| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Aeneid by Virgil: Thus while their straggling parties we defeat,
Some to the shore and safer ships retreat;
And some, oppress'd with more ignoble fear,
Remount the hollow horse, and pant in secret there.
"But, ah! what use of valor can be made,
When heav'n's propitious pow'rs refuse their aid!
Behold the royal prophetess, the fair
Cassandra, dragg'd by her dishevel'd hair,
Whom not Minerva's shrine, nor sacred bands,
In safety could protect from sacrilegious hands:
On heav'n she cast her eyes, she sigh'd, she cried-
Aeneid |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: for me!"
"She'll get over it, good-now?"
"Never! It is--but I won't go into it--there are reasons why she never will.
At last she calmly and firmly asked if she might leave me and go to him.
The climax came last night, when, owing to my entering her room by accident,
she jumped out of window--so strong was her dread of me! She pretended it
was a dream, but that was to soothe me. Now when a woman jumps out of window
without caring whether she breaks her neck or no, she's not to be mistaken;
and this being the case I have come to a conclusion: that it is wrong to so
torture a fellow-creature any longer; and I won't be the inhuman wretch to do
it, cost what it may!"
Jude the Obscure |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: how many private fortunes go to swell the stream of his expenditure;
while if he loses, he will become a laughing-stock to all mankind.[9]
[9] Or, "you will be mocked and jeered at past all precedence," as
historically was the fate of Dionysus, 388 or 384 B.C. (?); and
for the possible connection between that incident and this
treatise see Lys. "Olymp."; and Prof. Jebb's remarks on the
fragment, "Att. Or." i. p. 203 foll. Grote, "H. G." xi. 40 foll.;
"Plato, iii. 577.
No, no! I tell you, Hiero, your battlefield, your true arena is with
the champion presidents of rival states, above whose lesser heads be
it your destiny to raise this state, of which you are the patron and
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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 Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: messieurs, no one is to leave his chamber to-morrow morning without my
order, under pain of grievous punishment."
Thereupon, all went to bed. The next morning, Louis XI. was the first
to leave his apartment, and he went at once to the door of the strong-
room. He was not a little astonished to see, as he went along, the
marks of a large foot along the stairways and corridors of the house.
Carefully avoiding those precious footprints, he followed them to the
door of the treasure-room, which he found locked without a sign of
fracture or defacement. Then he studied the direction of the steps;
but as they grew gradually fainter, they finally left not the
slightest trace, and it was impossible for him to discover where the
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