| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Richard III by William Shakespeare: And weigh thee down to ruin, shame, and death!
Thy nephews' souls bid thee despair and die.
[To RICHMOND] Sleep, Richmond, sleep in peace, and
wake in joy;
Good angels guard thee from the boar's annoy!
Live, and beget a happy race of kings!
Edward's unhappy sons do bid thee flourish.
Enter the GHOST of LADY ANNE, his wife
GHOST. [To RICHARD] Richard, thy wife, that wretched
Anne thy wife
That never slept a quiet hour with thee
Richard III |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: of a myth fades away as inevitably as the primitive meaning of
a word or phrase; and the rabbins who told of a worm which
shatters rocks no more thought of the writhing thunderbolts
than the modern reader thinks of oyster-shells when he sees
the word ostracism, or consciously breathes a prayer as he
writes the phrase good bye. It is only in its callow infancy
that the full force of a myth is felt, and its period of
luxuriant development dates from the time when its physical
significance is lost or obscured. It was because the Greek had
forgotten that Zeus meant the bright sky, that he could make
him king over an anthropomorphic Olympos. The Hindu Dyaus, who
Myths and Myth-Makers |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert: The road was so bad that it took two hours to cover the eight miles.
The two horses sank knee-deep into the mud and stumbled into ditches;
sometimes they had to jump over them. In certain places, Liebard's
mare stopped abruptly. He waited patiently till she started again, and
talked of the people whose estates bordered the road, adding his own
moral reflections to the outline of their histories. Thus, when they
were passing through Toucques, and came to some windows draped with
nasturtiums, he shrugged his shoulders and said: "There's a woman,
Madame Lehoussais, who, instead of taking a young man--" Felicite
could not catch what followed; the horses began to trot, the donkey to
gallop, and they turned into a lane; then a gate swung open, two farm-
A Simple Soul |
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 Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: give to him. He could not get away from the fact that if
he had been brought up as she had they would have
been no more fit to find their way about than the Babes
in the Wood; nor could he, for all his anxious cogitations,
see any honest reason (any, that is, unconnected
with his own momentary pleasure, and the passion of
masculine vanity) why his bride should not have been
allowed the same freedom of experience as himself.
Such questions, at such an hour, were bound to drift
through his mind; but he was conscious that their
uncomfortable persistence and precision were due to
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