| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: hear him speak the language which lovers use to their loves when they are
by themselves, and I was delighted. Nothing of the sort; he conversed as
usual, and spent the day with me and then went away. Afterwards I
challenged him to the palaestra; and he wrestled and closed with me several
times when there was no one present; I fancied that I might succeed in this
manner. Not a bit; I made no way with him. Lastly, as I had failed
hitherto, I thought that I must take stronger measures and attack him
boldly, and, as I had begun, not give him up, but see how matters stood
between him and me. So I invited him to sup with me, just as if he were a
fair youth, and I a designing lover. He was not easily persuaded to come;
he did, however, after a while accept the invitation, and when he came the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: definitions or intricate ratiocination. Let them learn to be wise
by easier means: let them observe the hind of the forest and the
linnet of the grove: let them consider the life of animals, whose
motions are regulated by instinct; they obey their guide, and are
happy. Let us therefore at length cease to dispute, and learn to
live: throw away the encumbrance of precepts, which they who utter
them with so much pride and pomp do not understand, and carry with
us this simple and intelligible maxim: that deviation from Nature
is deviation from happiness.
When he had spoken he looked round him with a placid air, and
enjoyed the consciousness of his own beneficence.
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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 This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: slipped her hand into his under cover of darkness to be pressed
softly.
Then at six they arrived at the Borgis' summer place on Long
Island, and Amory rushed up-stairs to change into a dinner coat.
As he put in his studs he realized that he was enjoying life as
he would probably never enjoy it again. Everything was hallowed
by the haze of his own youth. He had arrived, abreast of the best
in his generation at Princeton. He was in love and his love was
returned. Turning on all the lights, he looked at himself in the
mirror, trying to find in his own face the qualities that made
him see clearer than the great crowd of people, that made him
This Side of Paradise |
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 Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: And they alone were there to find what they were looking for.
So they were, and so they are; and as they came are coming others,
And among them are the fearless and the meek and the unborn;
And a question that has held us heretofore without an answer
May abide without an answer until all have ceased to mourn.
For the children of the dark are more to name than are the wretched,
Or the broken, or the weary, or the baffled, or the shamed:
There are builders of new mansions in the Valley of the Shadow,
And among them are the dying and the blinded and the maimed.
The Wandering Jew
I saw by looking in his eyes
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