| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: but you never forget the thump--eh? A blow on the very heart.
You remember it, you dream of it, you wake up at night
and think of it--years after--and go hot and cold all over.
I don't pretend to say that steamboat floated all the time.
More than once she had to wade for a bit, with twenty cannibals
splashing around and pushing. We had enlisted some of these chaps
on the way for a crew. Fine fellows--cannibals--in their place.
They were men one could work with, and I am grateful to them.
And, after all, they did not eat each other before my face:
they had brought along a provision of hippo-meat which
went rotten, and made the mystery of the wilderness stink
Heart of Darkness |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: There are the dancing-girls of Samaris who dance in the manner of
all kinds of birds and beasts. Their feet are painted with henna,
and in their hands they have little copper bells. They laugh while
they dance, and their laughter is as clear as the laughter of
water. Come with me and I will show them to thee. For what is
this trouble of thine about the things of sin? Is that which is
pleasant to eat not made for the eater? Is there poison in that
which is sweet to drink? Trouble not thyself, but come with me to
another city. There is a little city hard by in which there is a
garden of tulip-trees. And there dwell in this comely garden white
peacocks and peacocks that have blue breasts. Their tails when
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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 Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: eyes, and half averted from the chair I was to occupy on the
other side of the table. He was motionless, mysterious, remote,
enigmatical, with something mournful too in the pose, like that
statue of Giuliano (I think) de' Medici shading his face on the
tomb by Michael Angelo, though, of course, he was far, far from
being beautiful. He began by trying to make me talk nonsense.
But I had been warned of that fiendish trait, and contradicted
him with great assurance. After a while he left off. So far
good. But his immobility, the thick elbow on the table, the
abrupt, unhappy voice, the shaded and averted face grew more and
more impressive. He kept inscrutably silent for a moment, and
Some Reminiscences |
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 An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: snubbing that the pretty ones can keep us in our place. Men, as
Miss Howe or Miss Harlowe would have said, 'are such ENCROACHERS.'
For my part, I am body and soul with the women; and after a well-
married couple, there is nothing so beautiful in the world as the
myth of the divine huntress. It is no use for a man to take to the
woods; we know him; St. Anthony tried the same thing long ago, and
had a pitiful time of it by all accounts. But there is this about
some women, which overtops the best gymnosophist among men, that
they suffice to themselves, and can walk in a high and cold zone
without the countenance of any trousered being. I declare,
although the reverse of a professed ascetic, I am more obliged to
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