| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Damaged Goods by Upton Sinclair: am always afraid of not having been persuasive enough, and it
even seems to me that I am a little to blame for these
misfortunes. I should have been able to prevent them; they would
not have happened if those who are the authors of them knew what
I know and had seen what I have seen. Swear to me, sir, that you
are going to break off that marriage!"
George was greatly embarrassed, and unwilling to reply. "I
cannot swear to you at all, Doctor; I can only tell you again
that I will think it over."
"That WHAT over?"
"What you have told me."
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter: some earlier period, no doubt, a real youth had been sacrificed
and his body bound within the pine; but now it was
deemed sufficient for the maidens to sing their wild songs
of lamentation; and for the priests and male enthusiasts
to cut and gash themselves with knives, or to sacrifice
(as they did) to the Earth-mother the precious blood offering
of their virile organs--symbols of fertility in return
for the promised and expected renewal of Nature and
the crops in the coming Spring. For the ceremony, as
we have already seen, did not end with death and lamentation,
but led on, perfectly naturally, after a day or
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: The detonations resounded through the distant fields and meadows,
merging into one continuous roar. The whole plain was shrouded in
smoke, but the Zaporozhtzi continued to fire without drawing
breath--the rear ranks doing nothing but loading the guns and handing
them to those in front, thus creating amazement among the enemy, who
could not understand how the Cossacks fired without reloading. Amid
the dense smoke which enveloped both armies, it could not be seen how
first one and then another dropped: but the Lyakhs felt that the balls
flew thickly, and that the affair was growing hot; and when they
retreated to escape from the smoke and see how matters stood, many
were missing from their ranks, but only two or three out of a hundred
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
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 My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: corresponding development of my deeply injured and oppressed
people.
From motives of peace, instead of issuing my paper in Boston,
among my New England friends, I came to Rochester, western New
York, among strangers, where the circulation of my paper could
not interfere with the local circulation of the _Liberator_ and
the _Standard;_ for at that time I was, on the anti-slavery
question, <307 CHANGE OF VIEWS>a faithful disciple of William
Lloyd Garrison, and fully committed to his doctrine touching the
pro-slavery character of the constitution of the United States,
and the _non-voting principle_, of which he is the known and
My Bondage and My Freedom |
