| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: that never spake, and saw sights that never appeared; but the
imagination of the people was really turned wayward and possessed.
And no wonder, if they who were poring continually at the clouds saw
shapes and figures, representations and appearances, which had
nothing in them but air, and vapour. Here they told us they saw a
flaming sword held in a hand coming out of a cloud, with a point
hanging directly over the city; there they saw hearses and coffins in
the air carrying to be buried; and there again, heaps of dead bodies
lying unburied, and the like, just as the imagination of the poor
terrified people furnished them with matter to work upon.
So hypochondriac fancies represent
 A Journal of the Plague Year |
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 Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: Monsieur the Cure of the Madeleine, on the day when she attends her
first Communion I will give her thirty thousand francs and find her a
good husband, some worthy young man."
"My eldest son, then madame! He is two-and-twenty, and he worships the
child."
The Baron now came down; there were tears in his eyes.
"You are forcing me to desert the only creature who had ever begun to
love me at all as you do!" said he in a whisper to his wife. "She is
crying bitterly, and I cannot abandon her so--"
"Be quite easy, Hector. She will find a home with honest people, and I
will answer for her conduct."
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