| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: But sat on his high terrace, with the tikis by his side,
And stared on the blue ocean, like a parrot, ruby-eyed.
Dawn as yellow as sulphur leaped on the mountain height:
Out on the round of the sea the gems of the morning light,
Up from the round of the sea the streamers of the sun; -
But down in the depths of the valley the day was not begun.
In the blue of the woody twilight burned red the cocoa-husk,
And the women and men of the clan went forth to bathe in the dusk,
A word that began to go round, a word, a whisper, a start:
Hope that leaped in the bosom, fear that knocked on the heart:
"See, the priest is not risen - look, for his door is fast!
Ballads |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: contains the bones of Saint Maxima, who came from Ravenna on purpose to
touch the body--
--Of Saint Maximus, said my father, popping in with his saint before him,--
they were two of the greatest saints in the whole martyrology, added my
father--Excuse me, said the sacristan--'twas to touch the bones of Saint
Germain, the builder of the abbey--And what did she get by it? said my
uncle Toby--What does any woman get by it? said my father--Martyrdome;
replied the young Benedictine, making a bow down to the ground, and
uttering the word with so humble, but decisive a cadence, it disarmed my
father for a moment. 'Tis supposed, continued the Benedictine, that St.
Maxima has lain in this tomb four hundred years, and two hundred before her
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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 At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft: and a dazed defense against them and the equally frantic white
simians with the queer wrappings and paraphernalia ... poor Lake,
poor Gedney... and poor Old Ones! Scientists to the last - what
had they done that we would not have done in their place? God,
what intelligence and persistence! What a facing of the incredible,
just as those carven kinsmen and forbears had faced things only
a little less incredible! Radiates, vegetables, monstrosities,
star spawn - whatever they had been, they were men!
They had
crossed the icy peaks on whose templed slopes they had once worshipped
and roamed among the tree ferns. They had found their dead city
At the Mountains of Madness |
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 Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter: young Sun with only one feeble ray)? Why did Samson
(name derived from Shemesh, the sun) lose all his strength
when he lost his hair? Why were so many of these gods
--Mithra, Apollo, Krishna, Jesus, and others, born in
caves or underground chambers?[1] Why, at the Easter
Eve festival of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem is a light
brought from the grave and communicated to the candles
of thousands who wait outside, and who rush forth rejoicing
to carry the new glory over the world?[2] Why indeed?
except that older than all history and all written records
has been the fear and wonderment of the children of men
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
