| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Emerald City of Oz by L. Frank Baum: "Very well," she said, "I'll go in alone. I s'pose you're the King of
this town, aren't you?"
"No," answered the rabbit, "I'm merely the Keeper of the Wicket, and
a person of little importance, although I try to do my duty. I must
now inform you, Princess, that before you enter our town you must
consent to reduce."
"Reduce what?" asked Dorothy.
"Your size. You must become the size of the rabbits, although you may
retain your own form."
"Wouldn't my clothes be too big for me?" she inquired.
"No; they will reduce when your body does."
The Emerald City of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from 1492 by Mary Johntson: long-followed laws, and where indeed disorder might cry
`Weakness and Ill-doing!' But I should be judged rather
as a general sent to bring under government an enemy people,
numerous, heathen, living in a most difficult, unknown and
pathless country. And to do this I had many good men,
it is true, but also a host that was not good, but was factious,
turbulent, sensual and idle. Yet have I brought these strange
lands and naked peoples under the Sovereigns, giving them
the lordship of a new world. What say my accusers? They
say that I have taken great honors and wealth and nobility
for myself and my house. Even they say, O my friend!
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: colored ornaments. The clock, the candelabra, all were in white marble
and gold. The only table there had a cloth of cashmere. Elegant
flower-pots held roses of every kind, flowers white or red. In fine,
the least detail seemed to have been the object of loving thought.
Never had richness hidden itself more coquettishly to become elegance,
to express grace, to inspire pleasure. Everything there would have
warmed the coldest of beings. The caresses of the tapestry, of which
the color changed according to the direction of one's gaze, becoming
either all white or all rose, harmonized with the effects of the light
shed upon the diaphanous tissues of the muslin, which produced an
appearance of mistiness. The soul has I know not what attraction
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
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 In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: life. For one captain, sailing out of New Bedford, carried him to
Nuka-hiva and marooned him there among the cannibals. The motive
for this act was inconceivably small; poor Tari's wages, which were
thus economised, would scarce have shook the credit of the New
Bedford owners. And the act itself was simply murder. Tari's life
must have hung in the beginning by a hair. In the grief and terror
of that time, it is not unlikely he went mad, an infirmity to which
he was still liable; or perhaps a child may have taken a fancy to
him and ordained him to be spared. He escaped at least alive,
married in the island, and when I knew him was a widower with a
married son and a granddaughter. But the thought of Oahu haunted
|
