| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: devils took for their churning-stick. The word means "a
churning-stick," and it appears also, with a prefixed
preposition, in the name of the fire-drill, pramantha. Now
Kuhn has proved that this name, pramantha, is etymologically
identical with Prometheus, the name of the beneficent Titan,
who stole fire from heaven and bestowed it upon mankind as the
richest of boons. This sublime personage was originally
nothing but the celestial drill which churns fire out of the
clouds; but the Greeks had so entirely forgotten his origin
that they interpreted his name as meaning "the one who thinks
beforehand," and accredited him with a brother, Epimetheus, or
Myths and Myth-Makers |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: And the rain-flurries drum on the glass:
Alone by the fireside with elbows on knees
I can number the hours as they pass.
Yet now, when to cheer me the crickets begin,
And my pipe is just happily lit,
Believe me, my friend, tho' the evening draws in,
That not all uncontested I sit.
Alone, did I say? O no, nowise alone
With the Past sitting warm on my knee,
To gossip of days that are over and gone,
But still charming to her and to me.
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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 Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: blue-black between the stars. As if to be more like a pedlar, I
wear a silver ring. This I could see faintly shining as I raised
or lowered the cigarette; and at each whiff the inside of my hand
was illuminated, and became for a second the highest light in the
landscape.
A faint wind, more like a moving coolness than a stream of air,
passed down the glade from time to time; so that even in my great
chamber the air was being renewed all night long. I thought with
horror of the inn at Chasserades and the congregated nightcaps;
with horror of the nocturnal prowesses of clerks and students, of
hot theatres and pass-keys and close rooms. I have not often
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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 Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: to; that's a sign of ill-luck, as sure as Death. He's all brown,
too, and no one ever attends to him. That's the Memsahib's work, I
know; because, when Tsin-ling tried to burn gilt paper before him,
she said it was a waste of money, and, if he kept a stick burning
very slowly, the Joss wouldn't know the difference. So now we've
got the sticks mixed with a lot of glue, and they take half-an-hour
longer to burn, and smell stinky. Let alone the smell of the room
by itself. No business can get on if they try that sort of thing.
The Joss doesn't like it. I can see that. Late at night,
sometimes, he turns all sorts of queer colors--blue and green and
red--just as he used to do when old Fung-Tching was alive; and he
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