| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche: Zarathustra, thou art more pious than thou believest, with such an
unbelief! Some God in thee hath converted thee to thine ungodliness.
Is it not thy piety itself which no longer letteth thee believe in a God?
And thine over-great honesty will yet lead thee even beyond good and evil!
Behold, what hath been reserved for thee? Thou hast eyes and hands and
mouth, which have been predestined for blessing from eternity. One doth
not bless with the hand alone.
Nigh unto thee, though thou professest to be the ungodliest one, I feel a
hale and holy odour of long benedictions: I feel glad and grieved thereby.
Let me be thy guest, O Zarathustra, for a single night! Nowhere on earth
shall I now feel better than with thee!"--
Thus Spake Zarathustra |
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 Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: plays in the world may be classed with some one of seven
archetypal dramas.[109] If this be true, the astonishing
complexity of mythology taken in the concrete, as compared
with its extreme simplicity when analyzed, need not surprise
us.
[109] In his interesting appendix to Henderson's Folk Lore of
the Northern Counties of England, Mr. Baring-Gould has made an
ingenious and praiseworthy attempt to reduce the entire
existing mass of household legends to about fifty story-roots;
and his list, though both redundant and defective, is
nevertheless, as an empirical classification, very
Myths and Myth-Makers |
