| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: always returns to the central landmark by roads that slant in the
most unexpected manner. Each time, a radius or spoke is laid,
here, there, or elsewhere, in what looks like mad disorder.
The operation is so erratically conducted that it takes the most
unremitting attention to follow it at all. The Spider reaches the
margin of the area by one of the spokes already placed. She goes
along this margin for some distance from the point at which she
landed, fixes her thread to the frame and returns to the centre by
the same road which she has just taken.
The thread obtained on the way in a broken line, partly on the
radius and partly on the frame, is too long for the exact distance
The Life of the Spider |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: religious people declare to be impossible. This opinion could
scarcely exist otherwise in a man who was accustomed from his
youth to dissect the creature above all others--before, during,
and after life; to hunt through all his organs without ever
finding the individual soul, which is indispensable to religious
theory. When he detected a cerebral centre, a nervous centre, and
a centre for aerating the blood--the first two so perfectly
complementary that in the latter years of his life he came to a
conviction that the sense of hearing is not absolutely necessary
for hearing, nor the sense of sight for seeing, and that the
solar plexus could supply their place without any possibility of
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Land of Footprints by Stewart Edward White: Then I would give him his reward. It was either the word
"assanti," or the two words "assanti sana," according to the
difficulty and importance of the task accomplished. They mean
simply "thank you" and "thank you very much."
Once or twice, after a particularly long and difficult month or
so, when Memba Sasa has been almost literally my alter ego, I
have called him up for special praise. "I am very pleased with
you, Memba Sasa," said I. "You have done your cazi well. You are
a good man."
He accepted this with dignity, without deprecation, and without
the idiocy of spoken gratitude. He agreed perfectly with
|
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 Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: night the approaching howl of destroyers. Smoke-stacks were
hurled overboard, pilot-houses torn away, cabins blown to
fragments.
And over roaring Kaimbuck Pass,--over the agony of Caillou
Bay,--the billowing tide rushed unresisted from the
Gulf,--tearing and swallowing the land in its course,--ploughing
out deep-sea channels where sleek herds had been grazing but a
few hours before,--rending islands in twain,--and ever bearing
with it, through the night, enormous vortex of wreck and vast wan
drift of corpses ...
But the Star remained. And Captain Abraham Smith, with a long,
|
