| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: few to do the work--and hard work, too, as the small-boat sailor
knows. I have toiled all night, both watches on deck, in a
typhoon off the coast of Japan, and been less exhausted than by
two hours' work at reefing down a thirty-foot sloop and heaving up
two anchors on a lee shore in a screaming south-easter.
Hard work and excitement? Let the wind baffle and drop in a heavy
tide-way just as you are sailing your little sloop through a
narrow draw-bridge. Behold your sails, upon which you are
depending, flap with sudden emptiness, and then see the impish
wind, with a haul of eight points, fill your jib aback with a
gusty puff. Around she goes, and sweeps, not through the open
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Death of the Lion by Henry James: in the face and accept it. I knew where I had failed, but it was
exactly where I couldn't have succeeded. I had been sent down to
be personal and then in point of fact hadn't been personal at all:
what I had dispatched to London was just a little finicking
feverish study of my author's talent. Anything less relevant to
Mr. Pinhorn's purpose couldn't well be imagined, and he was visibly
angry at my having (at his expense, with a second-class ticket)
approached the subject of our enterprise only to stand off so
helplessly. For myself, I knew but too well what had happened, and
how a miracle - as pretty as some old miracle of legend - had been
wrought on the spot to save me. There had been a big brush of
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: indicted me for impiety. And therefore, I adjure you to tell me the nature
of piety and impiety, which you said that you knew so well, and of murder,
and of other offences against the gods. What are they? Is not piety in
every action always the same? and impiety, again--is it not always the
opposite of piety, and also the same with itself, having, as impiety, one
notion which includes whatever is impious?
EUTHYPHRO: To be sure, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And what is piety, and what is impiety?
EUTHYPHRO: Piety is doing as I am doing; that is to say, prosecuting any
one who is guilty of murder, sacrilege, or of any similar crime--whether he
be your father or mother, or whoever he may be--that makes no difference;
|
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 Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence: 'Ma lass!' he said. 'The world's goin' to put salt on thy tail.'
'Not if we don't let it,' she said.
She minded this conniving against the world less than he did.
Duncan, when approached, also insisted on seeing the delinquent
game-keeper, so there was a dinner, this time in his flat: the four of
them. Duncan was a rather short, broad, dark-skinned, taciturn Hamlet
of a fellow with straight black hair and a weird Celtic conceit of
himself. His art was all tubes and valves and spirals and strange
colours, ultra-modern, yet with a certain power, even a certain purity
of form and tone: only Mellors thought it cruel and repellent. He did
not venture to say so, for Duncan was almost insane on the point of his
Lady Chatterley's Lover |
