| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: than a woman, is it not the greatest happiness that can befall a man
when he loves enough to feel more joy in touching a gloved hand, or a
lock of hair, in listening to a word, in casting a single look, than
in all the ardor of possession given by happy love? Thus it is that
rejected persons, those rebuffed by fate, the ugly and unfortunate,
lovers unrevealed, women and timid men, alone know the treasures
contained in the voice of the beloved. Taking their source and their
element from the soul itself, the vibrations of the air, charged with
passion, put our hearts so powerfully into communion, carrying thought
between them so lucidly, and being, above all, so incapable of
falsehood, that a single inflection of a voice is often a revelation.
Ferragus |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: A box it was, sure enough, and a candle-box at that, with the brand
upon the side of it; and it had banjo strings stretched so as to
sound when the wind blew. I believe they call the thing a Tyrolean
(3) harp, whatever that may mean.
"Well, Mr. Case," said I, "you've frightened me once, but I defy
you to frighten me again," I says, and slipped down the tree, and
set out again to find my enemy's head office, which I guessed would
not be far away.
The undergrowth was thick in this part; I couldn't see before my
nose, and must burst my way through by main force and ply the knife
as I went, slicing the cords of the lianas and slashing down whole
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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 Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic: At last he rounded the long oval of the clearing,
and found himself at the very edge of that largest throng
of all, which had been too far away for comprehension
at the beginning. There was no mystery now. A rough,
narrow shed, fully fifty feet in length, imposed itself
in an arbitrary line across the face of this crowd,
dividing it into two compact halves. Inside this shed,
protected all round by a waist-high barrier of boards,
on top of which ran a flat, table-like covering, were twenty
men in their shirt-sleeves, toiling ceaselessly to keep
abreast of the crowd's thirst for beer. The actions
The Damnation of Theron Ware |
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 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions
of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become
antagonistic
to the progress of industry; at all times, with the bourgeoisie
of foreign countries. In all these battles it sees itself
compelled
to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for its help, and thus, to
drag
it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore,
supplies the proletariat with its own instruments of political
and general education, in other words, it furnishes the
The Communist Manifesto |
