| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dracula by Bram Stoker: searching until, presently, I find in a high great tomb as if made
to one much beloved that other fair sister which, like Jonathan
I had seen to gather herself out of the atoms of the mist.
She was so fair to look on, so radiantly beautiful,
so exquisitely voluptuous, that the very instinct of man in me,
which calls some of my sex to love and to protect one of hers,
made my head whirl with new emotion. But God be thanked,
that soul wail of my dear Madam Mina had not died out of my ears.
And, before the spell could be wrought further upon me,
I had nerved myself to my wild work. By this tim e I had
searched all the tombs in the chapel, so far as I could tell.
Dracula |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: mind, that tho' the anguish had the sensation of glowing heat--it might,
notwithstanding that, be a bite as well as a burn; and if so, that possibly
a Newt or an Asker, or some such detested reptile, had crept up, and was
fastening his teeth--the horrid idea of which, with a fresh glow of pain
arising that instant from the chesnut, seized Phutatorius with a sudden
panick, and in the first terrifying disorder of the passion, it threw him,
as it has done the best generals upon earth, quite off his guard:--the
effect of which was this, that he leapt incontinently up, uttering as he
rose that interjection of surprise so much descanted upon, with the
aposiopestic break after it, marked thus, Z...ds--which, though not
strictly canonical, was still as little as any man could have said upon the
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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 The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare: O Sir, such a life, with such a wife, were strange!
But if you have a stomach, to't i' God's name;
You shall have me assisting you in all.
But will you woo this wild-cat?
PETRUCHIO.
Will I live?
GRUMIO.
Will he woo her? Ay, or I'll hang her.
PETRUCHIO.
Why came I hither but to that intent?
Think you a little din can daunt mine ears?
The Taming of the Shrew |
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 Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: - All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called
"facts." They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.
Who does not know fellows that always have an ill-conditioned fact
or two which they lead after them into decent company like so many
bull-dogs, ready to let them slip at every ingenious suggestion, or
convenient generalization, or pleasant fancy? I allow no "facts"
at this table. What! Because bread is good and wholesome and
necessary and nourishing, shall you thrust a crumb into my windpipe
while I am talking? Do not these muscles of mine represent a
hundred loaves of bread? and is not my thought the abstract of ten
thousand of these crumbs of truth with which you would choke off my
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
