| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: sphere than that I live in; it will be your pride to have
descended from it; mine, that I should have deserved you; and you
will not perhaps have fallen too far by coming down to me in my
poverty and misery. Nay, if a woman's most glorious refuge is in a
heart that is wholly her own, you will always reign supreme in
mine. Not a thought, not a deed, shall ever pollute this heart,
this glorious sanctuary, so long as you vouchsafe to dwell in it--
and will you not dwell in it for ever? Did you not enchant me by
the words, 'Now and for ever?' /Nunc et semper/! And I have
written these words of our ritual below your portrait--words
worthy of you, as they are of God. He is /nunc et semper/, as my
Louis Lambert |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum: living with the old woman, waiting for me to come after her.
"My body shone so brightly in the sun that I felt very proud
of it and it did not matter now if my axe slipped, for it could
not cut me. There was only one danger--that my joints would
rust; but I kept an oil-can in my cottage and took care to oil
myself whenever I needed it. However, there came a day when I
forgot to do this, and, being caught in a rainstorm, before I
thought of the danger my joints had rusted, and I was left to
stand in the woods until you came to help me. It was a terrible
thing to undergo, but during the year I stood there I had time to
think that the greatest loss I had known was the loss of my heart.
The Wizard of Oz |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells: can make nothing of their numeral system. That, however, does not matter,
because Phi-oo understands ours.) From that I went on to tell him that
mankind had dwelt in cities only for nine or ten thousand years, and that
we were still not united in one brotherhood, but under many different
forms of government. This astonished the Grand Lunar very much, when it
was made clear to him. At first he thought we referred merely to
administrative areas.
"'Our States and Empires are still the rawest sketches of what order will
some day be,' I said, and so I came to tell him. ... [At this point a
length of record that probably represents thirty or forty words is totally
illegible.]
The First Men In The Moon |
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 Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: family, and that the wayfaring man might pause to drink at that
fountain, and keep his heart pure by freshening the memory of
home. Robin distinguished the seat of every individual of the
little audience; he saw the good man in the midst, holding the
Scriptures in the golden light that fell from the western clouds;
he beheld him close the book and all rise up to pray. He heard
the old thanksgivings for daily mercies, the old supplications
for their continuance to which he had so often listened in
weariness, but which were now among his dear remembrances. He
perceived the slight inequality of his father's voice when he
came to speak of the absent one; he noted how his mother turned
The Snow Image |
