| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: moment in anguish, and denying herself the love that might have
comforted her. Hidden, irreparable woe! Tears of the victim for her
slayer, tears of the slayer for his victim! When the children and
waiting-woman came at length into the room I left it. The count was
waiting for me; he seemed to seek me as a mediating power between
himself and his wife. He caught my hands, exclaiming, "Stay, stay with
us, Felix!"
"Unfortunately," I said, "Monsieur de Chessel has a party, and my
absence would cause remark. But after dinner I will return."
He left the house when I did, and took me to the lower gate without
speaking; then he accompanied me to Frapesle, seeming not to know what
The Lily of the Valley |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: She had grown up in Brooklyn, in a shabby little house under the
vacillating administration of her father, a music teacher who
usually neglected his duties to write orchestral compositions for
which the world seemed to have no especial need. His spirit was
warped by bitter vindictiveness and puerile self-commiseration,
and he spent his days in scorn of the labor that brought him
bread and in pitiful devotion to the labor that brought him only
disappointment, writing interminable scores which demanded of the
orchestra everything under heaven except melody.
It was not a cheerful home for a girl to grow up in. The
mother, who idolized her husband as the music lord of the future,
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson: that light hand on his arm; and behind all these aspects of
the nocturnal city he saw, in his mind's-eye, a picture of
the lighted drawing-room at home where he had sat talking
with Flora; and his father, from the other end, had looked on
with a kind and ironical smile. John had read the
significance of that smile, which might have escaped a
stranger. Mr. Nicholson had remarked his son's entanglement
with satisfaction, tinged by humour; and his smile, if it
still was a thought contemptuous, had implied consent.
At the captain's door the girl held out her hand, with a
certain emphasis; and John took it and kept it a little
|
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 King James Bible: saying, Wilt thou not shew us what thou meanest by these?
EZE 37:19 Say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will take
the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of
Israel his fellows, and will put them with him, even with the stick of
Judah, and make them one stick, and they shall be one in mine hand.
EZE 37:20 And the sticks whereon thou writest shall be in thine hand
before their eyes.
EZE 37:21 And say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will
take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be
gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own
land:
King James Bible |
