| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: that his brush had served as a tool of the Devil; and that a portion
of the usurer's vitality had actually passed into the portrait, and
was now troubling people, inspiring diabolical excitement, beguiling
painters from the true path, producing the fearful torments of envy,
and so forth. Three catastrophes which occurred afterwards, three
sudden deaths of wife, daughter, and infant son, he regarded as a
divine punishment on him, and firmly resolved to withdraw from the
world.
"As soon as I was nine years old, he placed me in an academy of
painting, and, paying all his debts, retired to a lonely cloister,
where he soon afterwards took the vows. There he amazed every one by
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: the heavy masts, seen dimly through the mist; between these
were spread eight dark lines of sailors' clothes, which, with
the massive yards above, looked like part of some ponderous
framework built to reach the sky. This prolongation of the
whole dark mass toward the heavens had a portentous look to
those who gazed from below; and when the denser fog sometimes
furled itself away from the topgallant masts, hitherto
invisible, and showed them rising loftier yet, and the tricolor
at the mizzen-mast-head looking down as if from the zenith,
then they all seemed to appertain to something of more than
human workmanship; a hundred wild tales of phantom vessels came
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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 Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: taken in Trinity Quad--the man on my left is now the Earl of Dorcaster."
It was a photograph of half a dozen young men in blazers loafing in an
archway through which were visible a host of spires. There was Gatsby,
looking a little, not much, younger--with a cricket bat in his hand.
Then it was all true. I saw the skins of tigers flaming in his palace
on the Grand Canal; I saw him opening a chest of rubies to ease, with
their crimson-lighted depths, the gnawings of his broken heart.
"I'm going to make a big request of you to-day," he said, pocketing his
souvenirs with satisfaction, "so I thought you ought to know something
about me. I didn't want you to think I was just some nobody. You see,
I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there
The Great Gatsby |
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 Vailima Prayers & Sabbath Morn by Robert Louis Stevenson: death, he asked that we should be given strength to bear the loss
of this dear friend, should such a sorrow befall us.
Contents
For Success
For Grace
At Morning
Evening
Another For Evening
In Time of Rain
Another in Time of Rain
Before a Temporary Separation
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