| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: than his own--a field where he is free to observe and examine
without fear of sacrilege. Let him look into Madame Blavatsky's
"Secret Doctrine", or her "Isis Unveiled'!--encyclopedias of the
fantastic inventions which terror and longing have wrung out of
the tortured soul of man. Here are mysteries and solemnities,
charms and spells, illuminations and transmigrations, angels and
demons, guides, controls and masters--all of which it is
permissible to refuse to support with gifts. Let the reader then
go to James Freeman Clarke's "Ten Great Religions", and realize
how many billions of humans have lived and died in the solemn
certainty that their welfare on earth and in heaven depended upon
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: the faint and lingering syllables. Scarcely had they loitered
through her lips ere she was lost in slumber. Aylmer sat by her
side, watching her aspect with the emotions proper to a man the
whole value of whose existence was involved in the process now to
be tested. Mingled with this mood, however, was the philosophic
investigation characteristic of the man of science. Not the
minutest symptom escaped him. A heightened flush of the cheek, a
slight irregularity of breath, a quiver of the eyelid, a hardly
perceptible tremor through the frame,--such were the details
which, as the moments passed, he wrote down in his folio volume.
Intense thought had set its stamp upon every previous page of
Mosses From An Old Manse |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Koran: us is keenest at torment and more lasting.'
Said they, 'We will never prefer thee to what has come to us of
manifest signs, and to Him who originated us. Decide then what thou
canst decide; thou canst only decide in the life of this world!
Verily, we believe in our Lord, that He may pardon us our sins, and
the magic thou hast forced us to use; and God is better and more
lasting!'
Verily, he who comes to his Lord a sinner,-verily, for him is
hell; he shall not die therein, and shall not live.
But he who comes to Him a believer who has done aright-these, for
them are the highest ranks,-gardens of Eden beneath which rivers flow,
The Koran |
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 Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: the cool arbour, under fluttering leaves. The splash of oars and
bathers, the bathing costumes out to dry, the trim canoes beside
the jetty, tell of a society that has an eye to pleasure. There is
"something to do" at Gretz. Perhaps, for that very reason, I can
recall no such enduring ardours, no such glories of exhilaration,
as among the solemn groves and uneventful hours of Barbizon. This
"something to do" is a great enemy to joy; it is a way out of it;
you wreak your high spirits on some cut-and-dry employment, and
behold them gone! But Gretz is a merry place after its kind:
pretty to see, merry to inhabit. The course of its pellucid river,
whether up or down, is full of gentle attractions for the
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