| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Rezanov by Gertrude Atherton: really as weak and silly as that. It was only a
mood. Should you not return I should grieve, yes;
and should I live as long as is common with my
race, still would my heart remain young with your
image, and with the fidelity that would be no less a
religion than that of my church. But I should not
live a selfish life, or I should be unworthy of my
election to experience a great and eternal passion.
Memory and the life of the imagination would be
my solace, possibly in time my happiness, but my
days I should give to this poor little world of ours;
Rezanov |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: lost?
Margret stood looking down at the sloping moors and fog. She,
too, had her place and work. She thought that night she saw it
clearly, and kept her eyes fixed on it, as I said. They plodded
steadily down the wide years opening before her. Whatever slow,
unending toil lay in them, whatever hungry loneliness, or
coarseness of deed, she saw it all, shrinking from nothing. She
looked at the big blue-corded veins in her wrist, full of
untainted blood,--gauged herself coolly, her lease of life, her
power of endurance,--measured it out against the work waiting for
her. No short task, she knew that. She would be old before it
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: Meredith. It was very amusing to hear her and Hope talk at
cross-purposes. You know her daughter Helen is in Paris, and
the mother seemed very sad about her. A lady was asking if
something or other were true; 'Too true,' said Mrs. Meredith;
'with every opportunity she has had no real success. It was not
the poor child's fault. She was properly presented; but as yet
she has had no success at all.'
"Hope looked up, full of sympathy. She thought Helen must be
some disappointed school-teacher, and felt an interest in her
immediately. 'Will there not be another examination?' she
asked. 'What an odd phrase,' said Mrs. Meredith, looking rather
|
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: and more radiant in the hour of return to the mother's arms.
The return, the salvation, for which humanity looks, is
the return of the little individual self to harmony and union
with the great Self of the universe, but by no means its
extinction or abandonment--rather the finding of its own true
nature as never before.
There is another thing which may be said here: namely,
that the disentanglement, as above, of three main stages of
psychological evolution as great formative influences in the
history of mankind, does not by any means preclude
the establishment of lesser stages within the boundaries
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
