| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: expedient to seize the others if he escape me? Shall I delay, and suffer
Egmont to elude my grasp, together with his friends, and so many others
who now, and perhaps for to-day only, are in my hands? How! Does
destiny control even thee--the uncontrollable? How long matured! How
well prepared! How great, how admirable the plan! How nearly had hope
attained the goal! And now, at the decisive moment, thou art placed
between two evils; as in a lottery, thou dost grasp in the dark future; what
thou hast drawn remains still unrolled, to thee unknown whether it is a
prize or a blank! (He becomes attentive, like one who hears a noise, and
steps to the window.) 'Tis he! Egmont! Did thy steed bear thee hither so
lightly, and started not at the scent of blood, at the spirit with the naked
Egmont |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: "Do not be alarmed if somebody tries to come in," said the priest.
"Somebody on whom we could depend was to make all necessary
arrangements for crossing the frontier. He is to come for the letters
that I have written to the Duc de Langeais and the Marquis de
Beauseant, asking them to find some way of taking you out of this
dreadful country, and away from the death or the misery that waits for
you here."
"But are you not going to follow us?" the nuns cried under their
breath, almost despairingly.
"My post is here where the sufferers are," the priest said simply, and
the women said no more, but looked at their guest in reverent
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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 The Amazing Interlude by Mary Roberts Rinehart: Marie for the memory of Maurice the spy. Many kinds of love; and one
heart might love many people, in different ways.
A small doubt crept into her mind. This feeling she had for Harvey was
not what she had thought it was over there. It was a thing that had
belonged to a certain phase of her life. But that phase was over. It
was, like Marie's, but a memory.
This Harvey of the new car and the increased income and the occasional
hardness in his voice was not the Harvey she had left. Or perhaps it
was she who had changed. She wondered. She felt precisely the same,
tender toward her friends, unwilling to hurt them. She did not want
to hurt Harvey.
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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 Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie: there too, you understand. We walked, maybe, for half an hour.
There's a lot of villas all the way along, but by degrees they
seemed to get more and more thinned out, and in the end we got to
one that seemed the last of the bunch. Big house it was, with a
lot of piny grounds around it.
"It was a pretty black night, and the carriage drive up to the
house was dark as pitch. I could hear him ahead, though I
couldn't see him. I had to walk carefully in case he might get on
to it that he was being followed. I turned a curve and I was
just in time to see him ring the bell and get admitted to the
house. I just stopped where I was. It was beginning to rain, and
Secret Adversary |
