| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: Woman! instead of comforting men, thou hast tormented and afflicted
them! Knowing that thou couldst ask and have, thou hast demanded--
blood! A little flour surely should have contented thee, accustomed as
thou hast been to live on bread and to mingle water with thy wine.
Unlike all others in all things, formerly thou wouldst bid thy lovers
fast, and they obeyed. Why should thy fancies have led thee to require
things impossible? Why, like a courtesan spoiled by her lovers, hast
thou doted on follies, and left those undeceived who sought to explain
and justify all thy errors? Then came the days of thy later passions,
terrible like the love of a woman of forty years, with a fierce cry
thou hast sought to clasp the whole universe in one last embrace--and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: dark, he could not rise again till I helped him. That was the
beginning of my acquaintance with McIntosh Jellaludin. When a
loafer, and drunk, sings The Song of the Bower, he must be worth
cultivating. He got off the camel's back and said, rather thickly:--
"I--I--I'm a bit screwed, but a dip in Loggerhead will put me right
again; and I say, have you spoken to Symonds about the mare's
knees?"
Now Loggerhead was six thousand weary miles away from us, close to
Mesopotamia, where you mustn't fish and poaching is impossible, and
Charley Symonds' stable a half mile further across the paddocks. It
was strange to hear all the old names, on a May night, among the
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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 Cratylus by Plato: dianoia); which is also the principle of beauty; and which doing the works
of beauty, is therefore rightly called the beautiful. The meaning of
sumpheron is explained by previous examples;--like episteme, signifying
that the soul moves in harmony with the world (sumphora, sumpheronta).
Kerdos is to pasi kerannumenon--that which mingles with all things:
lusiteloun is equivalent to to tes phoras luon to telos, and is not to be
taken in the vulgar sense of gainful, but rather in that of swift, being
the principle which makes motion immortal and unceasing; ophelimon is apo
tou ophellein--that which gives increase: this word, which is Homeric, is
of foreign origin. Blaberon is to blamton or boulomenon aptein tou rou--
that which injures or seeks to bind the stream. The proper word would be
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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 The Rig Veda: not the
evil-wisher master us.
11 Her tooth a deer, dressed in an eagle's feathers, bound
with
cow-hide, launched forth, She flieth onward.
There where the heroes speed hither and thither, there may
the Arrows
shelter and protect us.
12 Avoid us thou whose flight is straight, and let our bodies
be as
stone.
The Rig Veda |
