| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Macbeth by William Shakespeare: That made you breake this enterprize to me?
When you durst do it, then you were a man:
And to be more then what you were, you would
Be so much more the man. Nor time, nor place
Did then adhere, and yet you would make both:
They haue made themselues, and that their fitnesse now
Do's vnmake you. I haue giuen Sucke, and know
How tender 'tis to loue the Babe that milkes me,
I would, while it was smyling in my Face,
Haue pluckt my Nipple from his Bonelesse Gummes,
And dasht the Braines out, had I so sworne
Macbeth |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: The body receives back the flame that consumes it; the flame has once
more grasped its prey. This fusion, however, does not take place
without convulsions, explosions, tortures; analogous and visible signs
of which may be seen in chemistry, when two antagonistic substances
which science has united separate.
For the last few days whenever Wilfrid entered Seraphita's presence
his body seemed to fall away from him into nothingness. With a single
glance this strange being led him in spirit through the spheres where
meditation leads the learned man, prayer the pious heart, where vision
transports the artist, and sleep the souls of men,--each and all have
their own path to the Height, their own guide to reach it, their own
Seraphita |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: literary Review. The exact terms in which that sheet
disposed of Burns I cannot now recall; but they were to this
effect - that Burns was a bad man, the impure vehicle of fine
verses; and that this was the view to which all criticism
tended. Now I knew, for my own part, that it was with the
profoundest pity, but with a growing esteem, that I studied
the man's desperate efforts to do right; and the more I
reflected, the stranger it appeared to me that any thinking
being should feel otherwise. The complete letters shed,
indeed, a light on the depths to which Burns had sunk in his
character of Don Juan, but they enhance in the same
|
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 Verses 1889-1896 by Rudyard Kipling: A maiden plighted to the Chief in War,
The Man of Sixty Spears, who held the Pass
That leads to Thibet, but to-day is gone
To seek his comfort of the God called Budh
The Silent -- showing how the Sickness ceased
Because of her who died to save the tribe.
Taman is One and greater than us all,
Taman is One and greater than all Gods:
Taman is Two in One and rides the sky,
Curved like a stallion's croup, from dusk to dawn,
Verses 1889-1896 |
