| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: his mother; realizing thus, with the sublime harmonies of ecstasy, the
symbolic enterprise of Orpheus.
Often, when crouching in the crevice of some rock, capriciously curled
up in his granite grotto, the entrance to which was as narrow as that
of a charcoal kiln, he would sink into involuntary sleep, his figure
softly lighted by the warm rays of the sun which crept through the
fissures and fell upon the dainty seaweeds that adorned his retreat,
the veritable nest of a sea-bird. The sun, his sovereign lord, alone
told him that he had slept, by measuring the time he had been absent
from his watery landscapes, his golden sands, his shells and pebbles.
Across a light as brilliant as that from heaven he saw the cities of
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: "He goes off in a huff. The whole he can endure; at the parts he
baulks. Now I don't like this. I make a leg for Captain Ahab, and
he wears it like a gentleman; but I make a bandbox for Queequeg, and
he won't put his head into it. Are all my pains to go for nothing
with that coffin? And now I'm ordered to make a life-buoy of it.
It's like turning an old coat; going to bring the flesh on the other
side now. I don't like this cobbling sort of business--I don't like
it at all; it's undignified; it's not my place. Let tinkers' brats
do tinkerings; we are their betters. I like to take in hand none but
clean, virgin, fair-and-square mathematical jobs, something that
regularly begins at the beginning, and is at the middle when midway,
Moby Dick |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli: subjects. Therefore, as I have said, a new prince in a new
principality has always distributed arms. Histories are full of
examples. But when a prince acquires a new state, which he adds as a
province to his old one, then it is necessary to disarm the men of
that state, except those who have been his adherents in acquiring it;
and these again, with time and opportunity, should be rendered soft
and effeminate; and matters should be managed in such a way that all
the armed men in the state shall be your own soldiers who in your old
state were living near you.
3. Our forefathers, and those who were reckoned wise, were accustomed
to say that it was necessary to hold Pistoia by factions and Pisa by
The Prince |
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 Essays of Francis Bacon by Francis Bacon: and not with swelling, or pride. Certainly, it is
heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind move in
charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the
poles of truth.
To pass from theological, and philosophical
truth, to the truth of civil business; it will be ac-
knowledged, even by those that practise it not, that
clear, and round dealing, is the honor of man's
nature; and that mixture of falsehoods, is like alloy
in coin of gold and silver, which may make the
metal work the better, but it embaseth it. For these
Essays of Francis Bacon |
