| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: speech, which the notary thought very funny; then I sat down in my
armchair, with my feet on the fire-dogs. I had lost myself in a
romance /a la/ Radcliffe, constructed on the juridical base given me
by Monsieur Regnault, when the door, opened by a woman's cautious
hand, turned on the hinges. I saw my landlady come in, a buxom, florid
dame, always good-humored, who had missed her calling in life. She was
a Fleming, who ought to have seen the light in a picture by Teniers.
" 'Well, monsieur,' said she, 'Monsieur Regnault has no doubt been
giving you his history of la Grande Breteche?'
" 'Yes, Madame Lepas.'
" 'And what did he tell you?'
La Grande Breteche |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: found rest and protection in a little village of Carinthia.
Three years afterwards he died in the hospital of St. Sebastian at
Salzburg, in the Tyrol. His death was the signal for empirics and
visionaries to foist on the public book after book on occult
philosophy, written in his name--of which you may see ten folios--
not more than a quarter, I believe, genuine. And these foolish
books, as much as anything, have helped to keep up the popular
prejudice against one who, in spite of all his faults was a true
pioneer of science. {15} I believe (with those moderns who have
tried to do him justice) that under all his verbiage and confusion
there was a vein of sound scientific, experimental common sense.
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: would you answer?
ALCIBIADES: I should reply, that I was going to advise them about a matter
which I do know better than they.
SOCRATES: Then you are a good adviser about the things which you know?
ALCIBIADES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And do you know anything but what you have learned of others, or
found out yourself?
ALCIBIADES: That is all.
SOCRATES: And would you have ever learned or discovered anything, if you
had not been willing either to learn of others or to examine yourself?
ALCIBIADES: I should not.
|
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 Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells: a series of experiments in conjunction with Mr. Vincey, of Staple Inn,
in order to test the alleged possibility of projecting an apparition
of one's self by force of will through space.
Their experiments were conducted in the following manner: At a pre-
arranged hour Mr. Bessel shut himself in one of his rooms in the
Albany and Mr. Vincey in his sitting-room in Staple Inn, and each then
fixed his mind as resolutely as possible on the other. Mr. Bessel
had acquired the art of self-hypnotism, and, so far as he could,
he attempted first to hypnotise himself and then to project himself
as a "phantom of the living" across the intervening space of nearly
two miles into Mr. Vincey's apartment. On several evenings this
|
