| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: bound up with the whole, is not this still truer of our souls?
And if our souls are bound up and in contact with God, as being
very parts and fragments plucked from Himself, shall He not feel
every movement of theirs as though it were His own, and belonging
to His own nature?"
XXXVII
"But," you say, "I cannot comprehend all this at once."
"Why, who told you that your powers were equal to God's?"
Yet God hath placed by the side of each a man's own Guardian
Spirit, who is charged to watch over him--a Guardian who sleeps
not nor is deceived. For to what better or more watchful Guardian
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: may he help who can, that endowments, monastic houses, parishes
and schools be well established and managed; and it would also
be one of the works of the spiritual authority that it lessen the
number of endowments, monastic houses and schools, where they
cannot be cared for. It is much better that there be no monastic
house or endowment than that there be evil government in them,
whereby God is the more provoked to anger.
IX. Since, then, the authorities so entirely neglect their work,
and are perverted, it must assuredly follow that they misuse
their power, and undertake other and evil works, just as parents
do when they give some command contrary to God. Here we must be
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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 Door in the Wall, et. al. by H. G. Wells: soul had beaten against the thing forbidden!
"But it is impossible for one man to tell another just these
things. It's emotion, it's a tint, a light that comes and goes.
Only while it's there, everything changes, everything. The thing
is I came away and left them in their Crisis to do what they
could."
"Left whom?" I asked, puzzled.
"The people up in the north there. You see--in this dream,
anyhow--I had been a big man, the sort of man men come to trust in,
to group themselves about. Millions of men who had never seen me
were ready to do things and risk things because of their confidence
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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 United States Declaration of Independence: We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their
legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.
We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and
settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice
and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our
common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably
interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been
deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore,
acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them,
as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America,
United States Declaration of Independence |
