| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay: were simply being killed by new life.
Other creatures sported so wildly, in front of his very eyes, that
they became of different "kingdoms" altogether. For example, a fruit
was lying on the ground, of the size and shape of a lemon, but with a
tougher skin. He picked it up, intending to eat the contained pulp;
but inside it was a fully formed young tree, just on the point of
bursting its shell. Maskull threw it away upstream. It floated back
toward him; by the time he was even with it, its downward motion had
stopped and it was swimming against the current. He fished it out
and discovered that it had sprouted six rudimentary legs.
Maskull sang no paeans of praise in honour of the gloriously
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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 Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: mechanism of the social machine; but your first fright will go
off like a conscript's terror on the battlefield. You will grow
used to regarding men as common soldiers who have made up their
minds to lose their lives for some self-constituted king. Times
have altered strangely. Once you could say to a bravo, 'Here are
a hundred crowns; go and kill Monsieur So-and-so for me,' and you
could sup quietly after turning some one off into the dark for
the least thing in the world. But nowadays I propose to put you
in the way of a handsome fortune; you have only to nod your head,
it won't compromise you in any way, and you hesitate. 'Tis an
effeminate age."
Father Goriot |
