| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: guided by the line he takes."
"What, run away?"
"And why not run away? I don't see how we can keep on like this.
And not for my sake--I see that you suffer."
"Yes, run away, and become your mistress," she said angrily.
"Anna," he said, with reproachful tenderness.
"Yes," she went on, "become your mistress, and complete the ruin
of . . ."
Again she would have said "my son," but she could not utter that
word.
Vronsky could not understand how she, with her strong and
Anna Karenina |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: wherein nothing can now be caught. Only the old Spiders,
meditating or dozing in their green tent, are warned from afar, by
telegraph, of what takes place on the web.
To save herself from keeping a close watch that would degenerate
into drudgery and to remain alive to events even when resting, with
her back turned on the net, the ambushed Spider always has her foot
upon the telegraph-wire. Of my observations on this subject, let
me relate the following, which will be sufficient for our purpose.
An Angular Epeira, with a remarkably fine belly, has spun her web
between two laurestine-shrubs, covering a width of nearly a yard.
The sun beats upon the snare, which is abandoned long before dawn.
The Life of the Spider |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche: will, said YE-A to his remark. This however was the beginning of that long
repast which is called "The Supper" in the history-books. At this there
was nothing else spoken of but THE HIGHER MAN.
LXXIII. THE HIGHER MAN.
1.
When I came unto men for the first time, then did I commit the anchorite
folly, the great folly: I appeared on the market-place.
And when I spake unto all, I spake unto none. In the evening, however,
rope-dancers were my companions, and corpses; and I myself almost a corpse.
With the new morning, however, there came unto me a new truth: then did I
learn to say: "Of what account to me are market-place and populace and
Thus Spake Zarathustra |
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 Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: satisfaction, but absolutely nothing is left in our mind; by the end
of the century they are forgotten. But the nations, from the beginning
of time till our own day, have cherished as a precious treasure
certain strains which epitomize their instincts and habits; I might
almost say their history. Listen to one of these primitive tones,--the
Gregorian chant, for instance, is, in sacred song, the inheritance of
the earliest peoples,--and you will lose yourself in deep dreaming.
Strange and immense conceptions will unfold within you, in spite of
the extreme simplicity of these rudimentary relics. And once or twice
in a century--not oftener, there arises a Homer of music, to whom God
grants the gift of being ahead of his age; men who can compact
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