| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Young Forester by Zane Grey: small oaks or hickories just here? They can't live in deep shade. Here's
the stump of a white oak cut last fall. It was about two feet in diameter.
Let's count the rings to find its age--about ninety years. It flourished in
its youth and grew rapidly, but it had a hard time after about fifty years.
At that time it was either burned, or mutilated by a falling tree, or
struck by lightning."
"Now, how do you make that out?" asked father, intensely interested.
"See the free, wide rings from the pith out to about number forty-five. The
tree was healthy up to that time. Then it met with an injury of some kind,
as is indicated by this black scar. After that the rings grew narrower. The
tree struggled to live."
The Young Forester |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: accomplishes everything before expressing itself in any physical
phenomenon--must, in conformity with its nature, be free from the
physical conditions by which the external Being of Reaction, the
visible man, is fettered in its manifestation. From this followed a
multitude of logical explanation as to those results of our twofold
nature which appear the strangest, and a rectification of various
systems in which truth and falsehood are mingled.
Certain men, having had a glimpse of some phenomena of the natural
working of the Being of Action, were, like Swedenborg, carried away
above this world by their ardent soul, thirsting for poetry, and
filled with the Divine Spirit. Thus, in their ignorance of the causes
Louis Lambert |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: to boycott the interloper. His journals preach defiance to the
United States Government, and in the Tabernacle on a Sunday the
preachers follow suit.
When I went there, the place was full of people who would have
been much better for a washing.
A man rose up and told them that they were the chosen of God, the
elect of Israel; that they were to obey their priests, and that
there was a good time coming. I fancy that they had heard all
this before so many times it produced no impression whatever,
even as the sublimest mysteries of another faith lose salt
through constant iteration. They breathed heavily through their
|
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 Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: tance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible
from within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way
through the trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently
distinct the more prominent objects around; the eye, however,
struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or
the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies
hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse,
comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical
instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality
to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow.
An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and
The Fall of the House of Usher |
