| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin: As he spoke the figure of the dwarf became indistinct. The
playing colors of his robe formed themselves into a prismatic mist
of dewy light; he stood for an instant veiled with them as with the
belt of a broad rainbow. The colors grew faint; the mist rose into
the air; the monarch had evaporated.
And Gluck climbed to the brink of the Golden River, and its
waves were as clear as crystal and as brilliant as the sun. And
when he cast the three drops of dew into the stream, there opened
where they fell a small, circular whirlpool, into which the waters
descended with a musical noise.
Gluck stood watching it for some time, very much disappointed,
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: Here we may observe and I hope it will not be amiss to take notice
of it that a near view of death would soon reconcile men of good
principles one to another, and that it is chiefly owing to our easy
situation in life and our putting these things far from us that our
breaches are fomented, ill blood continued, prejudices, breach of
charity and of Christian union, so much kept and so far carried on
among us as it is. Another plague year would reconcile all these
differences; a dose conversing with death, or with diseases that
threaten death, would scum off the gall from our tempers, remove the
animosities among us, and bring us to see with differing eyes than
those which we looked on things with before. As the people who had
A Journal of the Plague Year |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: where she told her son that she must needs lie down, and take a
good long rest.
"A good long rest!" she repeated, looking Cadmus tenderly in
the face. "A good long rest, thou dearest one!"
"As long as you please, dear mother," answered Cadmus.
Telephassa bade him sit down on the turf beside her, and then
she took his hand.
"My son," said she, fixing her dim eyes most lovingly upon him,
"this rest that I speak of will be very long indeed! You must
not wait till it is finished. Dear Cadmus, you do not
comprehend me. You must make a grave here, and lay your
Tanglewood Tales |
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 Memorabilia by Xenophon: vocabulary only those were good workmen[31] who were engaged on good
work; dicers and gamblers and others engaged on any other base and
ruinous business he stigmatised as the "idle drones"; and from this
point of view the quotation from Hesiod is unimpeachable--
No work is a disgrace; only idlesse is disgrace.
But there was a passage from Homer[32] for ever on his lips, as the
accuser tells us--the passage which says concerning Odysseus,
What prince, or man of name,
He found flight-giv'n, he would restrain with words of gentlest blame:
"Good sir, it fits you not to fly, or fare as one afraid,
You should not only stay yourself, but see the people stayed."
The Memorabilia |
