| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: a god in this city of Tenoctitlan, and except for certain
ceremonies that you must undergo, and certain arts which you must
learn, none will trouble you. Your slightest wish will be a law,
and when you smile on any, it shall be an omen of good to them and
they will bless you; even my father Montezuma will treat you with
reverence as an equal or more. Every delight shall be yours except
that of marriage, and this will be withheld till the twelfth month
of the year. Then the four most beautiful maidens in the land will
be given to you as brides.'
'And who will choose them?' I asked.
'Nay, I know not, Teule, who do not meddle in such mysteries,' she
Montezuma's Daughter |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: with drolleries is not in everybody's line; and that Sancho your
worship speaks of, gentle sir, must be some great scoundrel,
dunderhead, and thief, all in one; for I am the real Sancho Panza, and
I have more drolleries than if it rained them; let your worship only
try; come along with me for a year or so, and you will find they
fall from me at every turn, and so rich and so plentiful that though
mostly I don't know what I am saying I make everybody that hears me
laugh. And the real Don Quixote of La Mancha, the famous, the valiant,
the wise, the lover, the righter of wrongs, the guardian of minors and
orphans, the protector of widows, the killer of damsels, he who has
for his sole mistress the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso, is this
Don Quixote |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Hamlet by William Shakespeare: His fell to Hamlet. Now sir, young Fortinbras,
Of vnimproued Mettle, hot and full,
Hath in the skirts of Norway, heere and there,
Shark'd vp a List of Landlesse Resolutes,
For Foode and Diet, to some Enterprize
That hath a stomacke in't: which is no other
(And it doth well appeare vnto our State)
But to recouer of vs by strong hand
And termes Compulsatiue, those foresaid Lands
So by his Father lost: and this (I take it)
Is the maine Motiue of our Preparations,
Hamlet |
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 Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: father, and again he gazed at that luminous spark. The eyelid
closed and opened again abruptly; it was like a woman's sign of
assent. It was an intelligent movement. If a voice had cried
"Yes!" Don Juan could not have been more startled.
"What is to be done?" he thought.
He nerved himself to try to close the white eyelid. In vain.
"Kill it? That would perhaps be parricide," he debated with
himself.
"Yes," the eye said, with a strange sardonic quiver of the lid.
"Aha!" said Don Juan to himself, "here is witchcraft at work!"
And he went closer to crush the thing. A great tear trickled over
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