| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson: Called friends to hold a jubilee.
Wild was the night; the charging rack
Had forced the moon upon her back;
The wind piped up a naval ditty;
And the lamps winked through all the city.
Before that house, where lights were shining,
Corpulent feeders, grossly dining,
And jolly clamour, hum and rattle,
Fairly outvoiced the tempest's battle.
As still his moistened lip he fingered,
The envious policeman lingered;
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot: On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.
II
The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer
>From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.
With the other masquerades
Prufrock/Other Observations |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: and then, besides, she found a woman requires a mansion when she
goes into society, to race meetings, or to the theater.
And so, while she became a marchioness, and pronounced her second
"Yes," before a very few friends, at the office of the mayor of
the English urban district, malicious people in the Faubourg were
making fun of the whole affair, and affirming this and that,
whether rightly or wrongly, and comparing the present husband to
the former one, even declaring that he had partially been the
cause of the former divorce. Meanwhile Monsieur de Baudemont was
wandering over the four quarters of the globe trying to overcome
his homesickness, and to deaden his longing for love, which had
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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 Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: VI
I went to the station at ten o'clock in the morning. There was no
frost, but snow was falling in big wet flakes and an unpleasant
damp wind was blowing.
We passed a pond and then a birch copse, and then began going
uphill along the road which I could see from my window. I turned
round to take a last look at my house, but I could see nothing
for the snow. Soon afterwards dark huts came into sight ahead of
us as in a fog. It was Pestrovo.
"If I ever go out of my mind, Pestrovo will be the cause of it,"
I thought. "It persecutes me."
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