| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake: Nor the lion's growl.
THE CHIMNEY-SWEEPER
A little black thing among the snow,
Crying! 'weep! weep!' in notes of woe!
'Where are thy father and mother? Say!' -
'They are both gone up to the church to pray.
'Because I was happy upon the heath,
And smiled among the winter's snow,
They clothed me in the clothes of death,
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.
'And because I am happy and dance and sing,
Songs of Innocence and Experience |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: of wounds, yet none had fallen.
From without we saw hundreds of guardsmen pouring into the courtyard,
and along the lower corridor from which I had found my way to the
armory we could hear the clank of metal and the shouting of men.
In a moment we should be attacked from two sides, and with
all our prowess we could not hope to withstand the unequal odds
which would thus divide our attention and our small numbers.
"To the upper chambers!" cried Tardos Mors, and a moment later
The Warlord of Mars |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
_Od' und leer das Meer._
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations. 50
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
The Waste Land |
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 Altar of the Dead by Henry James: things? Stransom knew enough of his other ties, of his obligations
and appearances, not to say enough of his general character, to be
sure there had been some infamy. In one way or another this
creature had been coldly sacrificed. That was why at the last as
well as the first he must still leave him out and out.
CHAPTER IX.
AND yet this was no solution, especially after he had talked again
to his friend of all it had been his plan she should finally do for
him. He had talked in the other days, and she had responded with a
frankness qualified only by a courteous reluctance, a reluctance
that touched him, to linger on the question of his death. She had
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