| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: way. When one of the other elements is fastened upon by fire, and is cut
by the sharpness of its angles and sides, it coalesces with the fire, and
then ceases to be cut by them any longer. For no element which is one and
the same with itself can be changed by or change another of the same kind
and in the same state. But so long as in the process of transition the
weaker is fighting against the stronger, the dissolution continues. Again,
when a few small particles, enclosed in many larger ones, are in process of
decomposition and extinction, they only cease from their tendency to
extinction when they consent to pass into the conquering nature, and fire
becomes air and air water. But if bodies of another kind go and attack
them (i.e. the small particles), the latter continue to be dissolved until,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: him shut his eyes - which opened again to the straight slope of the
remainder of the stairs. Here was impunity still, but impunity
almost excessive; inasmuch as the side-lights and the high
fantracery of the entrance were glimmering straight into the hall;
an appearance produced, he the next instant saw, by the fact that
the vestibule gaped wide, that the hinged halves of the inner door
had been thrown far back. Out of that again the QUESTION sprang at
him, making his eyes, as he felt, half-start from his head, as they
had done, at the top of the house, before the sign of the other
door. If he had left that one open, hadn't he left this one
closed, and wasn't he now in MOST immediate presence of some
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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 Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, etc. by Oscar Wilde: Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand:
Pity me then and wish I were renew'd -
and there are many signs elsewhere of the same feeling, signs
familiar to all real students of Shakespeare.
One point puzzled me immensely as I read the Sonnets, and it was
days before I struck on the true interpretation, which indeed Cyril
Graham himself seems to have missed. I could not understand how it
was that Shakespeare set so high a value on his young friend
marrying. He himself had married young, and the result had been
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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 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: ground of about five hundred yards that followed it.
The great barrier stood just in front of the imperial pavilion.
The Tsar and the whole court and crowds of people were all gazing
at them--at him, and Mahotin a length ahead of him, as they drew
near the "devil," as the solid barrier was called. Vronsky was
aware of those eyes fastened upon him from all sides, but he saw
nothing except the ears and neck of his owe; mare, the ground
racing to meet him, and the back and white legs of Gladiator
beating time swiftly before him, and keeping always the same
distance ahead. Gladiator rose, with no sound of knocking against
anything. With a wave of his short tail he disappeared from
Anna Karenina |
