Parabola's Spring 1995 issue: Earth, Air, Fire, Water In spite of recent advances in technical knowledge, we are still at a loss in front of this phenomenon called life, whose origins remain a mystery. Scientists and philosophers return again and again to the ageless questions of how we were created and what happens when we die. Even as scientific research yields increasingly minute divisions of the substances which make up the universe--from atoms to "sparticles"--we continue to puzzle over the elements that compose the world, whether we number them as four or one hundred and eleven. --from the editorial Focus Cover: Detail of "Shambhala," photograph of opal rock, Brisbane, Australia, 1989. Photograph copyright Courtney Milne. In this issue:

• "Ancient Quartet" by Scott Russell Sanders
  - Changing perspectives about the basic substances
• "The Primary Qualities" by Titus Burckhardt
  - An alchemical view
• "The Nature of Nature" by Thomas Kelting
  - The search for the connectedness of all things
• "Water Rises, Too" by Thich Nhat Hanh
  - The source of one thing is all things
• "The Known and Unknown Wind" by Doug Logan
  - Wind and water as the sailor sees them
• "The Forge" by Will R. Cumming
  - The power of fire
• "Sacred Waters, Holy Wells" by Mara Freeman
  - Miraculous pools and springs in the British Isles
• "Great and Little Worlds" by Paracelsus
  - Words from a master of sixteenth-century European alchemy
• "The Powers of Creation" by Kat Duff
  - The Zodiac within
• "Elements of Human Nature
  - Energies of the astrological signs
• "A River Went out of Eden" by Irving Friedman
  - The symbolism of the elements in Judaism
• "The Last Sacrifice" by Diana L. Eck
  - Antyeshti: The Hindu cremation rite
• "Clyde's Pick-Up" by William Bryant Logan
  - Even a truck
• "Travels of the Soul" by Sheikh Tosun Bayrak al Jerrahi
  - A Sufi view of human origins
• "Angels of Rain and Lightning" by Martha Heyneman
  - The many and the one
• "Carrying the Fire: An interview with John Biggers
  - An artist's view of the life process

Texts from the world's traditions

• "The Question" from Majjhima-nikaya
• "The Powers" from the Prasna Upanishad
• "The Resurrection" from the Bundahis

Epicycles - Traditional stories from around the world

• "The Earth Is Set Up" / Cheyenne - retold by Palmer Valor
• "The Mother of Water" / Finnish - from The Kalevala
• "Agni, God of Fire" / Hindu - retold by D.K.M. Kartha
• "The Son of the Wind" / African - from African Folktales
• "The Making of the Golem" / Jewish - retold by Chayim Bloch
• "The Nyalaidj Dancers" / Australian - retold by Gararu