| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: (ii. 45) concludes with a pious hope that God will pardon him for
having gone so far, the great rationalistic passage being, of
course, that in which he rejects the mythical account of the
foundation of Dodona. 'How can a dove speak with a human voice?'
he asks, and rationalises the bird into a foreign princess.
Similarly he seems more inclined to believe that the great storm at
the beginning of the Persian War ceased from ordinary atmospheric
causes, and not in consequence of the incantations of the MAGIANS.
He calls Melampos, whom the majority of the Greeks looked on as an
inspired prophet, 'a clever man who had acquired for himself the
art of prophecy'; and as regards the miracle told of the AEginetan
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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 Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: meeting him, he treated him with a stern courtesy, which distressed
Margaret as often as she witnessed it. She felt that her
grandfather had been the aggressor; and she felt also that he did
injustice to the merits of her lover. But she had a filial
tenderness for the old man, as the father of her sainted mother,
and on his own account, continually making more claims on her pity,
as the decay of his memory, and a childish fretfulness growing upon
him from day to day, marked his increasing imbecility.
Equally mysterious it seemed, that about this time Miss Liebenheim
began to receive anonymous letters, written in the darkest and most
menacing terms. Some of them she showed to me. I could not guess
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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 Coxon Fund by Henry James: encountered me without asking for news of the old man of the sea.
I hadn't said Mr. Saltram was old, and it was to be seen that he
was of an age to outweather George Gravener. I had at that time a
lodging in Ebury Street, and Gravener was staying at his brother's
empty house in Eaton Square. At Cambridge, five years before, even
in our devastating set, his intellectual power had seemed to me
almost awful. Some one had once asked me privately, with blanched
cheeks, what it was then that after all such a mind as that left
standing. "It leaves itself!" I could recollect devoutly replying.
I could smile at present for this remembrance, since before we got
to Ebury Street I was struck with the fact that, save in the sense
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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 Herodias by Gustave Flaubert: furniture could be heard, and the rattle of silver plates and dishes.
From the highest tower a loud blast upon a conch summoned from far and
near all the slaves belonging to the castle.
CHAPTER II
The ramparts were thronged with people when at last Vitellius entered
the castle gates, leaning on the arm of his interpreter. Behind them
came an imposing red litter, decorated with plumes and mirrors. The
proconsul wore a toga ornamented with the laticlave, a broad purple
band extending down the front of the garment, indicating his rank; and
his feet were encased in the kind of buskins worn by consuls. A guard
of lictors surrounded him. Against the wall they placed their twelve
Herodias |
