| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: looked best against her black dress? Which did indeed, said Mrs Ramsay
absent-mindedly, looking at her neck and shoulders (but avoiding her
face) in the glass. And then, while the children rummaged among her
things, she looked out of the window at a sight which always amused
her--the rooks trying to decide which tree to settle on. Every time,
they seemed to change their minds and rose up into the air again,
because, she thought, the old rook, the father rook, old Joseph was her
name for him, was a bird of a very trying and difficult disposition.
He was a disreputable old bird, with half his wing feathers missing.
He was like some seedy old gentleman in a top hat she had seen playing
the horn in front of a public house.
To the Lighthouse |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: mould is exhausted, and it is compelled to make manure of the
bones of its fathers. There the poet sustains himself merely by
his own superfluous fat, and the philosopher comes down on his
marrow-bones.
It is said to be the task of the American "to work the virgin
soil," and that "agriculture here already assumes proportions
unknown everywhere else." I think that the farmer displaces the
Indian even because he redeems the meadow, and so makes himself
stronger and in some respects more natural. I was surveying for a
man the other day a single straight line one hundred and
thirty-two rods long, through a swamp at whose entrance might
Walking |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: And he took the tears of balsam,
Took the resin of the Fir-tree,
Smeared therewith each seam and fissure,
Made each crevice safe from water.
"Give me of your quills, O Hedgehog!
All your quills, O Kagh, the Hedgehog!
I will make a necklace of them,
Make a girdle for my beauty,
And two stars to deck her bosom!"
From a hollow tree the Hedgehog
With his sleepy eyes looked at him,
|
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 War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: order. The meeting was a full one. After the usual ceremonies Pierre
rose and began his address.
"Dear Brothers," he began, blushing and stammering, with a written
speech in his hand, "it is not sufficient to observe our mysteries
in the seclusion of our lodge- we must act- act! We are drowsing,
but we must act." Pierre raised his notebook and began to read.
"For the dissemination of pure truth and to secure the triumph of
virtue," he read, "we must cleanse men from prejudice, diffuse
principles in harmony with the spirit of the times, undertake the
education of the young, unite ourselves in indissoluble bonds with the
wisest men, boldly yet prudently overcome superstitions, infidelity,
War and Peace |
