| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: He may have sung and striven
To mount where more of him shall yet be given,
Bereft of all retreat,
To sevenfold heat, --
As on a day when three in Dura shared
The furnace, and were spared
For glory by that king of Babylon
Who made himself so great that God, who heard,
Covered him with long feathers, like a bird.
Again, he may have gone down easily,
By comfortable altitudes, and found,
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: would have been better off if your father----"
"My father," cried the boy, "where is he?"
"He is dead," she said, laying her finger on her lips; "he died to
save my honor and my life."
She looked upwards. If any tears had been left to her, she would have
wept for pain.
"Louis," she continued, "swear to me, as I lie here, that you will
forget all that you have written, all that I have told you."
"Yes, mother."
"Kiss me, dear angel."
She was silent for a long while, she seemed to be drawing strength
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: "Ginevra Piombo does not pass her word and break it," she replied. "I
am your daughter."
"She is right," said the baroness. "We are sent into the world to
marry."
"Do you encourage her in disobedience?" said the baron to his wife,
who, terrified by the word, now changed to marble.
"Refusing to obey an unjust order is not disobedience," said Ginevra.
"No order can be unjust from the lips of your father, my daughter. Why
do you judge my action? The repugnance that I feel is counsel from on
high, sent, it may be, to protect you from some great evil."
"The only evil could be that he did not love me."
|
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 Russia in 1919 by Arthur Ransome: friends of the opposition parties, and, while it was in
progress, visiting daily the Conference in the Kremlin
which, in the end, definitely announced itself as the
Third International. I have considered it best to treat of that
Conference more or less as a whole, and am therefore
compelled to disregard chronology altogether in putting
down on paper, the results of some of my talks with the
opposition. Some of these took place on the same days as
my visits to the Kremlin conference, and during those days
I was also partly engaged in getting to see the British
prisoners in the Butyrka prison, in which I eventually
|
