| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Augsburg Confession by Philip Melanchthon: for the convening of a General Council. The same matter was thus
publicly set forth at greater length a year ago at the last Diet
which met at Spires. There Your Imperial Majesty, through His
Highness Ferdinand, King of Bohemia and Hungary, our friend and
clement Lord, as well as through the Orator and Imperial
Commissioners caused this, among other things, to be submitted:
that Your Imperial Majesty had taken notice of; and pondered, the
resolution of Your Majesty's Representative in the Empire, and
of the President and Imperial Counselors, and the Legates from
other Estates convened at Ratisbon, concerning the calling of a
Council, and that your Imperial Majesty also judged it to be
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: Quicksilver came into the room. I had not swallowed a morsel;
but--dear mother, I hope it was no harm--but six of the
pomegranate seeds, I am afraid, remained in my mouth."
"Ah, unfortunate child, and miserable me!" exclaimed Ceres.
"For each of those six pomegranate seeds you must spend one
month of every year in King Pluto's palace. You are but half
restored to your mother. Only six months with me, and six with
that good-for-nothing King of Darkness!"
"Do not speak so harshly of poor King Pluto," said Prosperina,
kissing her mother. "He has some very good qualities; and I
really think I can bear to spend six months in his palace, if
Tanglewood Tales |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: dwell in. It is not the fear of possible infection. That seems a
little thing when compared with the pain, the pity, and the disgust
of the visitor's surroundings, and the atmosphere of affliction,
disease, and physical disgrace in which he breathes. I do not
think I am a man more than usually timid; but I never recall the
days and nights I spent upon that island promontory (eight days and
seven nights), without heartfelt thankfulness that I am somewhere
else. I find in my diary that I speak of my stay as a "grinding
experience": I have once jotted in the margin, "HARROWING is the
word"; and when the MOKOLII bore me at last towards the outer
world, I kept repeating to myself, with a new conception of their
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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 Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: it was true in the outward world for Adam, it is true again in the
inner world of my heart for me. My God! do you love me?"
"Yes," said she, lengthening out the word as if to make it cover the
extent of feeling expressed by a single syllable.
"Well, let us sit here," he said, and taking Eve's hand, he went to a
great baulk of timber lying below the wheels of a paper-mill. "Let me
breathe the evening air, and hear the frogs croak, and watch the
moonlight quivering upon the river; let me take all this world about
us into my soul, for it seems to me that my happiness is written large
over it all; I am seeing it for the first time in all its splendor,
lighted up by love, grown fair through you. Eve, dearest, this is the
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