| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: it that man, in his structures, rarely introduces curves? Why is it
that he alone, of all creatures, has a sense of straightness?"
These queries revealed long excursions in space. He had, I am sure,
seen vast landscapes, fragrant with the scent of woods. He was always
silent and resigned, a living elegy, always suffering but unable to
complain of suffering. An eagle that needed the world to feed him,
shut in between four narrow, dirty walls; and thus this life became an
ideal life in the strictest meaning of the words. Filled as he was
with contempt of the almost useless studies to which we were
harnessed, Louis went on his skyward way absolutely unconscious of the
things about us.
Louis Lambert |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Tin Woodman of Oz by L. Frank Baum: and gazed around him.
He seemed to be in a big underground cave, which was
dimly lighted by dozens of big round discs that looked
like moons. They were not moons, however, as Woot
discovered when he had examined the place more
carefully. They were eyes. The eyes were in the heads
of enormous beasts whose bodies trailed far behind
them. Each beast was bigger than an elephant, and three
times as long, and there were a dozen or more of the
creatures scattered here and there about the cavern. On
their bodies were big scales, as round as pie-plates,
The Tin Woodman of Oz |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: the body of little Jude was hanging in a similar manner.
An overturned chair was near the elder boy, and his glazed eyes
were slanted into the room; but those of the girl and the baby boy
were closed.
Half-paralyzed by the strange and consummate horror of the scene
he let Sue lie, cut the cords with his pocket-knife and threw
the three children on the bed; but the feel of their bodies
in the momentary handling seemed to say that they were dead.
He caught up Sue, who was in fainting fits, and put her on
the bed in the other room, after which he breathlessly summoned
the landlady and ran out for a doctor.
Jude the Obscure |
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 Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: bed and lie on it, and burn his own fingers if he put them into the
fire. And then she told him how many fine things there were to be
seen in the world, and what an odd, curious, pleasant, orderly,
respectable, well-managed, and, on the whole, successful (as,
indeed, might have been expected) sort of a place it was, if people
would only be tolerably brave and honest and good in it; and then
she told him not to be afraid of anything he met, for nothing would
harm him if he remembered all his lessons, and did what he knew was
right. And at last she comforted poor little Tom so much that he
was quite eager to go, and wanted to set out that minute. "Only,"
he said, "if I might see Ellie once before I went!"
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