| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: not the taking of high interest, but the taking of any interest
whatsoever. The early church fathers were explicit, and the
Catholic Church for a thousand years consigned money-lenders
unhesitatingly to hell. But then came the modern commercial
system, and the money-lenders became the masters of the world!
There is no more amusing illustration of the perversion of human
thought than the efforts of the Jesuit casuists to escape from
the dilemma into which their Heavenly Guides had trapped them.
Here, for example is Alphonso Ligouri, a Spanish Jesuit of the
eighteenth century, a doctor of the Church, now worshipped as St.
Alphonsus, presenting a long and elaborate theory of "mental
|
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 Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: sleep like a dormouse! Such a thing has never happened before."
"It's the fog; it is that thick, you could cut it with a knife."
"But how about breakfast?"
"Bah! the boarders are possessed, I'm sure. They all cleared out
before there was a wink of daylight."
"Do speak properly, Sylvie," Mme. Vauquer retorted; "say a blink
of daylight."
"Ah, well, madame, whichever you please. Anyhow, you can have
breakfast at ten o'clock. La Michonnette and Poiret have neither
of them stirred. There are only those two upstairs, and they are
sleeping like the logs they are."
Father Goriot |
