| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: deception; and then lie like a trooper!"
The Canonization of Incompetence
The supreme crime of the church to-day is that everywhere and in
all its operations and influences it is on the side of sloth of
mind; that it banishes brains, it sanctifies stupidity, it
canonizes incompetence. Consider the power of the Church of
England and its favorite daughter here in America; consider their
prestige with the press and in politics, their hold upon
literature and the arts, their control of education and the minds
of children, of charity and the lives of the poor: consider all
this, and then say what it means to society that such a power
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: allowed the accumulation of private property just as ours does, and
the gospel that he preached was not that in such a community it is
an advantage for a man to live on scanty, unwholesome food, to wear
ragged, unwholesome clothes, to sleep in horrid, unwholesome
dwellings, and a disadvantage for a man to live under healthy,
pleasant, and decent conditions. Such a view would have been wrong
there and then, and would, of course, be still more wrong now and
in England; for as man moves northward the material necessities of
life become of more vital importance, and our society is infinitely
more complex, and displays far greater extremes of luxury and
pauperism than any society of the antique world. What Jesus meant,
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Grimm's Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm: he grew angry, and said: 'If you will not take care, I cannot help
you, I will not be burnt with you,' and he hung them up again each in
his turn. Then he sat down by his fire and fell asleep, and the next
morning the man came to him and wanted to have the fifty talers, and
said: 'Well do you know how to shudder?' 'No,' answered he, 'how
should I know? Those fellows up there did not open their mouths, and
were so stupid that they let the few old rags which they had on their
bodies get burnt.' Then the man saw that he would not get the fifty
talers that day, and went away saying: 'Such a youth has never come my
way before.'
The youth likewise went his way, and once more began to mutter to
Grimm's Fairy 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 The Case of The Lamp That Went Out by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: were ushered in.
"Then you believe you could identify the murdered man?" asked the
commissioner.
"From the general description and the initials on his linen, I
believe it must be Leopold Winkler," answered Pokorny. "Mrs.
Klingmayer has not seen him since Monday morning, nor has she had
any message from him. He left the office Monday afternoon at 6
o'clock and that was the last time that we saw him. The only thing
that makes me doubt his identity is that the paper reports that
three hundred gulden were found in his pocket. Winkler never seemed
to have money, and I do not understand how he should have been in
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