| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost: to her in the mildest tone, `faithless and perjured Manon! How
am I to complain of your conduct? I see you pale and trembling,
and I am still so much alive to your slightest sufferings, that I
am unwilling to add to them by my reproaches. But, Manon, I tell
you that my heart is pierced with sorrow at your treatment of
me--treatment that is seldom inflicted but with the purpose of
destroying one's life. This is the third time, Manon; I have
kept a correct account; it is impossible to forget that. It is
now for you to consider what course you will adopt; for my
afflicted heart is no longer capable of sustaining such shocks.
I know and feel that it must give way, and it is at this moment
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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 New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: insisted to our reluctant, averted minds, "still don't go down to
the essential things. . . ."
We have to go deeper, or our inadequate children's insufficient
children will starve amidst harvests of earless futility. That
conservatism which works in every class to preserve in its
essentials the habitual daily life is all against a profounder
treatment of political issues. The politician, almost as absurdly
as the philosopher, tends constantly, in spite of magnificent
preludes, vast intimations, to specialise himself out of the reality
he has so stupendously summoned--he bolts back to littleness. The
world has to be moulded anew, he continues to admit, but without, he
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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 1984 by George Orwell: flesh. Winston wriggled himself sideways, and with a violent lunge managed
to drive his shoulder between them. For a moment it felt as though his
entrails were being ground to pulp between the two muscular hips, then he
had broken through, sweating a little. He was next to the girl. They were
shoulder to shoulder, both staring fixedly in front of them.
A long line of trucks, with wooden-faced guards armed with sub-machine
guns standing upright in each corner, was passing slowly down the street.
In the trucks little yellow men in shabby greenish uniforms were squatting,
jammed close together. Their sad, Mongolian faces gazed out over the sides
of the trucks utterly incurious. Occasionally when a truck jolted there
was a clank-clank of metal: all the prisoners were wearing leg-irons.
1984 |
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 Enchanted Island of Yew by L. Frank Baum: entered at its large arched double doors, where several pairs of
servants met them. These servants, they found, were all dumb, so that
should they escape from the palace walls they could tell no tales of
the High Ki.
The prisoners now proceeded through several pairs of halls, winding
this way and that, and at last came to a pair of golden double doors
leading into the throne-room of the mighty High Ki. Here they all
paused, and the Ki-Ki both turned to the prince and Nerle and said:
"You are the only persons, excepting ourselves and the palace
servants, who have ever been permitted to see the High Ki of Twi. As
you are about to die, that does not matter; but should you by any
The Enchanted Island of Yew |
