| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: of chance.
"In other words," I hear some severe and sour-complexioned reader
say, "in plain language, they are a pair of old gamblers."
Yes, if it pleases you to call honest men by a bad name. But they
risk nothing that is not their own; and if they lose, they are not
impoverished. They desire nothing that belongs to other men; and if
they win, no one is robbed. If all gambling were like that, it
would be difficult to see the harm in it. Indeed, a daring moralist
might even assert, and prove by argument, that so innocent a delight
in the taking of chances is an aid to virtue.
Do you remember Martin Luther's reasoning on the subject of
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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 Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: to some one to be tested. If the man be a good judge of silver,
he will know: the coin will tell its own tale.
LVIII
Even as the traveller asks his way of him that he meets,
inclined in no wise to bear to the right rather than to the left
(for he desires only the way leading whither he would go), so
should we come unto God as to a guide; even as we use our eyes
without admonishing them to show us some things rather than
others, but content to receive the images of such things as they
present to us. But as it is we stand anxiously watching the
victim, and with the voice of supplication call upon the augur:--
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
