| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: next fallen upon a rock covered with exquisite mosses, named Canalis;
he was, therefore, still seeking a power to love, and this spaniel-
like search for a master gave him outwardly the air of a king who has
met with his. This play of feeling, and a general tone of suffering in
the young man's face made it more really beautiful than he was himself
aware of; for he had always been annoyed to find himself classed by
women among the "handsome disconsolate,"--a class which has passed out
of fashion in these days, when every man seeks to blow his own trumpet
and put himself in the advance.
The self-distrustful Ernest now rested his immediate hopes on the
fashionable clothes he intended to wear. He put on, for this sacred
Modeste Mignon |
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: animal, as a bear, lion, tiger, eagle, or the bird they call
cuntur (condor), or some other bird of prey."[2] According
to Lewis Morgan, the North American Indians of various
tribes had for totems the wolf, bear, beaver, turtle, deer,
snipe, heron, hawk, crane, loon, turkey, muskrat; pike, catfish,
carp; buffalo, elk, reindeer, eagle, hare, rabbit, snake;
reed-grass, sand, rock, and tobacco-plant.
[1] See The Golden Bough, vol. iv, p. 31.
[2] See Andrew Lang, Custom and Myth, p. 104, also Myth, Ritual
and Religion, vol. i, pp. 71, 76, etc.
So we might go on rather indefinitely. I need hardly
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: God. It is so wonderful that it seems as if a child could reach it
in a summer's day. And so a child could. But with me and such as
me it is different. One can realise a thing in a single moment,
but one loses it in the long hours that follow with leaden feet.
It is so difficult to keep 'heights that the soul is competent to
gain.' We think in eternity, but we move slowly through time; and
how slowly time goes with us who lie in prison I need not tell
again, nor of the weariness and despair that creep back into one's
cell, and into the cell of one's heart, with such strange
insistence that one has, as it were, to garnish and sweep one's
house for their coming, as for an unwelcome guest, or a bitter
|
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 Glinda of Oz by L. Frank Baum: haired one, Audah, said to Glinda:
"It will not be necessary to go to the lake. We are
the three fishes."
"Indeed!" cried Glinda. "Then you are the three
Adepts at Magic, restored to your proper forms?"
"We are the three Adepts," admitted Aujah.
"Then," said Glinda, "my task is half accomplished.
But who destroyed the transformation that made you
fishes?"
"We have promised not to tell," answered Aurah; "but
this young Skeezer was largely responsible for our
Glinda of Oz |
