| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: "Hunting," xii. 22.
Were he my enemy, to wrest some spoil from his unwilling hands would
be an exquisite pleasure, to my thinking. But of all sweet favours the
sweetest to my notion is the free-will offering of a man's beloved.
For instance, how sweet the responsive glance of love for love; how
sweet the questions and the answers;[43] and, most sweet of all, most
love-enkindling, the battles and the strifes of faithful lovers.[44]
But to enjoy[45] one's love perforce (he added) resembles more an act
of robbery, in my judgment, than love's pastime. And, indeed, the
robber derives some satisfaction from the spoils he wins and from the
pain he causes to the man he hates. But to seek pleasure in the pain
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock: Stand forth, Scarlet."
"Stand back, sirrah Scarlet," said the baron. "My daughter shall
have no father but me. Needs must when the devil drives."
"No matter who drives," said the friar, "so that, like a
well-disposed subject, you yield cheerful obedience to those
who can enforce it."
"Mawd, sweet Mawd," said the baron, "will you then forsake
your poor old father in his distress, with his castle in ashes,
and his enemy in power?"
"Not so, father," said Marian; "I will always be your true daughter:
I will always love, and serve, and watch, and defend you: but neither
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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 Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake: Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm:
So, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.
THE LITTLE BOY LOST
'Father, father, where are you going?
O do not walk so fast!
Speak, father, speak to your little boy,
Or else I shall be lost.'
The night was dark, no father was there,
The child was wet with dew;
The mire was deep, and the child did weep,
And away the vapour flew.
Songs of Innocence and Experience |
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 In the Cage by Henry James: equivalent pledges as to the tea-caddy and the jam-pot. These were
the questions--these indeed the familiar commodities--that he had
now to put into the scales; and his betrothed had in consequence,
during her holiday, the odd and yet pleasant and almost languid
sense of an anticlimax. She had become conscious of an
extraordinary collapse, a surrender to stillness and to retrospect.
She cared neither to walk nor to sail; it was enough for her to sit
on benches and wonder at the sea and taste the air and not be at
Cocker's and not see the counter-clerk. She still seemed to wait
for something--something in the key of the immense discussions that
had mapped out their little week of idleness on the scale of a
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