| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: calls his errant soul back to its prison-house of flesh and bones. The
shock of the reunion of these two powers, body and mind,--one of which
partakes of the unseen qualities of a thunderbolt, while the other
shares with sentient nature that soft resistant force which deifies
destruction,--this shock, this struggle, or, rather let us say, this
painful meeting and co-mingling, gives rise to frightful sufferings.
The body receives back the flame that consumes it; the flame has once
more grasped its prey. This fusion, however, does not take place
without convulsions, explosions, tortures; analogous and visible signs
of which may be seen in chemistry, when two antagonistic substances
which science has united separate.
Seraphita |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: you've been to another committee-meeting this evening!"
"Nope. I've been calling on a woman. We sat by the fire and kidded each
other and had a whale of a good time, if you want to know!"
"Well--From the way you say it, I suppose it's my fault you went there! I
probably sent you!"
"You did!"
"Well, upon my word--"
"You hate 'strange people' as you call 'em. If you had your way, I'd be as
much of an old stick-in-the-mud as Howard Littlefield. You never want to have
anybody with any git to 'em at the house; you want a bunch of old stiffs that
sit around and gas about the weather. You're doing your level best to make me
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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 On Horsemanship by Xenophon: requisite; and for the future there will be no need for an actual
blow, the mere sight of some one coming up behind will suffice to make
him leap. As soon as he is accustomed to leap in this way you may
mount him and put him first at smaller and then at larger trenches. At
the moment of the spring be ready to apply the spur; and so too, when
training him to leap up and leap down, you should touch him with the
spur at the critical instant. In the effort to perform any of these
actions with the whole body, the horse will certainly perform them
with more safety to himself and to his rider than he will, if his
hind-quarters lag, in taking a ditch or fence, or in making an upward
spring or downward jump.[4]
On Horsemanship |
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 Coxon Fund by Henry James: that wrought confusion. If he had loved us for our dinners we
could have paid with our dinners, and it would have been a great
economy of finer matter. I make free in these connexions with the
plural possessive because if I was never able to do what the
Mulvilles did, and people with still bigger houses and simpler
charities, I met, first and last, every demand of reflexion, of
emotion--particularly perhaps those of gratitude and of resentment.
No one, I think, paid the tribute of giving him up so often, and if
it's rendering honour to borrow wisdom I've a right to talk of my
sacrifices. He yielded lessons as the sea yields fish--I lived for
a while on this diet. Sometimes it almost appeared to me that his
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