| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: desires, pleasures, pains, fears, never remain the same in any one of us,
but are always coming and going; and equally true of knowledge, and what is
still more surprising to us mortals, not only do the sciences in general
spring up and decay, so that in respect of them we are never the same; but
each of them individually experiences a like change. For what is implied
in the word "recollection," but the departure of knowledge, which is ever
being forgotten, and is renewed and preserved by recollection, and appears
to be the same although in reality new, according to that law of succession
by which all mortal things are preserved, not absolutely the same, but by
substitution, the old worn-out mortality leaving another new and similar
existence behind--unlike the divine, which is always the same and not
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: master, and as his representative, the hero of the diamond necklace,
and disciple of Count Cagliostro--Louis, Prince de Rohan.
But if Freemasonry, among the frivolous and sensual French noblesse,
became utterly frivolous and sensual itself, it took a deeper,
though a questionably fantastic form, among the more serious and
earnest German nobility. Forgetful as they too often were of their
duty to their peoples--tyrannical, extravagant, debauched by French
opinions, French fashions, French luxuries, till they had begun to
despise their native speech, their native literature, almost their
native land, and to hide their native homeliness under a clumsy
varnish of French outside civilisation, which the years 1807-13
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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 The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells: the sails fluttered, and then bellied out as the wind came into them.
I stared at her weather-beaten side heeling steeply towards me;
and then she passed out of my range of view.
I did not turn my head to follow her. At first I could scarcely
believe what had happened. I crouched in the bottom of the dingey,
stunned, and staring blankly at the vacant, oily sea. Then I realized
that I was in that little hell of mine again, now half swamped;
and looking back over the gunwale, I saw the schooner standing away
from me, with the red-haired captain mocking at me over the taffrail,
and turning towards the island saw the launch growing smaller as she
approached the beach.
The Island of Doctor Moreau |
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 Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: watched him eagerly, as he took it out.
"I must gif it to him," he said, reading her face.
"Hur knows," she said with a bitter sigh of disappointment.
"But it is hur right to keep it."
His right! The word struck him. Doctor May had used the same.
He washed himself, and went out to find this man Mitchell. His
right! Why did this chance word cling to him so obstinately?
Do you hear the fierce devils whisper in his ear, as he went
slowly down the darkening street?
The evening came on, slow and calm. He seated himself at the
end of an alley leading into one of the larger streets. His
Life in the Iron-Mills |
