| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: of the tanned skin of some animal, on which
the hair had been originally left, but which had
been worn of in so many places, that it would
have been difficult to distinguish from the patches
that remained, to what creature the fur had belonged.
This primeval vestment reached from the
throat to the knees, and served at once all the
usual purposes of body-clothing; there was no wider
opening at the collar, than was necessary to
admit the passage of the head, from which it may
be inferred, that it was put on by slipping it over
Ivanhoe |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: again into the silence, along empty reaches, round the still bends,
between the high walls of our winding way, reverberating in
hollow claps the ponderous beat of the stern-wheel. Trees,
trees, millions of trees, massive, immense, running up high;
and at their foot, hugging the bank against the stream,
crept the little begrimed steamboat, like a sluggish beetle
crawling on the floor of a lofty portico. It made you feel
very small, very lost, and yet it was not altogether depressing,
that feeling. After all, if you were small, the grimy
beetle crawled on--which was just what you wanted it to do.
Where the pilgrims imagined it crawled to I don't know.
Heart of Darkness |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: freshness of my alarm; the praises of conscience began to grow
into a thing of course; I began to be tortured with throes and
longings, as of Hyde struggling after freedom; and at last, in an
hour of moral weakness, I once again compounded and swallowed the
transforming draught.
I do not suppose that, when a drunkard reasons with himself
upon his vice, he is once out of five hundred times affected by
the dangers that he runs through his brutish, physical
insensibility; neither had I, long as I had considered my
position, made enough allowance for the complete moral
insensibility and insensate readiness to evil, which were the
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde |
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 Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: Who lie within these sepulchres, be seen?
Already all the lids are rais'd, and none
O'er them keeps watch." He thus in answer spake
"They shall be closed all, what-time they here
From Josaphat return'd shall come, and bring
Their bodies, which above they now have left.
The cemetery on this part obtain
With Epicurus all his followers,
Who with the body make the spirit die.
Here therefore satisfaction shall be soon
Both to the question ask'd, and to the wish,
The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |
