| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Peter Pan by James M. Barrie: "Wendy, do come with me and tell the other boys."
Of course she was very pleased to be asked, but she said, "Oh
dear, I can't. Think of mummy! Besides, I can't fly."
"I'll teach you."
"Oh, how lovely to fly."
"I'll teach you how to jump on the wind's back, and then away
we go."
"Oo!" she exclaimed rapturously.
"Wendy, Wendy, when you are sleeping in your silly bed you
might be flying about with me saying funny things to the stars."
"Oo!"
Peter Pan |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: sufficiency and grave politeness of the hunter and the savage; he
did me the honours of this dell, which had been mine but the day
before, took me far into the secrets of his life, and used me (I am
proud to remember) as a friend.
Like my old soldier, he was far gone in the national complaint.
Unlike him, he had a vulgar taste in letters; scarce flying higher
than the story papers; probably finding no difference, certainly
seeking none, between Tannahill and Burns; his noblest thoughts,
whether of poetry or music, adequately embodied in that somewhat
obvious ditty,
"Will ye gang, lassie, gang
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: word 'incubating' means that and nothing else.
The brooding Hen is no more assiduous, but she is also a heating-
apparatus and, with the gentle warmth of her body, awakens the
germs to life. For the Spider, the heat of the sun suffices; and
this alone keeps me from saying that she 'broods.'
For two or three weeks, more and more wrinkled by abstinence, the
little Spider never relaxes her position. Then comes the hatching.
The youngsters stretch a few threads in swing-like curves from twig
to twig. The tiny rope-dancers practise for some days in the sun;
then they disperse, each intent upon his own affairs.
Let us now look at the watch-tower of the nest. The mother is
The Life of the Spider |
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 Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic: like dervishes of the Orient, till they fell headlong
in a state of trance. Octavian Methodism was spared
extravagances of this sort, it is true, but it paid
a price for the immunity. The people whom an open split
would have taken away remained to leaven and dominate
the whole lump. This small advanced section, with its men
of a type all the more aggressive from its narrowness,
and women who went about solemnly in plain gray garments,
with tight-fitting, unadorned, mouse-colored sunbonnets,
had not been able wholly to enforce its views upon the
social life of the church members, but of its controlling
The Damnation of Theron Ware |
