| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: the race, against the petty death of indolence, insufficiency,
baseness, misconception, and perversion. He it is and no other who
can deliver us "from the body of this death." This is the battle
that grows plainer; this is the purpose to which he calls us out of
the animal's round of eating, drinking, lusting, quarrelling and
laughing and weeping, fearing and failing, and presently of wearying
and dying, which is the whole life that living without God can give
us. And from these great propositions there follow many very
definite maxims and rules of life for those who serve God. These we
will immediately consider.
3. THE CRUCIFIX
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: draw from it its utmost strength and sweetness. M. de Nueil was at an
age when a man is the dupe of these caprices, of the fence which women
delight to prolong; either to dictate their own terms, or to enjoy the
sense of their power yet longer, knowing instinctively as they do that
it must soon grow less. But, after all, these little boudoir
protocols, less numerous than those of the Congress of London, are too
small to be worth mention in the history of this passion.
For three years Mme. de Beauseant and M. de Nueil lived in the villa
on the lake of Geneva. They lived quite alone, received no visitors,
caused no talk, rose late, went out together upon the lake, knew, in
short, the happiness of which we all of us dream. It was a simple
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells: speculation upon the Scotchman's idea--that there were still
hopes of women evolving into something higher.
He was unusually absurd and ready, and all the time it seemed to
Ann Veronica as a delightful possibility, as a thing not indeed
to be entertained seriously, but to be half furtively felt, that
he was being so agreeable because she had come back again. She
returned home through a world that was as roseate as it had been
gray overnight.
But as she got out of the train at Morningside Park Station she
had a shock. She saw, twenty yards down the platform, the shiny
hat and broad back and inimitable swagger of Ramage. She dived
|
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 Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare: Alacke, alacke, is it not like that I
So early waking, what with loathsome smels,
And shrikes like Mandrakes torne out of the earth,
That liuing mortalls hearing them, run mad.
O if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
Inuironed with all these hidious feares,
And madly play with my forefathers ioynts?
And plucke the mangled Tybalt from his shrow'd?
And in this rage, with some great kinsmans bone,
As (with a club) dash out my desperate braines.
O looke, me thinks I see my Cozins Ghost,
Romeo and Juliet |
