| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Reign of King Edward the Third by William Shakespeare: Down in a valley how both armies lay.
The French had cast their trenches like a ring,
And every Barricado's open front
Was thick embossed with brazen ordinance;
Here stood a battaile of ten thousand horse,
There twice as many pikes in quadrant wise,
Here Crossbows, and deadly wounding darts:
And in the midst, like to a slender point
Within the compass of the horizon,
As twere a rising bubble in the sea,
A Hasle wand amidst a wood of Pines,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: you some more like it,--like those Dutch coins and the /portugaises/,
the rupees of Mogul, and the /genovines/,--I'll give you some more on
your fete-days, and in three years you'll have got back half your
little treasure. What's that you say? Look up, now. Come, go and get
it, the precious metal. You ought to kiss me on the eyelids for
telling you the secrets and the mysteries of the life and death of
money. Yes, silver and gold live and swarm like men; they come, and
go, and sweat, and multiply--"
Eugenie rose; but after making a few steps towards the door she turned
abruptly, looked her father in the face, and said,--
"I have not got /my/ gold."
Eugenie Grandet |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: elegance of her boudoir. But what chiefly, indeed almost solely,
drew her attention, was the aspect of Aylmer himself.
He was pale as death, anxious and absorbed, and hung over the
furnace as if it depended upon his utmost watchfulness whether
the liquid which it was distilling should be the draught of
immortal happiness or misery. How different from the sanguine and
joyous mien that he had assumed for Georgiana's encouragement!
"Carefully now, Aminadab; carefully, thou human machine;
carefully, thou man of clay!" muttered Aylmer, more to himself
than his assistant. "Now, if there be a thought too much or too
little, it is all over."
Mosses From An Old Manse |
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 Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: consisted in a gradual but swiftly progressive obliteration of
space, time, sensation, and the multitudinous factors of
experience which seem to qualify what we are pleased to call our
Self. In proportion as these conditions of ordinary consciousness
were subtracted, the sense of an underlying or essential
consciousness acquired intensity. At last nothing remained but a
pure, absolute, abstract Self. The universe became without form
and void of content. But Self persisted, formidable in its vivid
keenness, feeling the most poignant doubt about reality, ready,
as it seemed, to find existence break as breaks a bubble round
about it. And what then? The apprehension of a coming
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