| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: a good fight, When you are scolded for a mistake ask the person who
scolds you whether he or she supposes you did it on purpose, and
follow the question with a blow or an insult or some other
unmistakable expression of resentment, Remember that the progress of
the world depends on your knowing better than your elders, are just as
important as those of The Sermon on the Mount; but no one has yet seen
them written up in letters of gold in a schoolroom or nursery. The
child is taught to be kind, to be respectful, to be quiet, not to
answer back, to be truthful when its elders want to find out anything
from it, to lie when the truth would shock or hurt its elders, to be
above all things obedient, and to be seen and not heard. Here we have
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: begin by curing the soul; that is the first thing. And the cure, my dear
youth, has to be effected by the use of certain charms, and these charms
are fair words; and by them temperance is implanted in the soul, and where
temperance is, there health is speedily imparted, not only to the head, but
to the whole body. And he who taught me the cure and the charm at the same
time added a special direction: 'Let no one,' he said, 'persuade you to
cure the head, until he has first given you his soul to be cured by the
charm. For this,' he said, 'is the great error of our day in the treatment
of the human body, that physicians separate the soul from the body.' And
he added with emphasis, at the same time making me swear to his words, 'Let
no one, however rich, or noble, or fair, persuade you to give him the cure,
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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 Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: Uncertain also what could come to birth
And what could not, and by what law to each
Its scope prescribed, its boundary stone that clings
So deep in Time. Nor could the generations
Kind after kind so often reproduce
The nature, habits, motions, ways of life,
Of their progenitors.
And then again,
Since there is ever an extreme bounding point
. . . . . .
Of that first body which our senses now
Of The Nature of Things |
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 House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: This quiet lady, this portrait by Hiroshigi;
And took it home with him; and with it came
What unexpected changes, subtle as weather!
The dark room, cold as rain,
Grew faintly fragrant, stirred with a stir of April,
Warmed its corners with light again,
And smoke of incense whirled about this portrait,
And the quiet lady there,
So young, so quietly smiling, with calm hands,
Seemed ready to loose her hair,
And smile, and lean from the picture, or say one word,
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