| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from King Lear by William Shakespeare: With a more riotous appetite.
Down from the waist they are Centaurs,
Though women all above.
But to the girdle do the gods inherit,
Beneath is all the fiend's.
There's hell, there's darkness, there's the sulphurous pit;
burning, scalding, stench, consumption. Fie, fie, fie! pah,
pah!
Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my
imagination. There's money for thee.
Glou. O, let me kiss that hand!
King Lear |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: pretty good analogy of what I have done; you can understand now
a little of what I felt as I stood here one evening; it was a
summer evening, and the valley looked much as it does now; I
stood here, and saw before me the unutterable, the unthinkable
gulf that yawns profound between two worlds, the world of matter
and the world of spirit; I saw the great empty deep stretch dim
before me, and in that instant a bridge of light leapt from the
earth to the unknown shore, and the abyss was spanned. You may
look in Browne Faber's book, if you like, and you will find
that to the present day men of science are unable to account for
the presence, or to specify the functions of a certain group of
The Great God Pan |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: many of my neighbours did. I have set this particular down so fully,
because I know not but it may be of moment to those who come after
me, if they come to be brought to the same distress, and to the same
manner of making their choice; and therefore I desire this account
may pass with them rather for a direction to themselves to act by than
a history of my actings, seeing it may not he of one farthing value to
them to note what became of me.
I had two important things before me: the one was the carrying on
my business and shop, which was considerable, and in which was
embarked all my effects in the world; and the other was the
preservation of my life in so dismal a calamity as I saw apparently
A Journal of the Plague Year |
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 Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: manifactor, where the Chinese swallow up enough to feed the whole
neighborhood."
The clerk looked at the judge with a smile, and Popinot found it hard
to keep his countenance. They went together into the outer room, where
sat an old man, who, no doubt, performed the functions of office
clerk, shopman, and cashier. This old man was the Maitre Jacques of
China. Along the walls ran long shelves, on which the published
numbers lay in piles. A partition in wood, with a grating lined with
green curtains, cut off the end of the room, forming a private office.
A till with a slit to admit or disgorge crown pieces indicated the
cash-desk.
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