| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: whither she knew not.
At the moment when the Duc de Nivron reascended the staircase to the
castle, after closing the door of the tower, a cry of horror, uttered
by Gabrielle, echoed in his ears with the sharpness of a flash of
lightning which burns the eyes. Etienne ran through the apartments of
the chateau, down the grand staircase, and along the beach towards
Gabrielle's house, where he saw lights.
When Gabrielle, quitting her lover, had entered the little garden, she
saw, by the gleam of a torch which lighted her nurse's spinning-wheel,
the figure of a man sitting in the chair of that excellent woman. At
the sound of her steps the man arose and came toward her; this had
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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 Phaedo by Plato: piece with this.
The hollows on the surface of the globe vary in size and shape from that
which we inhabit: but all are connected by passages and perforations in
the interior of the earth. And there is one huge chasm or opening called
Tartarus, into which streams of fire and water and liquid mud are ever
flowing; of these small portions find their way to the surface and form
seas and rivers and volcanoes. There is a perpetual inhalation and
exhalation of the air rising and falling as the waters pass into the depths
of the earth and return again, in their course forming lakes and rivers,
but never descending below the centre of the earth; for on either side the
rivers flowing either way are stopped by a precipice. These rivers are
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