| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter: right to imagine any part of this solemn ceremony as coarse
or obscene."[6] As Nature, however, has been known (quite
frequently) to be coarse or obscene, and as the initiators
of the Mysteries were probably neither 'good' nor 'learned,'
but were simply anxious to interpret Nature as best they
could, we cannot find fault with the latter for the way
they handled the problem, nor indeed well see how they could
have handled it better.
[1] F. Nork, Der Mystagog, mentions that the Roman Penates were
commonly anointed with oil. J. Stuart Hay, in his Life of
Elagabalus (1911), says that "Elagabal was worshipped under the
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
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 1984 by George Orwell: among dwelling-houses. Immediately above his head there hung three
discoloured metal balls which looked as if they had once been gilded. He
seemed to know the place. Of course! He was standing outside the junk-shop
where he had bought the diary.
A twinge of fear went through him. It had been a sufficiently rash act to
buy the book in the beginning, and he had sworn never to come near the
place again. And yet the instant that he allowed his thoughts to wander,
his feet had brought him back here of their own accord. It was precisely
against suicidal impulses of this kind that he had hoped to guard himself
by opening the diary. At the same time he noticed that although it was
nearly twenty-one hours the shop was still open. With the feeling that he
1984 |
