| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: "Keep not thy mind upon one place alone,"
The gentle Master said, who had me standing
Upon that side where people have their hearts;
Whereat I moved mine eyes, and I beheld
In rear of Mary, and upon that side
Where he was standing who conducted me,
Another story on the rock imposed;
Wherefore I passed Virgilius and drew near,
So that before mine eyes it might be set.
There sculptured in the self-same marble were
The cart and oxen, drawing the holy ark,
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: To the absolute governments, with their following of parsons,
professors, country squires and officials, it served as a welcome
scarecrow against the threatening bourgeoisie.
It was a sweet finish after the bitter pills of floggings and
bullets with which these same governments, just at that time,
dosed the German working-class risings.
While this "True" Socialism thus served the governments as a
weapon for fighting the German bourgeoisie, it, at the same time,
directly represented a reactionary interest, the interest of the
German Philistines. In Germany the petty-bourgeois class, a
relic of the sixteenth century, and since then constantly
The Communist Manifesto |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: chase to Moby Dick, they must also have food for their more common,
daily appetites. For even the high lifted and chivalric Crusaders of
old times were not content to traverse two thousand miles of land to
fight for their holy sepulchre, without committing burglaries,
picking pockets, and gaining other pious perquisites by the way. Had
they been strictly held to their one final and romantic object--that
final and romantic object, too many would have turned from in
disgust. I will not strip these men, thought Ahab, of all hopes of
cash--aye, cash. They may scorn cash now; but let some months go by,
and no perspective promise of it to them, and then this same
quiescent cash all at once mutinying in them, this same cash would
Moby Dick |
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 Wyoming by William MacLeod Raine: admiration went out in spite of herself. He was, at any rate, a
MAN, square-jawed, resolute, implacable. In the sinuous trail of
his life might lie arson, robbery, murder, but he still held to
that dynamic spark of self-respect that is akin to the divine.
Nor was it possible to believe that those unblinking gray eyes,
with the capability of a latent sadness of despair in them,
expressed a soul entirely without nobility. He had a certain
gallant ease, a certain attractive candor, that did not consist
with villainy unadulterated.
It was characteristic even of her impulsiveness that Helen
Messiter curbed the swift condemnation that leaped to her lips
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