| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Herland by Charlotte Gilman: after we had been introduced to a whole group of them, all with
pleasant, few-syllabled strange names, like the ones we knew.
"Oh yes," Moadine told him. "A good many of us have
another, as we get on in life--a descriptive one. That is the name
we earn. Sometimes even that is changed, or added to, in an
unusually rich life. Such as our present Land Mother--what you
call president or king, I believe. She was called Mera, even as a
child; that means `thinker.' Later there was added Du--Du-Mera
--the wise thinker, and now we all know her as O-du-mera--
great and wise thinker. You shall meet her."
"No surnames at all then?" pursued Terry, with his somewhat
Herland |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter: very feeble) their projections of intelligence into Nature
were correspondingly feeble. The reflections of themselves
projected into the world beyond could not reach the stature of
eternal 'gods,' but were rather of the quality of ephemeral
phantoms and ghosts; and the ceremonials and creeds
of that period are consequently more properly described
as, Magic than as Religion. There have indeed
been great controversies as to whether there has or has
not been, in the course of religious evolution, a PRE-
animistic stage. Probably of course human evolution in
this matter must have been perfectly continuous from
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
