| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Augsburg Confession by Philip Melanchthon: conscience has been felt by many until the end.] Therefore,
those who are not fit to lead a single life ought to contract
matrimony. For no man's law, no vow, can annul the commandment
and ordinance of God. For these reasons the priests teach that
it is lawful for them to marry wives.
It is also evident that in the ancient Church priests were
married men. For Paul says, 1 Tim. 3, 2, that a bishop should
be chosen who is the husband of one wife. And in Germany, four
hundred years ago for the first time, the priests were
violently compelled to lead a single life, who indeed offered
such resistance that the Archbishop of Mayence, when about to
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: indeed she comforted, as content under the roof of a garret as beneath
the silken hangings of opulence. Italian and Spanish both, she
fulfilled very scrupulously the duties of religion, and more than once
she had said to love:--
"Return to-morrow; to-day I belong to God."
But this slime permeated with gold and perfumes, this careless
indifference to all things, these unbridled passions, these religious
beliefs cast into that heart like diamonds into mire, this life begun,
and ended, in a hospital, these gambling chances transferred to the
soul, to the very existence,--in short, this great alchemy, for which
vice lit the fire beneath the crucible in which fortunes were melted
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: with one another, we shall be struck by a remarkable fact.
The peoples inhabiting it grow steadily more personal as we go west.
So unmistakable is this gradation of spirit, that one is tempted to
ascribe it to cosmic rather than to human causes. It is as marked
as the change in color of the human complexion observable along any
meridian, which ranges from black at the equator to blonde toward
the pole. In like manner, the sense of self grows more intense as
we follow in the wake of the setting sun, and fades steadily as we
advance into the dawn. America, Europe, the Levant, India, Japan,
each is less personal than the one before. We stand at the nearer
end of the scale, the Far Orientals at the other. If with us the I
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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 The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: those wretched men, the initiate who reveal it?"
As Pinto spoke to me, he looked through and through me with his
horrible piercing glance, so that I sat quite uneasily on my bench.
He continued: "Did I question her awake? I knew she would lie to
me. Poor child! I loved her no less because I did not believe a
word she said. I loved her blue eye, her golden hair, her
delicious voice, that was true in song, though when she spoke,
false as Eblis! You are aware that I possess in rather a
remarkable degree what we have agreed to call the mesmeric power.
I set the unhappy girl to sleep. THEN she was obliged to tell me
all. It was as I had surmised. Goby de Mouchy, my wretched,
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