| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Suddenly starting from his ambush,
Followed fast those bloody footprints,
Followed in that fiery war-trail,
With its glare upon his features.
And Nokomis, the old woman,
Pointing with her finger westward,
Spake these words to Hiawatha:
"Yonder dwells the great Pearl-Feather,
Megissogwon, the Magician,
Manito of Wealth and Wampum,
Guarded by his fiery serpents,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from When the World Shook by H. Rider Haggard: troubles than I did upon those of the native taboo and the
priestly oaths.
The end of it all was that we left our ship, having padlocked
up the door (the padlock, we explained, was a magical instrument
that bit worse than Tommy), and moved inland in a kind of
triumphal procession, priests and singers going before (the
Orofenans sang extremely well) and minstrels following after
playing upon instruments like flutes, while behind came the
bearers carrying such goods as we needed. They took us to a
beautiful place in a grove of palms on a ridge where grew many
breadfruit trees, that commanded a view of the ocean upon one
When the World Shook |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: neither yielded wholly, nor resisted wholly; but, perhaps, that was
only the more reason why I should be silent. What folly for women to
complain! If they have not proved the stronger, they have failed in
sense, in tact, in capacity, and they deserve their fate. Are they not
queens in France? They can play with you as they like, when they like,
and as much as they like." Here she danced her vinaigrette with an
airy movement of feminine impertinence and mocking gayety. "I have
often heard miserable little specimens of my sex regretting that they
were women, wishing they were men; I have always regarded them with
pity. If I had to choose, I should still elect to be a woman. A fine
pleasure, indeed, to owe one's triumph to force, and to all those
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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 Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: thought of the heathen world began to flow in a theologic channel. All
the great heathen thinkers henceforth are theologians. In the times of
Nero, for instance, Epictetus the slave, the regenerator of Stoicism, is
no mere speculator concerning entities and quiddities, correct or
incorrect. He is a slave searching for the secret of freedom, and
finding that it consists in escaping not from a master, but from self:
not to wealth and power, but to Jove. He discovers that Jove is, in
some most mysterious, but most real sense, the Father of men; he learns
to look up to that Father as his guide and friend.
Numenius, again, in the second century, was a man who had evidently
studied Philo. He perceived so deeply, I may say so exaggeratedly, the
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