| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells: immediate security. I had not realised what had been hap-
pening to the world, had not anticipated this startling vision
of unfamiliar things. I had expected to see Sheen in ruins--
I found about me the landscape, weird and lurid, of another
planet.
For that moment I touched an emotion beyond the common
range of men, yet one that the poor brutes we dominate
know only too well. I felt as a rabbit might feel returning
to his burrow and suddenly confronted by the work of a
dozen busy navvies digging the foundations of a house. I
felt the first inkling of a thing that presently grew quite
War of the Worlds |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence: She was determined to track this mood of his to its origin.
She counted it not much more than a mood.
"Shall we go through the wood a little way?" she asked him,
knowing he never refused a direct request.
They went down to the warren. On the middle path they
passed a trap, a narrow horseshoe hedge of small fir-boughs,
baited with the guts of a rabbit. Paul glanced at it frowning.
She caught his eye.
"Isn't it dreadful?" she asked.
"I don't know! Is it worse than a weasel with its teeth in a
rabbit's throat? One weasel or many rabbits? One or the other must go!"
Sons and Lovers |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde: something wrong with the wheel-spokes; but in spite of that I will
give it to you. I know it is very generous of me, and a great many
people would think me extremely foolish for parting with it, but I
am not like the rest of the world. I think that generosity is the
essence of friendship, and, besides, I have got a new wheelbarrow
for myself. Yes, you may set your mind at ease, I will give you my
wheelbarrow.'
"'Well, really, that is generous of you,' said little Hans, and his
funny round face glowed all over with pleasure. 'I can easily put
it in repair, as I have a plank of wood in the house.'
"'A plank of wood'! said the Miller; 'why, that is just what I want
|
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 Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: joy, all happiness, and sparks flew from them. She was under the
charm, and fearlessly intoxicated herself with a felicity of which she
had dreamed long. She seemed then so marvelously beautiful to Henri,
that all this phantasmagoria of rags and old age, of worn red drapery
and of the green mats in front of the armchairs, the ill-washed red
tiles, all this sick and dilapidated luxury, disappeared.
The room seemed lit up; and it was only through a cloud that one could
see the fearful harpy fixed and dumb on her red sofa, her yellow eyes
betraying the servile sentiments, inspired by misfortune, or caused by
some vice beneath whose servitude one has fallen as beneath a tyrant
who brutalizes one with the flagellations of his despotism. Her eyes
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
