| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: great occult power amongst his own people.
It was all one to us who owned the ship. He
had to employ white men in the shipping part of
his business, and many of those he so employed
had never set eyes on him from the first to the
last day. I myself saw him but once, quite
accidentally on a wharf--an old, dark little man
blind in one eye, in a snowy robe and yellow
slippers. He was having his hand severely kissed
by a crowd of Malay pilgrims to whom he had
done some favour, in the way of food and money.
The Shadow Line |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: watching for a more bitter dawn.
I had no idea that it was one of the special things that the Fates
had in store for me: that for a whole year of my life, indeed, I
was to do little else. But so has my portion been meted out to me;
and during the last few months I have, after terrible difficulties
and struggles, been able to comprehend some of the lessons hidden
in the heart of pain. Clergymen and people who use phrases without
wisdom sometimes talk of suffering as a mystery. It is really a
revelation. One discerns things one never discerned before. One
approaches the whole of history from a different standpoint. What
one had felt dimly, through instinct, about art, is intellectually
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: as we should scarcely offer to a dog here in England. At length my
offence of having escaped from a monastery and sundry blasphemies,
so-called, being proved against me, I was condemned to death by
fire.
'Then at last, when after a long year of torment and of horror, I
had abandoned hope and resigned myself to die, help came. On the
eve of the day upon which I was to be consumed by flame, the chief
of my tormentors entered the dungeon where I lay on straw, and
embracing me bade me be of good cheer, for the church had taken
pity on my youth and given me my freedom. At first I laughed
wildly, for I thought that this was but another torment, and not
Montezuma's Daughter |
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 Silas Marner by George Eliot: been a severe winter, I shall tell them I saw the roses blooming on
New Year's Eve--eh, Godfrey, what do _you_ say?"
Godfrey made no reply, and avoided looking at Nancy very markedly;
for though these complimentary personalities were held to be in
excellent taste in old-fashioned Raveloe society, reverent love has
a politeness of its own which it teaches to men otherwise of small
schooling. But the Squire was rather impatient at Godfrey's showing
himself a dull spark in this way. By this advanced hour of the day,
the Squire was always in higher spirits than we have seen him in at
the breakfast-table, and felt it quite pleasant to fulfil the
hereditary duty of being noisily jovial and patronizing: the large
Silas Marner |
