| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: containing the gist of the forthcoming book. On the
negative-image hypothesis it is not hard to see how thought is
conceived to affect the seen and the unseen worlds
simultaneously. Every act of consciousness is accompanied by
molecular displacements in the brain, and these are of course
responded to by movements in the ethereal world. Thus as a series
of conscious states build up a continuous memory in strict
accordance with physical laws of motion,[7] so a correlative
memory is simultaneously built up in the ethereal world out of
the ethereal correlatives of the molecular displacements which go
on in our brains. And as there is a continual transfer of energy
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: grotesque and horrible, their forms gigantic.
Suddenly he heard a sharp report and something struck the
water smartly within a few inches of his head, spattering his
face with spray. He heard a second report, and saw one of
the sentinels with his rifle at his shoulder, a light cloud
of blue smoke rising from the muzzle. The man in the water
saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his own
through the sights of the rifle. He observed that it was a
gray eye and remembered having read that gray eyes were
keenest, and that all famous marksmen had them.
Nevertheless, this one had missed.
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: touched her deeply. Her visit brought them some little change, and
that to them was worth a fortune. For the last four years they had
gone their way like navigators without a goal or a compass. Sitting by
the chimney corner, they would talk over their disasters under the old
law of /maximum/, of their great investments in cloth, of the way they
had weathered bankruptcies, and, above all, the famous failure of
Lecocq, Monsieur Guillaume's battle of Marengo. Then, when they had
exhausted the tale of lawsuits, they recapitulated the sum total of
their most profitable stock-takings, and told each other old stories
of the Saint-Denis quarter. At two o'clock old Guillaume went to cast
an eye on the business at the Cat and Racket; on his way back he
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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 Adventure by Jack London: 'm him, no good along me. Plenty white fella marster cross along
me. S'pose me no kill 'm him, bimeby he give me plenty tobacco,
plenty calico, plenty everything too much."
"There is only the one thing to do," Sheldon said to Joan.
She drummed with her hand and waited, while Binu Charley gazed
wearily at her with unblinking eyes.
"I'll start the first thing in the morning," Sheldon said.
"We'll start," she corrected. "I can get twice as much out of my
Tahitians as you can, and, besides, one white should never be alone
under such circumstances."
He shrugged his shoulders in token, not of consent, but of
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