| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Oedipus Trilogy by Sophocles: Nor can he now retract what then he said;
Not I alone but all our townsfolk heard it.
E'en should he vary somewhat in his story,
He cannot make the death of Laius
In any wise jump with the oracle.
For Loxias said expressly he was doomed
To die by my child's hand, but he, poor babe,
He shed no blood, but perished first himself.
So much for divination. Henceforth I
Will look for signs neither to right nor left.
OEDIPUS
Oedipus Trilogy |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter by Beatrix Potter: because he had not got any ring to
give to Old Brown.
The other squirrels hunted up and
down the nut bushes; but Nutkin
gathered robin's pin-cushions off a
briar bush, and stuck them full of
pine-needle-pins.
On the fifth day the squirrels
brought a present of wild honey; it
was so sweet and sticky that they
licked their fingers as they put it down
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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 Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: whole body, irrespective of age. It will be understood that, when
Lycurgus first came to deal with the question, the Spartans like the
rest of the Hellenes, used to mess privately at home. Tracing more
than half the current misdemeanours to this custom,[2] he was
determined to drag his people out of holes and corners into the broad
daylight, and so he invented the public mess-rooms. Whereby he
expected at any rate to minimise the transgression of orders.
[1] Lit. "with each age."; see Plut. "Lycurg." 25; Hesychius, {s. u.
irinies}; "Hell." VI. iv. 17; V. iv. 13.
[2] Reading after Cobet, {en touto}.
As to food,[3] his ordinance allowed them so much as, while not
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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 The Aspern Papers by Henry James: never should have heard of him, critic and historian as you are.
I know the world goes fast and one generation forgets another.
He was all the fashion when I was young."
She was perhaps amazed at my assurance, but I was surprised at hers; at her
having the energy, in her state of health and at her time of life, to wish
to sport with me that way simply for her private entertainment--the humor
to test me and practice on me. This, at least, was the interpretation that I
put upon her production of the portrait, for I could not believe that she
really desired to sell it or cared for any information I might give her.
What she wished was to dangle it before my eyes and put a prohibitive
price on it. "The face comes back to me, it torments me," I said,
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