| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare: His real habitude gave life and grace
To appertainings and to ornament,
Accomplish'd in himself, not in his case,:
All aids, themselves made fairer by their place,
Came for additions; yet their purpos'd trim
Pierc'd not his grace, but were all grac'd by him.
'So on the tip of his subduing tongue
All kind of arguments and question deep,
All replication prompt, and reason strong,
For his advantage still did wake and sleep:
To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: unutterable,-- shock me with a new sensation of formidable vulgarity. I
want to cry out loud, "You have no right to sing that song!" For I have
heard it sung by the lips of the dearest and fairest being in my little
world;-- and that this rude, coarse man should are to sing it vexes me like
a mockery,-- angers me like an insolence. But only for a moment!... With
the utterance of the syllables "to-day," that deep, grim voice suddenly
breaks into a quivering tenderness indescribable;-- then, marvelously
changing, it mellows into tones sonorous and rich as the bass of a great
organ,-- while a sensation unlike anything ever felt before takes me by the
throat... What witchcraft has he learned? what secret has he found -- this
scowling man of the road?... Oh! is there anybody else in the whole world
Kwaidan |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne: that she would reach Hong Kong twenty hours behind time, and more
if the storm lasted.
Phileas Fogg gazed at the tempestuous sea, which seemed to be struggling
especially to delay him, with his habitual tranquillity. He never changed
countenance for an instant, though a delay of twenty hours, by making him
too late for the Yokohama boat, would almost inevitably cause the loss
of the wager. But this man of nerve manifested neither impatience
nor annoyance; it seemed as if the storm were a part of his programme,
and had been foreseen. Aouda was amazed to find him as calm as he had been
from the first time she saw him.
Fix did not look at the state of things in the same light.
Around the World in 80 Days |
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 Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain: found he hadn't collected it. Well, at last he couldn't
stand it any longer. He couldn't sleep nights, he
couldn't eat, he was thinned down to a shadder, yet
he da'sn't ask anybody's advice, for the very person
he asked for advice might go back on him and let the
gov'ment know about the letter. He had the letter
buried under the floor, but that did no good; if he
happened to see a person standing over the place it'd
give him the cold shivers, and loaded him up with
suspicions, and he would sit up that night till the town
was still and dark, and then he would sneak there and
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