| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: There has fallen a petal of the rose
Just where the yellow satin shows
The blue-veined flower of her throat.
With pale green nails of polished jade,
Pulling the leaves of pink and pearl,
There stands a little ivory girl
Under the rose-tree's dancing shade.
LES BALLONS
Against these turbid turquoise skies
The light and luminous balloons
Dip and drift like satin moons
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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: of years to realize this thoroughly, but there it is. You are
just at the threshold, peeping in at the door. What did
Shakespeare say? "To thine own self be true, and it must follow
as the night the day, thou can'st not then be false to any
man." What a profound bit of philosophy in three lines!
I doubt if anywhere the basis of all human life has been
expressed more perfectly and tersely.
One of the Upanishads (the Maitrayana-Brahmana) says:
"The happiness belonging to a mind, which through deep
inwardness[1] (or understanding) has been washed clean and has
entered into the Self, is a thing beyond the power of words to
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 A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: invites the chumo or steward, who is appointed to make an estimate
of the value of each year's product, to his house, entertains him in
the most agreeable manner he can; makes him a present, and then
takes him to see his corn. If the chumo is pleased with the treat
and present, he will give him a declaration or writing to witness
that his ground, which afforded five or six sacks of corn, did you
yield so many bushels, and even of this it is the custom to abate
something; so that our revenue did not increase in proportion to our
lands; and we found ourselves often obliged to buy corn, which,
indeed, is not dear, for in fruitful years forty or fifty measures,
weighing each about twenty-two pounds, may be purchased for a crown.
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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 Statesman by Plato: which he would have interpreted his own parable.
He touches upon another question of great interest--the consciousness of
evil--what in the Jewish Scriptures is called 'eating of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil.' At the end of the narrative, the Eleatic asks
his companion whether this life of innocence, or that which men live at
present, is the better of the two. He wants to distinguish between the
mere animal life of innocence, the 'city of pigs,' as it is comically
termed by Glaucon in the Republic, and the higher life of reason and
philosophy. But as no one can determine the state of man in the world
before the Fall, 'the question must remain unanswered.' Similar questions
have occupied the minds of theologians in later ages; but they can hardly
Statesman |
