| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: corn, and sends pulses of varying colour across the
landscape. So you sit, like Jupiter upon Olympus, and
look down from afar upon men's life. The city is as
silent as a city of the dead: from all its humming
thoroughfares, not a voice, not a footfall, reaches you
upon the hill. The sea-surf, the cries of ploughmen, the
streams and the mill-wheels, the birds and the wind, keep
up an animated concert through the plain; from farm to
farm, dogs and crowing cocks contend together in
defiance; and yet from this Olympian station, except for
the whispering rumour of a train, the world has fallen
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: handkerchief to pieces, you heard what poor Moriarty really thought
of Mrs. Reiver, for he raved about her and his own fall for the most
part; though he ravelled some P. W. D. accounts into the same skein
of thought. He talked, and talked, and talked in a low dry whisper
to himself, and there was no stopping him. He seemed to know that
there was something wrong, and twice tried to pull himself together
and confer rationally with the Doctor; but his mind ran out of
control at once, and he fell back to a whisper and the story of his
troubles. It is terrible to hear a big man babbling like a child of
all that a man usually locks up, and puts away in the deep of his
heart. Moriarty read out his very soul for the benefit of any one
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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 Symposium by Xenophon: live in hope of some day getting something.[53]
[53] "I feed on the pleasures of hope, and fortune in the future."
Call. And so, of course, your one prayer is that you may never more be
rich, and if you are visited by a dream of luck your one thought is to
offer sacrifice to Heaven to avert misfortune.[54]
[54] Or, "you wake up in a fright, and offer sacrifice to the
'Averters.'" For {tois apotropaiois} see Aristoph. "Plutus," 359;
Plat. "Laws," 854 B; "Hell." III. iii. 4.
Char. No, that I do not. On the contrary, I run my head into each
danger most adventurously. I endure, if haply I may see a chance of
getting something from some quarter of the sky some day.
The Symposium |
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 Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll: made, why don't you make one yourself?'
The little voice sighed deeply: it was VERY unhappy,
evidently, and Alice would have said something pitying to comfort
it, `If it would only sigh like other people!' she thought. But
this was such a wonderfully small sigh, that she wouldn't have
heard it at all, if it hadn't come QUITE close to her ear. The
consequence of this was that it tickled her ear very much, and
quite took off her thoughts from the unhappiness of the poor
little creature.
`I know you are a friend, the little voice went on; `a dear
friend, and an old friend. And you won't hurt me, though I AM an
Through the Looking-Glass |
