| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Smalcald Articles by Dr. Martin Luther: Christ, and not the works of men, are to help [set free]
souls. Not to mention the fact that nothing has been
[divinely] commanded or enjoined upon us concerning the dead.
Therefore all this may be safely omitted, even if it were no
error and idolatry.
The Papists quote here Augustine and some of the Fathers who
are said to have written concerning purgatory, and they think
that we do not understand for what purpose and to what end
they spoke as they did. St. Augustine does not write that
there is a purgatory nor has he a testimony of Scripture to
constrain him thereto, but he leaves it in doubt whether there
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: good, and if the act is not conducive to our good we do not will it; for we
will, as you say, that which is our good, but that which is neither good
nor evil, or simply evil, we do not will. Why are you silent, Polus? Am I
not right?
POLUS: You are right.
SOCRATES: Hence we may infer, that if any one, whether he be a tyrant or a
rhetorician, kills another or exiles another or deprives him of his
property, under the idea that the act is for his own interests when really
not for his own interests, he may be said to do what seems best to him?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: But does he do what he wills if he does what is evil? Why do
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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 1984 by George Orwell: woman, presumably his wife, who seemed to form an impenetrable wall of
flesh. Winston wriggled himself sideways, and with a violent lunge managed
to drive his shoulder between them. For a moment it felt as though his
entrails were being ground to pulp between the two muscular hips, then he
had broken through, sweating a little. He was next to the girl. They were
shoulder to shoulder, both staring fixedly in front of them.
A long line of trucks, with wooden-faced guards armed with sub-machine
guns standing upright in each corner, was passing slowly down the street.
In the trucks little yellow men in shabby greenish uniforms were squatting,
jammed close together. Their sad, Mongolian faces gazed out over the sides
of the trucks utterly incurious. Occasionally when a truck jolted there
1984 |
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 Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke: head, but with the flat of his sword, so that Martimor's breath
went clean out of him, and the blood gushed from his mouth, and
he fell over the croup of his horse as he were a man slain.
Then Sir Lancelot laughed no more, but grieved, for he
weened that he had harmed the youth, and he liked him passing
well. So he ran to him and held him in his arms fast and
tended him. And when the breath came again into his body,
Lancelot was glad, and desired the youth that he would pardon
him of that unequal joust and of the stroke too heavy.
At this Martimor sat up and took him by the hand.
"Pardon?" he cried. "No talk of pardon between thee and me,
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