| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: and press us down. Here are thieves and robbers and tribunals:
and they that are called tyrants, who deem that they have after a
fashion power over us, because of the miserable body and what
appertains to it. Let us show them that they have power over
none."
XVIII
And to this I reply:--
"Friends, wait for God. When He gives the signal, and
releases you from this service, then depart to Him. But for the
present, endure to dwell in the place wherein He hath assigned
you your post. Short indeed is the time of your habitation
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Look with a just regard,
And with an even grace,
Here on the shattered corpse of a shattered king,
Here on a suffering world where men grow old
And wander like sad shadows till, at last,
Out of the flare of life,
Out of the whirl of years,
Into the mist they go,
Into the mist of death.
O shades of you that loved him long before
The cruel threads of that black sail were spun,
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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 The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: "Well," said Paul de Manerville, as he entered the room. "How are we
getting on? I have come to breakfast with you."
"So be it," said Henri. "You won't be shocked if I make my toilette
before you?"
"How absurd!"
"We take so many things from the English just now that we might well
become as great prudes and hypocrites as themselves," said Henri.
Laurent had set before his master such a quantity of utensils, so many
different articles of such elegance, that Paul could not refrain from
saying:
"But you will take a couple of hours over that?"
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
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 New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: to dissuade me from going up to Cambridge, and we argued
intermittently through all my visit.
I had remembered him as a big and buoyant man, striding
destructively about the nursery floor of my childhood, and saluting
my existence by slaps, loud laughter, and questions about half
herrings and half eggs subtly framed to puzzle and confuse my mind.
I didn't see him for some years until my father's death, and then he
seemed rather smaller, though still a fair size, yellow instead of
red and much less radiantly aggressive. This altered effect was due
not so much to my own changed perspectives, I fancy, as to the facts
that he was suffering for continuous cigar smoking, and being taken
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