| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Heap O' Livin' by Edgar A. Guest: When the hair about the temples starts to show
the signs of gray,
And a fellow realizes that he's wandering far
away
From the pleasures of his boyhood and his
youth, and never more
Will know the joy of laughter as he did in days
of yore,
Oh, it's then he starts to thinking of a stubby
little lad
With a face as brown as berries and a soul
A Heap O' Livin' |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: reduced it to an art. It was by sleeping in the temples of the deities,
after due mesmeric manipulations, that cures were even then effected.
Surely the old priests were the people to whom to go for information.
The old philosophers of Greece were venerable. How much more those of
the East, in comparison with whom the Greeks were children? Besides, if
these daemons and deities were so near them, might it not be possible to
behold them? They seemed to have given up caring much for the world and
its course -
Effugerant adytis templisque relictis
Di quibus imperium steterat.
The old priests used to make them appear--perhaps they might do it
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