| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: I babbled for you, as babies for the moon,
Vague brightness; when a boy, you stooped to me
From all high places, lived in all fair lights,
Came in long breezes rapt from inmost south
And blown to inmost north; at eve and dawn
With Ida, Ida, Ida, rang the woods;
The leader wildswan in among the stars
Would clang it, and lapt in wreaths of glowworm light
The mellow breaker murmured Ida. Now,
Because I would have reached you, had you been
Sphered up with Cassiopėia, or the enthroned
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: times like the torpedo which electrifies or paralyzes the fisherman,
at other times like a dose of phosphorous which stimulates life and
accelerates its propulsion; or again, like opium, which puts to sleep
corporeal nature, disengages the spirit from every bond, enables it to
float above the world and shows this earth to the spiritual eye as
through a prism, extracting from it the food most needed; or, yet
again, like catalepsy, which deadens all faculties for the sake of one
only vision. Miracles, enchantments, incantations, witchcrafts,
spells, and charms, in short, all those acts improperly termed
supernatural, are only possible and can only be explained by the
despotism with which some spirit compels us to feel the effects of a
Seraphita |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Extracts From Adam's Diary by Mark Twain: understanding it. In my judgment it is either an enigma or some
kind of a bug. If it dies, I will take it apart and see what its
arrangements are. I never had a thing perplex me so.
Three Months Later
The perplexity augments instead of diminishing. I sleep but little.
It has ceased from lying around, and goes about on its four legs
now. Yet it differs from the other four-legged animals in that
its front legs are unusually short, consequently this causes the
main part of its person to stick up uncomfortably high in the air,
and this is not attractive. It is built much as we are, but its
method of travelling shows that it is not of our breed. The short
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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 Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake: Her little boy weeping sought.
LAUGHING SONG
When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy,
And the dimpling stream runs laughing by;
When the air does laugh with our merry wit,
And the green hill laughs with the noise of it;
When the meadows laugh with lively green,
And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene;
When Mary and Susan and Emily
With their sweet round mouths sing 'Ha ha he!'
When the painted birds laugh in the shade,
Songs of Innocence and Experience |
