| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: a great surf roaring: he and the warlock standing there on the same
mat, speechless, gasping and grasping at one another, and passing
their hands before their eyes.
"What was this?" cried Keola, who came to himself the first,
because he was the younger. "The pang of it was like death."
"It matters not," panted Kalamake. "It is now done."
"And, in the name of God, where are we?" cried Keola.
"That is not the question," replied the sorcerer. "Being here, we
have matter in our hands, and that we must attend to. Go, while I
recover my breath, into the borders of the wood, and bring me the
leaves of such and such a herb, and such and such a tree, which you
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: fades away into nothingness, the name or the conception or both together
are everything. Language, like number, is intermediate between the two,
partaking of the definiteness of the outer and of the universality of the
inner world. For logic teaches us that every word is really a universal,
and only condescends by the help of position or circumlocution to become
the expression of individuals or particulars. And sometimes by using words
as symbols we are able to give a 'local habitation and a name' to the
infinite and inconceivable.
Thus we see that no line can be drawn between the powers of sense and of
reflection--they pass imperceptibly into one another. We may indeed
distinguish between the seeing and the closed eye--between the sensation
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