| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar by Edgar Rice Burroughs: he launched himself downward upon the sleek back. The
impact of his weight carried the deer to its knees and
before the animal could regain its feet the knife had
found its heart. As Tarzan rose upon the body of his
kill to scream forth his hideous victory cry into the
face of the moon the wind carried to his nostrils
something which froze him to statuesque immobility and
silence. His savage eyes blazed into the direction
from which the wind had borne down the warning to him
and a moment later the grasses at one side of the
clearing parted and Numa, the lion, strode majestically
Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Bucolics by Virgil: DAMOETAS
"My Muse, although she be but country-bred,
Is loved by Pollio: O Pierian Maids,
Pray you, a heifer for your reader feed!"
MENALCAS
"Pollio himself too doth new verses make:
Feed ye a bull now ripe to butt with horn,
And scatter with his hooves the flying sand."
DAMOETAS
"Who loves thee, Pollio, may he thither come
Where thee he joys beholding; ay, for him
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The White Moll by Frank L. Packard: her. Gray walls rose before her, walls that shut out sunshine and
hope, pitiless, cold things that seemed to freeze the blood in her
veins. And to-night, in just a few minutes more - a cell!
From the street outside came the sound of some one making a cheery,
but evidently a somewhat inebriated, attempt to whistle some ragtime
air. It seemed to enhance her misery, to enhance by contrast in its
care-free cheeriness the despair and misery that were eating into
her soul. Her hands clenched and unclenched. If there were only a
chance - somewhere - somehow! If only she were not a woman! If she
could only fight this hulking form that gripped so brutally at her
arm!
|
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 Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: ideal, which in one sense is part of ourselves and in another
sense is not ourselves, actually exerts an influence, raises our
centre of personal energy, and produces regenerative effects
unattainable in other ways. If, then, there be a wider world of
being than that of our every-day consciousness, if in it there be
forces whose effects on us are intermittent, if one facilitating
condition of the effects be the openness of the "subliminal"
door, we have the elements of a theory to which the phenomena of
religious life lend plausibility. I am so impressed by the
importance of these phenomena that I adopt the hypothesis which
they so naturally suggest. At these places at least, I say, it
|
