| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: glance this strange being led him in spirit through the spheres where
meditation leads the learned man, prayer the pious heart, where vision
transports the artist, and sleep the souls of men,--each and all have
their own path to the Height, their own guide to reach it, their own
individual sufferings in the dire return. In that sphere alone all
veils are rent away, and the revelation, the awful flaming certainty
of an unknown world, of which the soul brings back mere fragments to
this lower sphere, stands revealed. To Wilfrid one hour passed with
Seraphita was like the sought-for dreams of Theriakis, in which each
knot of nerves becomes the centre of a radiating delight. But he left
her bruised and wearied as some young girl endeavoring to keep step
Seraphita |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: Clasp me, hold me, and love me, single spring of delight."
And Rua folded her close, he folded her near and long,
The living knit to the living, and sang the lover's song:
NIGHT, NIGHT IT IS, NIGHT UPON THE PALMS.
NIGHT, NIGHT IT IS, THE LAND WIND HAS BLOWN.
STARRY, STARRY NIGHT, OVER DEEP AND HEIGHT;
LOVE, LOVE IN THE VALLEY, LOVE ALL ALONE.
"Taheia, heavy of hair, a foolish thing have we done,
To bind what gods have sundered unkindly into one.
Why should a lowly lover have touched Taheia's skirt,
Taheia the well-descended, and Rua child of the dirt?"
Ballads |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Proposed Roads To Freedom by Bertrand Russell: to judge what is for the good of the community. Like
all men who administer a system, they will come to
feel the system itself sacrosanct. The only changes
they will desire will be changes in the direction of
further regulations as to how the people are to
enjoy the good things kindly granted to them by their
benevolent despots. Whoever thinks this picture overdrawn
must have failed to study the influence and
methods of Civil Servants at present. On every matter
that arises, they know far more than the general
public about all the DEFINITE facts involved; the one
|
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 Memorabilia by Xenophon: some injunction on him contrary to the laws, he refused to obey, as
for instance when they forbade his conversing with the young;[4] or
again, when they ordered him and certain other citizens to arrest a
man to be put to death,[5] he stood out single-handed on the ground
that the injunctions laid upon him were contrary to the laws. And
lastly, when he appeared as defendant in the suit instituted by
Meletus,[6] notwithstanding that it was customary for litigants in the
law courts to humour the judges in the conduct of their arguments by
flattery and supplications contrary to the laws,[7] notwithstanding
also that defendants owed their acquittal by the court to the
employment of such methods, he refused to do a single thing however
The Memorabilia |
