| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde: Miller never gave little Hans anything in return, though he had a
hundred sacks of flour stored away in his mill, and six milch cows,
and a large flock of woolly sheep; but Hans never troubled his head
about these things, and nothing gave him greater pleasure than to
listen to all the wonderful things the Miller used to say about the
unselfishness of true friendship.
"So little Hans worked away in his garden. During the spring, the
summer, and the autumn he was very happy, but when the winter came,
and he had no fruit or flowers to bring to the market, he suffered
a good deal from cold and hunger, and often had to go to bed
without any supper but a few dried pears or some hard nuts. In the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: second good crack--as much as to say to his mules, 'get on'--so slinking
behind, he enter'd the little inn at the foot of the hill.
The muleteer, as I told you, was a little, joyous, chirping fellow, who
thought not of to-morrow, nor of what had gone before, or what was to
follow it, provided he got but his scantling of Burgundy, and a little
chit-chat along with it; so entering into a long conversation, as how he
was chief gardener to the convent of Andouillets, &c. &c. and out of
friendship for the abbess and Mademoiselle Margarita, who was only in her
noviciate, he had come along with them from the confines of Savoy, &c. &c.-
-and as how she had got a white swelling by her devotions--and what a
nation of herbs he had procured to mollify her humours, &c. &c. and that if
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: the latitude of the early home of the Aryans. When the Greeks
had long forgotten why these stars were called arktoi, they
symbolized them as a Great Bear fixed in the sky. So that, as
Max Muller observes, "the name of the Arctic regions rests on
a misunderstanding of a name framed thousands of years ago in
Central Asia, and the surprise with which many a thoughtful
observer has looked at these seven bright stars, wondering why
they were ever called the Bear, is removed by a reference to
the early annals of human speech." Among the Algonquins the
sun-god Michabo was represented as a hare, his name being
compounded of michi, "great," and wabos, "a hare"; yet wabos
Myths and Myth-Makers |
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 The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: forest, but soon lost all traces of it amid the bewilderment of
tree-trunks and underbush, and here and there a huge rock covered
over with gray lichens. All these giant trees and boulders of
granite seemed intent on making a mystery of the course of this
small brook; fearing, perhaps, that, with its never-ceasing
loquacity, it should whisper tales out of the heart of the old
forest whence it flowed, or mirror its revelations on the smooth
surface of a pool. Continually, indeed, as it stole onward, the
streamlet kept up a babble, kind, quiet, soothing, but
melancholy, like the voice of a young child that was spending its
infancy without playfulness, and knew not how to be merry among
The Scarlet Letter |
