| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Before Adam by Jack London: and children of the Fire People. The latter ran for
the most part naked, though the former wore skins of
wild animals.
The Fire People, like ourselves, lived in caves. The
open space in front of the caves sloped down to the
river, and in the open space burned many small fires.
But whether or not the Fire People cooked their food, I
do not know. Lop-Ear and I did not see them cook. Yet
it is my opinion that they surely must have performed
some sort of rude cookery. Like us, they carried water
in gourds from the river. There was much coming and
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Memorabilia by Xenophon: On Revenues 1
The Hiero 1
The Agesilaus 1
The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians 2
Text in brackets "{}" is my transliteration of Greek text into
English using an Oxford English Dictionary alphabet table. The
diacritical marks have been lost.
The Memorabilia
or
Recollections of Socrates
BOOK I
The Memorabilia |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: and equilibrium of discourse; it was an excrescence which had to be cut
out, a survival which needed to be got rid of, because it was out of
keeping with the rest. It remained for the most part only as a formative
principle, which used words and letters not as crude imitations of other
natural sounds, but as symbols of ideas which were naturally associated
with them. It received in another way a new character; it affected not so
much single words, as larger portions of human speech. It regulated the
juxtaposition of sounds and the cadence of sentences. It was the music,
not of song, but of speech, in prose as well as verse. The old onomatopea
of primitive language was refined into an onomatopea of a higher kind, in
which it is no longer true to say that a particular sound corresponds to a
|
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 Tattine by Ruth Ogden [Mrs. Charles W. Ide]: for which Joseph the gardener was to be thanked.
The long branch on which the pot hung was pivoted, if you know what that is,
on an upright post fastened firmly in the ground, and in such a way that you
could "higher it," as Tattine said, or lower it, or swing it clear of the fire
on either side. At the end of the branch away from the fire hung a chain, with
a few blocks tied into it, for a weight, so that you lifted the weight with
one hand when you wished to change the position of the branch with the other,
and then let it rest on the ground again at the spot where you wanted the pole
to stay. You see, the great advantage of this was that, when you wished to see
how things were going on inside of the kettle, or to stop its boiling
instantly--you could just swing it away from the fire in no time, and not run
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