| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: Jew, bind the Jew, take away all the Jew's money, put the Jew in
prison!' Then all the vile people will fall upon the Jew, for every
one takes a Jew for a dog; and they think he is not a man, but only a
Jew."
"Then put me in the waggon with some fish over me."
"I cannot, my lord, by heaven, I cannot: all over Poland the people
are as hungry as dogs now. They will steal the fish, and feel my
lord."
"Then take me in the fiend's way, only take me."
"Listen, listen, my lord!" said the Jew, turning up the ends of his
sleeves, and approaching him with extended arms. "This is what we will
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: position. I feel no air between this arm and the background of the
picture; space and depth are wanting. All is in good perspective; the
atmospheric gradations are carefully observed, and yet in spite of
your conscientious labor I cannot believe that this beautiful body has
the warm breath of life. If I put my hand on that firm, round throat I
shall find it cold as marble. No, no, my friend, blood does not run
beneath that ivory skin; the purple tide of life does not swell those
veins, nor stir those fibres which interlace like net-work below the
translucent amber of the brow and breast. This part palpitates with
life, but that other part is not living; life and death jostle each
other in every detail. Here, you have a woman; there, a statue; here
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: say) that such development and progress as have as yet been
actually discovered in nature, bear every trace of having been
produced by successive acts of thought and will in some personal
mind; which, however boundlessly rich and powerful, is still the
Archetype of the human mind; and therefore (for to this I confess I
have been all along tending) probably capable, without violence to
its properties, of becoming, like the human mind, incarnate.
But to descend from these perhaps too daring speculations, there is
another, and more human, source of interest about the animal who is
writhing feebly in the glass jar of salt water; for he is one of
the many curiosities which have been added to our fauna by that
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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 The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: who have closely observed, or known for themselves by delicious
experience, all that is meant by the perfect union of two beings, will
understand Gaston de Nueil's suicide perfectly well. A woman does not
bend and form herself in a day to the caprices of passion. The
pleasure of loving, like some rare flower, needs the most careful
ingenuity of culture. Time alone, and two souls attuned each to each,
can discover all its resources, and call into being all the tender and
delicate delights for which we are steeped in a thousand
superstitions, imagining them to be inherent in the heart that
lavishes them upon us. It is this wonderful response of one nature to
another, this religious belief, this certainty of finding peculiar or
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