| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Pellucidar by Edgar Rice Burroughs: now forced to a realization of the fact that I was in the
hands of enlightened creatures--for justice and grati-
tude are certain hallmarks of rationality and culture.
But what they purposed for us further was of most
imminent interest to me. They might save us from the
tarag and yet not free us. They looked upon us yet, to
some extent, I knew, as creatures of a lower order, and
so as we are unable to place ourselves in the position
of the brutes we enslave--thinking that they are happier
in bondage than in the free fulfilment of the purposes
for which nature intended them--the Mahars, too, might
Pellucidar |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum: "You are rather attractive," said the lady, presently. "Not at all
beautiful, you understand, but you have a certain style of prettiness
that is different from that of any of my thirty heads. So I believe
I'll take your head and give you No. 26 for it."
"Well, I b'lieve you won't!" exclaimed Dorothy.
"It will do you no good to refuse," continued the Princess; "for I
need your head for my collection, and in the Land of Ev my will is
law. I never have cared much for No. 26, and you will find that it is
very little worn. Besides, it will do you just as well as the one
you're wearing, for all practical purposes."
"I don't know anything about your No. 26, and I don't want to," said
Ozma of Oz |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Chronicles of the Canongate by Walter Scott: those of war. Nevertheless, two idle young fellows in the
vehicle, or rather on the top of it, were so much amused with the
deliberation which I used in ascending to the same place of
eminence, that I thought I should have been obliged to pull them
up a little. And I was in no good-humour at an unsuppressed
laugh following my descent when set down at the angle, where a
cross road, striking off from the main one, led me towards
Glentanner, from which I was still nearly five miles distant.
It was an old-fashioned road, which, preferring ascents to
sloughs, was led in a straight line over height and hollow,
through moor and dale. Every object around me; as I passed them
|
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 To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: ever being able to do.
What does one send to the Lighthouse indeed! At any other time Lily
could have suggested reasonably tea, tobacco, newspapers. But this
morning everything seemed so extraordinarily queer that a question like
Nancy's--What does one send to the Lighthouse?--opened doors in one's
mind that went banging and swinging to and fro and made one keep
asking, in a stupefied gape, What does one send? What does one do?
Why is one sitting here, after all?
Sitting alone (for Nancy went out again) among the clean cups at the
long table, she felt cut off from other people, and able only to go on
watching, asking, wondering. The house, the place, the morning, all
To the Lighthouse |
