| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: science, thus: Class, Mammalia; Order, Primates; Genus, Homo;
Species, Europeus; Variety, Brown; Individual, Ann Eliza; Dental
Formula
2-2 1-1 2-2 3-3
i---c---p---m---
2-2 1-1 2-2 3-3'
and so on?
No, my friends, I shall speak of trees as we see them, love them,
adore them in the fields, where they are alive, holding their green
sun-shades over our heads, talking to us with their hundred
thousand whispering tongues, looking down on us with that sweet
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: should have thought a page of small type, but I was cut short by
a beggar who had come behind me, and was making the usual
appeals. Of course I looked round, and this beggar turned out
to be what was left of an old friend of mine, a man named
Herbert. I asked him how he had come to such a wretched pass,
and he told me. We walked up and down one of those long and
dark Soho streets, and there I listened to his story. He said
he had married a beautiful girl, some years younger than
himself, and, as he put it, she had corrupted him body and
soul. He wouldn't go into details; he said he dare not, that
what he had seen and heard haunted him by night and day, and
The Great God Pan |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Old Indian Legends by Zitkala-Sa: beneath him. Spreading a handsomely decorated buffalo robe before
the man, two of the warriors lifted him by each shoulder and placed
him gently on it. Then the four men took, each, a corner of the
blanket and carried the stranger, with long proud steps, toward the
chieftain's teepee.
Ready to greet the stranger, the tall chieftain stood at the
entrance way. "How, you are the avenger with the magic arrow!"
said he, extending to him a smooth soft hand.
"How, great chieftain!" replied the man, holding long the
chieftain's hand. Entering the teepee, the chieftain motioned the
young man to the right side of the doorway, while he sat down
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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 Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: astonishment and promises. 'What! my dear boy! Oh! count upon me! Poor
fellow!' and Beaudenord was clean forgotten fifteen minutes
afterwards. He owed his place to Nucingen and de Vandenesse.
"And to-day these so estimable and unfortunate people are living on a
third floor (not counting the entresol) in the Rue du Mont Thabor.
Malvina, the Adolphus' pearl of a granddaughter, has not a farthing.
She gives music-lessons, not to be a burden upon her brother-in-law.
You may see a tall, dark, thin, withered woman, like a mummy escaped
from Passalacqua's about afoot through the streets of Paris. In 1830
Beaudenord lost his situation just as his wife presented him with a
fourth child. A family of eight and two servants (Wirth and his wife)
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