| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: tithes against their conscience to an episcopal curate.
Secondly, The poorer tenants will have something valuable of
their own, which by law may be made liable to a distress, and
help to pay their landlord's rent, their corn and cattle being
already seized, and money a thing unknown.
Thirdly, Whereas the maintainance of an hundred thousand
children, from two years old, and upwards, cannot be computed at
less than ten shillings a piece per annum, the nation's stock
will be thereby encreased fifty thousand pounds per annum,
besides the profit of a new dish, introduced to the tables of all
gentlemen of fortune in the kingdom, who have any refinement in
A Modest Proposal |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from When the World Shook by H. Rider Haggard: gods into the darkness whence they came. Yet what if some water
of Truth flows through the channel of his leaden lips, and what
if because I have ruled and will rule as thou didst decree,
therefore, in some dim place of souls, I must bear these burdens
of terror and of doom which I have bound upon the backs of
others! Nay, it cannot be, for what power is there in all the
universe that dares to make a slave of Oro and to afflict him
with stripes?
"Yet this can be and mayhap will be, that presently I lose my
path in the ways of everlasting darkness, and become strengthless
and forgotten as are those who went before me, while my crown of
When the World Shook |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Hamlet by William Shakespeare: Which now like Fruite vnripe stickes on the Tree,
But fall vnshaken, when they mellow bee.
Most necessary 'tis, that we forget
To pay our selues, what to our selues is debt:
What to our selues in passion we propose,
The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.
The violence of other Greefe or Ioy,
Their owne ennactors with themselues destroy:
Where Ioy most Reuels, Greefe doth most lament;
Greefe ioyes, Ioy greeues on slender accident.
This world is not for aye, nor 'tis not strange
Hamlet |
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 Recruit by Honore de Balzac: on the morning of the third day, the procureur-syndic of the commune
made his wife write her a letter, urging her to receive her visitors
as usual that evening. Bolder still, the old merchant went himself in
the morning to Madame de Dey's house, and, strong in the service he
wanted to render her, he insisted on seeing her, and was amazed to
find her in the garden gathering flowers for her vases.
"She must be protecting a lover," thought the old man, filled with
sudden pity for the charming woman.
The singular expression on the countess's face strengthened this
conjecture. Much moved at the thought of such devotion, for all men
are flattered by the sacrifices a woman makes for one of them, the old
|
