| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: three times like a shot rabbit. I instantly got two more cartridges
into the gun, and as I did so the lioness rose again and came crawling
towards me on her fore-paws, roaring and groaning, and with such an
expression of diabolical fury on her countenance as I have not often
seen. I shot her again through the chest, and she fell over on to her
side quite dead.
"That was the first and last time that I ever killed a brace of lions
right and left, and, what is more, I never heard of anybody else doing
it. Naturally I was considerably pleased with myself, and having again
loaded up, I went on to look for the black-maned beauty who had killed
Kaptein. Slowly, and with the greatest care, I proceeded up the kloof,
Long Odds |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: the common people; and illiterate persons are not in the habit
of allegorizing in the style of mediaeval monks or rabbinical
commentators. But what has been amply demonstrated is, that
the sun and the clouds, the light and the darkness, were once
supposed to be actuated by wills analogous to the human will;
that they were personified and worshipped or propitiated by
sacrifice; and that their doings were described in language
which applied so well to the deeds of human or quasi-human
beings that in course of time its primitive purport faded from
recollection. No competent scholar now doubts that the myths
of the Veda and the Edda originated in this way, for philology
Myths and Myth-Makers |
