| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: Nausicaa had told them, and brought him a shirt and cloak. They
also brought him the little golden cruse of oil, and told him to
go and wash in the stream. But Ulysses said, "Young women,
please to stand a little on one side that I may wash the brine
from my shoulders and anoint myself with oil, for it is long
enough since my skin has had a drop of oil upon it. I cannot
wash as long as you all keep standing there. I am ashamed to
strip {56} before a number of good looking young women."
Then they stood on one side and went to tell the girl, while
Ulysses washed himself in the stream and scrubbed the brine from
his back and from his broad shoulders. When he had thoroughly
 The Odyssey |
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 Four Arthurian Romances by Chretien DeTroyes: their pride, and strikes the foremost of them through the eye so
deep into the brain that the blood and brains spurt out at the
back of his neck; that one lies dead and his heart stops beating.
When the other saw him dead, he had reason to be sorely grieved.
Furious, he went to avenge him: with both hands he raised his
club on high and thought to strike him squarely upon his
unprotected head: but Erec watched the blow, and received it on
his shield. Even so, the giant landed such a blow that it quite
stunned him, and almost made him fall to earth from his steed.
Erec covers himself with his shield and the giant, recovering
himself, thinks to strike again quickly upon his head. But Erec
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