| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: Sense.' Swedenborg's explanation of the Apocalypse begins with these
words," said Monsieur Becker, taking down and opening the volume
nearest to him: "'Herein I have written nothing of mine own; I speak
as I am bidden by the Lord, who said, through the same angel, to John:
"Thou shalt not seal the sayings of this Prophecy."' (Revelation xxii.
10.)
"My dear Monsieur Wilfrid," said the old man, looking at his guest, "I
often tremble in every limb as I read, during the long winter evenings
the awe-inspiring works in which this man declares with perfect
artlessness the wonders that are revealed to him. 'I have seen,' he
says, 'Heaven and the Angels. The spiritual man sees his spiritual
Seraphita |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: nor even know, his peril. Her position became, like hell, a moral
prison from which there was no issue, in which there was no hope.
Madame Claes resolved to know at least the outward attractions of this
fatal science, and she began secretly to study chemistry in the books.
From this time the family became, as it were, cloistered.
Such were the successive changes brought by this dire misfortune upon
the family of Claes, before it reached the species of atrophy in which
we find it at the moment when this history begins.
The situation grew daily more complicated. Like all passionate women,
Madame Claes was disinterested. Those who truly love know that
considerations of money count for little in matters of feeling and are
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne: and longitude crossed.
The sea has its large rivers like the continents. They are
special currents known by their temperature and their colour.
The most remarkable of these is known by the name of the Gulf Stream.
Science has decided on the globe the direction of five principal currents:
one in the North Atlantic, a second in the South, a third in the North
Pacific, a fourth in the South, and a fifth in the Southern Indian Ocean.
It is even probable that a sixth current existed at one time or another
in the Northern Indian Ocean, when the Caspian and Aral Seas formed but
one vast sheet of water.
At this point indicated on the planisphere one of these currents
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea |
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 A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: up more than one false clue, Geyer received a report that there
was a house--No. 16 St. Vincent Street--which had been rented in
the previous October by a man answering to the description of
Holmes. The information came from an old Scottish gentleman
living next door. Geyer hastened to see him. The old gentleman
said that the man who had occupied No. 16 in October had
told him that he had taken the house for his widowed sister, and
he recognised the photograph of Alice Pitezel as one of the two
girls accompanying him. The only furniture the man had taken
into the house was a bed, a mattress and a trunk. During his
stay at No. 16 this man had called on his neighbour about four
A Book of Remarkable Criminals |
