| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: he read me a lecture, and told me how it really stood with you
financially. He was pretty serious; fearing, as I could not help
perceiving, that I should take too light a view of the
responsibility and the service (I was always thought too light -
the irresponsible jester - you remember. O, QUANTUM MUTATUS AB
ILLO!) If I remember rightly, the money was repaid before the end
of the week - or, to be more exact and a trifle pedantic, the
sennight - but the service has never been forgotten; and I send you
back this piece of ancient history, CONSULE PLANCO, as a salute for
your dedication, and propose that we should drink the health of the
nameless one, who opened my eyes as to the true nature of what you
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: death.
Here is another difficult text: [Figure 2]
It is demotic--a style of Egyptian writing and a phase of
the language which has perished from the knowledge of all men
twenty-five hundred years before the Christian era.
Our red Indians have left many records, in the form of
pictures, upon our crags and boulders. It has taken our most
gifted and painstaking students two centuries to get at the
meanings hidden in these pictures; yet there are still two little
lines of hieroglyphics among the figures grouped upon the Dighton
Rocks which they have not succeeds in interpreting to their
What is Man? |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: works it! Good God! what will the kings be soon? More than that, what
will the nations themselves be fifty years hence under this state of
things?"
"But you love me; you are beside me. I think the present delightful.
What do I care for such a distant future?" said his wife.
"Oh yes! by your side, hurrah for the present!" cried the lover,
gayly, "and the devil take the future."
Then he signed to the coachman, and as the horses sprang forward along
the road, the wedded pair returned to the enjoyment of their
honeymoon.
1845.
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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 Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas: the custom of that period, Monsieur le Prince, was a young
man, not more than twenty-six or twenty-seven years old,
with the eye of an eagle -- agl' occhi grifani, as Dante
says -- aquiline nose, long, waving hair, of medium height,
well formed, possessed of all the qualities essential to the
successful soldier -- that is to say, the rapid glance,
quick decision, fabulous courage. At the same time he was a
man of elegant manners and strong mind, so that in addition
to the revolution he had made in war, by his new
contributions to its methods, he had also made a revolution
at Paris, among the young noblemen of the court, whose
Twenty Years After |
