| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll: `Andy what's the "GYRE" and to "GIMBLE"?'
`To "GYRE" is to go round and round like a gyroscope. To
"GIMBLE" is to make holes like a gimlet.'
`And "THE WABE" is the grass-plot round a sun-dial, I suppose?'
said Alice, surprised at her own ingenuity.
`Of course it is. It's called "WABE," you know, because it
goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it--'
`And a long way beyond it on each side,' Alice added.
`Exactly so. Well, then, "MIMSY" is "flimsy and miserable"
(there's another portmanteau for you). And a "BOROGOVE" is a
thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round--
Through the Looking-Glass |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Verses 1889-1896 by Rudyard Kipling:
Then said the souls of the gentlemen-adventurers --
Fettered wrist to bar all for red iniquity:
"Ho, we revel in our chains
O'er the sorrow that was Spain's;
Heave or sink it, leave or drink it, we were masters of the sea!"
Up spake the soul of a gray Gothavn 'speckshioner --
(He that led the flinching in the fleets of fair Dundee):
"Oh, the ice-blink white and near,
And the bowhead breaching clear!
Verses 1889-1896 |
