| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Young Forester by Zane Grey: possession of them and a desire to be among them. The sixty acres of timber
land covered the whole of a swampy valley, spread over a rolling hill
sloping down to the glistening river.
"Now, son? go ahead," said my father, as we clambered over a rail fence and
stepped into the edge of shade..
"Well, father--" I began, haltingly, and could not collect my thoughts.
Then we were in the cool woods. It was very still, there being only a faint
rustling of leaves and the mellow note of a hermit-thrush. The deep shadows
were lightened by shafts of sunshine which, here and there, managed to
pierce the canopy of foliage. Somehow, the feeling roused by these things
loosened my tongue.
The Young Forester |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: Trimourti. The Trimourti is our Trinity. From this dogma Magianism
arose in Persia; in Egypt, the African beliefs and the Mosaic law;
the worship of the Cabiri, and the polytheism of Greece and Rome.
While by this ramification of the Trimourti the Asiatic myths
became adapted to the imaginations of various races in the lands
they reached by the agency of certain sages whom men elevated to
be demi-gods--Mithra, Bacchus, Hermes, Hercules, and the rest--
Buddha, the great reformer of the three primeval religions, lived
in India, and founded his Church there, a sect which still numbers
two hundred millions more believers than Christianity can show,
while it certainly influenced the powerful Will both of Jesus and
Louis Lambert |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Extracts From Adam's Diary by Mark Twain: if they should get away. The old one is tamer than it was, and
can laugh and talk like the parrot, having learned this, no doubt,
from being with the parrot so much, and having the imitative faculty
in a highly developed degree. I shall be astonished if it turns
out to be a new kind of parrot, and yet I ought not to be astonished,
for it has already been everything else it could think of, since
those first days when it was a fish. The new one is as ugly now
as the old one was at first; has the same sulphur-and-raw-meat
complexion and the same singular head without any fur on it. She
calls it Abel.
Ten Years Later
|
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 Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: he put his head in the second mate's door to inform him of my
unheard-of caprice to take a five hours' anchor watch on myself.
I heard the other raise his voice incredulously--"What? The
Captain himself?" Then a few more murmurs, a door closed, then another.
A few moments later I went on deck.
My strangeness, which had made me sleepless, had prompted that
unconventional arrangement, as if I had expected in those solitary
hours of the night to get on terms with the ship of which I
knew nothing, manned by men of whom I knew very little more.
Fast alongside a wharf, littered like any ship in port with a
tangle of unrelated things, invaded by unrelated shore people,
The Secret Sharer |
