| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: "I can set no limit to what may happen in the next fifty years.
Ah, no, Mr. Pepper, I don't agree with you in the least," she laughed,
interrupting his gloomy remark about things going steadily
from bad to worse. "I know I ought to feel that, but I don't,
I'm afraid. They're going to be much better people than we were.
Surely everything goes to prove that. All round me I see women,
young women, women with household cares of every sort, going out
and doing things that we should not have thought it possible to do."
Mr. Pepper thought her sentimental and irrational like all old women,
but her manner of treating him as if he were a cross old baby baffled
him and charmed him, and he could only reply to her with a curious
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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 House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: And then, when I had finished, went on thinking:
A man I saw on a train . . . I was still a boy . . .
Who killed himself by diving against a wall.
Here is a recollection of my wife,
When she was still my sweetheart, years ago.
It's funny how things change,--just change, by growing,
Without an effort . . . And here are trivial things,--
A chill, an errand forgotten, a cut while shaving;
A friend of mine who tells me he is married . . .
Or is that last so trivial? Well, no matter!
This is the sort of thing you'll see of me,
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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 The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: across great dry fields, to scattered farm-houses, and the villas
of rich natives. Hewet stepped off the road on to one of these,
in order to avoid the hardness and heat of the main road,
the dust of which was always being raised in small clouds by carts
and ramshackle flies which carried parties of festive peasants,
or turkeys swelling unevenly like a bundle of air balls beneath
a net, or the brass bedstead and black wooden boxes of some newly
wedded pair.
The exercise indeed served to clear away the superficial irritations
of the morning, but he remained miserable. It seemed proved beyond
a doubt that Rachel was indifferent to him, for she had scarcely
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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 Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare: And slept above some fifteen year or more.
PAGE.
Ay, and the time seems thirty unto me,
Being all this time abandon'd from your bed.
SLY.
'Tis much. Servants, leave me and her alone.
Madam, undress you, and come now to bed.
PAGE.
Thrice noble lord, let me entreat of you
To pardon me yet for a night or two;
Or, if not so, until the sun be set:
The Taming of the Shrew |
