| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dracula by Bram Stoker: movement up and down the river that hour, he found that few
of them had seen any of fog at all, except where it lay round
the wharf. However, the ship went out on the ebb tide,
and was doubtless by morning far down the river mouth.
She was then, when they told us, well out to sea.
"And so, my dear Madam Mina, it is that we have to rest for a time,
for our enemy is on the sea, with the fog at his command, on his way
to the Danube mouth. To sail a ship takes time, go she never so quick.
And when we start to go on land more quick, and we meet him there.
Our best hope is to come on him when in the box between sunrise and sunset.
For then he can make no struggle, and we may deal with him as we should.
Dracula |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: bars of steel were tossed about and chopped like bits of cheese.
All around and above giant machine arms were flying, giant wheels
were turning, great hammers crashing; traveling cranes creaked
and groaned overhead, reaching down iron hands and seizing iron
prey--it was like standing in the center of the earth, where the
machinery of time was revolving.
By and by they came to the place where steel rails were made; and
Jurgis heard a toot behind him, and jumped out of the way of a
car with a white-hot ingot upon it, the size of a man's body.
There was a sudden crash and the car came to a halt, and the
ingot toppled out upon a moving platform, where steel fingers and
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott: Ravenswood and his daughter to walk upon the terrace, for the
purpose of watching, from that commanding position, the earliest
symptoms of his lordship's approach. For this purpose, with
slow and idle step, he paraded the terrace, which, flanked with a
heavy stone battlement, stretched in front of the castle upon a
level with the first story; while visitors found access to the
court by a projecting gateway, the bartizan or flat-leaded roof
of which was accessible from the terrace by an easy flight of low
and broad steps. The whole bore a resemblance partly to a
castle, partly to a nobleman's seat; and though calculated, in
some respects, for defence, evinced that it had been constructed
The Bride of Lammermoor |
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 Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: And, secondly, since furnished, when sent off,
With texture of such rareness that they can
Through objects whatsoever penetrate
And ooze, as 'twere, through intervening air.
Besides, if those fine particles of things
Which from so deep within are sent abroad,
As light and heat of sun, are seen to glide
And spread themselves through all the space of heaven
Upon one instant of the day, and fly
O'er sea and lands and flood the heaven, what then
Of those which on the outside stand prepared,
Of The Nature of Things |
