| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Koran: the torment of a mighty day!'
But they hamstrung her, and on the morrow they repented; and the
torment seized them; verily, in that is a sign; but most of them
will never be believers: but verily, thy Lord He is mighty, merciful.
The people of Lot called the apostles liars; when their brother
Lot said to them, 'Do ye not fear? verily, I am to you a faithful
apostle; then fear God and obey me. I do not ask you for it any
hire; my hire is only with the Lord of the worlds. Do ye approach
males of all the world and leave what God your Lord has created for
you of your wives? nay, but ye are people who transgress!'
They said, 'Surely, if thou dost not desist, O Lot! thou shalt be of
The Koran |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: the pass-words for their army, and cried out to the
counter-revolutionary crusaders: "In this sign thou wilt conquer!" From
that moment on, so soon as any of the numerous parties, which had
marshaled themselves under this sign against the June insurgents, tries,
in turn, to take the revolutionary field in the interest of its own
class, it goes down in its turn before the cry: "Property, Family,
Religion, Order." Thus it happens that "society is saved" as often as
the circle of its ruling class is narrowed, as often as a more exclusive
interest asserts itself over the general. Every demand for the most
simple bourgeois financial reform, for the most ordinary liberalism, for
the most commonplace republicanism, for the flattest democracy, is
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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 Laches by Plato: exactly what you think, we have taken you into our counsels. The matter
about which I am making all this preface is as follows: Melesias and I
have two sons; that is his son, and he is named Thucydides, after his
grandfather; and this is mine, who is also called after his grandfather,
Aristides. Now, we are resolved to take the greatest care of the youths,
and not to let them run about as they like, which is too often the way with
the young, when they are no longer children, but to begin at once and do
the utmost that we can for them. And knowing you to have sons of your own,
we thought that you were most likely to have attended to their training and
improvement, and, if perchance you have not attended to them, we may remind
you that you ought to have done so, and would invite you to assist us in
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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 Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs: than ever before the unrighteousness of the regulation which
was to prove my doom, and in the natural revolt against its
injustice my anger rose, and there mounted within me a
feeling which I imagine must have paralleled that spirit
that once was prevalent among the ancients called anarchy.
For the first time in my life I found my sentiments arraying
themselves against custom, tradition, and even government.
The wave of rebellion swept over me in an instant, beginning
with an heretical doubt as to the sanctity of the
established order of things--that fetish which has ruled
Pan-Americans for two centuries, and which is based upon a
Lost Continent |
