| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare: Gentlemen, for shame forbeare this outrage,
Tibalt, Mercutio, the Prince expresly hath
Forbidden bandying in Verona streetes.
Hold Tybalt, good Mercutio.
Exit Tybalt.
Mer. I am hurt.
A plague a both the Houses, I am sped:
Is he gone and hath nothing?
Ben. What art thou hurt?
Mer. I, I, a scratch, a scratch, marry 'tis inough,
Where is my Page? go Villaine fetch a Surgeon
Romeo and Juliet |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: were as many Madame Firmianis as there are species in society, or
sects in Catholicism. Frightful reflection! we are all like
lithographic blocks, from which an indefinite number of copies can be
drawn by criticism,--the proofs being more or less like us according
to a distribution of shading which is so nearly imperceptible that our
reputation depends (barring the calumnies of friends and the
witticisms of newspapers) on the balance struck by our criticisers
between Truth that limps and Falsehood to which Parisian wit gives
wings.
Madame Firmiani, like other noble and dignified women who make their
hearts a sanctuary and disdain the world, was liable, therefore, to be
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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 Finished by H. Rider Haggard: to me is as mother and sister and child. It is useless to lie to
me, for the Master has told me all; moreover, I knew it for
myself, both through my Spirit and because I had watched you."
"I have no intention of lying to you, Nombe, about this or any
other matter, though I think that sometimes in the past you have
lied to me. Tell me, do you expect the Inkosi Mauriti, the lady
Heddana and myself to pass the rest of our lives in the Black
Kloof, when they wish to get married and go across the Black
Water to where their home will be, and I wish to attend to my
affairs?"
"I do not know what I expect, Macumazahn, but I do know that
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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 Timaeus by Plato: and dry, then the fleshy parts fall away and leave the sinews bare and full
of brine, and the flesh gets back again into the circulation of the blood,
and makes the previously mentioned disorders still greater. There are
other and worse diseases which are prior to these; as when the bone through
the density of the flesh does not receive sufficient air, and becomes
stagnant and gangrened, and crumbling away passes into the food, and the
food into the flesh, and the flesh returns again into the blood. Worst of
all and most fatal is the disease of the marrow, by which the whole course
of the body is reversed. There is a third class of diseases which are
produced, some by wind and some by phlegm and some by bile. When the lung,
which is the steward of the air, is obstructed, by rheums, and in one part
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