| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Though aged and weak he may be.
This castle is mine! thou hast made it thy prey,
Thy people 'twas put me to flight;
The tokens I bear will confirm what I say"--
The children they hear with delight.
"The king who erst govern'd returneth again,
And restores to the Faithful the goods that were ta'en,
I'll unseal all my treasures the while;
The laws shall be gentle, and peaceful the reign"--
The old man thus cries with a smile--
"Take courage, my son! all hath turned out for good,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain: Generly he didn't seem to notice, but sometimes he did.
Well, two or three days went along, and everybody got to
getting uneasy about Jubiter Dunlap. Everybody was asking
everybody if they had any idea what had become of him.
No, they hadn't, they said: and they shook their heads
and said there was something powerful strange about it.
Another and another day went by; then there was a report got
around that praps he was murdered. You bet it made a big
stir! Everybody's tongue was clacking away after that.
Saturday two or three gangs turned out and hunted the
woods to see if they could run across his remainders.
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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 Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: come to know her at Florence; she told them she was an orphan,
the child of an English father and an Italian mother, and she
charmed them as she charmed me. The first time I saw her was at
an evening party. I was standing by the door talking to a
friend, when suddenly above the hum and babble of conversation I
heard a voice which seemed to thrill to my heart. She was
singing an Italian song. I was introduced to her that evening,
and in three months I married Helen. Villiers, that woman, if I
can call her woman, corrupted my soul. The night of the wedding
I found myself sitting in her bedroom in the hotel, listening to
her talk. She was sitting up in bed, and I listened to her as
The Great God Pan |
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 Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain: should trust it so--"
"Oh, certainly, I know all that; but if you had only stopped to
think, you would have seen that you COULDN'T find the right man,
because he is in his grave, and hasn't left chick nor child nor
relation behind him; and as long as the money went to somebody that
awfully needed it, and nobody would be hurt by it, and--and--"
She broke down, crying. Her husband tried to think of some
comforting thing to say, and presently came out with this:
"But after all, Mary, it must be for the best--it must be; we know
that. And we must remember that it was so ordered--"
"Ordered! Oh, everything's ORDERED, when a person has to find some
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg |
