| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: come back before we are well, exactly as if there could be one
God who could help the body, and another God who could help the
soul; or as if we would help ourselves in spiritual need,
although it really is greater than the bodily need. Such plan and
counsel is of the devil.
Not so, my good man! If you wish to be cured of sin, you must not
withdraw from God, but run to Him, and pray with much more
confidence than if a bodily need had overtaken you. God is not
hostile to sinners, but only to unbelievers, that is, to such as
do not recognize and lament their sin, nor seek help against it
from God, but in their own presumption wish first to purify
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: shame, that his real nature was impenetrable up to the very last. I
even felt doubts at times as to his sex. If all usurers are like this
one, I maintain that they belong to the neuter gender.
"Did he adhere to his mother's religion? Did he look on Gentiles as
his legitimate prey? Had he turned Roman Catholic, Lutheran,
Mahometan, Brahmin, or what not? I never knew anything whatsoever
about his religious opinions, and so far as I could see, he was
indifferent rather than incredulous.
"One evening I went in to see this man who had turned himself to gold;
the usurer, whom his victims (his clients, as he styled them) were
wont to call Daddy Gobseck, perhaps ironically, perhaps by way of
Gobseck |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: on the eyelid which reveals at a single glance all the
treasures hidden in the bowels of the earth
The ancient Romans also had their rock-breaking plant, called
Saxifraga, or "sassafras." And the further we penetrate into
this charmed circle of traditions the more evident does it
appear that the power of cleaving rocks or shattering hard
substances enters, as a primitive element, into the conception
of these treasure-showing talismans. Mr. Baring-Gould has
given an excellent account of the rabbinical legends
concerning the wonderful schamir, by the aid of which Solomon
was said to have built his temple. From Asmodeus, prince of
Myths and Myth-Makers |
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 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: reason. Reason discovered the struggle for existence, and the law
that requires us to oppress all who hinder the satisfaction of
our desires. That is the deduction of reason. But loving one's
neighbor reason could never discover, because it's irrational."
Chapter 13
And Levin remembered a scene he had latelywitnessed between Dolly
and her children. The children, left to themselves, had begun
cooking raspberries over the candles and squirting milk into each
other's mouths with a syringe. Their mother, catching them at
these pranks, began reminding them in Levin's presence of the
trouble their mischief gave to the grown-up people, and that this
Anna Karenina |
