| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: look back to his explorations of her spirit as on a visit to some
famous shrine, immortalized, but in a sense desecrated, by popular
veneration.
Her letters, from London, continued to come with the same tender
punctuality; but the altered conditions of her life, the vistas of
new relationships disclosed by every phrase, made her
communications as impersonal as a piece of journalism. It was as
though the state, the world, indeed, had taken her off his hands,
assuming the maintenance of a temperament that had long exhausted
his slender store of reciprocity.
In the retrospective light shed by the letters he was blinded to
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Chinese Boy and Girl by Isaac Taylor Headland: silver hairpin, drew a line across the heavens, and from
that time the Heavenly River has flowed between them, and
they are destined to dwell forever on the two sides of the
Milky Way.
What had seemed to the youthful pair the promise of
perpetual joy, became a condition of unending grief. They
were on the two sides of a bridgeless river, in plain sight of
each other, but forever debarred from hearing the voice or
pressing the land of the one beloved, doomed to perpetual
toil unlit by any ray of joy or hope.
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: every opportunity of approaching the girl; and every time he
spoke to her, every time he looked into her eyes, Nina, although
averting her face, felt as if this bold-looking being who spoke
burning words into her willing ear was the embodiment of her
fate, the creature of her dreams--reckless, ferocious, ready with
flashing kriss for his enemies, and with passionate embrace for
his beloved--the ideal Malay chief of her mother's tradition.
She recognised with a thrill of delicious fear the mysterious
consciousness of her identity with that being. Listening to his
words, it seemed to her she was born only then to a knowledge of
a new existence, that her life was complete only when near him,
Almayer's Folly |
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 Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: origin may prove great and famous, with which the king, my
father-in-law that is to be, ought to be satisfied; and should he
not be, the princess will so love me that even though she well knew me
to be the son of a water-carrier, she will take me for her lord and
husband in spite of her father; if not, then it comes to seizing her
and carrying her off where I please; for time or death will put an end
to the wrath of her parents."
"It comes to this, too," said Sancho, "what some naughty people say,
'Never ask as a favour what thou canst take by force;' though it would
fit better to say, 'A clear escape is better than good men's prayers.'
I say so because if my lord the king, your worship's father-in-law,
Don Quixote |
