| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso: Ubaldo forward stepped, and to him hield
Of diamonds clear that pure and precious shield.
XXX
Upon the targe his looks amazed he bent,
And therein all his wanton habit spied,
His civet, balm, and perfumes redolent,
How from his locks they smoked and mantle wide,
His sword that many a Pagan stout had shent,
Bewrapped with flowers, hung idly by his side,
So nicely decked that it seemed the knight
Wore it for fashion's sake but not for fight.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: civilize the backwoods.
"When the pioneer perceived that we were crossing his
threshold, he came to meet us and shake hands, as is their
custom; but his face was quite unmoved; he opened the
conversation by inquiring what was going on in the world; and
when his curiosity was satisfied, he held his peace, as if he
were tired by the noise and importunity of mankind. When we
questioned him in our turn, he gave us all the information we
required; he then attended sedulously, but without eagerness, to
our personal wants. Whilst he was engaged in providing thus
kindly for us, how came it that in spit of ourselves we felt our
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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 Common Sense by Thomas Paine: To examine that connection and dependence, on the principles
of nature and common sense, to see what we have to trust to,
if separated, and what we are to expect, if dependant.
I have heard it asserted by some, that as America hath
flourished under her former connection with Great Britain
that the same connection is necessary towards her future
happiness, and will always have the same effect.
Nothing can be more fallacious than this kind of argument.
We may as well assert that because a child has thrived upon milk
that it is never to have meat, or that the first twenty years
of our lives is to become a precedent for the next twenty.
Common Sense |
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 A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: persons how to prevent their being touched by any contagious
distemper whatsoever. He directs the poor gratis.'
I take notice of these by way of specimen. I could give you two or
three dozen of the like and yet have abundance left behind. 'Tis
sufficient from these to apprise any one of the humour of those times,
and how a set of thieves and pickpockets not only robbed and cheated
the poor people of their money, but poisoned their bodies with odious
and fatal preparations; some with mercury, and some with other things
as bad, perfectly remote from the thing pretended to, and rather
hurtful than serviceable to the body in case an infection followed.
I cannot omit a subtility of one of those quack operators, with which
A Journal of the Plague Year |
