, `a good knight,
But never let me bide one hour at peace.'
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare: Playing patient sports in unconstrained gyves:
She that her fame so to herself contrives,
The scars of battle 'scapeth by the flight,
And makes her absence valiant, not her might.
'O pardon me, in that my boast is true:
The accident which brought me to her eye,
Upon the moment did her force subdue,
And now she would the caged cloister fly:
Religious love put out religion's eye:
Not to be tempted, would she be immur'd,
And now, to tempt all, liberty procur'd.
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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 Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: and thus almost the opposite of what we usually imagine a medium
so-called, or psychic subject to be. Karl Kellner: Yoga: Eine
Skizze, Munchen, 1896, p. 21.
The Buddhists used the word "samadhi" as well as the Hindus; but
"dhyana" is their special word for higher states of
contemplation. There seem to be four stages recognized in
dhyana. The first stage comes through concentration of the mind
upon one point. It excludes desire, but not discernment or
judgment: it is still intellectual. In the second stage the
intellectual functions drop off, and the satisfied sense of unity
remains. In the third stage the satisfaction departs, and
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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 When the World Shook by H. Rider Haggard: I looked at him and he ceased. Somehow I could not bear, as
yet, to hear her beloved name spoken by other lips.
Then we entered the passage that she pointed out to us, and
began a most terrible journey which, so far as we could judge,
for we lost any exact count of time, took us about sixty hours.
The road, it is true, was smooth and unblocked, but the ascent
was fearfully steep and slippery; so much so that often we were
obliged to pull each other up it and lie down to rest.
Had it not been for those large, felt-covered bottles of Life-
water, I am sure we should never have won through. But this
marvelous elixir, drunk a little at a time, always re-
When the World Shook |
