| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: from his nostrils, he had him placed flat on the bed, without a pillow,
with his head on the same level as his body, and even a trifle lower,
and with his bust bare in order to facilitate respiration.
Mademoiselle Gillenormand, on perceiving that they were undressing
Marius, withdrew. She set herself to telling her beads in her
own chamber.
The trunk had not suffered any internal injury; a bullet,
deadened by the pocket-book, had turned aside and made the tour
of his ribs with a hideous laceration, which was of no great depth,
and consequently, not dangerous. The long, underground journey had
completed the dislocation of the broken collar-bone, and the disorder
Les Miserables |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Case of the Golden Bullet by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: interesting person. He laid his thin, nervous hand on the carriage
door.
"We are not there yet," said the commissioner.
"No, but it's the third house from here," replied Muller.
"You know where everybody lives, don't you?" smiled Horn.
"Nearly everybody," answered Muller gently, as the cab stopped
before an attractive little villa surrounded by its own garden,
as were most of the houses in this quiet, aristocratic part of
the town.
The house was two stories high, but the upper windows were closed
and tightly curtained. This upper story was the apartment occupied
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter: naive and quasi-innocent character and became afflicted with
a sense of guilt and indecency. This extraordinarily
interesting and dramatic moment in human evolution was
of course that in which self-consciousness grew powerful
enough to penetrate to the centre of human vitality, the
sanctumof man's inner life, his sexual instinct, and to deal
it a terrific blow--a blow from which it has never yet
recovered, and from which indeed it will not recover, until
the very nature of man's inner life is changed.
It may be said that it was very foolish of Man to
deny and to try to expel a perfectly natural and sensible
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
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: This homage was repeated by Vitellius, Antipas, and the priests.
But now, beginning at the farthest end of the banqueting-hall, a
murmur of surprise and admiration swept through the multitude. A
beautiful young girl had just entered the apartment, and stood
motionless for an instant, while all eyes were turned upon her.
Through a drapery of filmy blue gauze that veiled her head and throat,
her arched eyebrows, tiny ears, and ivory-white skin could be
distinguished. A scarf of shot-silk fell from her shoulders, and was
caught up at the waist by a girdle of fretted silver. Her full
trousers, of black silk, were embroidered in a pattern of silver
mandragoras, and as she moved forward with indolent grace, her little
Herodias |
