| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: yourself, and wherein your Good and Evil consists.
XXV
A man asked me to write to Rome on his behalf who, as most
people thought, had met with misfortune; for having been before
wealthy and distinguished, he had afterwards lost all and was
living here. So I wrote about him in a humble style. He however
on reading the letter returned it to me, with the words: "I asked
for your help, not for your pity. No evil has happened unto me."
XXVI
True instruction is this:-- to learn to wish that each thing
should come to pass as it does. And how does it come to pass? As
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pathology of Lying, Etc. by William and Mary Healy: their subjective influence, but discussed the details of
composition and coloring. We might mention that in a
characteristic way she interjected some remarks that she herself
used to be very good at drawing and won several prizes at it.
She stated that she thought of going farther in art, but that her
parents could hardly afford to allow her to do this. These
remarks were found later to be quite aside from the truth.
Telling us the story of her school career, Janet insists her
memory had never been good for learning poems or for languages,
particularly Latin, but anything in the way of a picture she
could recall with ease. What she has read she often thinks of in
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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 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: cocoa-nuts, mangoes, and bread-fruit trees, but I think I like the
negresses best of anything I have seen. In turbans and loose sea-
green robes, with beautiful black-brown complexions and a stately
carriage, they really are a satisfaction to my eye. The weather
has been windy and rainy; the HOOPER has to lie about a mile from
the town, in an open roadstead, with the whole swell of the
Atlantic driving straight on shore. The little steam launch gives
all who go in her a good ducking, as she bobs about on the big
rollers; and my old gymnastic practice stands me in good stead on
boarding and leaving her. We clamber down a rope ladder hanging
from the high stern, and then taking a rope in one hand, swing into
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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 Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare: A longing tarriance for Adonis made
Under an osier growing by a brook,
A brook where Adon used to cool his spleen:
Hot was the day; she hotter that did look
For his approach, that often there had been.
Anon he comes, and throws his mantle by,
And stood stark naked on the brook's green brim:
The sun look'd on the world with glorious eye,
Yet not so wistly as this queen on him.
He, spying her, bounced in, whereas he stood:
'O Jove,' quoth she, 'why was not I a flood!'
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