| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: and it happened that for some reason or other I took in as I had
perhaps never done before the beauty of his rich blank gaze. It
was charged with experience as the sky is charged with light, and I
felt on the instant as if we had been overspanned and conjoined by
the great arch of a bridge or the great dome of a temple.
Doubtless I was rendered peculiarly sensitive to it by something in
the way I had been giving him up and sinking him. While I met it I
stood there smitten, and I felt myself responding to it with a sort
of guilty grimace. This brought back his attention in a smile
which expressed for me a cheerful weary patience, a bruised noble
gentleness. I had told Miss Anvoy that he had no dignity, but what
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Scarecrow of Oz by L. Frank Baum: This disagreeable person was dressed in rich velvets,
with many furbelows and laces. He was covered with golden
chains, finely wrought rings and jeweled ornaments. He
walked with mincing steps and glared at all the courtiers
as if he considered himself far superior to any or all of
them.
"Well, well, your Majesty; what news -- what news?" he
demanded, in a shrill, cracked voice.
The King gave him a surly look.
"No news, Lord Googly-Goo, except that strangers have
arrived," he said.
The Scarecrow of Oz |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: is happening or is likely to happen in war: and accordingly the law places
the soothsayer under the general, and not the general under the soothsayer.
Am I not correct in saying so, Laches?
LACHES: Quite correct.
SOCRATES: And do you, Nicias, also acknowledge that the same science has
understanding of the same things, whether future, present, or past?
NICIAS: Yes, indeed Socrates; that is my opinion.
SOCRATES: And courage, my friend, is, as you say, a knowledge of the
fearful and of the hopeful?
NICIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And the fearful, and the hopeful, are admitted to be future
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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 Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: of a separation which would be more painful than the first one.
Her heart contracted, but she took her resolution. Fantine, as we
shall see, had the fierce bravery of life. She had already
valiantly renounced finery, had dressed herself in linen, and had
put all her silks, all her ornaments, all her ribbons, and all
her laces on her daughter, the only vanity which was left to her,
and a holy one it was. She sold all that she had, which produced
for her two hundred francs; her little debts paid, she had only
about eighty francs left. At the age of twenty-two, on a beautiful
spring morning, she quitted Paris, bearing her child on her back.
Any one who had seen these two pass would have had pity on them.
Les Miserables |
