| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: while behind me, groaning beneath their burden, were the forms of
the four serving men. I heard the murmur of the river and the wind
that seventy years ago whispered in the reeds. I saw the clouded
sky flawed here and there with blue, and the broken light that
gleamed on the white burden stretched upon the door, and the red
stain at its breast. Ay, I heard myself talk as I went forward
with the lantern, bidding the men pass to the right of some steep
and rotten ground, and it was strange to me to listen to my own
voice as it had been in youth. Well, well, it was but a dream, yet
such slaves are we to the fears of fancy, that because of the dead,
I, who am almost of their number, do not love to pass that path at
Montezuma's Daughter |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli: correspondencies or relations with other states--a common meaning
of "correspondence" and "correspondency" in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries.
Concerning these two methods of rising to be a prince by ability or
fortune, I wish to adduce two examples within our own recollection,
and these are Francesco Sforza[*] and Cesare Borgia. Francesco, by
proper means and with great ability, from being a private person rose
to be Duke of Milan, and that which he had acquired with a thousand
anxieties he kept with little trouble. On the other hand, Cesare
Borgia, called by the people Duke Valentino, acquired his state during
the ascendancy of his father, and on its decline he lost it,
The Prince |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Poems by Oscar Wilde: And from the brick-built Lycian tomb what
horrible Chimera came
With fearful heads and fearful flame to breed
new wonders from your womb?
Or had you shameful secret quests and did
you harry to your home
Some Nereid coiled in amber foam with curious
rock crystal breasts?
Or did you treading through the froth call to
the brown Sidonian
For tidings of Leviathan, Leviathan or
|
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 A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: " 'The cut of his countenance is not reassuring,' said Maxime,
beholding the Sieur Denisart.
"And indeed the old soldier held himself upright as a steeple. His
head was remarkable for the amount of powder and pomatum bestowed upon
it; he looked almost like a postilion at a fancy ball. Underneath that
felted covering, moulded to the top of the wearer's cranium, appeared
an elderly profile, half-official, half-soldierly, with a comical
admixture of arrogance,--altogether something like caricatures of the
/Constitutionnel/. The sometime official finding that age, and hair-
powder, and the conformation of his spine made it impossible to read a
word without spectacles, sat displaying a very creditable expanse of
|
