| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Hamlet by William Shakespeare: It is most retrograde to our desire:
And we beseech you, bend you to remaine
Heere in the cheere and comfort of our eye,
Our cheefest Courtier Cosin, and our Sonne
Qu. Let not thy Mother lose her Prayers Hamlet:
I prythee stay with vs, go not to Wittenberg
Ham. I shall in all my best
Obey you Madam
King. Why 'tis a louing, and a faire Reply,
Be as our selfe in Denmarke. Madam come,
This gentle and vnforc'd accord of Hamlet
Hamlet |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Poems by Oscar Wilde: Threaded the bosky dell, their satyr spied
The boy's pale body stretched upon the sand,
And feared Poseidon's treachery, and cried,
And like bright sunbeams flitting through a glade
Each startled Dryad sought some safe and leafy ambuscade.
Save one white girl, who deemed it would not be
So dread a thing to feel a sea-god's arms
Crushing her breasts in amorous tyranny,
And longed to listen to those subtle charms
Insidious lovers weave when they would win
Some fenced fortress, and stole back again, nor thought it sin
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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 Death of the Lion by Henry James: rest of the evening, her inspired back to the house. To torment
her tenderly I pressed the glass upon her, telling her how
wonderfully near it brought our friend's handsome head. By way of
answer she simply looked at me in charged silence, letting me see
that tears had gathered in her eyes. These tears, I may remark,
produced an effect on me of which the end is not yet. There was a
moment when I felt it my duty to mention them to Neil Paraday, but
I was deterred by the reflexion that there were questions more
relevant to his happiness.
These question indeed, by the end of the season, were reduced to a
single one - the question of reconstituting so far as might be
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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 Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: "What is your day worth?"
"For the pair of us, my apprentice and me?--Five francs," said the old
man, looking Blondet in the eye with a hesitation which betrayed an
enormous overcharge.
The journalist took ten francs from his pocket, saying, "There's ten,
and I'll give you ten more for the otter."
"And it won't cost you dear if there's white on its back; for the sub-
prefect told me there wasn't one o' them museums that had the like;
but he knows everything, our sub-prefect,--no fool he! If I hunt the
otter, he, M'sieur des Lupeaulx, hunts Mademoiselle Gaubertin, who has
a fine white "dot" on her back. Come now, my good gentleman, if I may
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