| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde: Old enough to do wrong, and not old enough to be wise.
FIRST SOLDIER
Why, then, he might be any age.
SECOND SOLDIER
They say the Duchess wanted to pardon him.
FIRST SOLDIER
Is that so?
SECOND SOLDIER
Ay, and did much entreat the Lord Justice, but he would not.
FIRST SOLDIER
I had thought, Pietro, that the Duchess was omnipotent.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: two whole years of his life to the work.
It is wrong to think that my father showed any inconsistency
in this matter. He did not delude himself for a moment into
thinking he was engaged on a virtuous and momentous task, but when
he saw the sufferings of the people, he simply could not bear to go
on living comfortably at Yásnaya or in Moscow any longer,
but had to go out and help in order to relieve his own feelings.
Once he wrote:
There is much about it that is not what it ought to be; there
is S. A.'s money¹ and the subscriptions; there is the relation
of those who feed and those who are fed. There is sin without
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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 Grimm's Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm: chamber, and they will go to them and be pleased with them, and that
is what no man would do.' The king liked the advice, and had the
spinning-wheels placed in the ante-chamber.
But the servant, who was well disposed to the huntsmen, went to them,
and disclosed the project. So when they were alone the king's daughter
said to her eleven girls: 'Show some constraint, and do not look round
at the spinning-wheels.' And next morning when the king had his twelve
huntsmen summoned, they went through the ante-chamber, and never once
looked at the spinning-wheels. Then the king again said to the lion:
'You have deceived me, they are men, for they have not looked at the
spinning-wheels.' The lion replied: 'They have restrained themselves.'
Grimm's Fairy Tales |
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 Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: would murmur, hardly above her breath. "Speak for me before the
gods, Bhagat. Speak for such a one, the wife of so-and-so!"
Now and then some bold child would be allowed the honour, and
Purun Bhagat would hear him drop the bowl and run as fast as his
little legs could carry him, but the Bhagat never came down to
the village. It was laid out like a map at his feet. He could
see the evening gatherings, held on the circle of the threshing-
floors, because that was the only level ground; could see the
wonderful unnamed green of the young rice, the indigo blues of
the Indian corn, the dock-like patches of buckwheat, and, in its
season, the red bloom of the amaranth, whose tiny seeds, being
The Second Jungle Book |
