| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from King James Bible: LORD glory and strength.
PSA 96:8 Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name: bring an
offering, and come into his courts.
PSA 96:9 O worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness: fear before him,
all the earth.
PSA 96:10 Say among the heathen that the LORD reigneth: the world also
shall be established that it shall not be moved: he shall judge the
people righteously.
PSA 96:11 Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the
sea roar, and the fulness thereof.
PSA 96:12 Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein: then shall
King James Bible |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: his school in a later generation, like his contemporaries Glaucon and
Adeimantus, were unable to follow him in this region of speculation. In
the Sophist, where he is refuting the scepticism which maintained either
that there was no such thing as predication, or that all might be
predicated of all, he arrives at the conclusion that some ideas combine
with some, but not all with all. But he makes only one or two steps
forward on this path; he nowhere attains to any connected system of ideas,
or even to a knowledge of the most elementary relations of the sciences to
one another.
BOOK V. I was going to enumerate the four forms of vice or decline in
states, when Polemarchus--he was sitting a little farther from me than
The Republic |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Koran: drive you out; for sedition is worse than slaughter; but fight them
not by the Sacred Mosque until they fight you there; then kill them,
for such is the recompense of those that misbelieve.
But if they desist, then, verily, God is forgiving and merciful.
But fight them that there be no sedition and that the religion may
be God's; but, if they desist, then let there be no hostility save
against the unjust.
The sacred month for the sacred month; for all sacred things
demand retaliation; and whoso transgresses against you, transgress
against him like as he transgressed against you; but fear ye God,
and know that God is with those who fear.
The Koran |
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 At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: cat, which a minute's attention sufficed to stamp on his memory. The
young man himself had his peculiarities. His cloak, folded after the
manner of an antique drapery, showed a smart pair of shoes, all the
more remarkable in the midst of the Paris mud, because he wore white
silk stockings, on which the splashes betrayed his impatience. He had
just come, no doubt, from a wedding or a ball; for at this early hour
he had in his hand a pair of white gloves, and his black hair, now out
of curl, and flowing over his shoulders, showed that it had been
dressed /a la Caracalla/, a fashion introduced as much by David's
school of painting as by the mania for Greek and Roman styles which
characterized the early years of this century.
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