| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Iliad by Homer: your peace, and listen to better men than yourself. You are a
coward and no soldier; you are nobody either in fight or council;
we cannot all be kings; it is not well that there should be many
masters; one man must be supreme--one king to whom the son of
scheming Saturn has given the sceptre of sovereignty over you
all."
Thus masterfully did he go about among the host, and the people
hurried back to the council from their tents and ships with a
sound as the thunder of surf when it comes crashing down upon the
shore, and all the sea is in an uproar.
The rest now took their seats and kept to their own several
The Iliad |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll: Alice said to herself, as she stood watching him. `There he
goes! Right on his head as usual! However, he gets on again
pretty easily--that comes of having so many things hung round
the horse--' So she went on talking to herself, as she watched
the horse walking leisurely along the road, and the Knight
tumbling off, first on one side and then on the other. After the
fourth or fifth tumble he reached the turn, and then she waved
her handkerchief to him, and waited till he was out of sight.
`I hope it encouraged him,' she said, as she turned to run
down the hill: `and now for the last brook, and to be a Queen!
How grand it sounds!' A very few steps brought her to the edge of
Through the Looking-Glass |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: intellectual competition, a man must be able to sit forty-eight hours
on end in his chair before a table, as a General could remain for two
days on horseback and in his saddle.
The throng of aspirants has necessitated a division of the Faculty of
Medicine into categories. There is the physician who writes and the
physician who practises, the political physician, and the physician
militant--four different ways of being a physician, four classes
already filled up. As to the fifth class, that of physicians who sell
remedies, there is such a competition that they fight each other with
disgusting advertisements on the walls of Paris.
In all the law courts there are almost as many lawyers as there are
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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 Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde: I took the scarlet poppies from the corn,
And made a little wreath, and my grave uncle,
Don John of Naples, laughed: I did not know
That they had power to stay the springs of life,
To make the pulse cease beating, and to chill
The blood in its own vessels, till men come
And with a hook hale the poor body out,
And throw it in a ditch: the body, ay, -
What of the soul? that goes to heaven or hell.
Where will mine go?
[Takes the torch from the wall, and goes over to the bed.]
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