| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: enough to be their grandfathers; some of them wore evening
dress--there was no one among them save Jurgis who showed any
signs of poverty.
When the roundup was completed, the doors were opened and the
party marched out. Three patrol wagons were drawn up at the
curb, and the whole neighborhood had turned out to see the sport;
there was much chaffing, and a universal craning of necks. The
women stared about them with defiant eyes, or laughed and joked,
while the men kept their heads bowed, and their hats pulled over
their faces. They were crowded into the patrol wagons as if into
streetcars, and then off they went amid a din of cheers. At the
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: with strange fixity of gaze from the cavernous sockets hollowed
by disease. It seemed as if Bartolommeo sought to kill some enemy
sitting at the foot of his bed by the intent gaze of dying eyes.
That steady remorseless look was the more appalling because the
head that lay upon the pillow was passive and motionless as a
skull upon a doctor's table. The outlines of the body, revealed
by the coverlet, were no less rigid and stiff; he lay there as
one dead, save for those eyes. There was something automatic
about the moaning sounds that came from the mouth. Don Juan felt
something like shame that he must be brought thus to his father's
bedside, wearing a courtesan's bouquet, redolent of the fragrance
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: Helen would have been a wanton, though Venus had never been created.
But he does believe that the heavenly bodies, and the whole skies,
have a physical influence on climate, and on the health of men.
He talks of alchemy, but he means by it, I think, only that sound
science which we call chemistry, and at which he worked, wandering,
he says, among mines and forges, as a practical metallurgist.
He tells us--what sounds startling enough--that magic is the only
preceptor which can teach the art of healing; but he means, it seems
to me, only an understanding of the invisible processes of nature,
in which sense an electrician or a biologist, a Faraday or a Darwin,
would be a magician; and when he compares medical magic to the
|
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 Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: A citizen of that Rome where Christ is Roman.
Therefore, for that world's good which liveth ill,
Fix on the car thine eyes, and what thou seest,
Having returned to earth, take heed thou write."
Thus Beatrice; and I, who at the feet
Of her commandments all devoted was,
My mind and eyes directed where she willed.
Never descended with so swift a motion
Fire from a heavy cloud, when it is raining
From out the region which is most remote,
As I beheld the bird of Jove descend
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
