| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Four Arthurian Romances by Chretien DeTroyes: swords descending. He draws back, and the knights could not
check their strokes: they had wielded them with such force that
the swords struck the floor, and both were broken in pieces.
When he sees that the swords are broken, he pays less attention
to the axes, fearing and dreading them much less. Rushing in
among them, he strikes first one guard in the side and then
another. The two who are nearest him he jostles and thrusts
aside, throwing them both down flat; the third missed his stroke
at him, but the fourth, who attacked him, strikes him so that he
cuts his mantle and shirt, and slices the white flesh on his
shoulder so that the blood trickles down from the wound. But he,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Aeneid by Virgil: Your son, not knowing what his foes decree,
You say, is absent: absent let him be.
Yours is Cythera, yours the Cyprian tow'rs,
The soft recesses, and the sacred bow'rs.
Why do you then these needless arms prepare,
And thus provoke a people prone to war?
Did I with fire the Trojan town deface,
Or hinder from return your exil'd race?
Was I the cause of mischief, or the man
Whose lawless lust the fatal war began?
Think on whose faith th' adult'rous youth relied;
Aeneid |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: husbands obey; ladies shall ride a horseback, dress'd like
cavaliers; princes and nobles appear in night-rails and
petticoats; men shall squeak upon theatres with female voices,
and women corrupt virgins; lords shall knot and cut paper; and
even the northern people.........:" A Greek phrase (which for
modesty's sake I forbear to translate) which denotes a vice too
frequent amongst us.
That the Ministry foresaw this great change, is plain from the
Callico-Act; whereby it is now become the occupation of women all
over England, to convert their useless female habits into beds,
window-curtains, chairs, and joint-stools; undressing themselves
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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 Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: paternal roof, he listened with a grave countenance to his revered
parent's lecture, and refrained from giving him a good deal of
information in reply. As, for instance, that young men no longer went
into the army or the navy as they used to do; that if a man had a mind
to be a second lieutenant in a cavalry regiment without passing
through a special training in the Ecoles, he must first serve in the
Pages; that sons of the greatest houses went exactly like commoners to
Saint-Cyr and the Ecole polytechnique, and took their chances of being
beaten by base blood. If he had enlightened his relatives on these
points, funds might not have been forthcoming for a stay in Paris; so
he allowed his father and Aunt Armande to believe that he would be
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