| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: her.
"I saw him on his way through Paris; and if you had seen him, as I
did, you would have felt that not a word might be spoken about the
Duchess, at the risk of bringing on an attack which might have
wrecked his reason. If he had known what his crime was, he might
have found means to justify himself; but being falsely accused of
being married!--what could he do? Albert is dead, quite dead to
the world. He longed for rest; let us hope that the deep silence
and prayer into which he has thrown himself may give him happiness
in another guise. You, monsieur, who have known him, must greatly
pity him; and pity his friends also.
Albert Savarus |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Augsburg Confession by Philip Melanchthon: History, Book 9, many examples of dissimilar rites are
gathered, and the following statement is made: It was not the
mind of the Apostles to enact rules concerning holy-days, but
to preach godliness and a holy life [, to teach faith and
love].
Article XXVII: Of Monastic Vows.
What is taught on our part concerning Monastic Vows, will be
better understood if it be remembered what has been the state
of the monasteries, and how many things were daily done in
those very monasteries, contrary to the Canons. In Augustine's
time they were free associations. Afterward, when discipline
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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 The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: The place, moreover, in the strangest way in the world, had,
on the instant, and by the very fact of its appearance,
become a solitude. To me at least, making my statement
here with a deliberation with which I have never made it,
the whole feeling of the moment returns. It was as if,
while I took in--what I did take in--all the rest of the scene
had been stricken with death. I can hear again, as I write,
the intense hush in which the sounds of evening dropped.
The rooks stopped cawing in the golden sky, and the friendly
hour lost, for the minute, all its voice. But there was no
other change in nature, unless indeed it were a change that I
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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 Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson: set out over the ford and up the hill upon the farther side;
till, just as I came on the green drove-road running wide through
the heather, I took my last look of Kirk Essendean, the trees
about the manse, and the big rowans in the kirkyard where my
father and my mother lay.
CHAPTER II
I COME TO MY JOURNEY'S END
On the forenoon of the second day, coming to the top of a hill, I
saw all the country fall away before me down to the sea; and in
the midst of this descent, on a long ridge, the city of Edinburgh
smoking like a kiln. There was a flag upon the castle, and ships
Kidnapped |
