| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: of knowledge. Strange! It seems that it is for these few bits
of paper, headed by the names of a few Scots and English
shipmasters, that I have faced the astonished indignations, the
mockeries, and the reproaches of a sort hard to bear for a boy of
fifteen; that I have been charged with the want of patriotism,
the want of sense, and the want of heart, too; that I went
through agonies of self-conflict and shed secret tears not a few,
and had the beauties of the Furca Pass spoiled for me, and have
been called an "incorrigible Don Quixote," in allusion to the
book-born madness of the knight. For that spoil! They rustle,
those bits of paper--some dozen of them in all. In that faint,
A Personal Record |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: defended by a stockade; they had purchased a quantity of arms and
ammunition from New York, and had even plac'd quantities of small
paving stones between the windows of their high stone houses,
for their women to throw down upon the heads of any Indians
that should attempt to force into them. The armed brethren, too,
kept watch, and reliev'd as methodically as in any garrison town.
In conversation with the bishop, Spangenberg, I mention'd this
my surprise; for, knowing they had obtained an act of Parliament
exempting them from military duties in the colonies, I had
suppos'd they were conscientiously scrupulous of bearing arms.
He answer'd me that it was not one of their established principles,
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: had been worn by the murderer of the Dewars?
In spite of a summing-up distinctly favourable to the prisoner,
the jury were out three hours. According to one account of their
proceedings, told to the writer, there was at first a majority of
the jurymen in favour of conviction. But it was Saturday night;
if they could not come to a decision they were in danger of being
locked up over Sunday. For this reason the gentleman who held an
obstinate and unshaken belief that the crime was the work of a
homicidal maniac found an unexpected ally in a prominent member
of a church choir who was down to sing a solo in his church on
Sunday, and was anxious not to lose such an opportunity for
A Book of Remarkable Criminals |
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: the ceremony, in fact, of which our Eucharist is only a
reflection; whereas in the mysteries of Bacchus actual raw
flesh was distributed, which each of those present had
to consume in commemoration of the death of Bacchus
dismembered by the Titans, and whose passion, in Chios
and Tenedos, was renewed each year by the sacrifice of a man
who represented the god.[4] Possibly it is this last fact which
made people believe that the Christians (whose hoc est corpus
meum and sharing of an Eucharistic meal were no more than
a shadow of a more ancient rite) did really sacrifice a child
and devour its limbs."
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
